British Wool Weekend

happens this weekend at the Great Yorkshire Showground, and so over the last couple of weeks I've been busy dying wool and fibre, and to this end when the Hobbits were here a couple of weeks ago they helped me dye 3 kilos of knitting wool.

This is the result of their work, drying in the sun, on one of the few dry days we've had in August.
I've also dyed 1 1/5kgs of alpaca, again a request from one of my regular customers for some rainbow dyed alpaca, and some Teeswater fleece.
I've also been re-bagging my fibre with our new address, it's not all done but I hope to get it finished by the start of next year's fibre events, and I've also sent a booking form off for Stockton Sparkle, an event that is 4 days long at the beginning of December.
Once this weekend is over I'm hoping to spend the rest of September working on the garden, I really want to get my chickens here and start to get the veg area of my garden dug over, but the soil is so hard, like concrete, despite all the rain we've had, I know it is going to be a long, slow process getting the veg garden ready. But it will happen!!!!

Mogfest

This event was arranged in secret by Amber Moggy, for her husband, Mr Mog, to celebrate his 60th birthday, and I was one of the few stallholders asked to attend with specific instructions to bring my rainbow dyed alpaca tops, which, thanks to the house move, I'd not had time to dye some more, so I set about and dyed a couple of kilos last week in readiness for Sunday.
It was an early start in order to get to Ulveston in time to set up before Mr Mog arrived at 10am. He'd been told he was going to a craft fair, but when he parked his car in the car park, he recognised a couple of dogs in a car, and wondered why they were there and when he saw the Mogfest banner outside the hall, suspected something was up. He was pretty stunned when walked in and saw us all there, and I don't think he stopped smiling all day. His very own Fibre Festival with all his favourite stallholders.
Sometimes life is good.

And here is Mr Mog's birthday cake.
Happy Birthday Mr Mog and many more of them.

The Garden

Last weekend friends and family came to look at the house and garden, and as it rained we were able to fit all 21 people in our lounge! It was good to see everyone and now they have been, we can start and make the house and garden our own. We have discovered that the whole house needs rewiring, we knew the wiring wanted looking at but it is a bigger job than we thought. We await the electrician's quotes.We can now start working on the garden, which is approx 60ft wide and 80ft long .

Looking from the bottom of the garden back to the house and showing one of the circular boarders who's centre piece is a large magnolia. The boarder against the fence also has several large specimen shrubs, which we are not sure what we are going to do with them.

This part of the boarder is to be cleared of it's flowers and transformed into my veg plot. Against the trellis I'm hoping to plant a couple of espalier fruit trees.

The opposite boarder is to be cleared and this is where, hopefully, my hens will live

These large conifers are to be removed as they take up so much space and you can plant nothing near them.

There are, for some reason, 4 conifers, that have been cut small and square, just at the back of the house. These have now been cleared of their branches, we just have to dig out the roots and once that is done, these little boarders will be ideal for small herb gardens, being outsidethe kitchen door.

This is another view of the boarder where, once cleared my chickens will live, and it gives you an idea of how long the garden is. As you can see there is plenty of work to keep us out of mischief.

I have to get on with some dying next week as I'm off to a fibre event on Sunday. Hopefully more about this next week