It might be a short month but February seems to have been a busy one! It was book-ended with snow and storms but was also quite productive here at Moulin Yarns.
A fair bit of DIY happened this month. So did lots of seed sowing and pricking out of seedlings in the greenhouse, looks like I will be eating lots of vegetables this year! Tomatoes, Brussel sprouts and Cauliflower in abundance, as well as herbs and salad leaves.
I had a lovely message from someone in Somerset who had knitted a scarf using some of my yarn during the month, the first thing they wanted to know was if there was anything special they needed to do when blocking because it was hand-dyed yarn. But the really nice thing was it was yarn she had received as a Christmas present and they were so happy with the way it turned out. The yarn in question is called ‘Remember, Remember’ and is the colours you would find in a bonfire, with yellows, oranges and reds with black for the ash. And it sparkles!!
In the middle of the month I was contacted by a former work colleague who is nanny to twin girls. One of them has started to crochet and she wondered if I would show her a bit of spinning and dyeing, so we arranged a date. They came, spent about 3 hours and went away with some mini-skeins that she had dyed herself. First of all she chose some colours and we dyed a nice tonal fuschia pink together. We then tried speckled yarn which she was happy to do almost all on her own. I liked the results myself and may even reproduce it as colourway named after her – Paige turner!!
Of course, once I had shown her my dyeing techniques she wanted to see how yarn is spun, so over coffee and biscuits I explained the process, something that they will get the chance to try the next time they visit.
Because I had the dyes out anyway I dyed up some of the yarn stock for myself, some mohair silk-weight which will match other yarns in my stock when the shop reopens in spring, in time for Easter.
In other news, unfortunately there won’t be any Perthshire Open Studios this year as they couldn’t find enough people willing to step up to run it after the current committee were retiring, but it isn’t all bad news, we will be at craft fairs again this year!! The Aberfeldy Arts and Crafts Market will be happening along with the Farmers market on the first Sunday of the months from April to October. On those days the studio will be closed but I’ll keep you up to date with the dates on the website.
Until next month, happy crafting.