new niddy noddy

This morning I went to my local all things yarn and spinning shop and found this lovely carved and shaped niddy noddy. It looks Scandinavian, would love to know who it was made by, it rests beautifully in the hand, has a little peg to take out in order to slip the skein off.

LOOMS old and new

Here is my old bed frame loom on its way to completing a fleece lock rug, I have put this aside now for my new to me upright tapestry/rug loom.
Since writing this I saw a lovely 30" Macomber jack loom on ebay, put the only bid in and bought it, drove it down from the north west, what a lovely loom. I think it had been wet at some time (floods)? so as dismantled I gave it a good sanding and protective matt varnish, looks beautiful now, I have recently discovered from its nameplate and number that it was made in March 1971.

Poor old George

Poor old George, the nice horse who is featured in my Blog header had to be put down yesterday, he was very old and blind in one eye, a thoroughbred, had been a showjumper in his heyday, but spent his latter years in the company of Shanti, and little Oscar, a Shetland, and he outlived them all. Miss you George.

field walking finds

I found these artifacts years ago whilst  field walking over an Iron age site partly in our orchard and sadjacent fields, amongst lots of pottery sherds, bones, beads, pig tusk, shale bracelet parts, querns and other finds. This is one of a few spindle whorls along with loom weights I found when this field was annually ploughed up and the rain made things visible. The tapered cube mystery object is about an inch square and very smoothly polished on 3 sides but mainly one, it is of a hard dense heavy purplish stone.
My own thought is that it may have been used for rubbing the stems of nettles or other fibres to make bast for yarn. The other picture shows one of the several circle marks that appear in the field at times. This site has been logged by the local archaeology dept, and on an adjacent hill are graves of Anglo Saxons, but the whole area covers finds from Neolithic through Bronze and Iron ages, Romans to Anglo Saxons and Medieval Tudor to modern. Now under grassland and listed.
Finding this spindle whorl started my interest in spinning and weaving.

soft beret

I wanted to knit something warm and soft for myself, so I knitted the band with Dark brown Wensleydale and the rest of it with gey alpaca plied with dyed mohair locks, ran round the band with shirring elastic, so it stays on, making a second one now with dyed Cotswold.