Back on the road again - nearly!

"Bunty"

Recently, my gardening jobs have concentrated themselves into one week, followed by a fairly empty week, allowing me time to make jams, spin wool or do my own gardening – whatever takes my fancy. I didn’t really plan it that way, but I do quite like it although my body is not so sure about gardening for 5 days in a row!

A couple of weeks ago was one of my quiet weeks, and the weather was not good, so I started to spin the Shetland fleeces that I talked about in my previous blog. To keep me company while I was spinning, I set my YouTube music selection to ‘Random shuffle’. My YouTube music collection is pretty eclectic, made up of classical pieces, folk music, celtic music, 70s and 80s classics, etc and other random stuff that I’ve heard on people’s Facebook posts and enjoyed. Sometimes the random shuffle seems to get stuck in a loop and I end up listening to back-to-back Dire Straits or Fleetwood Mac, but that particular day it seemed to be behaving itself until I realised that it had played Crystal Gale’s ‘River Road’ (twice), Martha Tilston’s ‘Nomad Blood’ (twice!) and Canned Heat’s ‘Back on the Road Again’ – I could see a bit of a theme developing and, having too much time on my hands to think, it set off a train of thought that chugged off down the track, gathering momentum as it went. To be honest bits of this train – let’s call them the carriages, to continue the analogy – had been waiting in the sidings for some time, just waiting for the locomotive to come along and link them all together.

Carriage #1:

Back in 2015, when I finally hung up my WWOOFing shoes (or should that be wellies?) I had hoped to find a way to continue WWOOfing without having to work back-to-back with no break in between to rest and catch my breath, but the need to earn a living led me to start my gardening jobs and clients expected me to turn up regularly, not come one week and then take off for a couple, so the dream died … or so I thought.

Carriage #2:

During lockdown, while the markets were closed and I couldn’t sell my jams, chutneys, etc, I saw some of my market trader friends start doing home deliveries to keep their businesses going. It occurred to me that, if I had a van, I could also travel around, selling my wares but, as the markets had never been my main source of income, I couldn’t justify the expense of buying a van, taxing it and insuring it, so the dream died … or so I thought.

Carriage #3:

A few years ago, when I was first on my own, my lovely sister and brother-in-law started to include me in a group that went to the Fairport Convention music festival in Cropredy, Oxfordshire each year. At first, we camped in a large tent but, when they both retired, they bought a campervan so that they could do more travelling abroad, so the van went to Cropredy and I slept in the awning. I rather liked the idea of a campervan, but they are very expensive, so the dream died … or so I thought.

The Locomotive:

I have just turned 66. I am not getting any younger. I have finally qualified for my State Pension. It may not be a huge amount, but it does mean that, if I want to, I could become, at least, semi-retired. Those tunes just kept on playing in my head and through my speakers as I sat spinning wool into yarn – a very contemplative occupation. I put down my wool, picked up my laptop and looked on eBay for ‘Campervans’. There were a few possibilities but they were all ‘oop North’ and too far for me to go and see, but then I saw one that said ‘Weston-super-Mare’ as the location. Before I could think twice I picked up the phone and dialled the mobile number that was listed. It turned out that the van was actually in Bristol, the listing had been put up by the guy’s son-in-law (who lived in Weston). For a moment I discounted the idea of going to see it, until I realised that it was my side of Bristol and only a stone’s throw from Dundry, where I regularly do a farm sit, so I knew exactly how to get there and didn’t have to navigate myself through Bristol itself. Before I could get cold feet, I made an appointment to view it that afternoon.

The interior

It was old – 25 years old, to be exact – and had travelled many miles, but was in surprisingly good condition inside, and with only a few bubbles of rust visible on the outside. We went out for a test drive. It was a noisy diesel, but was quite quiet inside and there were no ominous puffs of black smoke from the exhaust. It pulled like a train, and tugged at my mind and my heart. We negotiated (I just knew that Creative Negotiating Course I’d been sent on years ago, when I was a components buyer, would come in handy one day); we struck a deal and he agreed to put her through an MOT. I drove home, wondering what on earth I’d done. She’d cost me the best part of half my savings but my heart was singing and my face had a permanent grin.

Last Thursday evening, my daughter and her partner took me to Bristol and Jeni and I drove her home. The most direct route home would have been up Dundry Hill but it is very steep and very bendy and I didn’t think it would be a clever idea to make that my first obstacle in a vehicle I had never driven before, so we planned a slightly less testing route and, after initially stalling her as soon as I got in, my biggest problem was keeping to the speed limit! Jeni was supposed to be there to give me encouragement and support but she ended up being the one trying to keep my exuberance from bubbling over and telling me to slow down. It would have been ironic to get my first ever speeding ticket at the age of 66 whilst driving a very old diesel campervan!

Hob and grill

Fridge

So now she is home and we are already planning her first trip – to Devon and Cornwall to catch up with old friends. Jeni has suggested a name for her – when I was a child, the family dog was my constant companion on solo adventures so, please, let me introduce you to Bunty the VW T4 Trident Autosleeper Campervan! She has a fridge, a sink, two gas rings and a grill, a pull out double bed and another one in the roof space, blown hot air heating and a solar panel on the roof that charges not only the leisure battery but the main vehicle battery as well. She also came with a brand new awning that I haven't looked at yet, as it keeps raining! All I have to do now is kit her out ready for her trip, and that has already started as my friend, Mary, has given me kitchen items, including a whistling kettle, for my birthday present! In time, she may also double up as 'Jan's Jam Van' and we'll go off to markets, village fetes and perhaps even have a regular circuit of Mendip villages, selling my wares to Somerset folk!

Sink

Rear seat/bed

The rear

‘I make roots, I pull them up again, woah, my Nomad Blood’! 

Spinning!

Outdoor spinning is lovely on a warm day!

This week my blog is all about spinning – and I don’t mean that fast-pedalling-on-an-exercise-bike thing! Last week was a quiet one as far as gardening work went, and the weather was not the best,  so I decided to concentrate on a mainly indoor pursuit instead.

A little while ago a friend of mine asked me if I would spin-test (like road-testing!) a couple of her Shetland fleeces. She consistently wins prizes for her fleeces at shows, both on and off the sheep, but had no idea how they would be for hand-spinners. I did point out to her that I am not an expert, but she still wanted me to have a go – such a trusting soul! Most of her sheep are the colouration called grey katmoget (there are many different colours of Shetland sheep, each with traditional names), which is silver-grey on the upper body and black beneath.

A grey katmoget Shetland sheep

The two fleeces were duly delivered in labelled paper carriers, and I decide to spin one ‘in the grease’ i.e. without washing the lanolin out of it first, and the other after washing. They were both from ‘shearlings’ i.e. it was the first time that their fleeces had been clipped, and these are always the best as they are longer, thicker and more lustrous than at subsequent shearings. As a sheep ages the fleece tends to become thinner and, if they have had any health issues during the year, there is often a weak bit in the fleece which is not good for spinning.

The raw fleece ready for carding

The one to be washed was split into more manageable bits because, although Shetland fleeces are relatively small, a soaking wet fleece is a difficult item to manhandle, and I don’t really have a big enough vessel to give it enough room to really soak. I placed about four gallons of rainwater in the container, with a squirt of eco-friendly washing up liquid, and left it to soak for several days. The washing up liquid helps remove the lanolin, as it has a degreaseant in it, and also helps to ‘wet’ the wool effectively.

Soaking the fleece

Once it has soaked for several days, I carefully squeeze out as much water as possible and then rinse it several times in lukewarm water, being very careful not to agitate it, as Shetland wool felts for a pastime! With other fleeces I have got away with putting the rinsed fleece into a net laundry bag and spinning it in the washing machine, but I tried this with a previous Shetland fleece and ended up with a nice piece of grey felt! ☹ After the final rinse I took it outside and draped it as thinly as I could over my wooden garden bench, so that it would dry in the sun – it promptly rained on it! However, the first piece eventually dried and is waiting to be spun. The second piece is still soaking and will be processed as soon as I have some free time.

Washed fleece drying in the sun

The first job with the fleece, after washing or not, is to card it. This involves combing the fleece so that most of the fibres lie in one direction and is traditionally done using a pair of carders which are rectangular pieces of wood on short handles, covered on one face with carding cloth which has multiple rows of curved wire teeth. The two carders are used in opposition to each other and the fleece to be carded is laid on one face and the other face pulled through it, several times. This method is very time-consuming and for someone with arthritic thumb joints, ultimately painful, so I decided a few years ago to invest in a drum carder, which does the same job, but on a larger scale with two opposing drums covered in carding cloth doing the pulling. Allegedly you can get electric ones, but I bought a manual one which still saves me a lot of time, and pain.

My drum carder

Once the carding is done you end up with a batt of wool with all the fibres tending to lie in one direction, and about the size of a piece of A4 paper (or foolscap, if you’re old enough to remember that!). And now the fun really starts!

The prepared Batt of wool

To create a yarn that is strong enough to knit or crochet with, it is advisable to spin two full bobbins of wool that are then plied together onto a third bobbin. The unwashed fleece is full of lanolin and a few bits of vegetation that have got caught in the fleece as it grows, and a fair amount of dust and dirt, so I wore an apron to protect my clothes. In some ways it is easier to spin a greasy fleece as the fibres stick together more easily and also feed through the fingers smoothly. However, the downside is that your hands and arms get very greasy and sticky. Some people, including the owner of these sheep, are allergic to lanolin, so any yarn would have to be well washed after spinning to remove it completely. Once I’d spun my two bobbins of ‘singles’ I suddenly remembered that my aunty had given me some cones of a filament, that may or may not be silk, when she was having a sort out of her wool stash, but it is ultra-fine and shiny and I decided to add some of the silver grey into the finished yarn, whilst I was plying the other two strands. 

Plying the two 'singles'

Once plied I wound the yarn into two skeins using a useful tool called a ‘niddy-noddy’ and then washed them in lukewarm water and detergent, rinsed them several times until the water ran clear and then hung them on the line to drip dry. When you first wash either the fleece or the finished yarn, the washing water comes out a dark orangey brown, that gets progressively paler as you rinse. Some of that is accumulated dirt and dust but most of it is the lanolin. When I use the outside container to soak the fleece, I subsequently use the lanolin water to water my pot plants – they seem to thrive on it!

Hand carders and a 'Niddy-Noddy' behind

I’m hoping that the washed fleece is as easy to spin as the unwashed one but, so far, both fleeces get the thumbs-up from me. It is not the smoothest of yarns, as Shetland wool seems to have lots of little lumps and knurly bits that give the finished yarn texture, but I will be quite happy to knit with it and turn it into something beautiful.

   

The finished skeins

One project finished, and another one about to start!

Hurrah! I have finally finished re-decorating my cottage and by early next week it should be back on the market! Phew! What a mission that turned out to be. At times I wished I wasn’t such a perfectionist and could just turn a blind eye to something that wasn’t quite up to standard but, hey-ho, I am my father’s daughter and ‘if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well’! So I have washed walls and woodwork with sugar soap, filled and sanded blemishes and nail holes, papered, painted walls and ceilings (usually two coats), painted all the woodwork in all the rooms, re-laid carpet tiles in part of the bathroom, renewed the loo seat, laid vinyl flooring in the utility room and shampoo-ed the sitting room carpet, as well as weeding the outside area (twice), re-varnishing the front door and repairing some guttering. I have been up and down stepladders more times than I care to remember and even climbed the extended ladder to paint the giddy heights of the stairwell. I even ventured through the loft trap to retrieve a box of Christmas decorations that I had suspected was still up there, but which hadn’t seen the light of day for 17 years! The house definitely looks lighter and brighter, and very neutral, so I hope that it will sell this time and I can finally start to look for another place to call Home. 

When I haven’t been at the cottage, I have been continuing with my gardening jobs and helped clear an overgrown bed at the market garden, which meant that I got up close and personal with several wee beasties that were lurking in the mini jungle. This week, when I was there, we were weeding between the rows of runner beans (on the hottest day of the year, so far) when Liam discovered a common newt amongst the grasses. There was a large wildlife pond in the centre of the vegetable area, created by a previous tenant, but the liner has long since deteriorated and it hardly holds any water at all, so I hope the newt was able to find some dampness to protect it from the ferocious sun. 

At one of my gardening clients I have agreed to take on the challenge of an extra project – rebuilding the collapsed bank on one side of their stream. We have decided to use gabions for extra stability – these are those weldmesh cages that you sometimes see on motorways and other roads holding back banks of earth. They are normally one metre cubed but my client and I think we can get away with much smaller ones, so that I don’t have to dig out so much soil from the bank. My daughter, Jeni, caught in a weak moment, has volunteered to help me at weekends! We have worked together as WWOOFers and make a surprisingly good team, as we seem to think in the same way, so disagreements are few and far between. I wondered what I was going to do now that the cottage was finished! 😀  

Yesterday, as it wasn’t forecast to be so hot, Jeni and I decided to meet up and go for a walk, starting at her house. The quiet countryside ramble that we had anticipated turned into a bit of an intrepid adventure: our first challenge came when we turned off the lane onto a footpath, walked across the field in the direction indicated and found that the stile we were expected to use was quite a barrier. Originally, there had obviously been a stone wall as the field boundary, with a traditional stone stile set in it, but the farmer had then stock fenced either side of it, installing rather inadequate wooden stiles each side and about two feet away from the original boundary, thus creating a gulf of approximately 5 feet wide filled with brambles and nettles that had grown across the gap – no-one had obviously crossed it for some time, but we did! 

Once across the next field we slithered and slid our way down a steep wooded valley towards the main Wells-Shepton Mallet road at the bottom of the coombe and came across our next challenge – a huge fallen tree, right across the footpath. Jeni scrambled down the slope to see if there was a way round it at the bottom, but then we decided that there was a very small gap that we could crawl through on the footpath itself, so we did. The footpath then led to a small wooden footbridge that crossed the main inlet pipeline to the water treatment works. It looked decidedly rotten, with several steps missing, but it was the only way to get out onto the roadway, so we gingerly negotiated that, fought our way through a wilderness of brambles and nettles and emerged onto the main road, only to see a notice pinned to the footpath sign saying, ‘Footpath closed, due to dangerous bridge’! Obviously, they hadn’t seen fit to repeat this sign at the other end of the footpath. 

After that the walk became far less challenging, as we just had to follow the footpath through some fields before coming back into Shepton at the top of the hill, having climbed back up the other side of the valley. It was a lovely walk, and we saw some beautiful butterflies, a small mouse in a hedge and some amazing shell fossils in a piece of rock at the side of a maize field, as well as hearing some young buzzards calling from the treetops in the wood.