Monday 22 February 2010

Making stock and taking stock

Making stock;
I have had a wonderfully busy February designing and making new stock for the art and crafts outlets where I sell my work on the Island, as well as items for my Folksy shop.
I love the new yarns coming through for Spring/Summer and particularly enjoy the fresh colours. I'm introducing new designs as well as knitting the popular favourites such as my guernsey styled nautical motif sweaters for children.
Taking stock;
With the weather determined to stay cold, wet and wintry, I have had little choice but to keep the boats underwraps and press on with indoor pursuits.
I'm hoping that it won't be too much of a mad rush around to clean, paint, polish, antifoul, varnish, service the outboard motor etc etc...
Oh dear, the list of jobs is very long and most of the chores require reasonable weather conditions!
Luckily the dinghies are good to go. We usually wash the ropes by hand in buckets and the bath tub (it's a bit of a job and the bath tub needs a good scrub afterwards too!) but this year we decided to wash all the ropes at the local laundrette.
Bagged them up in old pillowcases and duvet covers and put them in on a warm wash. It worked really well, thankfully no shrinkage, just lovely and clean and fresh!

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Jacob Fleece Part One





I'm preparing a Jacob fleece for spinning.
This fleece is locally sourced on the Isle of Wight.
It is brown/black and white and I have decided to separate the colours to spin.

Boats, nearly time...

The one bill I don't mind too much dropping through the letterbox is the one from our Harbour Master telling me it's time to pay up for the Summer mooring fee. Okay, I don't much like paying the bill, but I do start tingling with the thought that we are on the other side of winter now and it will soon be time to prepare the boats for sailing once more.
I will introduce you to our 3 little boats in the coming weeks as they are brought out of their sleepy winter storage and spruced up for the season.
One is a self build dinghy (PBO Pup), one is an old Mirror dinghy(which we enjoy racing with) and one is our small sailing yacht (Sunstar 18) for river and Solent sailing.