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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: February 2015
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Saturday, February 28, 2015. Knitting Up The Stash. Way back in January I decided to go on a yarn and fibre diet, my stash has got way out of control and is slowly taking over my house. So no yarn purchases for me unless:. 1 It's for a swap (is being sent away). 2 I need to purchase something to finish off something made from my stash yarn and fibre. So far so good. I have started knitting these, all from the stash:. 3 A handmade gift for a swap I'm taking part in over on Ravelry. I can't say or show...
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: April 2015
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Tuesday, April 28, 2015. Winter Warmers.Steamed Jam Roly-Poly, Spinning Shetland, and a Finished Sweater! Anzac day weekend, we had 3 days of great weather for this time of year but yesterday was very cold and my word did it rain - all night and all day. When it's cold and grey and it's a Sunday I had to make a nice traditional English pudding. Steamed Jam Roly-Poly, always loved it but I haven't made one for many many years. It's the pudding of my childhood. 250g self raising flour. 1 tablespoon of sugar.
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: November 2014
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Sunday, November 23, 2014. Mary Berry's Banana loaf. Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of having a whole day at home to myself. What to do? Banana loaf my favorite recipe is a Mary Berry one. It's quite adaptable and keeps and freezes very well. Not too sweet as I use a little less sugar than the original recipe calls for, moist, cakey, and not at all heavy as I find a lot of banana loaf recipes are. I made 3, 1 for now and 2 for the freezer. Here's the recipe:. 225g self raising flour. The original reci...
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: October 2014
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014. Alpaca Fibre Processing, Part 2. I finally finished cleaning/washing/combing the mid fawn alpaca fibre. 490g of perfectly clean, soft, fluffy nests to spin. Before I started the fibre weighed 610g so the wastage has run at about 20% which isn't bad. The cria fleece I'm working on now, which came from Radar, is so very soft and fine and wastage seems very high. So I did two experiments:. Thursday, October 23, 2014. This is the fibre that was sitting in the red basket on my 'Thre...
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: March 2013
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Monday, March 25, 2013. The veggy patch is in full production. We picked 3 kg of runner beans yesterday, ate some with dinner last night and I blanched and froze the rest. There's another similar amount of beans almost ready to pick. I can see us getting sick of beans fairly soon. 1 large onion, chopped. 1 clove garlic, sliced. 1 tbsp olive oil. A knob of butter. 3 large fennel bulbs, cleaned and chopped. Reserve a few of the fennel fronds. 600g potatoes, peeled and chopped. Salt and white pepper. Remove...
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: June 2013
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Saturday, June 15, 2013. Over the last 2 weeks I've spent every spare minute I could find spinning the fibre that I combed and I'm very pleased with what I've achieved. It takes a very long time to fill a bobbin when you are spinning extremely fine singles. While spinning I was considering leaving the yarn as a singles yarn. Here's what Peter Teal says on the subject:. But after thinking about the benefits of plying the yarn:. It balances the yarn. Plied yarns are more uniformly strong. Recipe for a yarn.
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: February 2014
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Sunday, February 16, 2014. Yay, I finished combing the rest of the clean alpaca fibre last night. There's 218g. I'm really chuffed with it:. It was very labour/time intensive and I could not imagine prepping a whole fleece this way, however, for a special project requiring a small amount of fibre it's definitely worth doing. I'll continue cleaning the vm out of the remainder of this fleece over the coming week and have decided to send it away to be washed, blended with some fine merino and carded. Here's...
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: Knitting Up The Stash...
http://serenknitty.blogspot.com/2015/02/knitting-up-stash.html
Saturday, February 28, 2015. Knitting Up The Stash. Way back in January I decided to go on a yarn and fibre diet, my stash has got way out of control and is slowly taking over my house. So no yarn purchases for me unless:. 1 It's for a swap (is being sent away). 2 I need to purchase something to finish off something made from my stash yarn and fibre. So far so good. I have started knitting these, all from the stash:. 3 A handmade gift for a swap I'm taking part in over on Ravelry. I can't say or show...
serenknitty.blogspot.com
DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: May 2013
http://serenknitty.blogspot.com/2013_05_01_archive.html
Monday, May 20, 2013. Wool Combs and an Exhibition. For me it's all about quality. I like to work with the best quality materials and tools I possibly can. When I put a lot of hours into a project I want the finished item to be as good as it can possibly be. So I decided to get myself a pair of these beauties:. My next purchase will be the hackle to go with my combs so that I can blend fibre from my alpacas with wool and silk to make my own custom blends. 550 mtrs of very heavy lace weight 100% alpaca.
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DARFIELD DYE WORKS/ SERENKNITTY: December 2014
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Wednesday, December 31, 2014. Chocolate Mousse Cake with Berries. A New Years Eve show-stopper of a cake! This is luxuriously rich and chocolatey yet is surprisingly simple and quick to make (apart from the chilling time). You will need a 25 cm springform cake tin, with the base and sides lined with non stick baking paper. Oven 180 degC, 160 deg fan. 25g cocoa mixed into a paste with 3 tablespoons boiling water. 100g self raising flour. 1 level teaspoon baking powder. Serves at least 12 people, small sli...