wool

Since the start of the year, I have been making a conscious, deliberate effort to make more time for making. Rediscovering my creative side has been a revelation to me. Having a variety of absorbing, enjoyable, fulfilling (and manageable!) hobbies have been doing wonders for my physical and mental well-being.

In parallel to my renewed interest in making things with my hands, I'm also becoming increasingly interested in the processes involved in creating the raw-materials that I then enjoy transforming at home...or out on the hillside.
 
I've started with wool. Living in a sheep-farming community, this seems the logical thing to do. Daily life, yearly life in our village still revolves around the handful of sheep farmers who scratch out a living raising livestock.

Perennial, divisive issues such as the expansion of the ski stations, the management of the Pyrénées National Park, electronic tagging of livestock, the reintroduction of the brown bear (...) are all important, very real issues for local farmers.

But despite having lived here for five years and taking an active interest in these thorny issues, I realise that I still know very little about the realities of the traditions and way of life that have shaped our valley over the centuries.

And I know even less about sheep!

Back in February, I listen to some excellent French podcasts about sheep farming and the wool industry here in France. They've really got me thinking. In addition to recycling, re-purposing and re-using yarns, where possible, I'd like my choice of materials to have a real connection to the landscape in which I live and work.

The first step back then was to find a spinning wheel and learn how to use it!

Since then, I've been spinning away at every opportunity and feel like I'm really starting to get the hang of things now.

The next step then is to knit a garment with my own, hand spun yarn. Only a few weeks left before it's time to cast on!

French beans

My beaux-parents are here in the valley this week. 

As usual, they arrived with a car-full of presents for us. The very best kind: home-grown and home-prepared. Four jars of courgette jam. A box of potatoes. Garlic. Onions. Two crates of tomatoes. A crate of French beans.

Tuesday was a bit of a poorly day for me. So whilst the men-folk were up a mountain, I sat in the kitchen and was given a lesson in canning French beans in a pressure cooker from my belle-mère.

From a crate of fresh, crisp beans, we ended up with only two jars for the winter. But they are a celebration of quality over quantity.   

For me, these jars of beans encapsulate one of the things that I so treasure about daily life in France: the deeply rooted understanding that it is in our own back gardens (be it veggie patches, favourite hedgerows, shady glen, brook sides or mountain meadows) that the best stuff of life resides. 

By the time the boys had come back from the mountain, there were two jars of French beans ready to tidy away for the winter. And they came home with armfulls of delicious wild mushrooms.

summer stash

Spent yesterday morning washing, fulling and blocking the pile of yarns that have been slowly building up beside my spinning wheel over the summer. Some of these will end up in the natural dye pot, others are destined for the Shetland Wool Week KAL.

easing in slowly

September already.  N came back from a mountain walk earlier today, his arms full of parasol mushrooms - my favourite kind of bouquet! And a sure sign that Autumn is loitering...but not yet here.

I'm slowly beginning to resurface from the month that's been, gently easing back into a new, slower, everyday pace.  
 
I am so grateful for a brand new month, for slightly better health and improved mood, for scrumping in apple orchards and for gentle afternoon walks, for freshly washed sheets and home-made summer vegetable soups. 

And I am grateful to have emerged from the haze of the cure into the golden, sun-drenched daze of late summer.

late summer daze

Late summer days daze with my darling.
The sun is back, and the pastures are still full of flowers and cows.

An afternoon spent in the shade of an old barn, walking barefoot through the meadows, picking wild flowers, searching for bilberries and carding wall.

I also cast on a couple of samples for a WIP...

swatches

I've been sampling yarns this week. Not only to try out the different colour combinations, but also the different fibre construction. Now I've got a handful of little samples of both woolen and (semi) worsted spun yarns, I've made a couple of swatches of the Fair Isle pattern to see how the colours and yarns work together. The results were rather surprising. 

I had expected worsted spun (bottom sample) to be the ideal construction for Fair Isle because it affords a crisp stitch definition which really shows off the design. However, whilst considerably more fuzzy, the woolen spun yarn (top sample) was softer, airier and more lightweight. Both swatches were knit with the same weight yarn and needles and finished in the same way (washed in hot water and blocked) and yet the worsted sample faired better in the finishing and didn't suffer from shrinkage as much as the woolen sample. 

Now armed with these knitted and blocked samples, I think I'll stick with what I know and spin woolen for the time being. I'm excited with my semi-worsted results though, as hopefully I'll be able to have a go at spinning some sock yarn next!

worsted samples

Whilst the tent was drying in the sunshine and N was off for a stroll in the meadows, I made the most of the fresh air to play with my wheel. I tried out some new carding and spinning methods I picked up over the weekend. 

It's the first time I've tried spinning semi-worsted, and the finished yarn looks wonderfully smooth and uniform, so different from my fuzzy woollen yarns. Soon I'll have enough to be able to cast on a couple of swatches for my shwook hat to see which effect I prefer.

wild camping at Payolle

 

After a month stuck in the mud, a few days beneath the Pyrenean sky. A few days spent in another valley, outside, spinning in wild spaces. 

A few cays for carding, experimenting, sampling.

 

A few days of breathing deeply, of feeling the morning sun on our faces, the evening breeze at our backs. Nights of building fires, gazing at stars, falling asleep to the sound of cow bells. Days of spinning beside bubbling streams, searching for blueberries amongst the wild heather.

 (After a night in Serris, we wild-camped the next day at Payolle).

la cure

July and August. 

For the French, these are the holiday months. Suncream. Straw hats. Ice creams. Coffees on pavement cafés. Apéros on the balcony. Festivals and village fêtes stretching long into the night.  Market stalls groaning under the weight of plump, sweet summer fruits. Peaches, nectaries, plums, apricots, strawberries. Melons. 

For me this year, July and August have been a time to emerge from my hibernation. To slow down, take stock. And finally get looked after. 

Daily baths in thermal pools. Hosed down. Plastered in hot, stinky, thermal mud. Balneotherapy. Physiotherapy. Group therapy. 

Eating better. Sleeping better. Walking better. Living better. Feeling (a little) better. 

As hippy-dippy as it might sound, my time spent up at the thermal baths has felt like a re-birth. 

It hasn't cured me. Sadly nothing will do that. But it has helped me to accept the situation. Myself. My life now and my life in the future. 

At the end of July, I was waiting for the baths, a downtrodden and defeated English girl. At the end of August, I've emerged a more confident, more hopeful English girl, who's now a little more French around the edges. (After a month as a curiste, it would be impossible not to feel a little more gallic, after all).

July and August. The holiday healing months. Healing my body. Healing my mind. Healing my soul. Three weeks up at Barèges. Hours spent being pampered. Making wonderful new friends. Dreaming of other possibilities...

Days saturated with mud and water and golden summer light.

woollen samples

I've been working on the yarns for my Shwook hat. I made the first batch of samples, spun from rolags in the woolen way. Next I'll have a go at semi-worsted spinning of the same yarns to see if there is a difference once knit.