After some pondering, I've decided to sign up for Me Made May '12.  The rules of the challenge are pretty open, but essentially the idea is to challenge yourself to wear self-made garments throughout May.  Now I often wear handknitted garments, because I have a lot of them and my favourite sweaters/cardi's etc. are now all handmade.  But I've only recently started really working on my self-sewn wardrobe, so I'm hoping this challenge will encourage me to wear and/or make more sewn garments.

Most of my everyday outfits should fit the bill nicely, but I do have a wedding to attend at the end of May, and I've already chosen a dress from my wardrobe to wear for it, but it's not handmade. I want to wear a handknitted shrug as part of the outfit, so part of my challenge will be to complete the shrug project in time.  Also, if I go horseriding at all during May (which I hope to do!), then I'll need to work something handmade into my outfit, normal riding gear is jodhs, boots, a t-shirt and waterproof jacket, none of them being handmade.  I intend that the challenge will make me analyse and appreciate my handmade wardrobe more thoroughly.  I like making things for myself to wear, but it'd be good to know just how much, or how little I use each piece.

Blogging about my outfits every day could prove to be a problem.  I'm away on holiday for the first week of May, and since I'm not the most regular blogger anyway, I think I'll challenge myself to blog as often as I want to, rather than making an unrealistic promise to write a blog entry every day.  The idea is to have fun eh?  Actually, the holiday itself might prove interesting in terms of a MMM wardrobe.  It's an outdoorsy camping holiday, so I guess I'll be taking plenty of handknitted sweaters!

I do plan to do plenty of sewing over the next few weeks, and onwards.  I recently finished a Tova shirt, which I'm delighted with and I promise pics soon.  That set me off on a whole journey of finding sewing blogs that inspire (must make a list of them), and investing in sewing patterns in the recent Simplicity and New Look pattern sales.

Here are a few of the patterns I added to my library recently, I'm so looking forward to playing around with them - and hopefully making nice things.

And most recently, I bought this Vintage pattern, can't wait to have a go at making it up.

I'm still also working on my Garter Yoke Cardi, which I'm making with yarn I've recycled from my Birdseed Ingenue sweater.  It's knitting up fast, I've finished the yoke already. So hopefully it'll be done before the end of May.

To join the MMM '12 challenge, I need to include a personal statement about what my own Me-Made-May challenge will be.  So here goes...

'I, (Karen, from the Wildcraft Blog), sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '12. I endeavour to wear at least one item of handmade (knitted, sewn or otherwise crafted) clothing each day for the duration of May 2012'

There you have it.  See you in May!

I've been neglecting this blog lately, mainly because I've been working on a Big Project that's kinda put me off my blogging mojo.  What is this Big Project?  Well I'm working on a major upgrade to the Wildcraft site, which has involved enough php coding and css to remind me why I mostly dye wool these days!  But it's coming along nicely, and should be ready to go live within a few weeks.  In the meantime, want a sneak peek?

You might just be able to spot some new sections for Felting and Other Crafts.  And there's a new Artisan's Corner too - which will be for finished craft items, such as wooden toys, handmade gift cards, jewellery, knitted socks, that kind of thing.  It's a bit of an expansion to the existing shop, and I'm pretty excited about it.

But I've also been working on some fun woolly projects.  There's been some spinning.

This is fibre from Longdrawjames' Fibre Club, the November installment, which was Falkland wool in a colourway named 'Fireworks in the Bedroom'.  It's so totally different from my usual palette, I had much fun spinning it.  There's only about 130m of it, worsted weight - and I can't decide what to make with it.  A hat?  Fingerless mitts?  Maybe a felted bag?  It's too scritchy for a cowl, otherwise I'd make one of those - I do like bright pink accessories.

And I've done some dyeing (apart from the usual shop dyeing),  This is a braid of superwash BFL that I dyed to replicate my favorite handspun socks which are wearing out.

I also finished a big knitting project, a handspun hoodie made from my Tour de Fleece yarn from last year.  It deserves a post all of its own, and since I haven't taken pics yet that'll have to wait.  I've been wearing it nonstop since casting off, which is unusual for me - normally I have to let finished projects mature off the needles for a while before I can face wearing them.  But this one is so cosy that it's become a new favorite already.

And since my sweater needles were empty, today I cast on this:

It's a Garter Yoke Cardigan, made with yarn recycled from my Birdseed Ingenue sweater.  While I loved the colours of the Birdseed yarn, it never got much wear as the Ingenue sweater.  I'd knitted a size too small, and the yarn was too heavy for the design anyway, so it was way too warm to wear comfortably.  Hopefully it'll work better as a cardigan, and the Garter Yoke design does look lovely in handspun.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it knits up.

This weekend, we got chickens.

We chose six, two fully grown and already laying, and four slightly younger birds.  I thought the move would unsettle them so we wouldn't see eggs for a week or so, so I was astonished to find this one this morning. And yes, it's a blue egg, laid by one of the Chalk Hill Blues (a hybrid developed by the farm where we bought them).  The other hens are all also hybrids, but different breeds.  We have two Speckledys, one Bluebell, and one Bovans Nera.  The last is named Florence, she's a cute little thing, I already like her the most, she's the gold/black one in the foreground two pics above.

Shortly after that photo was taken, it looked like this:

I'm so excited that we have these little critters. We've gone far too long without chickens on the farm!

We're hosting a group spinning/knitting project in the Wildcraft Woollies group over on Ravelry at the moment.  It's been dubbed the Silk Hankie Along, and the idea is that you make something from silk hankies, aka mawata squares, simple eh?  A number of participants, like Chriss, are knitting directly with the unspun fibre.  I've not long finished an unspun silk project (Hanna's silk mittens), so I've chosen to spin mine this time.

I fancied a challenge, so I've decided to make an Elijah elephant with my silk.  I started out by dyeing 50 of silk squares, they were supposed to be elephant grey, but they turned out rather more blue than I originally intended.

I did think about knitting Elijah from an unspun single, like the mittens I did.  But he's a fiddly pattern, but I didn't relish the prospect of wrangling with dpn's and tiny little elephant limbs, whilst trying to join silk ends.  So I decided to spin a two ply yarn with them, low twist to keep the yarn soft and squishy, and somewhere between dk and aran weight.

So far, I've started pulling the silk into lengths, and winding them into a ball prior to spinning.  If you'd like to see an excellent tutorial on how do to this, do take a peek at Chriss' post (linked above), her photos make the process really easy to follow.

So my plan is to make two balls like this, spin each separately, and then ply them together.  I put a little on the wheel last night and it seems to be spinning up nicely, pics of that next time.

In other news, I have a new toy...

It's a little tablet computer (an HTC Flyer). With a 7" screen, it's between a smartphone and an iPad in size, and that suits me perfectly.  I got it a couple of weeks ago for a bargain price at Curry's (sorry, tried to link, but looks like they've all gone).  I've been using it to keep up with email, Ravelry and blog feeds, but it's also great for storing my knitting patterns. It came with a stylus, so I can mark up pdf's with notes etc., which is great for marking off lace charts row by row.

Here it is with my latest pattern purchase, Ysolda's Whimsical Little Knits 3.

I can't wait to knit something from it, I'm thinking I'll start with the Narwhal mittens, which are very cute.  Before then, however, I have Elijah to knit.  And I also have some commission knitting to do for one of my cousins, who's requested a handknitted cardi.  More about that in a later post!