Aran Brew

Aran Brew Has Moved

2010-10-01T12:37:00.001-07:00

Hop on over to the new aranbrew.com website, I'd love to see you there.

Crochet Headband and Summer Holidays

2010-08-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Link to this post at new aranbrew.com site. Please update links and rss feed readers, thanks!

Here's my latest crochet creation, it's a dinky little headband with a flower on. I was in Penneys the other day and they have loads of headbands which are just a bit of elastic with a fancy flower on it. I thought I could do something similar in yarn.

I mentioned at the very end of this post that I was trying out Aoibhe's Rasta Kitty hat. I'm using mini mochi yarn and while it's supposed to fingering weight I think it's a lot lighter than the yarn used in the pattern so it was turning out more like a beany than a floppy beret and I want a floppy beret. When I ripped it back I was left with the grey band that was the brim of the hat and I thought it could be given a new life as a headband. I crocheted a little flower using the grey yarn and a contrasting purply pink yarn and sewed it on. I think it looks quite well. I must make more of these as they are quick and look great. I might even write up the pattern too.

I'm off on my holidays on Thursday. We're off to the Passy/Chamonix area of the Alps in France. We're getting the ferry and driving through France. There was a bit of drama this week as I have some sort of lung infection and I had really bad chest pain. I then became allergic to the antibiotics the doctor gave me which isn't surprising as I've reacted to all the antibiotics I've ever taken. A trip to the A&E yesterday confirmed I have nothing major wrong. I still have other stuff that needs to be checked out so the battle with the Irish health system and waiting goes on. The A&E doctor was very nice and she is also a mountaineer so she gave me some good advice and most importantly told me to go on holidays. I may have to take it a bit easier than planned. Sitting in a nice house in France knitting and looking at mountains while eating mountains of cheese still sounds good to me. I've even discovered there is a Phildar yarn store near where we're staying.

Today I've been figuring out what knitting to bring on holiday. I may have no other packing done but I know what knitting I'm bringing, my priorities are straight! I'm going to knit the Gaia shoulder hug shawl (Ravlery Link) using a ball of Noro sock. It was either that or Damson by Ysolda using my Malabrigo sock yarn. I think the Gaia is a bit easier and I won't have to be constantly looking at the pattern so that swung it. I'm also bringing the scribble lace shawl which is easy mindless knitting so I should be able to finish it. I'll bring along my spindle as you can always find time for some spindling. I'm also taking my knitting without tears by Elizabeth Zimmerman so I can buy yarn to make something from it. Why? Check out Knitting Elizabeth, a blog where Irish knitters are knitting their way through the Elizabeth Zimmerman books. I'm hoping to join in and maybe even design my own jumper.

Talk to you all when I get back and happy knitting.

Yvaine

2010-08-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

Link to new aranbrew.com site.

I love Neil Gaiman. Though you guys already know this after the presenting Neil Gaiman with a crocheted bee incident. I've read almost all his books at this stage. I do like to space out the reading of Gaiman as when I've finished them all I'll be bereft. I still have Good Omens left to read. A recent read was Stardust which I really loved, it's a great all ages story. I watched the film too and loved that as much as the book which is rare for me. I prefer books to film versions of books and also if I've read a book I know what happens so why see a film of it too? Stardust was an exception as they really captured the spirit of the book and there was some great acting too. I loved the section with Robert De Niro most of all.

Anyway all this rambling brings me to the Yvaine shawl that I mentioned briefly here. I saw this pattern when I used Ravlery's snazzy search feature to search for patterns that used about 330m of sport weight yarn. It's really useful to be able to search like that especially when knitting with handspun as you only have a limited amount of it. You can't go and get more of the yarn if you run out. Yvaine is a versatile pattern and I thought it would suit the texture of the handspun well. Also since there is no lace or patterning I could just keep knitting until I ran out of yarn. There are supposed to be moss stitch panels on the shawl but I was lazy and just did some garter ridges instead. I have a problem with moss stitch even when knitting it in a rectangle shape I usually get it wrong. I tried a row of it but couldn't work out how to deal with moss stitch and increases so I just left it. I think it looks fine without the moss stitch. I finished it this week so that's another quick knit. At this rate though I think there might be another force at work. I think after all this time and practice I might be getting quicker at knitting. It certainly seems so. I'm pretty happy about that as I've always been a slow knitter. Even as a kid I didn't get my regulation tea cosy done in time for parents night, I think my Mum finished the last few rows for me!

I liked this pattern a lot, it taught me how triangular shawls are constructed, it's always nice when it clicks in your brain how it works and I'm pretty sure I could knit a shawl with no pattern now. This project perfectly filled the gap between finishing my Easkey wave wrap and going on holidays next Thursday. We're off to Chamonix and the Alps and I can't wait. The Yvaine shawl is blocking so hopefully I can get some nice photos of it with mountains in the background. I've picked up a nasty lung infection of some sort and that's why I'm here blogging instead of busily packing for the trip. I'm on antibiotics and strong painkillers so I'm ensconced on the sofa. I've started watching Doctor Who though so that's cheering me up. I've also made a sneaky start on a project I was saving for the holidays, the Rasta Kitty hat from Aoibhe. Maybe I'll finish that in time for wearing on my trip to the Mer de Glace.

Blog Migration

2010-08-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Plans have been afoot for a while now to redesign the blog and move it to it's own http://aranbrew.com URL. I got the URL ages ago but didn't manage to move the blog. I'm quite good at computers but for some reason web design and css evade me. I decided to try out wordpress and found it's pretty easy to design a blog that looks well. In an evening I managed to get the blog looking better than it ever has on blogger. Wordpress has a few other advantages, images seem to behave better and the whole layout is nicer. Another big plus is that there is a very nice android app which makes it easy for me to blog from my phone. I wonder why there is no nice blogger app, blogger and android are both run by google so you'd think they would integrate them a bit better. I decided to pay wordpress to redirect to the aranbrew.com URL as working out how to host it would take another three months.

Now that is all done and I've moved I have to ask you all to point your links this way and update your rss feeds and all that jazz. I'll still blog a link to new posts for a while in blogger and put in a big arrow pointing here. I'm hoping to work out how to get blogger to redirect here for old posts but again that may take me some time to figure out.

I'm hoping you will read the posts over at the new aranbrew.com and comment over there. I'll still be importing comments over there but hopefully everything will move to the new URL.

Thanks for reading the tech post!

A Star Is Born

2010-08-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

I fell out with crochet some time ago and ever since we've been on the rocky road to reconciliation. I wanted it to do things it wasn't comfortable with, it accused me of not understanding it. I've come to accept that crochet was right all along. I was trying to bend it to work in ways it didn't want to. Crochet and I have accepted this and we're ready to move on. I used to subscribe to Interweave Crochet and while it has nice patterns I think it is too focused on jumpers. Lace is where crochet shines, there are so many beautiful knitted lace shawls but more beautiful modern crochet lace designs are needed. After all isn't Irish crochet lace one of the most beautiful forms of lace in the world? Dora Ohrenstein explains all in this wonderful article. I promised crochet that I would go and learn more about it's roots and also my own as the history of crochet is tied up with Ireland's history. I started Aoibhe's rose rock which is an ideal first Irish crochet project. A trip to the Sheelin lace museum is also on the cards when I'm next in Fermanagh visiting a friend who lives near there.

I recently got the happy news that my sister in law is pregnant! Obviously a baby gift needed to be made. They live in Jamaica and post there is very unreliable, anything good is likely to be swiped and I wasn't taking that chance with something hand made. Luckily they were over visiting last week so I decided to make something quickly in time for the visit. So what to make? I couldn't make a wool jumper or a hat now could I? The poor baby would melt. I decided to make a blanket, I figured blankets are always useful even if they're not needed for warmth they can be used as a rug or even a sun shade. Now a blanket is a bigger project than I'd usually take on and I hoped I could get it done in time. I decided I'd crochet the blanket as it would be quick. I found the cutest baby blanket in Beth's little star afghan. It's actually a very simple pattern but it looks really effective. If you can make a chain and a double crochet you can make this blanket. I used Patons baby fab DK yarn in green and grey and I changed colour every five rows. I used a 5mm hook. It worked up really quickly and I managed to finish it in a mere three weeks. Last week my niece and I went to Dublinia and the zoo so there was some frantic hooking when I got back from days out. The zoo is really good these days, I loved the new elephant enclosure.

I've noticed that this year I've been making a lot of larger projects and managing to finish them pretty quickly which I'm really pleased about. This blanket turned out pretty cute but I'm sure it won't be a patch on how cute the new nephew is going to be. He'll be arriving in November!

Mittens With Pints On

2010-08-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do 'here's a cool thing from the internet' or 'I want to make this' type posts. Today I make an exception to bring you both a cool thing on the internet and something I really want to knit.

I discovered Spilly Jane a few days ago and I've been oohing and ahhing over her designs ever since. She has the most wonderful colour work mitten patterns. There are ones with gnomes, cupcakes, strawberries and all manner of whimsical little things. For obvious reasons I've fallen for the ones on the left and I must make them. I don't have the yarn to make them though as I don't have a collection of lots of yarn all of the same weight in different colours, I can only wish! The pattern calls for knit picks yarn which isn't available in Ireland. I think I've found the perfect substitute yarn in Jamieson and Smith though.

Jamieson and Smith are a yarn company that are based in Shetland, one of the Scottish islands which is famous for knitting and for their native Shetland. Their jumper weight yarn spun from Shetland fleece fits the bill perfectly. It's fingering weight, 100% wool, comes in smaller 25g balls, has a brilliant colour range and is really cheap. It's designed for fair isle colour work jumpers after all. I suppose I could go entirely mad and attempt to dye some yarn I have into enough to make these but I'm not confident enough of my colour matching skills to do it. I think I might just have to order the yarn if there is to be any hope of these mittens getting made in the next few months.

I posted a link to this pattern on facebook and it made me smile that the people who liked and commented on the mittens with pints on were people who are interested in beer. It made me think about how knitting acts a kind of filter for people. Many of my non knitting friends send me links with knitted and crocheted things they think are cool. Or they mention something they saw about knitting being trendy again as they know I knit. It sometimes says more about them than me which I find interesting. A friend Luke (who writes and hopefully won't mind me using him as an example) sent me on a very cool knitted R2D2 pattern he found. Luke is into sci-fi and gaming so of course he finds this cool. I am nerdy person but I'm not into Star Wars as I didn't see it until I was an adult so it doesn't mean as much to me as it does to someone who grew up with it. Another friend obsessed with cycling sent me a photo of a knitted bicycle. All the cavers love my crocheted caving helmet.

It's funny that people who aren't into knitting will notice it when someone knits something that touches on a part of their life, where knitting intersects with what they think is cool. They then pass it back to me. It's maybe their way of saying wow you knit and I never realized it was cool and useful to stuff in my life. But still I wonder do they really understand what I love about the knitting process. I don't really do it because I think I will end up with a finished product that reflects my interests. Though that is part of why I do it. I love beer and knitting and a pair of mittens with pints on are what I dream of pulling on after a fun night with friends at the Bull and Castle. But if I just wanted some clothing with beer on I could get it without going to the trouble of knitting it. I like the whole process and creative design parts of knitting just as much as the finished product. Picking the perfect pattern like the mittens with pints on. Then picking out the perfect yarn to make it with, choosing my own colour palette for the project, maybe even deciding that I should spin the yarn for it myself. Then the technical side of the knitting. A plain knitted item is much easier and quicker to make but I don't usually do that. Lace and colour work or an interesting construction always make a project much more interesting to make even if it is more complicated and takes longer. Learning something new with each project means I don't get bored of the knitting. The fact that I end up with something cute and wooly that I can wear to keep my hands warm is just the icing on the cake.

One shawl doesn't make a summer

2010-08-17T02:51:00.000-07:00

Recently I told you about my Easkey wave wrap knit using Carol Feller's lovely captiva wrap pattern. Progress went very quickly after my last blog post. I almost didn't know I was knitting it. It knit up so quickly and easily and then...

This happened. I did the ninth repeat and and ran out of yarn just as I finished the decreasing for the last few scallops. I needed three scallops and only had enough yarn for half the first one. I didn't have any more yarn and it had been discontinued at This Is Knit where I bought it on sale ages ago. I tried it on to see if it looked ok but really it was just that bit small. So what to do now? I remembered a lady at my knit night had mentioned a website called odd balls where one can buy left over balls of yarn. I searched the website not really expecting to find the yarn. As luck would have it someone was destashing a skein of the yarn I needed in the exact same dyelot as the yarn I had. Needless to say I ordered it and it arrived really quickly. I definitely recommend checking out odd balls if you need some yarn to finish a project.

While I waited for the yarn to arrive I started a crochet project which I've also finished. I won't show you guys any pictures as it's a present for someone so I don't want to spoil the surprise. Pictures and details next week when I've handed it over. I'm really pleased with how I've been finishing things so quickly lately. Sometimes I look at the list of things I need to make and it seems like fun having a queue then at other times the queue of things to make starts to weigh heavy on my mind. So it's nice to finish things so that I can plan what to make next.

When the yarn arrived I ripped back the decrease section and added another pattern repeat. I'm really glad I did now as it made the wrap that little bit bigger. I finished it off with only a small amount of yarn left over. I blocked the wrap and it really made a big difference, it opened out the lace and made the garter stitch less scrunchy.

I really enjoyed knitting this pattern. Some designers seem to focus on the end result and their patterns can be quite boring to knit as sometimes the plainer knits look better as a finished garment. Then there are designers who focus solely on the technical parts of the pattern and the finished garment isn't really the point. Which you prefer probably depends on whether you like the process or the end result. This project was for me one of those happy times when the process was great, I enjoyed the bit of lace and the short rows. But there was also the added bonus that the finished garment turned out so well. It's quite girly and pretty and the shape means it looks great draped over a shoulder. Carol is obviously a very talented designer, I must check out more of her patterns. I've already added eilonwy to my mental queue, I think it would be fabulous knit with handspun.

I got to wear the wrap on Sunday when I finally got to have a good chat with Fourboys and Undermeoxter who I know from Ravelry. It's probably the first time I've been recognized because of the knitted garment I was wearing. We spent a really pleasant afternoon sitting in the sun in Avoca knitting. I even got to see the famous glenvaragin cardigan, D you can finish it, you're almost there!

Having finished two projects that were both pretty big I decided to cast on for something new. Did I pick a hat, gloves, a bag? No I cast on yet another shawl. I think I see a theme developing here. This is the fifth shawl I've cast on this year so far and I'm not getting tired of them at all. A summer of shawls it is. This one is being knitted with my Betsy Doodles handspun. The pattern is the Yvaine shawl from Feministy. To continue the nod to Neil Gaiman and Stardust I cast on for this while watching the film on RTE last Saturday. I adore knitting this yarn, just adore it. With every stitch I start thinking that I should give away all my commerical yarn and just knit with handpsun from now on. It's just so lovely to knit something you have spun and have picked the perfect pattern for. Anyway I'll leave you with a picture of the perfect Sunday afternoon. Just add friends and knitting.

Raspberry Mead

2010-08-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

I've tried to make mead on a number of occasions and try is the operative word. It just never turns out quite right for me. I have bottles of mead stashed away on my brewing shelves and I keep them in the hope they will age up into something nice. Any bottles that I've sampled don't taste great so I have my doubts that age will help.

I decided to brew mead again with cheaper ingredients and on a smaller scale. It's been pretty warm here this summer which has been great but it's not ideal beer brewing weather. I've heard from a few of the home brewers that their beer fermentations have been very warm. One of my pet hates is beer that has been brewed too warm, I can taste it a mile off. When beer is fermented too warm the yeast can produce higher weight fusel alcohols which don't taste good, they're sort of harsh and nasty. I'm hoping that mead won't really suffer the same problems and maybe a warmer fermentation will give some fruity flavours to the mead.

I dug out my copy of Making Wild Wines and Meads by Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling. I like this book a lot, it gives a simple run through of how to brew at the start and the rest of the book is recipes. They're divided up into sections and include fruit wines, wines from nuts, flowers and vegetables, meads, melomels and metheglins and wines from herbs. I followed the raspberry melomel recipe exactly as it appears in the book in the hope that this will make it turn out right. I used honey from Lidl and frozen raspberries. I meant it when I said cheap ingredients. I mixed up all the ingredients and added campden powder to kill any nasties. After twenty four hours I added some red wine yeast.

The primary fermentation has just finished and I'm glad it has. It was quite vigorous and made the house stink. On most home brewing forums you'll find a thread where someone is complaining that his wife is giving out to him about his brewing and the smells. In my case the opposite is true but thankfully my husband likes the results of my brewing experiments. Though this mead has turned out a lurid pink colour so maybe he won't like this one as much. I'll rack this mead into a one gallon glass carboy tomorrow and then cover it up and forget about it for a month or two before I bottle it. Fingers crossed it will turn out ok this time.

Knit Nation, London, July 2010

2010-08-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

Knit Nation. I wish every nation was full of knitters, then we would have world peace, solutions to all problems and lots more smiling happy people in the world. There would also be a lot more sheep but then that's a small price to pay. I'm just back from Knit Nation in London and I had the most fabulous two days and I'm now sure that knitters are the nicest people.

I got a plane early on Friday morning to Gatwick and got some trains and ended up arriving at Imperial College, the Knit nation venue just in time for the opening of the marketplace at 11.00. Most of the knitters in the queue made a beeline for the Wollmeise stand. I decided to join them for a look. I heard an Irish accent and recognised Jo from Celtic Memory Yarns. I said hello and we chatted while she was deciding what colours to buy I hope you got some you loved Jo! I bought two skeins just in case they all sold out but I needn't have worried as there was loads. Wollmeise is a phenomenon, the web shop sells out like lightening every time there is an update. Having seen all the colours all at once I will say that some of the hype is definitely justified. The colours are bright, clear and well separated. Having tried some dyeing myself I can appreciate that it's amazingly well done. I got two skeins. One is a beautiful autumnal skein called Paul which may grow up to be a clapotis. The other was a mostly purple yarn called grapes for sheri. I have no plans for it yet but I seem to be on a shawl roll recently so it may end up being another one.

I then went to the p/hop. P/hop stands for pennies per hour of pleasure and is raising money for the wonderful Medecins Sans Frontieres. Various designers have donated patterns and you donate money based on the hours of pleasure you get from the pattern. At the stand I met Clare who I have known online for some time, she helps out p/hop in the UK. I love meeting people that I know from the web though it can be funny as you try to explain who you are. Maybe there will be new etiquette books explaining how to deal with these situations. Clare very kindly offered that I could stay with her Friday night so thanks a million for that Clare. At her place I had the privilege of meeting the black cat, if you follow Clare's blog or twitter you will have heard of the black cat that visits her. He's a funny cat who came over and immediately demanded attention from me.

At lunch I met Sinead who had been at a sock knitting class with the famous Cookie A for the morning. We did some yarn shopping and got some food. Then it was off to meet yet another generous and fabulous knitter, L. On Ravelry I had complained that I didn't know I needed a wheel for my class and L offered to lend me hers as she was taking a class that morning and didn't need the wheel for the afternoon. So a big thanks to L if you're reading this. I could have done the class with no wheel but it was much better to have one.

The class teacher was Judith Mackenzie McCuin and she is a spinning genius. I learned more about spinning in the three hours of this class than I have in the last few months of spinning combined. Judith explained all about how spinning wheels work and all the tricks that you can do to make them work at their peak. She then explained how to make the spinning wheel do the work for you. Most spinners produce a default yarn meaning that they draft and treadle at a certain rate which then produces a certain weight yarn. I definitely do this and recently I've been trying to produce different yarn and was advised that I would have to treadle faster and draft finer to produce a laceweight yarn and I wasn't very successful at it. Judith says that you can't change your default yarn and when you get to that stage that it's a good time to learn what she teaches so it seems I took this class at the right moment.

She got us to use the wheel to change the yarn we produced so by changing settings on the ratios and brake band we were able to get different weights of yarn as you can see in the picture. I didn't change how fast I treadled or how fast I drafted to produce all these different yarns I just changed the wheel set up. Well it was like a light bulb went off in my head. It was like I didn't really know how to spin at all before this class. I now have a much better understanding of how my wheel works and how to use it. It was a fantastic class and well worth going to London to take it. Judith is a legend.

After all that excitement it was time for dinner and pints with Sinead and Viola. We had great fun in the pub and there was even Fuller's London Pride on cask for me. After that I met up with Clare and some knitters I know from twitter so it was great to met them in person.

Now to shw you all the rest of my shopping loot. The marketplace was really well set up just like the whole event. It all ran so well and so smoothly. Well done to all the organizers and volunteers. I got my two skeins of Wollmeise. I got a skein of green laceweight from Krafty Koala. From Juno Fiber Arts I got some dyed Wensleydale and Teeswater fiber, I haven't tried either before. From Baby Long Legs I got some lovely smoky blue BFL fiber. From John Arbon I got some undyed yarn so I can play around with some dyeing. I also got an issue of Inside Crochet which you can't get in Ireland for some reason and a Knit Nation bag. The Loop bag was free. I also met the lovely Ysolda Teague and tried on some of her designs. I got a snap with her in her fun photo both too.

On Saturday I dropped back into Knit Nation for a bit before I went to meet A from Impy Malting. I made a detour to the Hummingbird bakery for a delicious cupcake and some coffee. Impy and I had a great chat over some tasty beers at the Market Porter. It's great to go out with someone local like Impy, I'd never have found these great beer pubs on my own. I really liked the Harvey’s Bitter being in the mood for light hoppy beers at the moment. I don't know why but dark complex beers just aren't my thing at the moment, maybe it's the weather. The pub was busy but we got a seat and talked life, beer and knitting. Us knitting, brewing, beer blogging girls have to stick together you know.

We then headed to The Rake which is the beer pub you always hear about on UK beer blogs. They have a cool selection of beers on cask and many in bottles. I looked at their bottled selection and was surprised at how many of them are available in pubs in Dublin like The Bull and Castle, The Porterhouse and L. Mulligan Grocer and the quality off licenses. I always think that in the UK you can get lots more beer than here, it just shows how much the selection in Dublin has improved in recent times. For US and Belgian beer we're actually pretty well served. Of course we don't get as many English ales or cask beers which is a pity. Sadly I couldn't stay long and being sensible left for my train back to the airport in plenty time. Thanks Impy and hopefully I can return the favour with beer tour of Dublin soon. All in all it was the most fabulous two days. Knit Nation? Definitely.

More photos of the trip are here. I apologize for the quality of some of them. Usually this is where I say I took them on my phone not my camera but this time the reverse is true. My camera isn't focusing properly and seems to be crap with knitting things, maybe it's the colours. The ones I took when I got home with the phone are much better.

Trouble, the brewery cat

2010-07-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

Recently Trouble Brewing invited Irish Craft Brewer to a barbecue and tour of their new brewery in Co. Kildare. Trouble along with Dungarvan is one of Ireland's newest craft breweries and both breweries are run by Irish craft brewer members. When I first joined Irish Craft Brewer a few years ago I went along to the first tasting night that they held in The Bull and Castle. That night I met Thom an enthusiastic home brewer who was studying brewing and hoping that one day he would open a brewery. Most home brewers have fanciful day dreams involving their very own brewery and brewing batches of wonderful beer but very few ever actually make that dream a reality. Thom along with Paul and Stephen who are also ICB members have done that very thing. I loved reading their blog as they battled with equipment, red tape and electrics while setting up the brewery. It certainly gives an insight into all the hard work and dedication it takes to turn the day dream into a reality.

Last Saturday we went along to L Mulligan Grocer where we boarded a bus bound for Trouble.

The brewery is compact and they've really worked wonders getting all the necessary equipment into the building. Of course all us brewing fans were checking out the shiny mash tun and kettle and looking at all the pipes trying to work out what went where. We spotted the white board that we gave the guys as a present being put to good use. A white board is a handy thing in a brewery, it helps one keep track of what's in each fermenter and when it was put there. The festival bar that they use at events was pressed into service to slake the thirst of the home brewers. Many pints of Trouble's Ór were poured. It's a fabulous beer, I really like it. I think it is pretty much the perfect beer for summer drinking. There's a lovely soft malt profile with a fabulous slightly fruity hoppy bite. You should definitely try it if you get the chance. As always the Irish Craft Brewer list of pubs that stock Irish beer should help you find it.

Paul worked his magic with the barbecue doling out burgers and sausages to some hungry home brewers. As he said you can't go wrong with beer and burgers. It was a great day but every great day can be made better with the addition of a kitten and some serious cuteness. Shortly after we arrived B spotted what she thought was a kitten running across the car park. She eventually arrived back with a small kitten. A mother cat was nowhere to be found and the guys said there are no houses nearby so the poor little thing was lost and abandoned. Milk was found and he lapped it all up so he was obviously hungry. Thom is a fan of cats and said if they were in the brewery more regularly he could have become the brewery cat. Thom eventually decided to bring the little guy home to see how he got on with his own cat. If they don't get on he'll find him a home. I'm hoping that the kitten will be called Trouble. From the pictures below you can see he definitely wants to be a brewery cat.

Easkey Wrap

2010-07-20T02:59:00.000-07:00

After finishing up Annis I started knitting away on my summer cardigan. I think it should be finished just as we come into the autumn which is fine as for once we're enjoying summer weather in Ireland. It would be too warm to wear the cardigan just now. Since I'm in no rush to finish the cardigan I started thinking of projects new and decided to cast on using some old stash. I feel I'm doing quite well with my stash recently. I've been working with what I have and giving away stuff I definitely won't use. I had five balls of salmon pink mirasol cotanani that I got on sale in This Is Knit ages ago and was planning to use for some sort of vest. Plans changed however when I spotted Carol Feller's captiva wrap on her blog just after she published the pattern. I fell in love with the pattern and there was just enough cotanani to make it so I ear marked the yarn to make the wrap.

I cast on last week and am in love with the pattern and the yarn and how it's all working up. The pattern is wonderful, it's just so cleverly put together. It's worked side to side and the edging is worked along with the pattern. It's a very satisfying knit as you see the lovely scallops emerging and it's going so quickly. The yarn is lovely too, the mix of wool and cotton give a lovely crisp stitch definition. It's probably the perfect antidote to the intricacies of Annis. I love how it's turning out and can't wait to see it finished as I think it will be really wearable.

The scallops along the edge of this pattern and the shape of the wrap remind me of a wave as it’s just about to break. So I’ve named my version of this pattern Easkey after the famous wave break in Sligo. There’s a famous Irish surfer called Easkey Britton who was called after the wave so maybe it’s no wonder she grew up to surf. I’d imagine her throwing on this wrap in a casual way to warm up after catching a few waves in the cold clear water off the west coast. I might use it for the same thing even though I'm really terrible at surfing. I usually flop around the place on my boogie board getting odd looks from the real surfers, probably because my wetsuit is a state as it's more a canyoning wetsuit. It's got holes and is ripped from catching on rocks while abseiling down waterfalls.

I also crocheted up a quick phone cover using some Kilcarra Donegal tweed for my husbands new phone. Crochet covers are great, so quick and easy. This one was done by chaining the right number of stitches to go along the bottom of the phone then double crochets all around the chain and working in the round until it was big enough to cover the phone. I've been crocheting some small things recently and have enjoyed getting my crochet mojo back. I think I'm ready to move on to something bigger. I'd love to do a shawl or something but I'm going to keep searching until I find a really nice pattern.

Here's some dyeing I did recently. It's 100g of shetland top I got ages ago and was hoping to dye. I think it turned out really well. I think it will look really cool when I spin it up.

Typical me, I started something... And now I'm not too sure

2010-07-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

I think all my blog post titles should be Morrissey lyrics from now on. Yesterday I finished my Annis shawl. It took me about a month to do it which is not bad considering I missed a few weekends of knitting. I blogged about starting it here when I thought it would go quickly enough. In this post the sad tale of the nupps emerged. I really struggled with them and so I left out the second row of nupps. I then avoided the project for a bit as I didn't want to do the next row of nupps. Luckily someone on Ravelry suggested this video which uses a crochet hook to do the nupp stitch all in one go. This eliminated the need to purl seven together and may have saved my sanity. Even though the nupps were easier the row still took ages.

I was very happy to reach the stocking stitch short row section. I'd been told the short rows really flew but I wasn't convinced as I was so slow knitting the lace section. I was proved wrong and knit the short row section really quickly. I think I got most of it done at the cookie exchange night last week. A cookie exchange night you say? A few of us knitters including R from she knit up that ball, Tea and Cakes and K from chocolate bunni crafts met up for some knitting and chat with a batch of cookies each. We then exchanged cookies so everyone went home with a selection of cookies. I've been munching tasty home baked cookies all week. It was such a fun night and coming home with yummy cookies and some new stash (thanks R!) was a bonus.

Back to Annis, here it is all finished and blocked. The malabrigo laceweight was really lovely to knit with and I love the colourway, which is olive if anyone is interested. The pattern suggested 5mm needles and I used them after my first cast on and the fabric seemed very loose and floppy so I went down to 4mm when I cast on again. I usually need to go down a needle size for most patterns anyway.

I'm not entirely sure why I didn't really enjoy knitting this but for some reason it was more an exercise in perseverance than enjoyment. Hence the title of the blog post. I loved knitting my Ishbel shawl and the Storm Cloud Shawlette but for some reason this didn't float my boat. I think it might be because it is done from the outside in rather than inside out like most shawls. It starts with so many stitches that by the the time I got to the shorter rows I was already a little sick of it. The lace part isn't difficult and there are only eighteen lace rows but it is very time consuming because of the nupps. Maybe I thought that after spending so much time on the lace I'd have more to show for it at the end. I'm not very keen on the look of the nupps in the end either. They're just bobbles with a fancy name and they're not that special looking for all the work that went into them. I think I would probably use beads instead of nupps if a pattern requires them in future. It also turned out smaller than I thought it would be, maybe I should have used sock yarn or used the needle size recommended in the pattern. The picture of the shawl in Knitty looks a good bit larger than mine. It's really more a scarflette than a shawl.

Saying all that though I don't dislike the end product, it is what it is and given some time I'll love it despite my slight disappointment about how it turned out. It's pretty and delicate and will be lovely draped around the shoulders. I probably won't wear it much as a shawl but more as a sort of short scarf/cowl type thing. Here's some more pictures of the finished Annis.

As always all my craft projects are collected in this picasa album.

Tour De Fleece, First Week

2010-07-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

The first week of the tour de fleece is over and I've finished my first yarn. It's the trick or treat batt from Laura Hogan core spun around a cotton thread. It's chunky weight and there's just about 170 m of it. I think this will be made into a scribble lace type scarf. It's so soft and the colours are fabulous, I love it.

Crimes against crochet

2010-07-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

I went to the library last night and was browsing the craft section when I found a real gem of a book. Without delay I decided to get the photos I took of the works of textile genius contained in the book onto the blog. I figure it's Friday and everyone could use a good laugh before the weekend.

I've rarely laughed as much at a book before. The front cover is on the left and reveals that the book is called 'Glorious Crocheted Sweaters'. Glorious indeed. The model does look a little dubious though don't you think? Maybe that is because of the giant colourwork cardigan she is trying to rock. The neck tie isn't really adding anything here is it? To me it looks like a paper napkin that she forgot to remove after having some lunch.

Anyway onwards and upwards we have many more 'glorious' sweaters to see...

This looks warm but that's about the only thing you can say in it's favour. And if you have a thing for crocheting crazy clashing tartans then don't worry you can also clothe your children in them. You can use a lovely fuzzy mohairy yarn too and don't worry it won't fit them either. I'm sure these jumpers weigh like a million kilos as well as being stiff like a board due to the colourwork.

Now on to something a little lighter and more suitable for summer.

Words almost fail me. What sort of a pose it that? I'm no fan of yellow and red together and this ensemble really isn't going to convince me. Also this is supposed to be a summer garment. I'm sure it's made of acrylic yarn too, this means if you wore this on a hot day you'd most likely melt and die both from embarrassment and heat exhaustion.

I love the look of the model in this picture. You can almost hear the thoughts inside her head. 'I'm sorry my child but yes I did crochet us matching pastel chevron stitch jumpers and now I'm trying to pretend to everyone that this was a good idea and that we look fabulous but I know we are living a lie. You poor innocent thing, you did nothing to deserve this.'

An aran style jumper is necessity in the snow and when teamed with ear muffs you will be warm and stylish. Sadly your dog on seeing you will slump into an existential ennui and lie on the ground and refuse to move.

Sadly we're at the last photo I took of the 'glorious' crocheted sweaters. I think I have saved the best for last though. By best I actually mean damaging, if you saw this picture and decided that really it would have been better for the world if crochet was never invented I can't say I'd blame you. The world might have been better off if we were all still wandering around butt naked than clothe ourselves in sweaters such as the ones you are about to see.

These poor poor children? Where are they now? What untold damage did this modeling assignment do to them? Did they ever get counseling? Are they sitting forgotten in some mental institution blabbering to themselves about the pain and trauma of being made dress like this? I wish I knew.

I suppose I must now provide you with a link to Amazon should you wish to rush out and purchase this classic of textile design. Actually for further laughs read the reviews. Most of them are positive! I hope there aren't people out there inflicting these designs that time forgot on their loved ones in this day and age.

L. Mulligan Grocer

2010-07-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday we went along to the opening of Dublin's newest craft beer pub. The special thing about this pub is that it's owned and run by friends of mine, Seaneen of 9 Bean Row and Colin of California wine imports. They've been working away frantically to open the pub for the last while and Thursday night was the first night they opened their doors.

The pub is called L. Mulligan Grocer and is located in Stoneybatter just across from the beer tardis that is Drink Store. Stoneybatter is now quite the destination if you like craft beer. The pub is still in the process of being finished so there is no food yet but I'll definitely be back to try it when there is.

We got a very warm welcome and some nice cold pints of Trouble Brewing Or. Well Dave did, I was driving. It's a lovely cosy old school pub with nice wood panels to split up the bar. The beer range is already fantastic with a large selection of Irish beers on draught and no Guinness, Carlsberg or any other mass produced beer. There is a large selection of bottled beers from all over the world too. There's also an extensive whiskey menu.

What struck me about the place was that it had only been open a few hours and already there was a lovely busy vibe from the place. It felt like a local with people chatting away. Long may it continue that way. Congratulations guys, the pub is fabulous and I wish you every success in the world with it.

Tour De Fleece 2010

2010-07-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

The start of the Tour De France signals the start of the Tour De Fleece for spinners. Yes it's yet another odd event that fiber loving folks participate in because of Ravelry. Every day the tour rides you spin your wheels too, or spindles. The Ravelry group is here. I spun my spindle every day last year as I was away on holidays during the tour and looking back I didn't blog about it.

I haven't been spinning so much of late and I'm really looking forward to spinning every day. I hope I can watch the Tour De France too. I remember always seeing it when I was young and went to visit my aunt. My cousin was and still is obsessed by cycling so he was cheering the Irish cyclists on back in the days when Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche were on top. My cousin went on to became a pro for a while racing in Europe and he still races in Ireland.

Back to the spinning. I started core spinning this lovely batt called Trick or Treat from Laura Hogan. I'm hoping to finish that fairly quickly. My plan after that is to finish off the laceweight alpaca I've been doing and maybe start on some merino and silk mix.

The Yarn Room, Ashford, Wicklow

2010-06-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

A little while ago we went on a camping trip to Wicklow. On the Saturday I decided to call in to The Yarn Room which is located in Ashford. The Yarn Room began life selling on the web and also as a stall in the market in Dun Laoghaire at weekends. That's where I first met the lovely Stephanie who runs the shop. She has since gone on to make The Yarn Room a reality. It's a perfect little yarn shop and a yarny oasis.

As luck would have it I dropped in on a day when Stephanie was having a felting and spinning day. I learned how to felt a flower. I can't remember the ladies name but thanks to her for showing me how. I also spun some lovely colourful Icelandic fleece on an Ashford Traveler wheel. It's a lovely smooth wheel and I had a lot of fun spinning and then stopping for a cup of tea and some biscuits. I also loved the look of the plotulopi yarn which is unspun roving that can be spun or stranded together for colour work. As well as the fibre the shop is also filled with fabulous yarns. There's also a whole table of pattern books where one could lose a lot of time.

I did a bit of shopping too. I got a tiny 0.75mm crochet hook, a pack of merino fibre and a gauge for measuring the weight of spun yarn. I can totally recommend a visit to The Yarn Room. Thanks Stephanie!

Last weekend I visited more yarn shops so I'll tell you about those soon. Work continues on my Annis shawl. It's going really really really slowly. I cast on but had to rip back and cast on again as the cast on edge wasn't looking very nice. The new cast on looks much better. It was going along quite nicely but progress is slow as I'm a slow knitter and there's 363 stitches in a row. Notice the 'it was' in the last sentence. Progress has now slowed to almost non existent. I'm knitting away but well nothing much is happening. I think I've spent the last few days on a purl row. The reason is the nupps, or little balls of screaming annoyance as I like to call them. They are fine to do on the right side but then when it comes to purling seven stitches together it's horrid. It takes forever, I'm even using the aforementioned tiny crochet hook to help. I think I will leave them out on the next row (row 11) and then do them on row 13. I know it's not correct but it may help me to finish the project with my sanity intact. I keep telling myself I only have eight rows to go until I reach the stocking stitch section. Watch this space.

Get Your Knit On!

2010-06-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

With the title of the last post I couldn't resist. So why should you get your knit on? Well it's world wide knit in public day tomorrow. I'm going to the event in Stephens Green hosted by the wonderful Sinead of Knit Inc. I've even baked a batch of cookies, they're pecan, sultana and cranberry and hopefully they'll be gobbled up. WWKIP is great fun so come along, it's a chance to meet lots of knitters. It's also fun to see everyone stop to ponder why a load of people are sitting round knitting.

While at WWKIP day or knit night a nice easy project is a must. My current large cardigan, Summer's end, isn't suitable for social kntting at all. With all the talking I do I know I'd come home and have to rip it all back to fix the many mistakes I'd surely make. Enter the scribble lace stole by R of She Knit Up That, this must be the perfect mindless knitting project. It's garter stitch on large needles using kidsilk haze and noro blossom. Even though it's a simple project it's massively effective producing a gorgeous stylish stole that is perfect for summers evenings. I'm hoping to have mine done soon.

I've also been crocheting the odd block from 200 crochet blocks for blankets throws and afghans. This book is great, I like to pick it up and a make a quick block from it. This particular rosette was supposed to continue to become a square but after this much I decided I liked it and finished it off. I have a plain white jumper and think this would brighten it up. I also think a load of buttons sewn on to the jumper might be nice too. Maybe I can do both.

In my last knitting post I was telling you all about the Summer's end cardigan and I was hoping it would be my main project for a while but I've been distracted! This Is Knit are running a summer knit a long (link to ravelry thread). I really enjoyed the last one where I finished my owls jumper in double quick time. This time they're knitting the annis shawl from knitty. It's a lovely pattern and there's even help sessions in the shop to help everyone with any tricky bits. I'm hoping I won't get too badly stuck but that's the beauty of a knit a long, there's always someone who is ahead of you so they can help you out. The yarn on the left is Malabrigo lace in the olive colourway. I have a skein of malabrigo sock in rayon vert but I thought it was a little too variegated for this lacy shawl. I also had this idea that it should be green so when I saw this fabulous dark olive with hints of brown I had to have it. The cast on is huge, 363 stitches! Thankfully there is only one repeat of the lace section and then it's short row stocking stitch. So look out for progress on that in the coming weeks.

Lastly I'll leave you with the latest batt to come from Louie the drum carder. It's called Ondine and was inspired by mermaids and the rusalka. It's blue alpaca with various sea and seaweedy colours of merino. There is sparkle and ribbon to represent the turn of a wave. There is also thread and netting to catch the mermaid in a wool woven spell. I'll spin it into a special yarn.

Get Your Kit On

2010-06-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

A while ago a friend of mine asked if I might be able to make some beer for his birthday party at the end of this month. It sounds like great fun, we're all off to Sligo and camping in his large garden. With exams and projects I didn't have a day to devote to brewing. I find that all grain brews take a good while to mature. If I brewed now it might not even be properly carbonated at the end of the month and it would still be very green. Even an extract beer might not be ready so I was wondering if I'd get to brew for the party at all.

Ed recently invited us to his house for a tasting of some beers he'd brewed. It all started with this thread on Irish Craft Brewer where Ed decided he was going to make a kit, an extract and an all grain beer and do a blind tasting to compare the three. Brewing wisdom says that kit beers are like a ready meal, you mix them up and you get beer very easily. You are limited to the kits that are available though. Extract beers are like a dolmio sauce, you're still using malt extract but you have more control over the final flavours. All grain brewing is like making the meal from fresh ingredients in that there is complete control over the final product. The trade off is that all grain is that bit more complicated and takes longer.

We assembled at Ed's house to taste his three beers. Beer one was lovely with great fresh hops though it was a little thin. Beer two was nice too not as tasty as one but still a good sipping beer. Beer three wasn't great at all, it tasted oxidized. So my guesses were that one was the extract, two the all grain and three the kit. I assumed that since many kits taste bad that the one that was oxidized must have been the kit. It turned out I was completely wrong. Beer one was the kit, beer two was the extract and beer three the all grain. I think something must have gone a bit wrong with Ed's all grain. The main surprise to me was that the kit beer tasted so good. Often with kit beers there is some oxidation which gives a certain taste called kit tang but I couldn't detect it at all. You can read Ed's very entertaining account of the experiment here.

All this convinced me I should make a kit beer for the party. A kit would probably be ready in time too. I ordered the same kit that Ed used from The Home Brew Company. I was so impressed with the service from these guys. I ordered the kits on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning they arrived. Tonight I mixed them up. It was so easy and only took about 40 minutes! I felt like a brewing fraud.

First I sterilized my better bottles and everything that would be in contact with the beer. I poured the kit into a pot and added 500g of malt extract, 300g of sugar and 2L of boiling water. I mixed it up then poured it into the better bottle and topped it up to 23L with water. I added the yeast that came with the kit and was done. Easy peasy.

I made a Coopers IPA kit and a Coopers wheat beer kit. I'll dry hop the IPA with some Cascade. I'm thinking adding a load of raspberries to the wheat beer. I just hope these turn out as well as Ed's kit. I didn't have much luck with kits when I first started brewing but these should be fine.

Summer Cardigan

2010-05-31T07:16:00.000-07:00

My latest knitting project is a cardigan called Summer's End (Ravelry Link). I can only give you a Ravelry link as the designers website doesn't seem to be working anymore. It's a cardigan worked bottom up all in one piece then the sleeves are knit and joined on. It's a simple enough design but it does have a lovely lace section that will add a nice bit of interest. I'm hoping it will be a nice wearable cardigan for the chilly summer evenings we get here.

I'm knitting it with blue aran wool I got ages ago in the Woolen mills in Clare. I had originally thought I'd make a crochet blanket with the wool but now I think it will be nicer as a cardigan. I made enough crochet blocks from this wool to make a large cushion cover and I must get around to finishing that off some time soon.

I'm hoping the name of the design won't be too prophetic and that I will manage to finish this before the summer ends. I'm quite a slow knitter and this isn't great when you write a knitting blog. It's hard to write lots of posts about the progress of the same garment and I'm sure reading about the endless slog to finish a cardigan wouldn't be too entertaining for anyone reading either.

The lace is going well and I'm finding that with practise I don't need as many counters and I can remember what I'm supposed to be doing more easily. I find the lace keeps me knitting a little faster as there is a bit interest from row to row, I get bored if I have miles of stocking stitch to do with no breaks.

I have to show you a close up picture of the cutest stitch marker ever. It's a lemon cupcake! It's from K at Chocolate Bunni Crafts and is part of a set of four terribly cute lemon cupcakes. She makes loads of really cute stitch makers so check her shop out. You'll be supporting an Irish crafter too which is full of win. These stitch markers really do cheer me up each time I move them from one needle to the next.

I made a pair of baby booties recently as a present. I crocheted these from some purple cotton and they turned out to be very cute. There is only one problem, I think they may be too small to fit the baby! I may still give them as a present anyway and see if they fit. If not I can always make them again, it shouldn't be hard to make them in a bigger size. The pattern is available here.

Copper Coast Ale from Dungarvan

2010-05-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

There are two geoparks on the island of Ireland and both of them feature on my very favourite places to go list but for very different reasons. Marble Arch Caves in County Fermanagh is a place I've been to so many times I've lost count. The caves extend far beyond the show cave and exploring them is a lot of fun. I particularly love Cascades cave with it's entrance maze leading to large river passages filled with decorations. It's a whole other world. You can read about Artur's cave diving exploits in the area over at his blog Hell and High Water, he's a bona fide explorer.

The Copper Coast, Irelands other geopark is down south near Dungarvan, County Waterford. I love the Copper Coast though I don't have a photo of anywhere in the area. Maybe its because I don't want to show anyone the place as it will ruin the most wonderful feature of the place which is the splendid isolation. When I worked shifts in Kilkenny I'd have days off midweek and I'd go to Annestown beach and fly my kite with the whole beach to myself. To me the Copper Coast conjures up images of beautiful deserted beaches with wonderful rock formations. When I heard Dungarvan Brewing Company had named their red ale Copper Coast I smiled at the perfect name.

So to the beer at last, it pours a coppery brown colour with a nice cream head. It has a slightly yeasty caramel nose. It tastes of chocolate caramel with what tastes like a small amount of roast barley rounding it off. There's a nice bit of a hop bite which is great to find in a red ale. All too often red ales are far too much on the malty side of the equation so this is great to find. Though this is mostly a malt driven beer and it's nice and robust and not thin at all, another fault I find in many red ales. I loved the nice blurry carbonation which didn't ruin the beer by being too fizzy.

This is a beer for drinking with a nice hearty dinner, like a stew, pie or duck. This beer will go with any kind of roasted meat as the caramel flavours in both will complement each other. Of course you could always drink it sitting on your favourite deserted beach watching the sun set.

The music I'd set this beer to is something that I always used to listen to while driving around the Copper Coast on a sunny day, Four Tet's album Rounds. I'd liken it to the track 'As Serious as your Life' as it's laid back, complex and a bit sweet like this beer. And no I'm not going to even try to explain how I match beer and music...

Salad Days and a beer to drink with them, Dungarvan Helvick Gold

2010-05-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

Recently I briefly mentioned a new Irish craft brewery, the Dungarvan brewing company run by brothers in law Cormac and Tom along with their wives Jen and Claire. A week or two ago we met Cormac and his lovely wife Jen in The Bull and Castle where we sampled some very tasty Copper Coast ale on cask. They also gave me a sample of each of their beers to try plus a bottle opener and a Dungarvan bag. The bag is what the stylish beer geek will be using to tote their beer around for the summer. Thanks for that guys!

The weather has been beautiful and sunny the last few days so I've been making the best of it. On the evidence of last summer any sun at all is to be celebrated so I barely went indoors at all for the whole weekend. I was down visiting my parents and my Dad had the barbecue out for every meal, he even made the fry on Sunday morning on the barbecue. I love this time of year sitting outside in the sun eating grilled food and salads. I particularly love salads, they're so easy to make, just throw lots of stuff in a bowl and it looks like you've done loads of work. This evening back in my own house I cooked up some burgers with baby potatoes baked in the coals of the barbecue. I served it with a mixed salad and some coleslaw. The coleslaw is an important nod to the cuisine of Waterford. Blaas and coleslaw are two things that always come to mind when I think of Waterford. I went to school in Waterford so I'm allowed slag it off. I love blaas and have had many arguments explaining that they are not just baps. Recently an American in a forum made a snide comment that they look like the rolls you get in any American restaurant. I did shout 'They Are NOT Bread Rolls' at the screen. Blaas get their unique taste from a long rising time and they go stale quickly, I must try bake them some day. Having a fresh blaa with ham and coleslaw for lunch at school was always really tasty.

I decided to taste the Dungarvan Helvick Gold which is a blonde ale along with the barbecue. Now there is a big downside to this beer which I should tell you about first. One bottle is not nearly enough of this beer. We split it between us and were very unhappy about only having one bottle. So if you're buying it (Drink Store stock it and deliver around the country) don't just buy one to try or you will regret it. This beer is gorgeous and perfect for that laid back sitting in your garden eating a burger and salad in the sun type of vibe. I could happily drink it all evening but having only one bottle I'm now writing a blog post about it instead and pining for it's aroma.

It pours a nice blonde colour with a slight haze as it's bottle conditioned. The aroma is great, to me it's very fruity, almost like a weiss beer. It doesn't taste like a weiss beer though as it's a lovely well balanced hoppy blonde ale. Blonde ales can be bland as breweries treat them as something that shouldn't be challenging so that lager drinkers will drink it. This beer isn't like that but I think it will convert a lot of people to craft beer with it's full on flavour and easy going nature. It's packed full of flavour without being too bitter. I really loved it and as I said a half bottle just wasn't enough at all.

I can't wait to taste the other beers and I'll be reporting on them here. If you can't wait to read my wittering you can read Mr Billings talking about the rest of the beers here and The Beer Nut about Black Rock stout here.

Oh Louie Louet!

2010-05-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned before how wonderful my lovely husband is? Of course I have but it should be mentioned again. He is pretty awesome. He has surpassed himself this time by getting me a drum carder for finishing my exams. I spotted a Louet drum carder on ebay going for a bargain price and ended up getting it. I feel a bit guilty about the whole affair really.

It arrived packaged very securely in a big box this morning. The postman arrived at the ungodly hour of 7.45 and woke me up so he only had himself to blame for the sight of my bed head that greeted him at the door. Since I was up I decided to unpack it and it looked great, I decided to grab some alpaca fleece and try to card it. This didn't go well. I couldn't get the fiber to latch on to the carder at all and managed to scratch the table as I hadn't secured the carder to the table properly with the clamps.

Let's back up from this disaster and have a quick cup of coffee and look at why I wanted this carder in the first place. Carders are cool machines that align fiber for spinning, they also blend different fibers and colours making a fiber preparation called a batt. They are expensive but they tend to last forever so they're an investment that can be used for a long time. See how I convinced myself? They are quicker than hand cards and batts are lots of fun to spin from. The drum carder I got is a Louet Classic carder, it's got a coarse cloth with 46tpi, the tpi refers to the number of pins or tines per inch. Intertwined, the bible of art yarn spinning, recommends this carder for crazy carded batts as it will deal with whatever you put into it. I want to make mad batts so I was stalking ebay and keeping an eye out for a Louet classic as a new one was definitely out of the price range. I've been looking over a year and haven't seen one. The cheapest new carder I've seen is an Ashford but they don't suit art batts so when the Louet popped up on ebay I jumped at it.

After coffee and figuring out if I could blame the table scratches on the dog I set up the carder outside on the crap plastic outside table. I realised I'd been turning the handle the wrong way and magically the fiber started feeding onto the drum. After some messing around I carded a batt of white alpaca fiber and then did a batt of brown alpaca mixed with some various bits of greenish merino and a tiny touch of sparkle. It's a little more brown than the photos. It turned out pretty well for a first go, it looks spinnable from anyway. It's called Forest Nymph which is a bit whimsical for me but that's what came to mind when I finished it.

The carder will help a lot with processing the alpaca fleeces. I'm hoping to wash and dye the fleece in batches then blend the colours and card them using the carder. I'm also keeping fabric scraps and cast offs from Penneys and stuff to use in funky art batts. Can't wait.

It's got to the stage that with all this fiber stuff and know how I've collected over the last year or so I'm thinking that this hobby should start paying for itself. I'm hoping to set up an Etsy shop at some stage this summer, watch this space for that.

Longer Lengths

2010-05-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Ages ago I showed you some spinning. Then I disappeared into the ether while I finished projects and studied for my exam. I'm finished my course now and the exam went well which is good. I was studying green technology. It's an interesting area if not a little depressing as you see how far we have to go to reduce our impact on the environment.

While I was studying I found spinning was great to do in my breaks. Spinning is easy to pick up and put down and doesn't involve remembering a pattern. It's nice to let your brain drift and have a break while you draft and treadle the wheel.

I finished quite a few yarns. First off I finished the Betsy Doodles batt mentioned above. The batt was from Laura Hogan and it was quite fabulous. The blues and greys were fabulous mixed together. It's a two ply yarn and it's about sport/fingering weight. There's 330m of it too. I'm not quite sure what to make with this so all suggestions are welcome.

Next I spun up the roving I made using my home made hackle. It spun up really quickly and I navajo plied it. It's worsted weight and there's 80m of it. I called it Sea Change. I'm still constantly fascinated by how different fiber can look from the spun yarn. I might mix this with some alpaca to make a funky floppy hat like the ones cool surfer types wear.

I finally got around to finishing up the yarn I spun from the silk hankies I dyed using with kool aid. The yarn is about lace weight and there's 140m of it. I'm hoping to crochet a necklace with this using some pearl beads.

Did you notice how I confidently quote how long each skein is? As if I knew what I was talking about? It now appears that I have been talking nonsense as today I discovered I was measuring my skeins wrong. I'd take the yarn off the niddy-noddy, count the number of strands then multiply by 46cm (the length of the niddy-noddy) and then multiply by two. When I measured the Betsy Doodles yarn I was disappointed I didn't get more yardage as it seemed like I had quite a lot and now I know why. I was in This Is Knit teaching a crochet class and R of She Knit Up That was helping someone measure their yarn with a niddy-noddy. She mentioned how to calculate the length of yarn and said you count the strands, multiply by the length of niddy and multiply by four. Four? Four? Facepalm! Of course it's four. The yarn goes up and around it four times. How did I not notice that before?

How dumb am I? Obviously doing all that physics in college didn't help with my atrocious adding up skills. I now have twice as much handspun yarn as I thought I had. It's great actually as I was wondering what I'd do with all the small skeins of yarn I'd made. It now seems I have enough to actually make some decent projects from them. So thanks a million R!

A storm gathers

2010-05-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

I mentioned I was knitting the storm cloud shawlette in a recent post. Here's the last row being cast off using my own handpsun art yarn. I had 10cm of the mohair left over and about 30cm of the artyarn. I love when a project uses up all the yarn. I tend to hoard the small scraps left over after a project and then end up not using them.

I've seen a lot of strong opinions about art yarn on the internet and Ravelry. Some people really dislike it. They argue that it is really hard to knit or crochet with art yarn. I've even seen people press the disagree button and tell people that their project using their art yarn isn't nice.

I think these people need to lighten up, stop being mean and learn to think outside the box.

Of course art yarn isn't traditional spinning, of course it looks a bit mad but then that's the whole point. People spin for fun these days just like they knit for fun. You don't have to spin or knit, you can just pop to the shops and buy a pair of socks. I'm very thankful for that. I spin quickly but I knit very slowly so I'd never manage to make myself enough socks. When people don't have to do something out of necessity I think they have more freedom to be imaginative and creative. Spinning is an old art form and while it's very nice to spin a traditional woolen laceweight long draw it's also nice to go mad and spin some crazy ass yarn with poms poms and glitter sticking out of it. Art yarn keeps spinning modern and vibrant and I think it will help ensure that people remain interested in the craft.

If you want to see more art yarn check out the websites of these fabulous fiber artists Jazz Turtle, Studioloo, Pluckyfluff, and Insubordiknit.

Art yarn makes a perfect accent in a project. I think the purple shawl would have been much less interesting without the odd row of colourful handspun breaking it up. The shawl is fantastically fun and I think I will wear it over a plain t-shirt during the summer. It's also really warm, that must be the mohair. When I visited Cushendale I was told that it's hard to find really top quality mohair and they had to search for a while before finding the mohair yarn they dye in such lovely colours.

I've been somewhat in hiding the last few weeks as I was finishing my project for college. I have a quick break today but I'll be back studying for my exam next week. After that I'm free and looking forward to a summer filled with knitting, spinning and dyeing.

Quick post about an Irish Times mention

2010-04-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

I told you all about the Porterhouse award for best Irish beer in this blog post. Now you can read a professional account of the day. John Wilson is the wine correspondent with the Irish Times and his account of the day is here. I think he captured the day well and I thought it was interesting that we all concluded that the bottled versions of many of the beers were better than their draught counter parts.

I'd have to agree with his point that most Irish breweries seem to make the same range of beers and that maybe small quantities of more unusual beers would be the way forward. I think this is certainly true. When Galway Hooker's IPA came along there were was nothing else like it on the Irish micro market and it has achieved great success. Perhaps because the sorts of people who try Irish micro brewed beers are the type who try different beers anyway. So maybe the Irish micros should be more adventurous.

There are signs that this is happening. Sadly study prevented me from making the Franciscan Well beer festival this year. But reports tell me that many great beers have been launched this year including White Gypsy's oak aged imperial stout. I think that definitely qualifies as adventurous. Carlow Brewing have been releasing some cracking new beers including their tasty Easter stout that was part of the Porterhouse competition. There's also Whitewater's new Copperhead ale which was one of my favourites at the competition. The Irish micro brewing scene is definitely in great health. Two new breweries launched at the Franciscan well, Trouble Brewing and Dungarvan Brewing Company. Both are fellow Irish Craft Brewer members. I wish them both well and I hope when all my study is done that I will be able to relax and enjoy their beers over the summer.

While flicking through the paper I noticed that 9 Bean Row also gets a mention in The Times. Hopefully this will cheer her up as she is stranded away from home due to the volcanic ash.

Surprise yarn and funky phone covers

2010-04-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

A wonderful surprise arrived in the post for me this week. The rather wonderful Under Me Oxter ran a fun Easter treasure hunt over on her blog. I searched the blog for clues and ended finding yarny treasure. I came fifth and my prize was two skeins of Debbie Bliss Donegal tweed chunky in red and blue. There were also some yummy chocolate Easter treats in the bag, they didn't survive for very long after this picture was taken. I was secretly hoping I'd win this yarn as I thought it would make some really nice felted slippers. I've been oogling felted slipper patterns since my own slippers gave up the ghost, I think felted slippers would be much cosier. If anyone has any pattern suggestions let me know.

I got a new smartphone for my birthday recently. It's a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 running android and it's fantastic so far. Obviously a fancy phone with a nice screen needs a cover. Being a crafter I couldn't go out and buy a phone cover, I needed to make one. So I dug out these lovely bright blue and green yarns on the left from the stash and set to work.

Mobile phone covers aren't the most environmentally friendly as they're usually made from plastic. An Irish company makes the leaf cover which is biodegradable. I reckon my wooly cover is more eco friendly as not only is wool biodegradable but it's also a renewable resource as well. I happen to think wool looks cooler too. Another advantage is that a wooly cover can be used to clean the phone as well.

It's a simple pattern using single crochet and stripes. The yarn is double knitting Debbie Bliss Prima which is bamboo and merino. I sewed it all up and added a flap. I then added buttons, lots of buttons. I love how it turned out. I must remember the addition of some funky buttons can turn an ordinary project into something really funky.

A little storm cloud

2010-04-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

After my success at the Ravelympics with the Ishbel shawl I decided I wanted to knit another shawl. I had some gorgeous purple mohair boucle yarn from Cushendale woolen mills in my stash. I was on the look out for the perfect shawl pattern that would suit the yarn. I decided anything too lacey wouldn't show up and I also wanted a quick enough knit.

I think I found the perfect pattern in the storm cloud shawlette. It's a semi-circular shawl that knits up really easily using an elongated garter stitch pattern. To add some interest I decided to use some of the core spun art yarn to add a bit of interest every couple of rows. It's much bigger now than it was in this picture so I should finish it soon. After that my plans for summer knitting include many more shawls.

When I finished the Ishbel shawl I promised I'd take some better pictures of it. The picture of it blocking doesn't do it justice at all what with the mad background of my blue yoga mat. So here it is looking like it's supposed to. I've worn the shawl many times now and I really love it. It's not too big and it's just perfect for keeping the wind out when I wear a coat. There's always the satisfaction of wearing something that you made yourself too.

Michael Jackson award for Irish beer at The Porterhouse

2010-04-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Last week I told you about the Porterhouse independent Irish beer and whiskey festival. As part of the festival the Michael Jackson award for best Irish beer would be decided by a panel of judges. For the second year I was part of the panel along with Sean of Irish Craft Beer and John Wilson, writer with The Irish Times. We settled into a window seat in the Porterhouse Central so that we could get good light much to the amusement of passing tourists, some of whom stopped to puzzle at why three people were drinking beer and writing things down. This year the line up had expanded a bit and the judging was held in two venues, first Porterhouse Central and later Porterhouse Temple Bar.

We started off with ales and tasted most of them in Porterhouse central. There were a lot of fresh hoppy golden ales on show and I really liked them. A lot of work and care has obviously been put in by the brewers recently. An advantage to blind tasting is that you have no preconceptions. If the beer is bad on the day you just mark it as you see fit. As you don't know what the beer is you can't forgive it and mark it up by saying to yourself that it usually tastes good or that it was nice last time you had it. There were one or two ales which weren't so great on the day.

Some of the specialty beers and bottled beers were also tasted in central. These were by and large excellent. One of the bottled beers in particular impressed us beyond anything we had tasted. The second bottled beer was also a cracker with an intensely bitter bite.

We moved on down to the Porterhouse Temple Bar, it was nice to have a break from the tasting to give the taste buds a chance to recover. We had a lovely sunny seat around the old copper kettle on the top floor and awaited the delivery of the next beers. The lagers were first up with only three in the category. The first lager was very tasty and was clearly ahead of the other two. Definitely more flavoursome than macro lager and perfect for a nice summer's day. A prison diet of bread and water kept the palate clean. Our waitress was completely bemused and wondered why we were sniffing the beer. Then she realised we were tasting the beer like wine. She was a great laugh actually.

Stouts were up next and as expected this was tightly contested category. Irish brewers make some fabulous stouts and it was a very close run thing in the end. After this we tasted the last of the speciality beers and finished off the bottled beers.

Our judging sheets were taken away so that the final scores could be added up. We had some excellent food and tried to recover our powers of tasting. Then I waited around for a bit for the press launch of the festival. This year the announcement of the beers of the festival took place with the opening of the festival which was a good idea. I think it makes things easier for customers who might not have tried much craft beer. They can pick out an award winning beer to try out.

Winners:

Best Ale: Copperhead by Whitewater
This is a lovely golden hoppy fresh zingy ale. Fabulous.

Best Lager: Amber by White Gypsy
A perfect lager for summer sipping with a nice flavour and bit of bite to it.

Best Speciality: 3 Kings by Franciscan Well
A smokey ale with a nice blur of spices in the background.

Best Stout: Wrasslers XXXX by The Porterhouse
The all conquering wrasslers wins again. It's just a fabulous stout with so much flavour.

Best Bottled: Oyster Stout by The Porterhouse

Overall winner of the Michael Jackson award for best Irish beer: Oyster Stout by The Porterhouse

A surprise for me as I didn't have any idea what this was when I tasted it. I was very impressed with this complex dark stout which looked perfect with a nice tint of red to it. A fabulous nose. It has a complex taste with hints of spices and it impressed us in spades.

Oyster stout in general is something I usually pass over. I really dislike fish and shellfish and I just can't eat seafood no matter how I try. So Oyster stout isn't something I go for on draught as it's quite smooth and not something to get overly excited about. It's completely different when bottled. The smoothing effect of the nitrogen is stripped away leaving you with an altogether more interesting beer. A much more complex and intense beer emerges. I'll be buying a few bottles to keep in the press.

Thanks once again to The Porterhouse for asking me to judge, it was a great day. Judging beer is harder than it seems and it's a good challenge to the palate and taste buds to judge beers against each other blind like this.

Photo courtesy of The Beer Nut.

Some Spinning

2010-03-31T07:43:00.000-07:00

Currently spinning a batt called Betsy Doodles by Laura Hogan from her etsy shop. Beautiful blue merino and soft fuzzy grey shetland. It will be 2-ply and about fingering weight when it's done.

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef in the Science Gallery

2010-03-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

After all my talk of the crochet coral reef it's finally here! I recommend that you go dive in and immerse yourself in the woolly wonder that is the hyperbolic crochet coral reef at the Science Gallery, Pearse St, Dublin. It's running from now until the 11th of June and the gallery has free admission.

I went to take a look last week and it really is amazing. I've never seen so much crochet in one place. When you walk in you see a fabulous kelp forest made of videotape. The toxic reef follows in a riot of colour. It's amazing that all this is made from rubbish and the things that people throw away. It also makes you think about the plastic trash that is clogging up the oceans, polluting and destroying the coral reefs.

The Irish reef is upstairs and it's so impressive to see what Irish crocheters have come up with. Beautiful shapes and colours abound and it's quite overwhelming to try and take it all in. I'll definitely be back for another look around the reef. I was looking out for my pieces but didn't manage to spot any of them this time so further investigations will be needed.

At the back of the exhibition there is the Maths Chapel. Here the smaller jewels of the reef can be seen along with two Escher prints. I was pleased to see a staff member from the Science Gallery crocheting while explaining maths and hyperbolic geometry. It's such a fun contrast and most people are really surprised by it. You can see them do a double take when they are told all this complex maths underlies this crocheted beauty.

Here's some photos but really they don't do the reef justice at all. If you can make the trip to the Science Gallery at all.

Here's a very nice video from the opening night featuring the ladies who started it all Maragaret and Christine Wertheim of The IFF.

And the winner is...

2010-03-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who entered the Aran Brew is two competition. I really enjoyed reading all your comments and thoughts about spring. I've also discovered new readers with blogs too so I'll check them out. For fairness I decided to draw the winner out of a hat.

So drumroll please... The winner is...

Chic with stix!

Congratulations and I'll contact you about getting the yarn to you. I look forward to seeing what it becomes.

Porterhouse Independent Beer and Whiskey Festival 2010

2010-03-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

The Porterhouse will be running their 7th independent beer and whiskey festival from the 25th of March to the 4th of April this year. The festival is a celebration of craft beer and whiskey brewed in Ireland. Last years festival was a great success and this year the festival is expanding with beers from Carlow brewing company and White Gypsy are being added to the line up.

Last year I had the great opportunity to judge the Michael Jackson award for Irish beer and this year I am delighted to say I will be on the judging panel again. There are many new beers on the list this year and I am really looking forward to tasting them. I'll be writing up a full report about the days tasting in the next week.

Go along to the Porterhouse and get your Irish beer on!

Bottling: The less glamourous side of home brewing

2010-03-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

Read any home brewing blog and you'll see lots of posts about beer recipes, grain, hops, brewing techniques and indeed talk about tasting the beer when it's been made. What you won't see so much about is the bottling of the beer. Bottling must be the most hated task of the home brewer. Compared to the fun of planning the recipe and brewing the beer it's just tedious, it's the last finishing step that has to be gotten out of the way before you get to the good part which is drinking the beer.

It has to be done though and this week I bottled my polar beer which I brewed back in January. It's been sitting almost unnoticed in the shed getting nice and cold.

I've developed a bit of a system to deal with the pain of bottling. I put a load of bottles to be sterilized into a plastic box. The plastic box means I don't get sterilizer all over the kitchen counter as it can stain it. I then use a funnel to pour the sterilizing solution into the bottles until they are full. If I'm using swing tops I then close the bottles and leave the solution to do it's work. I then rinse them until there is no smell of sterilizer from them. I don't usually leave the bottles to dry though I suspect I should.

I boil up the recommended amount of sugar with water and let it cool. I pour it into a sterilized better bottle which acts as the bottling bucket. Using a sanitized tube I transfer the beer from the primary fermenter to the bottling bucket.

At this stage I usually need help to move the full better bottle up onto the table. I then attach a bottling wand to the tap of the better bottle. Bottling wands really help with not losing the will to live while bottling.

I get all the bottles and caps I'll need together on some newspaper and then put a bucket under the bottling wand to catch any drips. Then I bottle away and hope that it doesn't take too long.

Usually I measure the final gravity of the beer. This time however I forgot to take a sample before I put the sugar in so the reading I took is wrong. Ah well I'm sure it fermented out and the required amount of alcohol is present. Very precise I know.

I usually have a husband helper to close the bottles if they're flip tops and cap with crown caps if needed. I can recommend a helper as it speeds up the process and you also have someone to talk to. Some people recommend opening a home brew from the previous batch when bottling and this is also very sensible advice. For more on bottling see Barry's excellent guide to bottling.

I don't know even blogging about bottling is getting to be as tedious as the act itself. So that's enough of that. On to the results of the sneaky taste of the beer. I can't wait to taste this beer when it ages a bit more and is fully carbonated. It's nice and clean with no yeast profile which is what I was looking for. It's malty but I couldn't fully work out what was going on with the malt from the taste I had. I was impressed by the hop profile, it's got a lovely bitter hit just at the end and no real flavour or aroma. All in all it's looking very promising for the polar beer.

Aran Brew featured in Mail on Sunday article

2010-03-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

I discovered that Aran Brew was featured in the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday. I did an interview with Caroline about home brewing a while ago and had almost forgotten it. The article is published in full on the Bibliocook blog here. Great to see an article about modern home brewing dispelling the myths that it tastes awful and is only for people making beer on the cheap. She also captured the sense of community and enthusiasm that goes along with home brewing. It's such a fun hobby and I think more people should try it out.

If you've just come to this blog and are wondering why all the posts seem to be about knitting and where the hell is the beer, well here's a link to all the posts tagged with brewing and a link to those tagged with beer. My most recent brew was an alt beer called Polar Beer and I'm going to bottle it this week. From the preliminary tastes I've had it seems to have turned out really well.

I'm also going to use this post to link to Ireland's newest micro brewery Dungarvan Brewing Company. I know the people who have set up this brewery and they are true beer enthusiasts. They were home brewers originally and are now living the dream by setting up their own brewery. The beers will be featured at this years Franciscan Well easter festival and I'm really looking forward to tasting them especially the copper coast red ale.

Aran Brew is two! Blog Giveaway.

2010-03-13T12:07:00.000-08:00

It's been a long cold winter and spring has been slow coming in this year. On Thursday evening when I found myself with some spare time I decided to dye some yarn and fleece. I wanted to cheer myself up with some spring colours. I wanted to capture the colour of a daffodil bud just before the flower bursts out. I ended up with this.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's such a lovely fresh spring green colour. The yarn is from Cushendale woolen mills and it's a lovely sock yarn spun from Irish fleece in a traditional woolen style. I visited the mill in Graignamanagh when I went walking by the river with my Mum and aunt recently. It's a lovely village in the first place and the mill makes it even better to visit. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I can't show you photos of the place or even the glorious sunshine and views we had when we walked by the river side.

I just looked back at my post history there and have discovered that next week Aran Brew is two years old. It doesn't seem like it, maybe that's because I've had so much fun writing this blog and documenting my adventures in brewing, knitting and all the other crafts I try. I love seeing comments and hearing that people like reading what I write. There is another reason to celebrate this week, the blog has made the (not so) short lists for the Irish blog awards. Congratulations to the other fibre related blogs on the list, Dublin knit collective, She knit up that ball, Clasheen and Etsy Ireland. Also congratulations to Live at the witch trials, The Beer Nut and 9 Bean Row. Well done everyone. I'm going to the blog awards in Galway so expect a report on that.

Anyway back to the yarn. Do you like it? Would you like to have it? Yes? Excellent! I'm having my first ever blog giveaway of this skein of yarn in celebration of the blog being two and the blog awards. All you have to do is leave a comment telling me why you love spring and what you'll do with the yarn. I'll announce who has won next week.

While I had the dyeing stuff out I decided I might as well dye some of my alpaca fleece. I grabbed a load of fleece from the bags in the shed. I figured I'd wash the fleece and then dye it all in one go to save myself some time. It worked really well and I'll be doing this from now on. The dyes came from Kemtex in the UK as part of their starter kit. I just dunked the fleece in the pot in laundry bags and sprinkled some dye on. It didn't look like it was going to turn out ok as the water was pretty murky and grey looking. I presume the alpaca wasn't completely clean. I took the fleece out and rinsed it and hung it to dry not expecting much. But when it dried I was really surprised, it turned out to be this lovely soft blue colour reminding me of a blue sky on a day with a few clouds.

I also dyed some silk hankies and have just started to spin them on my Zebisis drop spindle. I love silk, it's amazingly shiny fantastic stuff. I've got lots going on at the moment so expect some new posts about what I'm knitting, the opening of the crochet coral reef, bottling my alt beer, some brewing plans and some fun beer tasting.

Raised Hackles

2010-03-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

After reading Deb Menz's book Colour In Spinning I wanted a hackle. What on earth is a hackle I hear you ask? It's a slightly scary, well very scary looking piece of equipment used for blending and combing fibres. They're particularly good for blending combed top which is one of the most common types of fibre you can get. They're also quite expensive. I was reading a thread in the art yarn spinners group on Ravelry which had a link to this tutorial where someone has made a hackle themselves cheaply.

Being financially challenged at the moment I decided it was worth giving it a go. It wouldn't cost much and would be a very useful piece of kit if it worked.

First I needed a load of hair combs. These were surprisingly difficult to find. I even checked the Afro-Caribbean shops on Moore St to no avail. I do think they thought I was slightly mad looking for a load of hair combs since my hair is very short. I found that they sell all kinds of tat on Moore St these days though. Eventually I found the right combs in Dunnes Stores and I grabbed five of them.

I got some metal self tapping screws and some clamps from the DIY shop. I found a piece of wood in the back of the shed that would work as base to screw the combs onto. All in all it cost less than twenty euro.

Dave was enlisted to help and he drilled two holes in each comb then screwed the comb onto the wood while I held the comb in place. It was pretty easy and didn't take very long. The real question was, would it work?

It always amazes me that you can learn all sorts of things online that you never could without the internet. I don't know anyone person who even knows what a hackle is let alone someone who knows how to use one. You Tube however comes to the rescue with this video.

I lashed on the fiber like in the video. This is a selection of merino that was part of a mixed bag from The Yarn Room. I used this fiber before when I carded it with some alpaca and got a nice fuzzy yarn. Actually I just looked back through the blog and I seem to have forgotten to write anything about that yarn. Ah well I'm sure it will show up here soon having been turned into a hat or something.

I put different colours on in layers building them up until the combs were full. I then pulled the roving and threaded it through my diz. Now I hear you ask, what is a diz? Does spinning require you to learn a different language? Sometimes it feels like it. A diz is used to take fiber off a comb or hackle. It's just something with a small diameter hole so that the fiber comes out the same width when pulled through it. Lacking anything else I used a bottle opener that was handy.

Something magic happens when you pull the fiber off the combs. It all gets blended and mixed up together. I think the colours when mixed are much nicer than the individual ones. I pulled off all the fiber and rolled it up into two big balls. I'll spin these up on the wheel soon.

The hackle was a success for something we knocked together so quickly. I think it will only work on prepared fleece as too much tugging on the combs would probably break them. I want it for blending fiber and it's perfect for that. So now that I know it works for top I'm going to start blending some of the fiber I have with fun stuff like angelina, silk noil, ribbons, sequins etc.

Ravelympics Winter 2010

2010-02-28T14:21:00.000-08:00

Who am I to fight against weird internet memes? The knitting Olympics has been run for many years by the Yarn Harlot. Then Ravelry got in on the act setting up the Ravelympics. The idea is that you cast on at the opening ceremony and finish a whole project by the closing ceremony challenging yourself in the process. I was on holidays during the last olympics so I didn't quite get my mittens knit on time and missed out on a medal.

This time there would be no mistakes, I had put in the training and I was going to get a medal if it killed me, well perhaps not kill but major RSI was a risk I'm telling you. I decided to do two challenging projects, one spinning and one a lace shawl.

The lace shawl would be the famous and fabulous Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. I cast on the day the olympics started in The Bull and Castle pub with a pint of Galway Hooker to steady the nerves. I was there to meet the wonderful Irish members of the all conquering Ravelry group, Lazy, Stupid and Godless. I love that group of crazy beatchs. I got to meet my fibre dealer Laura Hogan too, go to her Etsy shop and she'll sort you out with a fiber fix. Kneehigh brought a date, her Mmmmalabrigo scarf, she knows how to show yarn a good time. The distractions of great conversation, a rugby match and beer were all too much and I had to start it about five times before I figured out what I was supposed to do. I then had trouble with the purl yarn overs so I put the knitting aside and concentrated on the fun day out part.

It transpires that I'm not the only one who had problems with the yarn overs and this helpful post explained the problem. I used the large holes solution and that worked perfectly. The yarn is a lovely merino, cashmere, nylon mix from Old Maiden Aunt that I dyed myself during the course I did with Lillith in Scotland last year. The stocking stitch part went really quickly and then I got into the lace. I haven't done much lace knitting before so doing a big project with charts was a challenge. When I figured out how the charts worked I found the charts much easier to follow than written lace directions. In future I'll definitely be doing all lace from charts. I really enjoyed knitting the lace. I made a couple of mistakes but I noticed them and was able to either tink back or in the case of a missing yarn over a row down I used this handy method to fix it.

I knit most of the shawl while actually watching the Winter Olympics on BBC2. I love the winter games, as a kid we had Eurosport and I got obsessed by watching ski jumping on it and I still love it. This time I really fell for the new discipline of ski cross. The first set of obstacles are called Wu-Tangs after the Wu-Tang clan, bringing some much needed gangsta to proceedings. I also got to dream about being as cool as Amy Williams and throwing myself at race car speeds down an ice slope on a glorified tea tray. In fairness the closest I'll get to emulating the athletes is by trying my hand at curling in Chamonix later this year. Here's the Ishbel blocking on my bright blue yoga mat. When it's dry I'll take some glamorous shots of it and post them up. I've been looking at it not quite able to believe I knit it in just over two weeks. I love it.

The spinning part of my Ravelympics was a challenge too. I wanted to spin up the lovely merino/tencel fiber that I dyed as part of my dyeing course at Old Maiden Aunt. I had ideas about what I wanted this yarn to be. The fiber is a grey/purple mixed with white. Tencel being a plant based fiber doesn't absorb the acid dyes one uses on wool based fiber so it stays white which gives a fantastic effect.

I wanted to corespin the fiber but my last corespun yarn ended up very over twisted and not looking too happy. There's a great group called Novelty and Art Yarn Spinners on Ravelry where I found a link to JazzTurtle's fantastic blog post about core spinning. I tried her technique and it worked much better this time, it's almost balanced in the end. I wanted this yarn to be bulky and thick and think. I also autowrapped the yarn with black lurex thread. Autowrapping is a fun technique where you leave a thread to do it's own thing while you're spinning so it wraps around the spun yarn at the wheel's orifice. The yarn ended up bulky weight and I have about 70 metres of it. I think it will look fab as a funky hat or cowl. I might combine it with some left over black Hulda from my Owls jumper. I named the yarn Bill Compton as I've been watching rather a lot of True Blood lately. I think it suits, it's dark and twisted and all that.

Crochet Coral Reef

2010-02-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

Since finishing off my hats I've been busily crocheting coral for the Irish Crochet Coral Reef which will be exhibited in the Science Gallery soon. On Saturday the 20th Feb from 1-3pm Margaret Wertheim will be back to talk about the submissions for the reef and finalizing the project before the exhibition. Go here to book tickets, they're free. Margaret is a fantastic speaker so if you have an interest in the project you should go along.

Above is a photo of some of the coral I saw while snorkeling in Jamaica. It really made me think more about the crochet coral reef and how it's raising awareness about the disappearance of these amazing ecosystems. The coral I saw definitely provided inspiration for my own crochet. I used a lot of plastic which wasn't the easiest to crochet with but the effect is great. I like the recycling aspect of taking something that is destroying reefs and using it to raise awareness of the problem. The black coral below is made from Jamaican black plastic scandal bags. You can see some of the coral posing for pictures below. I particularly like the blue and green one that reminds me a bit of some amazing nudibranchs I saw in the National Geographic.

I made another large floppy white plastic coral which isn't pictured at Make night last week. This was also held in the Science Gallery. It was a fun night where lots of people turn up to make stuff. There were robots, electronics, origami, cupcakes and crochet. I also got to play with sugru which is one of the very best substances in the world.

Irish Beer and Cheese Evening

2010-02-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

I've talked before about the joys of beer and cheese on this blog. Dave happened to buy some Irish cheese in the shops and we had some Irish beer so the idea of having an Irish beer and cheese night formed. We rang some people and Thom and Séan and his wife agreed to come over for a night of beer and cheese.

The beers were all Irish, we got a selection of almost all the bottled craft beers you can get in Ireland. There was Porterhouse Hophead and Plain; O'Hara's Stout, Red, Curim Gold and Aldi Ale; Whitewater's Clotworthy Dobbin and Belfast Black; Hilden's Belfast Blonde and Cathedral Quarter.

The cheese came from the supermarket and Sheridans Cheesemongers. There was Cashel Blue, Tipperary Camembert, Wexford cheddar with chives, Knockanore smoked, Mileens, Coolea mature and Ryefield Goats Cheese.

All this was served with homemade brown bread, cheese crackers, chutney and grapes. Sean also brought some tasty olives and chutney. I can recommend a beer and cheese night if you don't like cooking much but still want to invite people over for food and drinks. It's really easy to prepare. All you have to do is unwrap the cheese and lay it all out on some nice plates.

We tasted the lighter beers with the lighter cheeses first then moved on to the stronger darker beerswith the stronger cheeses like the cashel blue. The knockanore smoked was especially popular, it was all gone by the end of the night. I liked the Mileens cheese a lot, I thought it went well with the Curim Gold but others didn't. That's the funny thing about beer and cheese, I could recommend lots of matches here and you could try them and be wondering why on earth I thought they went together. Much better to have your own beer and cheese evening and find your own perfect match. I usually try a few cheeses with each beer as the tastes change with each different cheese.

The best Irish beers on the night were agreed to be Porterhouse Plain, Carlow's Aldi Ale and Porterhouse Hophead. So the Porterhouse are obviously doing things right with their new bottling line. Very disappointing was Hilden's Cathedral Quarter. It really didn't taste right and we wondered if we'd gotten a bad bottle but I remembered I had this recently in a pub and it wasn't right then either. So perhaps there was a whole bad batch or maybe it's supposed to taste like this which isn't a good thing.

Thom brought along a few beers which were duly tasted. He also brought an experimental beer of his which had been left sitting on the yeast for ages. This is a big no no in brewing as it leads to autolysis which can lead to off flavours. Not so in the case of this beer, it was fantastic and I look forward to tasting a carbonated version soon.

First Dublin Spinning Meet Up

2010-02-06T14:11:00.000-08:00

The first Dublin spinning meet up happened last Sunday. The plan is that spinners will meet on the balcony at the Powerscourt Centre in Dublin's city centre on the last Sunday of every month. I loaded up the car with Gloria the wheel and set off. I walked in to see wheels, spindles, fibre, biscuits and many happy spinners.

Above you can see Thread Bear's wheel Daisy in action. Also Handspunheart was there with her Louet wheel, Louie. There were many spindle spinners including the ladies from Playing With Fibre, Hooks Law, She Knit Up That Ball, Chic With Stix and others. Many of them were dab hands and a few people were just starting out on the road to spinning obsession. It was lovely to sit and spin with people who understand the obsession. I also had some lovely coffee and an oreo cupcake which pretty much made it into a perfect day.

Strangely enough with all the chatting and admiring other peoples fibre and wheels I managed to spin up the BFL fibre I dyed with kool-aid. It was agreed that due to the colours it should be called Wibbly Wobbly Wonder after the ice-cream. It's a single, sport weight and about 60 metres. Not sure what it wants to be yet but it's pretty.

You go home and you cry and you want to dye

2010-01-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

Apologies but I think every post about dyeing from now on will involve some appalling Smiths pun. In Jamaica I bought a load of kool-aid, a disgusting substance which can be used to make a drink. No right minded person actually drinks this stuff do they? Kool-aid can be used to dye yarn and that's why I wanted it. There are lots of great tutorials about how to dye with kool-aid so I won't repeat them. It's fun, cheap and easy. The colours are limited so it's not really a solution if you want to do lots of dyeing but it's fun if you want to give dyeing a try without spending lots. I dyed a small skein of alpaca yarn I spun, some blue faced leicester fibre and some silk hankies. I used pretty much the same dye on each of them but they all turned out a bit different due to the different fibres.

Here's how the BFL fibre and the alpaca yarn turned out. They didn't felt and the colours came out well so that's good I suppose. The only problem is I don't really like the colour so much. It reminds me of a Wibbly Wobbly Wonder Ice Cream. Maybe in spring I'll get an attack of the pastels and make something from them but usually I'm not a pastels person. The alpaca might make a cute crochet flower though so maybe it will get used. I'm really pleased with my new photography set-up though. The colours of the yarn come out really well with it.

When I first started spinning I bought 100g of silk hankies. I didn't get round to spinning them as I didn't have a light spindle and I always had half a notion that I'd dye them so they wouldn't be so boring to spin. I find spinning something that is all one color harder work than spinning something coloured. I dyed some of the silk hankies as part of my kool-aid experiment and they turned out well as silk takes up dye really well. As it turns out spinning silk hankies is really easy. You draft them out before you spin them.

The very pretty spindle you see there is part of my christmas present. It's a stone whorl spindle from Zebisis Designs, it's small and light weighing only 23g. The stone is beautiful Botswana agate. It spins really quickly and so it's perfect for spinning silk which likes lots of twist. The silk hankies are really easy to spin, the yarn comes out soft and shiny.

I ordered two spindles from Zebisis but when I opened my package there were three spindles inside. I thought there was a mistake for a minute but it turns out the third was a bonus christmas present. So thanks a million to Zebisis for that. The first one pictured below is Amazonite and weighs 36g. The second one is orange turquoise and weighs 33g. The stone whorls are really pretty and match well with the carved wooden shafts. Very pretty.

The fibre that the spindles are reclining on are batts from Laura Hogan's Etsy shop. These beauties made up the rest of my christmas present. I think batts are my very favourite type of fibre, they're lovely to look at, have great colours and blends of fibre and spin up really well. Laura Hogan is an Irish etsy seller and her order arrived at light speed. Her batts are fabulous, she obviously has a great eye for colour. The one is the first picture is a halloween themed batt called trick or treat, I love the fun colours in this. The one in the second photo is Betsy Doodles a gorgeous blue/grey mix of merino and shetland wool.

It never ceases to amaze me how great the members of Ravelry are and as if to prove my point many of the groups there are fund raising for the people of Haiti. Lots of designers have also decided to donate a portion of their profits from pattern sales (Rav Link) to charities helping in Haiti. I bought some patterns I'd been meaning to buy, it's a win win, I get a pattern I wanted and money goes to Haiti. Irish designers (that I know of) donating include Aoibhe of Thread Bear and Carol Feller of Stolen Stitches. I got Centrique from Stolen Stitches and Rasta Kitty and Oxidise from Thread Bear. I also got Whimsical little knits 2 and Ishbel by Ysolda, both of which I had been meaning to get for ages. I hope people don't think I'm being preachy here or anything. You don't have to donate or anything, I just thought I'd mention it as it's a very good cause.

Polar Beer

2010-01-20T16:00:00.000-08:00

It's been mighty cold in Dublin recently. Our normally boring looking estate turned into a winter wonderland carpeted with snow. While snowed in writing the crafty plans post I had just put in an order with The Home Brew Company, well the order arrived despite all the ice and snow. I got some free samples of odds and ends of various malts to try out with the order. Excellent stuff. With all the cold weather I decided to take advantage and brew an alt beer.

Alt style beer is made in Düsseldorf using a top fermenting ale yeast and the beer is then lagered at a cold temperature. Traditionally it was probably made in winter when the brewers could take advantage of the cold weather to lager the beer which would mellow out the fruity flavours normally created by ale yeast. My copy of Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher tells me that it should taste of toffee malt but it should be crisp with a blast of fresh herbal noble hops. Luckily The Beer Nut was off doing some field research on alt beer with Barry in Düsseldorf so that was useful for formulating the recipe.

I used lager malt and added a touch of wheat malt to give a good head. The caramunch and munich malt were tossed in with the hope they will give the beer some complexity and a nice toffee taste without being too sweet. I know what I'd like this beer to taste like but really I have no idea if this grain bill will achieve that. Part of the fun of brewing is finding out. I went with german Perle hops for bittering and Hallertau for aroma as they're a classic german hop. Hopefully the hops will balance the malt nicely.

Recipe:

Grain Bill:
2.5kg Lager malt
Wheat malt: 500g
Munich malt: 500g
Caramunch: 500g
Dark Crystal: 60g

Hops:
60 Minutes: Perle 7.1%AA 40g
15 Minutes: Hallertau Hersbrucker 3%AA 10g
Aroma: Hallertau Hersbrucker 3%AA 25g

Yeast: Safale S04

OG: 1.046

Mashed at 68 deg C for an hour.

There were no big problems with the brewday. I'm still dreaming of how things will be easier when I build myself a boiler, I could see on the day where having one could save me time and effort. The OG came out pretty much where I wanted it for a session strength beer between four and five percent alcohol. Since there was still snow outside I decided to try cooling the wort using the snow. I have read with envy about American home brewers who can dunk the pot in a snow drift to cool it. So we built a snow drift and cooled the pot outdoors. Unfortunately the temperature was taking ages to drop and I wanted to finish the day and clean up so I cheated and finished cooling using the wort chiller.

I used Safale S04 as it will work at the colder end of the temperature range for ale yeast and it ferments quite cleanly. The beer is finishing the first week of fermentation in my cold downstairs room now. I'll move it out to my shed for a few weeks of lagering. Hopefully during that time the temperature will stay nice and cold. Who knows maybe we'll have more frost and snow to help it along. Though if it drops to minus ten again I might end up making eis beer.

Nante kouun nano - How lucky!

2010-01-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

I'm sure someone who knows Japanese like my friend Rebecca will correct me and say that nante kouun nano doesn't actually mean how lucky. For the moment I am willing to believe what google tells me. I have been lucky and won a competition over at DMaxi's Under Me Oxter blog. It was a ban-zai competition where you had to write a haiku to win a wonderful Japanese themed prize.

Luckily skill at writing haiku had nothing to do with winning as the winner was drawn at random. For what it's worth here is my sock knitting themed haiku.
Click of dpn
Knitters defence
Against cold feet
You should hop over to the blog and look at the other entries though as there are some really clever and funny ones. Anyway despite my lame haiku the luck of the random draw was with me and the postman arrived with this fantastic prize.

The photo shows the lovely haul of goodies. The photo was taken in my new light box studio which I'm hoping will help me take better photos of my yarn and projects. It's so dark at this time of year that a light box is needed to get photos of projects. The book is lovely and I really liked the lovely photography of all the projects. Let's see if it inspires some zen sock knitting. I hope so since my last attempt at sock knitting inspired some rage that a calm zen master wouldn't at all approve of. The book had a nice surprise of some beautiful origami paper lurking in the origami sock pattern page.

There was also a ball of Japanese Noro sock yarn featuring my favourite colour purple. I think this is probably too lovely to be made into socks and will likely see a future life as a scarf or little shawl, maybe the famous Ishbel. The sushi sock roll is so much fun! Apparently you're supposed to rip out the rectangle of knitted material as you knit the sock. That might keep me interested long enough that I finish the socks. As if that wasn't enough the prize also had a lovely silk needle roll, a load of colourful stitch markers and a row counter. I don't actually have a row counter so this handy gadget might save me some heartache when I lose the bit of paper I had been writing down what row I was on. Which happens a lot round here.

So I'm well pleased with my prize win. Thanks a million Under Me Oxter! Oh and if anyone is wondering under me oxter is a blog so named for how the blog owner knits, with the knitting needles tucked under her armpit.

Crafty Plans for 2010

2010-01-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

I had a great witty title for this post but Impy Malting beat me to it with her new beers resolutions. I'm hoping to do a bit more brewing this year. I was looking at my blog and home brew bottle stocks and I realised I hadn't made anything since my heather ale back in September. My excuse is I went back to college all of a sudden, a green technology course came up and I jumped at the opportunity. The next while was taken up with lectures and projects. Then for the first time in years I had exams which went well but I didn't get to do much of anything in December but study. I had been hoping to make a repeat of the spicy Westley's winter warmer. Now that the excuses are done with here are some brewing plans for the next while.

It's been really cold in Dublin and there's been lots of snow. I've been holed up in the AranBrew layer knitting, scheming, making plans and writing blog posts. I did a stock take of my home brew ingredients and discovered I have no specialty grains and only some Perle and Pioneer hops left. From the comfort of my warm armchair I ordered lots of stuff from the Home Brew Company. Since it's so cold I decided that I should make an alt beer, kolsh or some other style of beer that will be helped by maturing in the chilly temperatures. I got caramunch, carapils, special b and munich malt. I also stocked up on Saaz and Halltertau hops so a lager type beer is definitely in my future. Unfortunately they were out of lager yeast but I reckon an ale yeast safale US05 fermented cold will do the job. If the order manages to make it through the snow I'll brew this weekend.

I ordered a 33 litre fermentation bucket and am going to have a go at making my own boiler using this tutorial thread on Irish craft brewer. Basically you put two kettle elements and a tap onto the bucket to make a cheap boiler. My large pot on the gas hob in the kitchen is fine for extract brewing but when mashing I have to use the pot to collect the wort. That means I have to heat the mashing water in a load of other pots. I'm also unable to lift the heavy pot of hot wort up onto the hob. I'm hoping a boiler will make things easier and quicker.

I'm also hoping to brew more seasonally this year. A dark Belgian trappist ale for the dark month of February. A bock for March and April. An IPA's and a saisson for the summer. A German Helles for October. A porter for november. A winter warmer in December. We'll see how that turns out.

Now for the knitting aims for the year list. This came from a post Aileen made in the Irish Knitters Group on Ravelry. It's a 10 for 2010 list and here's mine.

Knit a hat and mittens for Dave
Knit a clapotis/coin lace shawl
Crochet for the crochet coral reef
Card and spin aran weight alpaca, dye it and knit a colannade shawl
Do more yarn and fiber dyeing
Make a hackle so I can blend fiber with it
Start making more art yarn
Knit a pair of fancy colour work mittens
Get the hang of knitting lace with charts
Conquer my fear of sock knitting

Montego Bay Soon Come

2010-01-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

I finished my Montego Bay Scarf just before christmas and brought it to Jamaica with me. I wore it on the plane and it was lovely, warm and soft. I even managed to get some nice photos of it relaxing by the beach in the sun.
Travel is an amazing thing, we left Dublin on a chilly snowy morning and arrived in Kingston to hot sun. I presume most of you aren't amazed but this was only my second trip across the Atlantic so the complete season change on landing is still amazing to me.

We saw blue skies, crocodiles on the Black River, flowers, listened to christmas reggae music and snorkeled to see a coral reef which was beautiful. I'm sure it will inspire me to make some crochet coral for the Irish Crochet Coral Reef. More photos here.

I visited the Appleton Rum distillery which was a fun trip. I've never been to a distillery before so it was interesting to see how rum is made. Unlike many producers Appleton actually let you in to see the distilling room and the barrel aging room. Rum is made from sugar cane and nowadays it's a very efficient process with almost all of the juice being extracted from the cane and the waste fibre used to power the plant. The juice from the sugar cane is boiled to reduce it to molasses. It's then fermented and after that distilled to produce a pure clear spirit. Appleton uses mostly pot stills combined with continuous column stills. Even though it is mostly pure some flavour compounds remain from the fermentation and the still to give the spirit it's taste. This spirit is white rum and at 60% it's rocket fuel, drink carefully!

In Jamaica it's traditional to drink white rum with sorrel, sugar and ginger as a christmas drink. We had this on christmas day and it really fits the season with it's lovely red colour, it's sweet and spicy and pretty refreshing on a hot christmas day.

The real magic of rum happens when it's aged in oak barrels. The spirit extracts different flavours from the wood. It is aged for varying lengths of time. In the Caribbean rum ages quickly in the warm climate. A portion of the rum is lost to evaporation and this is called the Angel's share. Again due to the climate a lot of rum can be lost to evaporation especially when the rum is aged for many years. They say a rum aged for one year here is equivalent to a rum aged for 3 elsewhere. The barrel room feels cold due to all the alcohol in the air evaporating on your skin and cooling it. Our guide told us staff are only allowed in the room for a certain length of time as they would eventually get drunk from the fumes. I tasted the Appleton 12 year old rum and it was somewhat like a whiskey, rich and dark.

I also tasted El Doardo 15 year old rum from Guyana which my sister in law assured me was the best rum in the world. It's pretty powerful stuff but I don't really know how to describe it. I think it may have been a bit lost on me I'm afraid. I'm much more of a beer girl than a spirits lady.

Speaking of beer I discovered Red Stripe had just launched a new beer called Bold. When big beer brands release something new it tends be a thin light imitation of their original so I was expecting another new beer along the lines of Red Stripe light. Red Stripe light is great in the hot climate as it's 3.5% so you can drink it and not get too tipsy. Red Stripe Bold is surprising in that it's a stronger, darker, sweeter, hoppier version of the original Red Stripe. It's quite nice, a little too sweet for me though. It's pretty strong so care is needed in the heat when it's tempting to drink lots of them to keep cool.

We had a great christmas in Jamaica, that injection of sun will help with the long cold dark days of january. It been really cold here with snow and ice that just isn't melting. Maybe it's time I took out the brewing gear and made a lager, kolsch or alt beer. I'll also have news of my exciting win over at undermeoxter. With all the snow I'm inside knitting a lot so there will be many new finished projects coming up. This post is a mixed bag of all my interests, let me know if you guys like it.

Fastest Stout In The World

2009-12-31T11:29:00.000-08:00

A while ago I named my first all grain beer Lightening Bolt in honour of Usain Bolt as I watched him break the 200m world record while making it. Soon after I made a stout which would be much more to Usain's taste as I'm told he's a fan of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. Stephen, my brother in law is with Digicel in Jamaica and his wife is the Digicel sponsorship manager and looks after Usain Bolt's sponsorship. A plan was hatched to try get a bottle of my stout to Usain Bolt. I relabeled it Lightening Bolt Stout and sent it back with Stephen. The plan worked and he did indeed get the stout and while I was in Jamaica I got the photo. Here's the man himself, Usain Bolt, being presented with the stout by my lovely niece Asia.

Isn't that just the coolest photo ever? Well I think it is anyway. I got a signed photo of him too so that will take pride of place. Big up to Stephen, Shelly and Asia for arranging that!
It's a great note to finish the year on. Yet again having this blog has led to something really cool happening.

Since it's the end of the year I want to say thanks to everyone who checks in here and reads about the goings on at Aranbrew. I really love it when people read what I write and I love all your comments. I hope you all have a great 2010. Next year the blog will probably move to a new host and the redesign should be coming soon. I'm also hoping to brew a bit more. There's also all sorts of crafty adventures planned involving knitting, spinning and dyeing.

Happy new year everyone!

The Owls of Mid-Winter

2009-12-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

It's definitely winter. There's a chill in the air and lights everywhere. I like this time of year, wrapping up warm, preferably in hand knitted things and looking forward to the days getting longer while sitting by the fire in my parents house. This year is a little different though. I'm going to visit my brother in law and his family in Jamaica. My brother in law generously gave us flights over as a christmas present so we're jetting off to Kingston on friday.

Before that though I have to show you my finished Owls jumper. It took about five weeks to knit which is pretty fast for me. I was studying for exams and doing projects at the same time so I wasn't even working that hard on it. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. The yarn is lovely, warm yet light and the shaping really makes it fit well. I haven't made many knitted garments and this one has really encouraged me to not be afraid of a larger project. I expect it will get lots of wear in January. (The yarn is Louisa Harding Hulda, it's being discontinued unfortunately.)

I also finished the Montego Bay scarf. No photos of that yet, I'm bringing it to Jamaica to get a glamour shot of it in the sun. I think we're going to the beach for a few days and hopefully a photo opportunity will present itself.

I want wish all of you who read this blog a happy whatever mid winter festival you happen to celebrate. For most of you happy christmas. I hope it involves family and friends, feasting and drinking of good beer.

Cheery Cherry Cupcakes and Fat Bottoms

2009-12-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

I recently got Susannah Blake's Cupcakes book and have been making many scrumptious recipes from it. I especially liked these lemon meringue cupcakes which have lemon curd in the middle and are topped with meringue. Needless to say they didn't last very long. I've been reading a lot of Donal Skehan's lovely blog recently with all it's great tasty recipes. He has a recipe for Christmas Cupcakes which I must try before the festive season.

Speaking of which last year the Fat Bottomed Santa made his majestic journey around our house at christmas time. This year with all the cutbacks in the house and the recession I have to say I was worried if he'd show up at all. I needn't have worried because the Fat Bottomed Santa is much more resourceful than that. He showed up for the first time today with some cherry almond cupcakes he'd made. They're very tasty and he even left me a recipe.

Cherry Almond Cupcakes

115g Margarine or Butter

115g Golden Caster Sugar

95g Self Raising Flour

20g Ground Almonds

1tsp Vanilla Essence

1-2 tbsp Milk

2 Eggs

Glace Cherries

Icing Sugar

Lemon Juice

Cream the butter and sugar together until it's light fully mixed. Then mix in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla essence. Sieve the flour and almonds onto the mix and add the cherries. Fold together the mixture adding the milk if needed.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for about 15-20 minutes until the cupcakes have a golden top and are firm to the touch. Times may vary depending on your oven.

Leave the cupcakes to cool.

I mix icing in a kind of random manner. I usually use about 300g of icing sugar and add a tbsp of lemon juice and a tbsp of warm water. I mix it adding more icing sugar if it is too thin and more water if it's too thick. This icing shouldn't be too thick. Spoon it over the cupcakes, it helps if the cases are those big muffin ones so the icing doesn't spill out. Then top each one with a cherry and enjoy.

Irish Craft Beer in the Wild

2009-11-27T16:05:00.000-08:00

I don't usually write beer reviews on here as well I'm just not much use at them. I always run out of adjectives. I'm hoping that might change after christmas as Randy Mosher's new book Tasting Beer arrived for me yesterday. It has been hidden away until the big day though. Radical Brewing is my favourite beer and brewing book. I was allowed a flick through and it seems to be much more than just a tasting book with lots of asides and interesting beer facts.

I shall have to soldier on without Mosher's help on this one. Everyone knows Aldi the German supermarket for cheap treats. I like their Specially Selected range for good value chutney and sauces and now their Specially Selected range includes Irish craft beer. Tipped off by the ever vigilant folks at Irish craft brewer I heard they had something described as an Irish traditional ale for sale for €5.99 for a pack of four 330ml bottles. It's brewed by Carlow Brewing Company so hopefully this turns into some good exposure for them. The Red one was dispatched to get some. Now that I've danced around the issue with some preamble I suppose I better attempt some tasting notes.

It's a garnet brown colour with tints of red and a nice foamy head that dies down. It's got a sweet malty nose on it. It's a balanced beer with lots of caramely malty flavours, I tend to like beers where you can taste the malt so this gets an instant thumbs up. It has a great dry roasty finish with some nice spices to knock out the full flavour. It's a really nice beer, it's complex but not too much. Some beers go crazy on the complexity and then you can only have one of them. This is like some sort of spicy less intimidating version of Clotworthy Dobbin. You could kick back with this and enjoy a few of them.

Carlow are making some very tasty beers recently which are given much better reviews than I can by The Beer Nut. The stand out being Goods Store IPA. This new traditional ale is a very solid, good value, pleasant beer to drink for an evening.

Crafty donations and a mysterious crocheted tache

2009-11-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

It's been busy around here recently. I've been doing a lot of study for college and I'm still crafting away but the blog has been neglected. Progress is going well on my owls jumper. I've finished the main body and one sleeve and I've got about halfway through the other sleeve. I finally figured out how to do a make one properly with this project. I'm finding the sleeves hard going but I'm sure I'll start knitting much faster when those owls start to appear on the yoke. It's a very clever pattern as just when you're beginning to get sick of it along comes the yoke with a nice cable pattern with owls. I love how it looks so far. I''m also almost finished my Montego Bay scarf, I need to have it finished so I can wear it in Jamaica for christmas.

I've also been collecting free crafty stuff in the last few weeks. Has anyone noticed that when you do a craft people who used to do said craft decide to unload stuff they don't use on you? I've had yarn donated to me before and it usually doesn't work out. I tend to end up with a load of yarn I don't know what to do with and it sits there making me feel guilty about not using it. However this past two weeks I've had some donations of a crafty nature that were really wanted and useful.

A friend of mine mentioned to a friend of hers (in a complicated chain that always brings random stuff) that I was into spinning and she said she had a load of fleece and spinning equipment that she didn't want anymore. So I called to my friends and found a bag with some old fleece that I had to throw out as it looked past its best. There can be problems with old fleece if it hasn't been stored well as it can contain moths. Moths plus fiber equals bad. They lay eggs in the fiber destroying it. Ick! So I wasn't taking that chance. But the rest of the stuff was great. I bagged a lazy kate with two bobbins, a set of hand carders and a niddy noddy. What on earth is a niddy noddy I hear you ask.

A niddy noddy apart from sounding cool is a nifty device for making a skein of yarn. You wrap the yarn around the niddy noddy and because the ends are perpendicular to each other it makes it easy to wrap the yarn and to take it off. Much easier than using the back of a chair. The yarn I have wrapped is a silk merino blend that I left as a singles yarn. I'm really happy with it, its consistent and not over twisted even though it isn't plied.

The lazy kate and bobbins baffled me a bit at first. I have a lazy kate for my wheel and the bobbins from this one wouldn't fit my wheel, so what to do with them? Then it dawned on me, I could use it for my spindle spun yarn. I've been spinning this falkland top on my spindle for months now. I'm getting a bit bored of it at this stage and I wanted to spin something else on it. So I unwound it all onto the bobbin. I used a shoe box to make a support for the spindle to make it easy to wind the yarn off. I'm chuffed with it as it's incredibly thin and even. I might be good enough at this spindling lark to go treat myself to a shiny new spindle.

It gets a bit boring spinning top that is all one colour so I decided to dye the rest of the falkland top. Now this would have been a problem if it wasn't for the other crafty donation of the past two weeks. The rather wonderful Wyvernfriend mentioned she was getting rid of some pots that were no longer suitable for her new cooker. So I asked could I take them to use for dyeing. I called over and picked up the pots and a had a great chat with a fellow knitter. Much more fun than buying pots.

Today I had finished my projects and a literature review so some fun dyeing was in order before I start studying for my exams. Even Westley tried to get in on the act. Maybe he harbours ambitions to dye himself. I'm now imagining a blue, green and purple Westley. I dyed the top a blue colour from a pot of landscape dye I got by mistake in an order from Wingham and I also threw in a bit of green food colouring. It seemed to work. Santa is bringing me some proper dyes for christmas so I'll do a post with a tutorial about dyeing when I get them.
When dyeing with acid dyes you have to use separate dye pots that aren't used for food. That's why I needed the donated pots.

And finally I leave you with news that Sherlock Holmes is alive and sleuthing away in London...

One of my random conversations with Ais resulted in me promising to crochet a tache for her. I think she may have been feeling left out with all this talk of movember. Or perhaps she just gets cold cycling round London. How and ever I made the tache and extracted a promise that she would send me a photo of her wearing it. It winged its way through a postal strike and I was sent this great photo. All she really needs is a pipe to complete the look.
Anyway I think that's quite enough rambling on for one evening. This is getting to be a bit teal deer.

Knitting and Stitching Show, RDS, Dublin, October 2009

2009-11-07T03:01:00.000-08:00

Last year I had a lovely day out at the knitting and stitching show organized by Twisted Thread so I was looking forward to this years one. I was planning to go on Thursday and meet up with some ravelry friends but alas I was struck down with a cold. I recovered enough to go to the show on Sunday. It seemed to be a good idea as the crowds weren't so bad and I got to meet a friend there too. There was a corner of the show with bargain bags of wool so she dove in and got a bargain on some lovely Rowan. I'm glad I didn't pass that stall later in the day as I'm sure there were fights breaking out as ole wans fought it out over the last few bargain bags of Sirdar Crofter.

There was much to see in the show and there were less irrelevant stalls this year. Although I'm not sure what was going on with the man who was demonstrating mops. Were they thinking it's a craft show so there will be lots of women there and they like cleaning? He wasn't getting much attention as This Is Knit's fabulous stall was across the way with plenty to distract any passing shopper from the joys of mops and cleaning. There were many Irish based shops exhibiting this year with The Yarn Room having a much bigger stand this time. Stephanie who runs this shop is such a lovely lady so I hope she did well. I convinced my friend's friend to buy a bag of merino for felting from her. The Feltmakers Ireland stand convinced her to take up the hobby so I can't be blamed for that. Lola Rose were there with some yummy Colinette yarn, I thought the mohair was especially lovely.

One of the more interesting stands was Woolfish, they had balls of merino top which they had knit into dresses and bags. They look cool but I don't know if they're practical. Top is combed fiber, which is usually spun into yarn or felted. I'm not sure knitted up top would wear very well. When top is spun or felted it gains strength and the fibers stay together and don't fall apart. So anything made from top mightn't be able to take much wear and it might get bobbly. I couldn't help thinking that if you got one of those big balls of merino and spun it into yarn it would be much better value.

This year I was disciplined with my limited budget and restricted myself to supplies for spinning. I have enough yarn to last me quite a long time so I don't need any more. A lot of my shopping was done at the Texere stall. They had lots of fiber and thread, dyed and undyed. The guy on their stand was very nice and helpful too. I got some glitter thread for plying and wrapping yarn, some lovely dyed silk noil fiber and some guanaco fiber. A guanaco is an alpaca relative with lovely soft hair. The bag from Texere was quite cheap so it may not be exceptional quality but hey it's worth it just to try it out.

I had an interesting conversation with another shopper at the stand who was also buying guanaco. She looked at me askance when I said I intended to spin it on a spindle. She seemed quite shocked that someone with a spinning wheel would even think of using a spindle. She also stated that as the guanaco was a short staple length fiber it would have to be blended before it was spun. I attempted to explain that I'd seen a good article about how you needed to spin really fast to draft short stuff like guanaco. Spindles are great for spinning fast and for spinning fine, even though I'm not a great spinner yet I can spin much finer on my spindle than I can on my wheel. Tahkli style spindles are always recommend for spinning cotton, cashmere and guanaco type fibers. People don't generally believe you when you say this and the lady I was talking to didn't seem to either. It's a pity really, I think lots of people have it in their head that wheels are the only way to spin and that spindles are inferior and fiddly and difficult.

That isn't true. Spindles are cool and people have been using them since we became people pretty much. Abby Franquemont has a wonderful article here about the history of spinning and why people shouldn't lose the ability to spin. When you have a small amount of a luxury fiber I think it makes more sense to spin it on a spindle. I think you'll get more value out of it as you'll learn more about spinning it and challenge yourself. Spinning these days isn't about speed and making yarn quickly because if you don't you won't have clothes. It's a hobby and done for pleasure. Wheels are great but they're not the be all and end all, there's a whole world of spindle spinning out there to master.

I suppose I better stop rambling on and get back to pretty pictures. This is a lovely dyed silk brick from Oliver Twists whose website I can't find. It was a complete bargain as it was half price. I'll spin this into something special. It could also be felted, I think it would make a fantastic shawl if you knew what you were doing. I also got some sparkly angelina fiber which I hope will liven up my yarns. I have some great plans for some blended yarns. They will have to wait until my exams are finished though. Real life is getting in the way of doing fun stuff with fiber.

Irish Crochet Coral Reef

2009-10-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

There are rare occasions in ones life when you hear an idea that gets you inspired and excited and gets your brain firing on all it's cylinders. For me Saturday was such a day. Margaret Wertheim of The Institute for Figuring gave a talk at the Science Gallery in Dublin about her work and the possibility of setting up an Irish Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef.

I've talked about the crochet coral reef before so when I heard that Margaret Wertheim was coming here to talk I immediately applied for a ticket, the workshop was full in the end so lots of others obviously find the idea as fascinating as I do. A number of fellow Ravelry members like Irene, Orla, Fish and Mairead came along and it was great to meet them. Orla is a woman obsessed with hyperbolic coral, I think the organizers were stunned when she produced a large bag of fabulous crochet coral.

Margaret spoke about hyperbolic geometry and how crochet was used to make a mathematically correct model of a hyperbolic plane which had never been done before. Many people switch off when maths is mentioned but that wasn't the case with this talk. Margaret is a great communicator, she explained the maths by asking us questions and showing us real crocheted examples of what she was talking about.

She then explained how coral has a hyperbolic structure and that she and her twin sister decided to craft a coral reef based on hyperbolic crochet. Like a real coral reef which is made up of millions of individual corals the crochet coral reef is made up of bits donated by lots of people. Like a real reef the crocheters adapted and evolved the basic pattern to give a huge variety of forms. Margaret also talked about how global warming and pollution are affecting coral reefs. Reefs all over the world are dying, sadly they turn from beautiful vibrant reefs into sad bleached places. In response to this a toxic reef has been created made from recycled materials and plastics to raise awareness of how waste can have a devastating effect on these fragile natural ecosystems. You can watch Margaret talk in this TED video.

After the talk we did some crochet. Those of us who can crochet started making hyberbolic planes and pseudospheres. Those who couldn't crochet started learning. The hope is that we will organize workshops and get others involved so that we can all build an Irish reef. A Ravelry Group (Login Required) has been set up to help with this, so come along and join. The reef will be exhibited at the Science Gallery. I've already made two small bits of coral. I think I might spin some plastic yarn and make some toxic coral with it. It was such an inspiring day. After it I got out my books on the emergence of biological forms to see what other kinds of things I could possibly crochet. I saw a cool article about nudibranchs in the National Geographic, I think they could be crocheted in some wild colours. I think crochet coral will be coming up again on the blog, watch this space.

My talented friend Eddie from Beanstalk has promised to help out with my blog. He's going to redesign things so I'm really looking forward to having a shiny new look.

Knitting fever and a parliament of owls

2009-10-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my last post that thoughts of winter always make a knitter happy as it's time for them to take out their needles once again and wrap up in cozy hand knitted clothes.

I seem to be taking the coming cold days very seriously this year and I've knit lots of things in the past few weeks. I knit a calorimetry headscarf to go with my merino wool mittens. It's a lovely pattern and just perfect for small amounts of handspun wool. It gives you just enough warmth without being too big and bulky, just the thing to wear while walking the dog in the current weather. I know my Mum would love one so I might have to get spinning to make another.

I have another finished object to show off, yes show off as I'm really pleased with this and how it turned out. It's a cabled beret, the Rangoli hat. I knit it using handspun blue faced leicester, I had just about enough yarn to finish it, there was very little left over. I love the flower pattern on the top. It's a well written pattern with a great chart. I haven't used many knitting charts and I think this one is a good one to get started with them. I was worried when I first started this hat that it was a bit white aran Clancy brothers looking. The pattern saves it from that fate and makes it into a more modern take on a white aran hat. I think it looks quite chic when on especially as it's a bit slouchy. I can imagine me wearing this with my long black coat and boots in the winter.

As if all these new finished objects weren't enough I've started yet another new knitting project. It all started with this thread on ravelry (log in needed) where someone said they wanted to knit the owls jumper. A few other people said they wanted to knit it too and the idea of a knit-a-long formed. A knit-a-long is where lots of knitters knit the same pattern so they can help and encourage each other to get it finished. I've wanted to knit an owls ever since I saw Aileen's owls and everyone is fond of owls aren't they?

So it was that I found myself in This Is Knit buying balls of Louisa Harding's Hulda yarn for an owls jumper. I'm allegedly not spending money on yarn at the moment, if I want yarn I use my stash or spin it myself, thems the rules. The get out clause was provided by tea and cakes who had the great logic that if I really wanted the jumper and cast on for it straight away then it was ok to buy yarn for it. I figured it would cost about as much as buying a nice jumper in a shop so that was ok then. By the way the Hulda yarn is really nice, it's a wool, acrylic and linen mix and is really soft when knitted up. I'm using the black colourway as the flecks of white linen in it remind me of feathers.

For help with starting the pattern I went to Friday Fibre Fun at The Tea Garden organized by Playing with Fibre and Thread Bear. The Tea Garden is one of the cooler places I've been to in Dublin, they have lots of lovely nooks and crannies to sit in and it's very relaxed. They have wonderful posh teas, yes they're expensive but they leave you sit there and enjoy them for the whole evening. I had a fabulous darjeeling served in a lovely cute tea pot. It was a lovely evening hanging out and meeting new knitters, some of whom I'd known from twitter and ravelry, it's nice to put a face to the names. I think I will be back to Friday Fibre Fun as it's just that, fun. I get the feeling more help might be needed with my owls jumper too.

White Gypsy Brewery Tour

2009-10-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

At Septemberfest Cuilán Loughnane brewer from the newly opened White Gypsy brewery asked if we'd like to come visit his brewery for an open day. Who could turn down such an offer?

The new White Gypsy brewery is in Templemore, Tipperary. On entering the building I first noticed the two large gleaming copper vessels. Cuilán revealed that they had been cleaned especially for the occasion. The equipment came from the old Kinsale brewery which is no longer operating. These are the kettle and mash tun. There's also a fermenting room and another cold room with a lot of conditioning tanks.

As if a tour of the brewery wasn't enough there was a further treat in store. Cuilán had brewed a stout and it was time to transfer it to secondary. This however was no ordinary stout and no ordinary secondary.

It's an imperial stout which are usually strong, rich, dark, aged beers. Cuilán gave us some of the history of stout and beer in Ireland. There was a great history of local beers before the all conquering Guinness changed everything. Cuilán wants to get back to that tradition, using the old recipes, having local people drinking locally produced beer and the beer being made with locally sourced ingredients that the farmer gets a fair price for. It's a great vision and I wish him every success with it. Listening to him talk you get the feeling that here's a man who knows his stuff and will make it work.

But back to the stout, we had a quick taste of it and it's quite harsh and strong, it's not going to stay like that though. It's going to be aged and this is where some timber based alchemy will happen. We watched as the stout was filled into three oak casks, one french oak, one american oak and one a cask that previously held Bushmills whiskey. That one in particular smelled amazing, just like whiskey even though it has been empty for a year. The stout will age for six months and will make it's debut at the easter festival at the Franciscan Well. I can't wait to taste it to see whats happened to it.

After this we went outside to the marquee that had been set up for the occasion. There was a pig roasting away in the corner, it had been fed on the spent grain from the brewery. A lot of local people had come up to the brewery to check it out and sample the beer. Hopefully they were impressed and make a success of the beer in the local pubs.

I even learned how to pull a proper pint from the cask under the watchful eye of Paudi from the Franciscan Well. It's White Gypsy's IPA which is really tasty. It definitely went really well with the pork roll. What more could you want of day, sitting in the sun with friends, drinking fresh cask IPA and eating proper roast pork? I also sampled the Dunkel and the Blonde, both are nice beers but I think the Dunkel is my favourite of the lot.

It was a great day out and many thanks must go to the Loughnanes for inviting us and showing us such great hospitality.

Knitting for turning leaves

2009-09-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I haven't been knitting much recently until I put up the photos for this post. I've been getting a bit done it seems. I think it's the chill in the air that has given me the incentive to start knitting again. A knitter always starts to turn to wooly things once the autumn comes in.

First up I made a scarf from the supercoil yarn I spun recently. I cast on 12 stitches on comedy 15mm needles, they're huge. I knit in garter stitch until the yarn ran out. I sewed on a few matching buttons and use them to tie up the scarf. I found the large stitches stretched out a bit so the scarf isn't as wide as I thought it would be, that's ok. I have some lilac yarn which matches the yarn in this scarf so I may make matching handwarmers if I have enough yarn.

I am a firm believer that you can't have too many gloves and mittens. I love making gloves as they're really quick, useful and pretty. People sometimes tell me that I can get gloves for a euro in Penneys so why bother knitting but you can't get gloves this funky or unique anywhere. This is my handspun merino and it knit up nicely into these lacy handwarmers. The pattern is filigree (Rav Link) from Knitting New Mittens and Gloves by Robin Melanson. I've made mittens from this book before. This pattern was really easy and well written, it's a great book. I had lots of yarn left over which I wasn't expecting. I might something like calorimetry to go with these as I don't think I have enough yarn for a whole hat but this should keep my ears warm.

Work progresses well on the Montego Bay scarf. I've been knitting it on the bus and it's getting longer and longer almost without me noticing it. I'm mostly half asleep while knitting it in the morning so that may explain it. The pattern is easy to remember and the drape and colour of the yarn is stunning. I see people sneaking peaks at it while I'm knitting.

I haven't been crocheting much recently. I think me and crochet might need a bit of a break from each other after the shill shell shawl debacle (end of post). I look at crochet patterns and feel fear it will all go wrong again. Maybe if I give it time we can reconcile and get on well together again. For the meantime I'll keep knitting as it's solid, reliable and never lets me down. Maybe crochet is that flighty friend you know, the one who lets you down but when it/they come up trumps they're awesome.

SeptemberFest, Farmleigh, Dublin, September 2009

2009-09-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

Last year I had fun at the Septemberfest festival in Farmleigh in the Phoenix Park and I planned to go back this year. This year though there was a difference Irish Craft Brewer were invited to run a stand about homebrewing. It's a great testament to the great community spirit of ICB that from a website we now have people meeting up for tastings every month, the Brew It Yourself day was run in Cork and now homebrewing is a feature of the biggest beer festival in Ireland.

This year all the Irish Craft Brewers were present again. There were lots of nice beers to be had so we tried some out in the morning before it got busier later. I had some White Gypsy Dark Lager which I liked very much, it's a slightly less full on version of their Bock. Still caramely and rich but a bit easier to get through. Also making an appearance again this year were the guys from Tig Bhric in Kerry. This time they brought their Cul Dorcha beer which I liked. A dark chocolate porter, I really like Porter and we don't get enough of it here at all. I also had a taste of Whitewater's Belfast Black, it's a new stout. I heard from someone it was a dark lager but it's a stout. I've had a few black lagers recently like Brewdog's Zeitgeist and think it's a great summer drink. I liked Belfast Black it's a solid uncomplicated stout. My favourite on the day was Carlow Brewing's Goods Store IPA, it's fantastic, really refreshing and hoppy. I think my taste buds like floral grassy hops at the moment and this really hit the spot.

I went back to the ICB stand. The place was filling up and various website members manned the stand to chat to the masses about home brewing. There was lots of interest, from the guy who had a home bar and wanted a cheap way of supplying beer to it, to English guys wanting to make the real ale they miss from home, to people who want to set up their own breweries. People liked looking at the equipment and smelling the hops and grains. Children were especially fascinated by the fermenting yeast starter Sean had set up.

Luckily I had tried the beer earlier as the sunshine drew huge crowds out. It was amazing to see long queues of people waiting to get Irish beer, such a thing is usually unheard of. Irish people queue for beer alright but usually it isn't of this quality. In the afternoon things got really insane and the queues were about 45 minutes long for beer. Many of the brewers even ran out of beer. ICB got a bit cut off by the queues in the corner. Luckily since there were a few of us people could send others out into the queue. In the photo you can see Tim who had just returned triumphant with bottles of Hophead from The Porterhouse. Hence the smiles from Grainne and Sean.

Hophead is the first run off The Porterhouse's shiny new bottling line. It's really hoppy and citrus tasting in the bottle. I like the hot pink label and the attitude on the bottles. It reminds me of Brewdog and Wychwood with their challenge to the drinker. Advertising your tradition and Irishness as a craft brewery here doesn't seem to work. You want to pitch it to those people who want something different. Make it cool then maybe the rest of the people will follow. After a days evangelizing craft beer to the nation a few of us headed off to The Bull and Castle. Many thanks to Aidan and Ronan from Galway Hooker shouted us all a round. They are great guys and they make a smashing beer as well with it.

Sunday dawned sunny and bright. Dave had promised to help out at David Llewellyn's Double L Cider stand as they had been crazily busy on saturday. Most of the brewers had restocked and brought in extra people for the day and the queues weren't as bad. Some of the ICB people changed their hats and became bar staff at various points in the day. In the morning Sean Billings one of the founders of ICB gave a talk on how to get started in brewing. I used his articles to get started and I know lots of people on ICB have too. I didn't get to hear the talk as I was still manning the stand. Grainne and I talked to many people including one very polite Russian journalist who inquired if our husbands had got us into brewing. He was very nice about it but we put him straight.

I did sneak away for a talk on Beer and Cheese. There was a cheese stand in the beer tent selling tasty Irish cheese taster plates. But I wanted more cheese, you can never get enough cheese! Dan Fennelly and Dean McGuinness gave the talk. A plate of cheese was handed out then we were handed the various beers which were paired with four different cheeses. I looked around at the start and there were a few embarrassed looking people who had eaten all their cheese before the guys had even started talking. Didn't they realize what a tasting was about? Or maybe they just wanted the free food.

The pairings were Durrus and Galway Hooker, Glebe Brethan and Rebel Red from Franciscan Well and also with Porterhouse Hophead, St Gall with Hilden Cathedral Quarter, Bellingham Blue with Whitewater's Clotworthy Dobbin and also with Chimay Blue. Dan Fennelly had some great information on cheese and some really nice tasting notes. I loved all the cheeses especially the Bellingham Blue, I would usually go for Cashel Blue but I'll try this one in future now too. Dean McGuinness who I knew from Movies and Booze on Newstalk talked about Irish beer and the great quality and flavour you can get out there. My favourite pairing of the day was the St. Gall with Cathedral quarter, together they were different and better than they were on their own. It was a great fun talk involving two of my favourite things.

The bars were under siege for the day and the food stalls were really busy too. I got a fabulous lamb tagine pie from the Gallic Kitchen. I paired it with a lovely fresh cold glass of Galway Hooker, thanks to Aidan for the pint! A great weekend was had by all. It was great to see so many people sitting outside having some Irish food with fresh Irish craft beer. Events like this are great in changing the image of beer and drinking. It shows it can be about sensible drinking with good food and about taste rather than quantity. I was really impressed that there were lots of women sampling the beer as well. Women are completely ignored by large beer companies and it's nice to see craft brewers don't ignore half the population. We can only hope all the people who came will go out and buy Irish beer and ask for it in their pubs. Then we'll see real changes. I'm sure Septemberfest will be back next year with even more breweries present. Looking forward to it.

Electric Picnic 2009, Crafts and a Beer Surprise

2009-09-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

This year we headed to the Electric Picnic in Stradbally, we had been before in 2006 and 2007. This year had a pretty eclectic line up with a good few new bands.

I decided to dress up as I had in previous years. Some Penneys hacking was in order. I bought a mad dress for three euro. I then sewed a string of battery powered Led lights onto it. These were got in Dunnes last year at christmas. The dress had a pocket on the side and I used that to store the battery pack.

I pinned a pink brooch to the dress and paired the whole lot with pink wellies which were absolutely essential in the mud this year. There was an awful lot of mud, luckily I avoided falling over, I think my caving training helped there.

The hat is one I picked up in Penneys a few years ago. Hats are really easy to do up. I sewed on two strings of beads around the rim. I also sewed a feather to the hat. I think the outfit was great fun, especially when dancing in a dark tent. It was great at night as when you're all lit up people don't tend to walk into you as much.

Over the weekend I made a few visits to Stitchlily or Orla as she is more normally known. In the future will we all wear badges with our avatar names on them? She had a fantasic Sit and Stitch stall with crochet, spinning, sewing and knitting, basically all things fiber and stitch related in the Greencrafts part of the festival. It was a wonderfully chilled out little corner. On saturday morning I sat down and spun and watched the world go by. I also admired all the lovely mushrooms and lilies she had crocheted to decorate the area. More photos here.

On Sunday night in a break before The Flaming Lips we spotted some guys with what looked like a corny keg. It was Oliver and some others from The Porterhouse so we went over to say hello. They kindly offered us some Hophead. The only beers available this year at EP were Heineken, Coors Light and Paulaner which I hadn't been drinking so this was like manna from heaven. Heavenly it was indeed, fresh from the corny the beer was hoppy and citrusy and thirst quenching. Thanks Oliver! We also discovered that Hophead would be available freshly bottled at SeptemberFest in Farmleigh. But more of SeptemberFest in the next post.

I had fun this year at EP but I think this may be my last year there. It had lost a little of it's magic for me, don't get me wrong it was great but it's very expensive. I have to send a big thanks to the man with the tractor who towed my car out of the incredibly muddy car park on Sunday My musical highlights this time were Explosions in the Sky, Brian Wilson, Jape, David Kitt, Efterklang and Chris Cunningham.

Westley's Bog Bounty Heather Ale

2009-09-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

I went hiking in Wicklow recently with Dave and a friend of ours Katie. The dog came too, he was delighted with how dirty he was at the end of the walk. The heather has started flowering coating the whole place in a purple carpet. We collected some heather flower tips, 95g in all. I decided to make my own version of Fraoch. I know Fraoch has bog myrtle in it as well, I really like the taste bog myrtle gives to a beer. We didn't get any other herbs that day so it's just heather flavouring in there.
I used some low AA hops to bitter at the start. The heather was added at the end for aroma. The base malt should make it nicely sweet like the Scottish ales.

Grain:
3.5kg Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt
345g Amber Malt
500g Wheat Malt
230g Crystal Malt

Hops and Heather:
60 minutes: 55g Hallertau 2.1%AA
15 minutes: 1 tsp Irish Moss and a small handful of heather flowers
At end of boil: Rest of heather flowers added to the boil.
95g of heather in total

Mash:
Infusion mash at 66-67 deg C. Batch sparged.
Yeast: Safale S04

Volume: About 22-23 Litres

OG: 1.049

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Brewing usually takes up most of a day so while I brew I usually cook something nice. This time I went for something completely new involving yeast, homemade pizza. I'd never made pizza from my own dough before. It turned out really well. I'll definitely be making it again.

Spinning some art

2009-08-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

When I first got interested in spinning the first book I got was Lexi Boeger's Intertwined. I hadn't even got a spindle yet but the yarns in this book were so cool and unusual that the book was great just as a coffee table book. I checked out the art yarn spinners group (RavLink) on Ravelry and loved everything I saw there. People like Studioloo, Insubordiknit and Velma Like Velvet have made some really inspiring stuff.

Since I'm getting better at normal spinning I thought I might have enough skill to attempt an art yarn without it turning out looking like something the cat got at.

I got a lovely batt from Rockpoolcandy for my birthday but was too scared to spin it in case i made a mess of it. I finally decided to core spin it, this involves drafting the yarn sideways and wrapping it a core yarn. Ask The Bellwether has a great tutorial about how to do this. It turned out well for a first go, the batt was really lovely and I hope I did it justice.

I loved the results of the core spun wool I decided to try out another technique from Intertwined this time supercoils. Having loads of alpaca fleece to play with is handy for trying out things like this. I had this green merino which was too green for me so I carded some of that in with the alpaca. Mixed with white alpaca it turned a pleasing minty green colour. I also used pieces of lilac merino for the coil parts.

Supercoils are fun and look fantastic when the yarn is done but they take ages to do. The yarn also has a normal part to it as well. When I finished the coil part I navajo plied the remaining single. I'll knit it up into a scarf so there will be normal fabric then all the mad supercoiled parts.

Here's some more spinning. This time normal stuff. It's this merino I got from Scottish Fibres, it's lovely and soft but I wasn't so keen on the colour of the roving. Magically when spun up and navajo plied the colours mixed and I now like it. I think this yarn would make a nice pair of mittens or a hat. It's worsted weight and there's about 84 metres of it.

More photos here.

One of my crochet projects and I have broken up. The seasilk shawl and I just weren't getting on. I wasn't sure if we were compatible for the long term partnership needed to finish it. If we could just get through a couple more pattern repeats then my doubts over whether the yarn suited the pattern would go away. My feelings about the drape not showing off the silk well enough weren't real were they? There were too many doubts, I wasn't sure. I started looking at other patterns, ones with more drape, ones written especially for seasilk. So we split. It was for the best. The shawl was frogged before I was too far in, too committed to it to turn back. The yarn is now being turned into Montego Bay Scarf.

Blog News:
The lack of blogging recently was caused by me needing to upgrade my picasa account so I could have more pictures. I'm also hoping to upgrade the template and make it all look a bit prettier in the near future.

Brewing Little and Large

2009-08-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

First brewing large. Last Saturday I went over to my friend Ed's house to help him out with his first all grain brew day. Ed's been brewing for a while. His wedding present to us was a fridge stocked with bottles of tasty beers in loads of different styles. They went down a treat at our after wedding party. A little too well maybe since Ed ended up promising my uncle he'd brew him beer and the uncle promising Ed fields of barley. He recently did a few extract brews but he thought if he was going to buy extra kit he might as well go the whole hog and go all grain. He'll need the kit if the uncle carries out the threat and lands a bag of grain up to him.

We had a lovely day brewing in the sunshine in Ed's back garden. I have kettle envy now, Ed's boiler is a huge 10 gallon one with two powerful elements in it. It heats up very quickly and boils easily. It makes the brew day so much faster, I may have to think about getting one as it takes my gas ring a good while to bring my wort to a boil. We sprinkle sparged the mash which worked really well. At the end we ended up with 23 litres of wort all flavoured with lovely Nelson Sauvin and Cascade hops. Ed's full recipe is here.

Now for the brewing little. One of things I like about brewing is how varied it is. You can have a big 10 gallon set up like Ed's or a stainless steel automatic micro brewery like some of the guys on Irish Craft Brewer or you can do like me and make tiny batches of beer on your cooker with a minimum of fuss. I have some hops and grain I want to use up before they go out of date and I had just enough extract to make a small brew. I checked my stocks after this brew and I have very little specialty grain or hops left so I will need to do an order soon.
I wrote an article about small scale brewing which goes into the other reasons to brew small batches.

For this brew I wanted to use up some golding and fuggles hops that I had for ages. I decided a mild ale might be nice. But I can never leave things alone and so I put in some crystal malt, chocolate malt and oatmeal to steep before the extract. So I think that sort of makes this a porter. At the end of the boil I put in a cup of nice strong espresso. I've had a few coffee stouts and they're always nice but I think the coffee should add something to the porter. I think I like porter better than stout, I'm not keen on the dry roasty flavour of stout and the sweet ones I find too cloying. Anyway here's the recipe.

Recipe:
Westley's Breakfast Porter

Boil volume: 10L
End volume:8-9L

Malt:
680g Light dried malt extract
Steeped grains, steeped at 66 deg C for 30 minutes
60g Crystal malt
20g Chocolate malt
20g Oatmeal

Hops:
60 mins: Fuggles and Goldings
30 mins: Fuggles and Goldings
15 mins: Fuggles and Goldings
End: Fuggles and Goldings
Cup of strong espresso

Hop amounts: My accurate scale's batteries died but there's about 5-7g of each hop in each addition. It looked like a lot of hops but they've been there a while so they might be starting to loose flavour anyway.

Yeast: Danstar Nottingham

OG: 1.045

It should yield about eight 500ml bottles. I'll just bottle it straight from the primary better bottle in a bout three weeks time. Thanks to The Beer Nut for his suggestion that this should be a breakfast beer. I think it will be a nice one to sup when the trees start to change colour and thoughts and nights turn that little bit darker.

Bag Lady

2009-08-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

So just in case you guys think I don't knit anymore here's a finished object. It's the Kemp Handbag (Ravelry Link) in Noro Blossom yarn. I saw this pattern in a magazine, fell in love and bought the actual yarn suggested which I rarely do. For this bag it would look quite plain if it wasn't for the lovely Noro with it's great colours. It was a really easy quick knit.

However it languished in the back of the wardrobe because I couldn't work up the enthusiasm to make a lining for it. Now that I have a sewing machine sewing things up isn't an onerous task anymore. I made a lining from a chocolate brown fabric my Mum had lying around. Just to explain, my Mum works in a fabric and furnishing shop so she has a lot more fabric lying around than most other mothers. In fact she wouldn't have difficulty opening her own fabric shop. I even went fancy and put a big pocket and a mobile phone pocket on the inside. I then hand stitched the lining inside the bag. The handles were ones Dave had bought for me.

It was finished and it was nice but then I decided I should really make a flap to cover the opening. When out and about using a bag it's handy to be able to close it so nobody can sneak into it and rob your wallet. So I knitted a flap and used two handmade buttons that I got in Ginger Knits, Morar, Scotland. I looked ok before the flap but I think the flap and buttons really lifts the look of the bag. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Beer Jelly - The Session #30

2009-08-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

This month the session hosted over at Beer47 is on the subject of beer deserts. I decided to take it literally and make a desert from beer trying out a recipe I'd been wanting to make for a while. It's from Appetite for Ale by Will Beckett and Fiona Beckett. I love this book, it's like a manual on how to match food and beer with recipes as a bonus.

I made the beer jelly recipe from the book. I used Liefmann's Kriek since the off license didn't have any Floris. I'll probably use Floris in a future version of this recipe since it's pretty sweet and comes in lots of different flavours which you can match to the fruit used in the jelly. Since I was using kriek beer I used preserved cherries from the local Polish shop, these are one of the few things you find preserved in jars from Poland that are actually nice. I also put in some fresh raspberries. Leaf gelatine and some sugar completed the ingredients.

I never knew making real jelly was so easy. I always used stuff from packets but now I've used the gelatine I'll be on the look out for new jelly recipes. A few hours in the fridge and it was all set.

We had some friends over for dinner and they tested out the jelly. We topped it with some vanilla ice cream. It was really good. I didn't sweeten up the beer too much so there was a lovely lambic tartness to the jelly which worked really well as jelly is usually too sticky sweet for me. I paired it with some Rodenbach Grand Cru. I love this beer but I do think it's one of those love or hate it affairs. It's fruity and sour and a bit complicated. I think it went well with the jelly for me. If you have a sweet tooth I think something a bit sweeter would go better with it. Or you could just drink the beer that the jelly was made from. In this case Liefmann's kriek was too expensive to buy a few of so I just used it to make the jelly.

I'll definitely make beer jelly again so thanks to the session for giving me the push to try it out.

Great British Beer Festival, Knitting flash mobs and the bearded lady, 4 August 2009

2009-08-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

This year I made the trip to Earl's Court in London to the Great British Beer Festival hosted by CAMRA. It's a huge festival which is held every year with hundreds of beers from all over the UK and an international section with beers from all over the world. Obviously if you love beer this is the place to be at the start of august. A few of us from the Irish Craft Brewer website made the trip over.

We got to Earl's Court just as it opened and we staked out a table for the day. There were a bewildering array of beers on offer in the huge hall and I only got to try a small selection of the ones I wanted to. They sell beer in pints, half and third pints at the festival. Third pints are great if you're trying out lots of beers. I also nabbed a few small plastic glasses which were handy for sharing out tastes to people. So with that and some water at the end of the day I was fairly sober when I got home. Not so good was the lack of water fonts around the venue.

On to some of the beer highlights. Stone's very wonderful IPA has lots of hops, mostly flavour and aroma ones. I really liked this as it was bitter but not too bitter. Some American IPA's have a really harsh, oily very bitter character. I don't like those beers that much, it's not hard to go mad putting loads of hops in but you do have to balance them and make sure it tastes nice at the end and that is difficult. This beer is massively dry hopped and it shows. It's really fresh and grassy and wonderful, sort of like sticking your head in a bag of hops. Fabulous freshness you can't get in a bottle but if someone starts bringing Stone beers into Ireland I will buy them. I also sampled Stone's Levitation pale ale which again had a huge amount of flavour packed into a smaller ABV.

Next up was another cracker of a beer Allagash Interlude, I really liked this one. The man serving me warned me it was a bit lambic tasting and quite sour and was about to ask if that was ok when he saw my Cantillon t-shirt. I swear that t-shirt is like some sort of secret beer code. He smiled and said 'well then you'll love this'. It's brewed with saison yeast and Brettanomyces then part of it is aged in french oak barrels. It's smells like lambic but is sweeter in character. I thought it was sort of like Orval. Not as good as Orval but in that territory which is really no bad thing at all. I think American brewers are getting more interested in the weird and wonderful way they brew in Belgium. They also have the advantage of not being constrained by tradition the way like Belgians are. They can brew different versions of the traditional styles. It's an exciting development and hopefully more interesting beers like this are on their way.

I've heard a lot about Thornbridge brewery and how wonderful their beers are especially Jaipur. I didn't get to try Jaipur but had some Kipling which their website says is a south pacific pale ale. I tasted some of Kev's and we both struggling to see why people rave about it so much. It was a bit thin and the only hops I tasted were on the finish. It probably needs more carbonation than you get in cask type beer. Galway Hooker is a muted shadow of itself on cask, I think lots of hops especially the citrus ones need a bit of sparkle to really bring them out. I know people think everything must be better on cask but that's not the case for all beers.

Other American offerings I liked were the dark chocolate and cigar smoke Alaskan smoked porter and the bright, fresh, citrus of Opa Opa's dry hopped with centennial pale ale. I also had Dogfish Head's Midas Touch but that's for another post.
From Holland De Molen brewery's Tsarina Esra was a viscous complex thing that was unlike any beer I've ever had. I didn't like their Bloed, Zweet & Tranen so much as it had this plasticine taste that you get with some wood aged beers. I also had a taste of Cantillon's bright pink Lou Pepe which was tart with more sweet fruit than their kriek. From the UK I had some Elgood's Mad Dog as I like their other offering Black Dog. It was fairly thin but was improved so much when I drank it with a Cornish pasty, a case of food and beer going really well together.

Of course it wasn't all just about drinking, through beer blogging and Irish Craft Brewer I've met lots of great people. And we really had a great time at the festival though anyone passing our table must have been mystified as to what was going on. I finally meet the lovely Ally aka Impy Malting for real. I decided to make her a beer related knitted present. A flurry of knitting ensued and the beer sweater was the result. You can see him in the picture above, he spent the day keeping a lot of very fancy beer at the correct temperature. Apologies to the poor person I spent ages explaining the thermal properties of wool to. Wool is a good insulator so it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold but I don't think I was putting it that succinctly at the time. Thankfully Ally didn't think I was mad and really liked the beer jumper, he now has a good home adorning a bottle of her home brew.

Ally had brought along some knitting needles for me since Dublin airport has added them to the list of dangerous items you're not allowed bring on a plane. We did a spot of knitting and drinking. Boak from Boak and Bailey, claims not to be able to knit when drinking, she has a point it's far too easy to make mistakes. It was great to meet other beer bloggers like Mark from Pencil and Spoon. He popped in during the day with enthusiastic reports and tips on which beers were good.

We had a good laugh when Sarah won a Good Beard Guide with a fake beard in one of the pub games, being mad as a brush she wore it around for the rest of the day. She did get some free beer and a t-shirt out of it!

Later on in the day we wandered over to say hello to Pete Brown. I don't know what he thought when two ladies with some knitting, a beer bottle in a jumper and another lady with a beard came over for a chat. I got a postcard signed to put in the front of my Hops and Glory, the book itself was too heavy to cart around for the day. He happened to remember my twitter picture of his book posing on a beach so the dedication thanks me for taking the book out and showing it a good time. We also chatted to Pete's very lovely wife, she crochets as well. It really was turning into quite a knitty beery day. People always think I'm odd for liking both but now I know there's quite a few ladies who like both knitting and beer.

I didn't get to taste that many beers but that was a good thing the next day. The craic, the Irish Craft Brewer crowd, meeting other beer bloggers and some fantastic new beers made this into a great day out. I think I'll have to go again.

The rest of my photos of the day are here.

Boyle Arts Festival, July 31st 2009

2009-08-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

On a yet another wet summers morning I set off to Boyle, Roscommon to take part in the Boyle Arts Festival crafts past and present exhibition. Deirdre O'Reilly organized the exhibition and did a really great job getting lots of crafters together in the local hall. I was there to demonstrate spinning but really it was a good excuse for a lovely day out meeting lots of people and other crafts people.

I did a good bit of spinning and I also got lots of my alpaca carded up with some green merino. People were keen to see how you went from fleece to stuff you could spin. Kids seem to be especially fascinated with the whole thing. I had quite a few people tell me that spinning on the drop spindle looked like magic. I taught a few of the kids how to spin on the spindle. Kids are great they're not afraid of messing up like adults, they just get stuck in there and they did a great job of it.

There were two other spinners there. It was great to chat to ladies who know so much about spinning. They both span alpaca. The lady in photo had the softest most snuggly crochet shawl she had made from alpaca. I must make one.

There were many crafts represented, knitting, crochet, bobbin lace making, ceramics, sewing, basket making and lots of others. There was one man who was making traditional baskets and hen coups from straw.

The bobbin lace is amazing, it's so detailed and beautiful when it's finished. The process for making it looks very complicated. The lady doing it said it's not that hard but I don't believe her. A lot of crafts people downplay their talents and say it's nothing, it easy, not true. And definitely not true in this case, lace complicated, intricate detailed stuff and it takes skill to make it. It's not popular today as I don't think us young people have the attention span and patience to make it.

There was also some fantastic Irish Crochet Lace. It's so intricate and the thread is so tiny. I don't know how the ladies who do it see the stitches and most of them don't use magnifying glasses.

I met the lovely Sara from Kittiwake Design who is selling her lovely sewn designs. I got a lovely heart from her. Have a look at her mobiles, I really like the felt mushroom one.

Full set of photographs here.

The above photo shows the most amazing piece of craft work I've ever seen. It's a large bedspread of knitted lace squares all joined together. It's beautiful and detailed. The most amazing thing about it? The lady in the corner of the picture knitted it, she started it when she was 80, she recently completed it just after she turned 100. Isn't that amazing? What a fantastic heirloom piece for her family to have when she passes it down to them.

With craft being trendy again lots of people and publishers of books are keen to point out how hip and cool craft is and how it's 'not your grandmothers' knitting, crochet etc. Which is stupid, it really is. I love talking to the older generation of people and learning from them. It's sometimes hard to talk to older people as different generations assume they won't have things in common. I've found craft is a great way to get talking to older people, it doesn't matter what age you are you can still talk knitting or crochet as it's always the same.

So crafts are a great way of bringing generations together. And here the cool new craft people are telling older people that this new craft generation is not for them, not for grandmothers in an attempt to get young people interested. An opportunity lost, craft used to be all about passing down skills from one generation to the next. Your grandmother would teach you knitting when they minded you while your parents worked. The assumption that what your granny makes is not great is a lie too. Some of it might not be to your young persons taste but people should be allowed make what they like.

The bedspread above is beautiful no matter what generation you're from, to dismiss it as 'grannies knitting' is to dismiss the work, dedication and advanced skill that went into it's making. Younger knitters would shy away from this kind of complicated lace knitting, most younger knitters (and I include myself in all this, very much so) would not take on a project that might take us twenty years to complete. And younger knitters don't even have obstacles like failing sight and arthritic hands to take into account. To finish a project like this in your 100th year is amazing. Not your grandmother's knitting? No not all, most of us will never do something as rocking as this.

Dyeing to tell you

2009-07-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

For the last day of my trip to Scotland I had something special planned. I decided my holiday wouldn't be complete without a crafty day. So I searched the net and found the rather wonderful Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt Yarns. She is an indie dyer working in West Kilbride in Scotland and even better she does a dye workshop day. Her yarn looked amazing so I booked myself in for the day before we left for home.

The dye workshop was fantastic, it was like being a kid who had just been set loose in a room full of paint and told they could do what they liked. Lilith is a great teacher, she let me play around but she was also there to answer all of my stupid questions.

First I dyed some sample skeins and I got to try out different dye techniques, different colours and different fibers. They all change the result you get in the end. I also dyed some roving as I was keen to learn how to do that since I hope to dye some of my alpaca fleece.

After a quick lunch from the tasty bakery next door I decided on the yarn I wanted to dye for my main project. I picked out a lovely soft merino/cashmere/nylon blend and dyed two skeins of sock weight yarn. I'm hoping to make a clapotis shawl from it. I decided to dye it a murky brown colour and then over dye this with a lime green colour. The colour reminded me of brackish scummy water with bright green algae growing in it, in a good way though...

I also dyed about 100g of merino and bamboo blend top. This was a dark purple colour. The bamboo doesn't take up dye as it's a plant fiber (see all the things I know now after the course) so it gives these great white streaks running through the top.

In this picture you can see my dyed yarn on the top right. It's a lovely colour kinda like tree bark with lichen growing on it. Below it are the sample skeins. The bottom left is the roving which I can't wait to spin. Also on the bottom left is a skein of Old Maiden Aunt silk alpaca yarn in the colour way bracken. I couldn't leave without buying some! It was a really fun day, I learned loads and got to take home some lovely new yarn. Thanks a million Lilith.

In the top right hand corner of the photo above are some other crafty purchases from Scotland. I got some handmade soap with bog myrtle in it. I also bought a lovely nuno felt scarf made on the Island of Eigg. I picked up a lovely dress pattern for 50p in a charity shop. I try to buy crafts when I'm away, I can't afford to buy much but it's good to show some support for nice handmade things. Handmade things remind you more of a place especially if you get to meet the artist.

Rest of the photos are here.

Beer Holiday Read - Hops and Glory

2009-07-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

When a beer nerd goes on holiday they need something to read. This year I bought Hops and Glory by Pete Brown on holidays to read and was glad I did. I spent a while reading it in the sun on the beach in Scotland. Bizarrely we had sun enough for sitting on the beach in Scotland.

The book is the story of his search for the original India Pale Ale beer. The history of India Pale Ale is tied up with Britain's imperial past and the East India company and Pete gives a very entertaining account of the history with some great characters appearing. I for one hope the word rake comes back into fashion after this book. This isn't just a story of the history of the beer. Pete in a mad moment decides to take a barrel of his own IPA to India. This is harder than you'd think and he ends up on various types of ships to get to India. The best part of his travels comes when he sails across the Atlantic in a tall ship. I won't give too much away but suffice to say there are some trials along the way.

I'm a fan of travel stories and this is one of the good ones. You get history and travel and a very affable humorous narrator. Recommended.

From washed fleece to spun yarn

2009-07-03T04:04:00.000-07:00

I think this is the funniest picture ever. So cute and look at his funny hair! I'm still busily washing alpaca fleece. I decided to wash the second batch of it in cold water which worked fine to get it clean and it ensured that the fleece didn't felt.

I had kept the locks intact when I washed the fleece so the technique I used to prepare these for spinning is flick carding. In flick carding you grab hold of a lock, hold it by the end and brush out the end of the lock to open it up and make it fluffy. Then you turn it around and brush the end you were holding. This keeps all the fibres parallel and is good for spinning worsted yarns.

I then made rolags using the rest of the fleece using hand cards. A rolag is cigar shaped roll of fibre that has been separated and straightened out by the hand carders. I had tried making rolags before and they didn't turn out too well. I think raw fleece is much easier to make rolags from.

First you charge the carder by putting the fibre on it. The fibre is all over the place at first. Then you brush the fibre by drawing one carder over the other. Keep doing this until it's all looking lined up like in the second picture. Then I transferred from one carder to the other. The Joy of Handspinning website explains this really well and has handy videos too. Then you roll the fibres into a sausage shape. The fibre gets all separated and airy when you do this.

I made a basket of rolags and then spun them on my spinning wheel. Rolags are best for spinning using the long draw technique. There's a good video of it here on youtube. It's cool that a new technology like the net and youtube is used for teaching old techniques like spinning. Anyway long draw looks kinda like magic. I tried it before using the rolags I had made that weren't great. Because the rolags weren't good I couldn't get the hang of long draw at all. The thread kept breaking and I couldn't get enough twist in.

This time with the proper rolags long draw clicked for me. Now the single wasn't the most consistent and it wanted to get very very thin but it did mostly hold together without breaking so I'm getting enough twist in. I need more practice but at least I can do it. It's a very fast technique so it's worth sticking with learning it just for that. With a bit more practice I should be able to do it so that I get the thickness I want in the single. Long draw produces a woolen style yarn which is a lovely light lofty yarn with a bit of fuzz and halo to it. It seems to suit the alpaca really well.

I decided while I was learning new things I might as well try plying this yarn differently than usual. So I navajo plied it. This is a funky technique where you can make a three ply yarn from a single by sort of chaining the yarn while you put the plying twist in. I love plying yarn and this technique makes me like it even more as it's so much fun. Kinda like crochet with a spinning wheel.

Anyway after all that it's time for some shots of the finished yarn. It's just a first test skein so it's got it's wonky bits. It's very soft and fuzzy. It might make nice hand warmers or something. I've been learning loads since I got this fleece. Probably much more than I would if I'd just kept buying prepared roving. I wouldn't have had to learn how to use the hand cards and I would probably have just given up on learning long draw. I'm looking forward to learning more and ending up with lots of lovely alpaca yarn.

Though this post would be a good addition to fiber arts friday run by the lovely Alpaca Farm Girl. Check out her blog for even more cute photos of alpacas.

PS: I'm away on my holidays for the next two weeks so I'll see you all when I get back.

Five Bags Full

2009-06-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I said I was contacting a farmer about getting some alpaca fleece. Well this weekend our new tent arrived so me and Dave decided to go camping on the lake near where the farmer lived. On Sunday afternoon we met the farmer at his beautiful house right on Lough Derravaragh. First of all he brought us into the field to meet the alpaca. They had just been sheared on Friday and were looking pretty silly. They're quite small fellas and very cute. They came over to see us, apparently they're quite inquisitive and they weren't scared. He says he keeps them for interest and to scare the foxes away from the sheep when they're lambing. They chase foxes and predators away. He started with two and there are now five of them.

We ended up buying five fleeces from the five alpaca he had. This included a baby alpaca fleece. It's soft, crimpy, lovely and seems to be really good quality. There are two white ones and the others are lovely orange/brown colours. He showed us a lovely throw and cushion he had made by a spinner from the fleece. They were so soft and warm, it must be lovely to be warmed by a throw made from your own alpaca fleece. In the picture you can see some of the locks.

So today I set to work processing the fleece. I took a small amount to run through the process and see if there were any problems with it. I don't want to ruin a whole load of it or make lots of work for myself so I did a trial run. Some people spin alpaca as is without washing first. I decided not to. Alpaca like to roll in the dust and you don't know what they've been rolling in and I didn't want dust all over the place and getting into the bearing of my wheel.

I emptied one fleece out on a big bag and started sorting through it. I took out any obvious dirty bits and put handfuls of locks into a bucket. I then picked at the locks and took off any short bits and dirt. There wasn't so much dirt which is great. I put them into laundry bags and then soaked the bags in hot soapy water for fifteen minutes. The water got pretty dirty and grey. I then rinsed the bags in clean water.

After this I squeezed the bags in a towel before taking the fleece out and putting it on a towel on a rack to dry. For the next go I'll probably just put the locks directly into the laundry bags. I think I'll get a load more laundry bags and wash a load of fleece in the bath. Hopefully I can get them all clean and dry so that I can store it away until it's time to spin them.

I think you can expect to hear a lot more about alpaca fibre preparation and spinning in the next while. I think all this fleece should keep me busy for some time to come.

World Wide Knit in Public Day and Some Spinning

2009-06-17T01:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday was world wide knit in public day and Dublin joined in at Stephen's Green. Sinead from Knit Inc and Diane from Chicwithstix were both involved with the organizing. Some of the knitting bloggers who made it there were Teaandcakes, bridin, Gerry Berry, She knit up that ball, ktreu and others. If I've missed you and you were there let me know in the comments and I'll link to your blog.

In the morning people met in This Is Knit in Powerscourt for some knitting on a sunny balcony. When I arrived it was all in full swing. My jumper that I knit was admired and I got on with admiring the various knits people were wearing. Hand made knits are so much nicer and more interesting than stuff you get in shops. There were some fabulous shawls on show. This Is Knit had a prize draw for the occasion too.

After a quick pit stop to get a picnic we headed for Stephen's Green. The knitters set up across from the band stand, there was a big brass band playing there so we had the perfect spot. One of the girls had made some great WWKiPD posters. It was such a fun afternoon sitting in the sun, knitting, chatting to fellow knitters, making new friends and listening to the music. We got many confused looks from passers by. Many people stopped to chat and look at what we were making. Loads of people treated us a bit like a zoo exhibit though, looking at us, taking photos but not talking to us. We're knitters, we're friendly and willing to bore you with all the details if you ask!

There were a few spinners there too. It was great to see other people spinning and it got many funny looks too. Chicwithstix is a whizz with a drop spindle. The day had to come to an end eventually and we all drifted off. It was great to meet all the other knitters and know that I'm not alone, there are other knitters about and they're making beautiful things.

I also finished off my second yarn on my spinning wheel. It was made from cloud like blue faced leicester(bfl from now on) combed top from Wingham. I spun it sort of thick and thin. I was looking for a low enough twist wool that would be all fluffy and poofy and preserve the qualities of the fluffy top. I've found that spinning is the ideal thing to do while watching tv, keeps me occupied but it doesn't take all my attention. I did two full bobbins of the bfl and then plied them together. I ended up with 178m of about 11wpi wool.

I wound the yarn off the bobbin using a set square to wrap the wool around. You can use a device called a niddy-noddy for this but I don't have one so the set square worked really well. I tied it up and took it off, washed and dried it. It's funny the finished wool changes when you ply it and finish it off. This turned into the most amazing beautiful soft wool.

I can't believe I made this myself. It's not scratchy and the thick and thin bits add lovely texture. I've never seen something like this in a commerical yarn. Machines don't make mistakes and the yarn produced from them is consistent and perfect. Which is good for certain things but I'm now seeing the charm of non perfect textured yarn. It's got such charm and life to it. Anyway I'll stop now before I sound mad. Here's the wool but really you need to squish it to get the full effect. I'm hoping to knit this into a cosy cabled hot water bottle cover.

Westley's Slip From The Hamiltonian Path

2009-06-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

I brewed up an extract beer last week. It's an American pale ale hopefully along the lines of Sierra Nevada pale ale. It's fermenting away downstairs with the most wonderful hop aroma coming from it.

Here's the recipe.

Boil Volume: 21L
End Volume:18L

Grain:
150g Crystal Malt
100g Amber Malt
20g Chocolate Malt

2.3kg Light DME

Steep grains at 66 deg C for 30 minutes

Hops:
60 minutes
Pioneer 9.2% AA 30g
Centennial 8.2% AA 10g

45 minutes
Centennial 10g

30 minutes
Centennial 8g
Cascade 4.5% AA 10g

15 minutes
Centennial 20g
Cascade 10g

Flame Out
Cascade 20g
Centennial 10g

OG: 1.044

Yeast:
Safale S04

The name and label may need explanation. We were walking along the Royal canal to see Broome Bridge. The great mathematician Hamilton had a flash of inspiration at this bridge and carved the equation for Quaternion multiplication on the bridge. The modern graffiti didn't seem to contain any such flashes of brilliance but it was cool to see the plaque commemorating the event. Just as we reached the bridge the dog decided to jump in the canal. Maybe he figured out some great doggie mathematical problem, we'll never know. I snapped a photo of the smelly soggy doggie and this became the inspiration for the name of the beer.

Meanwhile I bottled my Molly Bloom's Raspberry White Beer last week. As you can see it turned out to be bright pink in colour which is great. It tastes very unusual, quite dry from the fruit and there's lot of flowery chamomile in there which I think may not be a good thing. A bit of carbonation and aging will help this beer a lot though. It will also benefit from being cold. I might open a test bottle tomorrow in celebration of Bloomsday.

Summer Ramblings, a bit of everything

2009-06-06T16:03:00.001-07:00

Things have been busy here at Aran Brew recently.

A few weekends ago we went to Eddie and Riona's wedding which was great, congratulations guys! Read their travel blog, it's great but it does make me very jealous of all the cool places they went to see.

We were driving home after the wedding and stopped to take a look at Lough Derravarragh just outside Crooked Wood. There's a great view from above the lake and we stopped to take a look. There's a field there and as you can see in the photo there's alpaca in the field!

I got to wondering if the farmer ever sells the fleeces and then I noticed a post box. Oh dear. I got out a pen and a paper bag as I had no paper with me and wrote a note with my contact details to the farmer saying I was a spinner and asked if he ever sold the fleeces. I apologized in the note for bothering him if he thought I was mad. Which wasn't unlikely given the state of the paper and the request.

I forgot about it and presumed they had rightly dismissed me as a madwoman but yesterday I got an email from the farmer and he said he's shearing the alpaca next week. He says I can come along and buy some fleece. Real alpaca fleece in Ireland, complete result! Sometimes it pays to write random notes.

I've also been sewing a lot recently. My Mum and I made a skirt using a pattern we made up ourselves. It's really nice but I have no photos of it yet. It was harder to do than I thought but I learned loads. In the photo is the beginnings of the spring ruffle top. This is going well, I did the top of it in an afternoon. I just have to do the bottom and join them together now. Hopefully it will turn out ok. I also bought some more fabric in Ikea when I was in Belfast, it was really cheap and I might turn it into some funky stuff for the house.

I also racked my Raspberry Wheat Beer onto secondary. I sterilized the better bottle then just put the frozen fruit into the end of it and racked the beer on top of it. I used 400g of raspberries and 400g of mixed summer berries. I tasted a bit last night and I think it's ready to bottle now. It's an interesting beer, unlike anything I've ever had before. It's light and not hoppy and pretty fruity, there's also a lot of chamomile going on too, maybe too much. I'd love to dry hop this with cascade as I think it would be lovely but that would disqualify it from the ICB all grain challenge. It's a quandary as I want to enter the challenge but I also want the beer to taste the best it can.

Dave and I went away for the June bank holiday weekend and lo and behold the sun came out. At one point it was 26 degrees which is very hot for Ireland. It was the best weather we've had in two years and luckily we were camping at the seaside for it. We headed up the causeway coastal route on saturday morning having been at a barbecue in a friends house in Belfast on friday night. I can recommend the Torr Head cliff road for anyone who likes driving along tiny roads with huge drops beside them. The view of Scotland from the head is pretty cool too. I didn't realize it was that near.

We brought the dog camping with us and he seemed to love it. We stayed at a campsite between Portrush and Portstewart. I think I'd prefer Portstewart for an evening out or something to eat. Westley was even left off his lead for short bits in the campsite and he didn't run away. We brought him along to see the Giant's Causeway. We'd been told it wasn't great but we really enjoyed the weird hexagonal rocks.

The dog didn't love it when we dragged him into the sea for a swim though. We went to Downhill, it's an amazing long beach with no stones, you can park your car on the beach too which is handy. There are also decent waves to play around in. It's just a pity the dog didn't like the water more. We also discovered a good way to cool the dog down on the hot days, we gave him ice. He loved it.

I also found time to sit outside doing some crochet while sipping a lovely cold Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We bought some beer up north as it's much cheaper up there. English ales are especially good value, in some shops there's a two ales for four pounds deal. Down south it's not unusual to pay 3.50 to 4.00 euro for an English ale.

It was a great weekend. Here's a photo taken near Carrick A Rede rope bridge. The sea was incredibly blue and clear with the sun beating down upon it. I've rarely seen the sea this colour in this country.

As we came home a friend of mine rang inviting me to go camping with her for a few days during the week. So I snuck off for sneaky mid week break. It was great to see her and her young son. He had great fun in the campsite which had a playground and a pets corner. We had a barbecue one of the nights and sat down and relaxed outside in our camping chairs. It was a week that really reminded me of what summer is all about.

Here's hoping for more hazy lazy days...

All sewn up

2009-05-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

I got a new sewing machine! It's from Lidl and cost eighty euro. I've been using my Mum's sewing machine rather too much so she got me one of my own for my birthday. It works great and is pretty simple which is better for me, when a sewing machine gets too complicated it's hard to use.

I've done a good bit of sewing over the years, as a kid my Barbies and Sindys all had couture outfits made from scraps left over from my Mum's sewing. My Mum is my secret weapon when sewing as she knows everything there is to know about sewing. She made her own wedding dress and lots of our clothes when we were kids. She works in a home furnishing shop and brings home loads of fabric with the excuse but it was cheap. I've gotten all my new curtains made by my Mum.

I want to make skirts as I never see skirts I like in the shops and they're not that hard to make. I decided to listen to my Mum who is always right about everything and make some cushions first. These are the mad looking cushions I like them a lot, they'll come camping with us this summer and brighten up the tent. I picked up the lovely colourful throw to go with them in Heatons for ten euro. I can almost sew straight but I'm really terrible at cutting straight. I can see a rotary cutter and a ruler in my future. Cutting wonky is ok on a cushion but not on a skirt.

I've got one or two sewing books recently. First of all is Sew What? Skirts. It's a great starter book about sewing as it goes through lots of techniques at the start. Then it shows you how to draft an a-line and straight skirt pattern. All the skirts are then made using variations on these techniques. The first skirt I make will be one from this book.

The other book is Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. I love this book! It's all laid back easy style, nothing too fussy. The other advantage is that it's all aimed at the beginning/intermediate sewer. Hopefully I'll make some stuff from this.

I went shopping today and got some fabric in Fabric World on Parnell Street. I got some lovely navy and pink stuff to make a skirt and some lovely white flowery fabric to make this spring ruffle top. I also got lots of bits and pieces like thread, tracing paper and elastic thread in The Dublin Woolen Mills just beside the Hapenny Bridge. Expect to see some results on the blog in the future.

Molly Bloom's Raspberry White Beer

2009-05-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

Over at Irish Craft Brewer an all grain brewing challenge was dreamed up by SBillings. As he said

The challenge is to do a 23 litre all grain brew using 3Kg of a single base malt, no speciality malt and only one hop addition.

I signed up for the challenge and got my thinking hat on.

I've been drinking a good few wheat and wit beers recently. I like Hoegaarden a lot but that's probably because it was one of the first different beers I ever tried while living in the dullest town on earth, Eindhoven. I usually find that weiss beers are a bit too sweet and cloying for my taste. I like the spiced Belgian versions much better than the German sweet ones. Although a weiss beer is nice served cold on a hot day. Hot days seem to be in short supply recently though so drinking opportunities are limited. I like the lemon zesty taste from Hoegaarden and it got me to thinking how I could make an altered version of a Belgian wit.

I turned to my always trusty Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher and read a bit about white beers. This seemed to be the base I could build the beer on. As the challenge says you can only use 3kg of base malt and no other I needed some adjunct grain to add to the plain malt to give it some fermentables and taste. An adjunct is an unmalted fermentable grain and things like rice, corn, sorghum, wheat and oats are often used. I haven't tried an adjunct mash before so I decided to try it so I'd learn something from the challenge.

I used 3kg of Maris Otter pale ale malt, 1kg unmalted Flaked Wheat and 500g Flaked Oats. I used about 240g which was 8% of the total malt in the adjunct mash. I brought about 4 litres of water to 60 degrees celsius and then put in the grains. I gave it a stir and checked it was at 50 degrees. I left it for about 15 minutes. The stuff looked like very gluey porridge. I then raised the temperature to 65.5 degrees and left it for another 15 minutes. After this I boiled it for a few minutes. The series of temperature rests is used to break down the starches in the un-malted grains to make them more easily accessible to the enzymes in the main mash. While I was doing this I brought the rest of the mash to 50 degrees. I then dumped the contents of the adjunct mash pot into the main mash tun. It splashed a bit and that stuff burns. I stirred it up, checked the temperature was 67 degrees and left it all to mash away for 45 minutes.

I took off the first runnings and then sparged with about 14 litres of water at 77 degrees. I topped up with about 5 litres of water and the gravity of the wort at this stage was 1.039.

I boiled for an hour and the only hop addition was 40g of 4.8%AA tettnang hops at the 60 minute mark. Since this was a challenge brew it would be pretty boring if I left it at that. I decided to throw a load of spices and herbs into this brew.
Spices:
10g of chamomile flowers
1 star anise
1 tsp crushed cardamon pods
1/2 tsp ground cumin seeds
5-10g crushed coriander seeds
Zest of one lemon

In Radical Brewing Mr. Mosher reckons that chamomile is a secret spice used in Belgian white beers. I also added the other stuff just in case. I hope the cardamon comes out as not too overpowering. I find it has a washing up liquid taste when there's too much of it in a curry. It'll be interesting to see what character comes from them.

I cooled and pitched the beer with Brewferm Blanche wheat beer yeast. It's fermenting away with a lot of foam. I'm keeping the temperature fairly low as I want some yeast character but nothing too bubblegum which you can get with white beer yeasts.

Now the astute amongst you will notice raspberry mentioned in the title. Well they come later, I plan to secondary this beer over about 1.2kg of raspberries. I'm hoping the spices, yeast and raspberries will all combine to make a frothy summer beer with a nice blurry fruity spiciness to it.

This challenge was a great idea. I made a new style of beer and learned to do an adjunct mash. I also got to play with different fruits and spices. I think it's nice to make unusual beer that you can't get in the shops. I loved the raspberry lambic Rose de Gambrinus from Cantillon so this is inspired by that though this will be much sweeter and probably less fruity.

I've named it Molly Bloom. I can't wait to have a lot of fun making the label for it. Sandymount will feature, hopefully on Bloomsday.

Smug Spinning Satisfaction

2009-05-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

With my first ever yarn from my spinning wheel I had to make something and decided on a get the skinny scarf a free pattern from interweave crochet.

It's a really nice easy pattern and the scarf itself is perfect for wearing with the weather at this time of year. No sign of summer sun in Dublin yet. It spirals a bit but I've decided to call that a design feature. I'm so happy I've ended up with something wearable at end of the process of spinning the fibre and then crocheting it into something. Though as I do more crafts I find it's the process I enjoy as much if not more than the end result.

The Session 27: Beer Cocktails

2009-05-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

The Session this month is hosted by Beer At Joes and is called Beyond the Black and Tan (Beer Cocktails). In America a Black and Tan is a mixture of pale ale and porter but we don't get them in Ireland. A word of warning if you're American walking into most Irish bars and asking for a Black and Tan will at best get you a three hour history lesson from a drunk local and at worst you'll be asked to leave. I think the closest we get to beer cocktails in Ireland is when women get Guinness with a dash of blackcurrant cordial in them. Usually though the blackcurrant is just put in there until you get used to the taste and then you just drink normal Guinness.

The other time I saw a beer cocktail was when I was in Havana last year. In the Caribbean they are crazy for cocktails and in Cuba the mojito is king. I love mojitos and due to almost constant food poisoning I gave up eating and just drank mojitos for the few days we were there. We went to Taverna de la Muralla on the Plaza Vieja which is Havana's brew pub. They brew three beers and they also offer beer cocktails. One was a mojito made with their blonde ale. It's a nice if odd drink. It tasted more of mojito than beer if I remember rightly.

Dave has blogged before about the insane combination of Guinness and Red Bull that you get in Jamaica. It tastes horrible but that's not the point. We asked some barmen in our hotel what we should drink at a wedding in Kingston and they said Guinness and Red Bull so you get drunk and can dance all night. You certainly need energy if you're going to be dancing to Jamaican dancehall all night. Dancehall sounds like a bunch of power tools being randomly being turned on and off. It makes no sense until you dance to it. Though being Irish we weren't very good, all the Jamaicans are incredible dancers, even old grannies and they know all the moves to every song.

I can't resist putting up this photo again as it's so funny. It's The Beer Nut and Dave enjoying a picon beer. It's bavaria mixed with sirop de picon. I like Bavaria as it reminds me of sitting outside the Pav bar in Trinity watching the cricket. Me and my pals would come up from our underground laser lab to see some real daylight and drink a six pack of cheap Bavaria. Even better the crazy, french, obsessed by physics postdoc I worked with would go home and not come to the pub. He never talked about anything but our project and talking about resonance energy transfer in nanocrystals while slightly merry was never a forte of mine. We never knew that we could have claimed to be classy by pouring in some picon into our cans.

I really don't know many beer cocktails but maybe in honour of this session I'll try some of the ones posted by fellow session bloggers this weekend.

Brew It Yourself, Franciscan Well, Cork 2009

2009-04-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

On Saturday the 18th of April we loaded up the car with bottles of homebrew and some brewing gear and set off at a very early hour. We stopped to pick up Sean Billings who was wandering the streets with a corny keg full of beer while we tried to find his house. Eventually we were all loaded up and we headed towards Cork.

The Franciscan well Brewery kindly agreed to host the first Irish Craft Brewer Brew It Yourself event. The idea was that basically the ICB forum would come alive for a day and people could come meet up exchange advice, see the equipment and get to taste some quality home brewed beers.
A lot of organization went on from various members such as The Beer Nut, Beer Is The Reason, Ale Man, Sean Billings, Thom, TheSolutionTo, Geoff, N1umbus and many others (don't be upset if I forget you), mostly taking the form of many musings in this meandering thread.
The HomeBrew Company also came along so that people could actually buy equipment on the day. The event was also supported by The Bull and Castle pub.

We arrived early and set a few things up such as the shiny new Irish Craft Brewer banner. Ale Man arrived and set up his very cool mobile bar. This dispensed his pale ale and IPA which were both very tasty. Sean also had his lager on tap which was a lovely and hoppy. Lots of fantastic home brews were on show throughout the day. Taf had a lovely cider, there was a lovely simcoe ale from Shane of the home brew company. I really liked Thom's pilgrim ale, an american style pale ale with loads of cascade hops. My own Black Abbey Dubbel was an explosive hit. I think the gravity hadn't quite dropped enough when I bottled it so it exploded out of the bottles. When it settled down it was pretty nice and there were two gentlemen who followed me around asking for more.

There was more going on than just drinking and chatting about beer though. Peter and Paudie, brewers from the Franciscan Well, decided to make a demonstration home brew version of their Rebel Red beer. Beer Is The Reason also brewed a beer using ingredients donated by The HomeBrew Company. The smell of mashing and hops filled the air and drew many curious people over to see what was going on.

A good crowd of people turned up which was great to see. Many of them were people who had brewed in the past and were hoping to get back into it. I think most people were very impressed with the quality and range of beer you could make at home. I think a lot of people are put off home brew by dodgy kits made years ago. Nowadays kits can give you great results if you buy the right one. I also discovered that wearing a Cantillon t-shirt attracts beer nerds like a magnet. This was ok though as I like talking about things like spontaneous fermentation and for once people weren't getting bored listening to me witter on about beer.

The Beer Nut was twittering live from the event using the wireless internet. A glass was raised to Barry of The Bitten Bullet in his absence as it was his birthday. Barry is a founding member of Irish Craft Brewer who moved to Germany recently.

The sun shone down, there were lots of people talking about and drinking home brew. It was a fantastic day.

Here's Shane from the HomeBrew Company with his shop which was emptying out by the end of the day. A friend of ours who came along bought a starter kit so hopefully we'll be tasting that soon.

After all that we moved on for some food and then with steering advice from the ICB Cork members we headed to The Bierhaus to sample some of their great selection of beers. I had a Galway Hooker Dunkel Weiss which I thought tasted a bit less fruity than the last time I had it.
Then it was on to the Abbott's Ale House which is a cool quirky little pub with a great selection of beers. Talking and drinking went on into the night. I'm not quite sure what's going on in the photo below though I have heard reports that Bavaria and syrup de picon might have been involved.

For those interested here's a link to a full set of photos of the day. You can also read Beer Is The Reason's blog post about the day here.

Brew It Yourself 2009

2009-04-16T03:21:00.001-07:00

Come along and learn how to make home brew. It's sure to be a great day out, lots of the experts from Irish Craft Brewer will be there to dispense advice and their tasty beers.

New Brewery Set Up

2009-04-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

It's an exciting day here at Aran Brew. Last weekend we went up to Ikea in Belfast where we bought the stuff to make new shelves for my brewing gear. It was about 40 pounds all told for the shelves. Needless to say we also stocked up on some lovely english ales and ciders in the supermarket too.

My lovely husband who has a horror of flat pack furniture very kindly suffered the pain and put the shelves together. I gave them a coat of beeswax and today I put them in place and stacked all my brewing gear on them. Here they are.

I think they're great. The brewing gear had been threatening to take over the room since I started making all grain beer. This way everything is all neatly stacked up. Hopefully it'll make brew day easier as I used to spend ages hunting in all the stuff for some vital bit of kit. The add on baskets are handy for keeping chemicals and small bits of kit in. The shelves are adjustable which was a vital feature as brewing stuff is not a standard size. The better bottles even have their own fermentation shelf.

I think some mead brewing may have to be done to celebrate.