Happy 2016 and welcome to my new site! 🙂

Santa Claus brought me a most unusual gift this year…. my own domain name and access to a server. Consequently I have spent much of the Christmas holidays trying to set up the new site and migrate all my blogger posts over. I think my personal tech support,  sat on the couch next to me, is already thinking this wasn’t such a clever gift… I really don’t get html, not even on the most basic level, while he speaks it so fluently he can’t seem to grasp that I don’t, our recent conversations must look like what you would expect if aliens landed on Earth and tried to communicate with us 🙁

Anyway, after much cursing and Googling (I only needed rescuing once, after I changed some html text and made the whole site inoperable), I seem to have all the posts transferred and there are just things like the contact widget and blogroll to set up. Then the fun bit, working out what new features WordPress offers, can start 🙂

If you like following this blog, please change the URL in your blog roll to http://www.teriberry.com or use the sign up for email alerts widget on the left. If you subscribe to “receive posts by email” please leave a comment letting me know how you find it, I’m concerned that the widget I installed is incredibly slow.

I will continue to post to both blogs for the next couple of weeks but will stop posting in blogger in February.

In between my cursing and ranting about how unintuitive website building software is I have been making a couple of bags.  Mostly as an excuse to use some of Zara’s lovely Gotland locks…

The Gotland locks are irresistibly soft and stroke-able, it will be a shame when the bag runs empty but for now there’s still plenty left 🙂

Zara from Sweden is selling some absolutely gorgeous Gotland locks on the forum, if you are quick there may still be some left! Of course I couldn’t resist and now they have arrived I’m so glad I didn’t, they are soooo shiny and soft!

Now I have Gotland locks from 4 different sheep (2 from Zara and 2 from UK sources) so its high time I did something with them. I decided to make a messenger bag using the same Gotland resist technique I used on a cat cave a couple of weeks ago.

I used a couple of layers of Corriedale and laid out some pockets over a resist before adding 2 layers of Gotland tops, my plastic resists and some vibrantly blue merino on the outside.

I only used the locks on the front flap and used a mix from all 4 fleeces as they varied from black/white to grey and almost jet black and are different lengths.

It’s interesting to see the Gotland invade the coarse Corriedale wool too:

Only the pockets remained white where the resists prevented the Gotland from going walkabout.

Where the resists were placed between the Gotland and merino the blue of the merino can still be seen.
The blue colour was brightened by a little bit of shaving.

It was interesting how the Gotland shrank (fulled) more than the merino, causing the merino to pucker slightly:

The locks were a little bit matted after I had finished fulling the bag so I combed them out which made some of them go rather fluffy, I used some leave in hair conditioner to try to tame them. Have you ever tried to hair products on your wool?

This is quite a large bag, about 40 cm wide by 40 cm high, now I have to decide what handles / strap to put on it. I was toying with the idea of an adjustable shoulder strap made from felt ropes but now I am leaning towards back-pack style straps, simply because it is so large it will weigh a tonne when I have filled it with everything bar the kitchen sink. What do you think?