Kotare blankets

The year 2024 started with orders for 9 blankets representing the Kotare or Kingfisher bird.

 

Kingfishers have blue green back feathers that turn to yellow to cream on the underside with a large black bill.  They are found throughout New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific region.  I love that they are cousins of the Australian kookaburra.

 

So nine blankets all the same colours.  It was a struggle.  I am not a production weaver.
 

 

 

 

I took surprisingly few photos of the Kotare blankets.  Love the colours but still couldn't do another run of them. 

Shawls

So this post takes us to this time last year, just one year behind.

 

The Guild I belong to, Kaimai Coast Creative Fibre, planned an exhibition for late March so I set to to weave a piece that was exhibition worthy.  I say planned as the dastardly covid had postponed two previous attempts to hold the exhibition.  The exhibition was hung at Carlton Art Gallery, Art Centre, Katikati.

I had been looking at photos from years past and thought I would revisit Twill.  This is 16 shaft advancing twill, 24 epi, Nm2/16 50%merino 50%camel yarn plus a little bling.

 

Of course, once I have a threading I make the most of it and tie on more warps.  This was a warp which I had wound many years ago and it was time to use it, mainly because I wanted to access the left over yarn on cones.

The colours are unusual for me to choose and I believe they were inspired by something I saw whilst on a trip in India.

Unfortunately, as I wove the first wrap the threads in part of the purple section kept breaking after I had woven a metre.  I decided I had gone too far to stop so persevered and can't recall the many many broken threads there were to get to 2.2 metres.  The group of threads which broke was a rayon-like thread.  At this stage I cut the first wrap off, wound some purple merino warps, tied them onto the troublesome blighters and pulled them through to the back of the loom.  After tying the warp to the front rod I weighted the new threads at the back and hey presto, could weave the second wrap.  And I got to keep the faulty product after spending hours fixing threads.

 

While this weaving was happening I looked over at the yarn shelf and spied this combination of  colours and couldn't resist another warp.

 

At about the same time a friend posted a photo of a bunch of dahlia flowers she had been gifted  and so these wraps was named Dahlia.  One has a black weft, the other red.

Glenorchy blankets

After Pauanesia closed I was blessed to be approached by Mrs Woolly's General Store in Glenorchy to weave blankets for them.

 

The Briefs were put together by Heather of Pauanesia so we were on the same wave length even though I haven't been to Glenorchy, a small village north of Queenstown at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu.  Many spectacular scenes from The Lord of the Rings were filmed nearby.  As an aside, when I cleaned out my mother's stuff I found several newspaper articles related to Glenorchy but have no clue to their significance. 

 

The first blanket range is called simply "Glenorchy".  It reflects the iconic red hut in the village, the towering mountain ranges and Lake Wakatipu. 

 

 

Next up was "Glenorchy Summer".

 

 

 

And then "Glenorchy Winter".

 

 

 

 When I first saw the briefs I was a bit awestruck as the colours were like none I had worked with before but with some shuffling of paint chips I slowly managed to tell the story quite successfully, I think.

 

  

 

And more Deflected Double Weave

Well hello blog, its been a year I think.  

I have finally worked out why I don't blog much.  I can't get the photos from my phone to the blog in any easy way.  Case in point, these photos only showed one side revealling about one third of a scarf and I don't seem to be able to shift them to get them in order.

 Most of my warps are hand painted and steamed to set the colour.  In my mind each one is a work of art.   The Kakapo scarves are nearer the end of this post. 

 

Scarves reflecting the New Zealand native bird, the Tui, woven in Deflected Double Weave using my name as the base of the original design.

 

Scarf, again woven in DDW, reflecting the blooms of the Puriri tree which can vary in colour from pale pale pink to deep wine.

                                             

 

Kakapo scarves in lovely shades of olive greens.

 

 

 

A cowl in Puriri shades.

Apologies for the messy post.  It's rather exciting seeing work I did 12 months ago, inspiring even.