What's been happening in the last two weeks

Oh dear, I'm not very consistent with this blogging.  When exciting things happen and I get busy I miss posting about it.

The first thing is I've been asked to be Guest Exhibitor at Creative Fibre Experience at Claudelands show grounds in September.  A surprise invite but excited to be part of the exhibition.  Have included some pieces from Low Tide and a couple of new scarves, one shibori from the warp I quickly wove off recently.  Hope people enjoy viewing the work. 

Fire

                         When we went to collect my work from Low Tide a couple of weekends ago we made a day trip of it with friends and visited the Waitakaruru Arboretum and Sculpture Park for several hours.  This Park is built in an old quarry, has been landscaped wonderfully and the sculptures added a very interesting dimension to the garden wandering.  In summer there is an onsite cafe.  Some of my favourite sculptures.

Parlez lentement by Niko Thomsen

Ups in downs by Matt McLean

Stairway to Heaven (Poutama) finished and looking rather wonderful, I think.  Unfortunately I have to go back to the drawing board as the mohair weft is making the floats too long so now I have to use two shuttles with floating selvedges and two layers.  I've nearly got my chains sorted and the wool for the weft is in the dye pot so we'll see how it goes.       

I was so enthused after my daughter in law brought two lovely friends to see my looms (they are so keen, its wonderful) and Aimee brought her spinning to show me I got my wheel out, dust and all, and produced this.

It was the remains of some sliver from Little Wool Company which I plied with a fine black alpaca thread.  At some stage I had pinched some of the red from the sliver so the very beginning of the skein has a lot of green.  I have just under 500 metres of ?10 ply thickness - what to do with it?  I have to say I enjoyed spinning thick.  I've always spun as fine as I could so the thread would go through my knitting machine but this was very satisfying to have a product finished quickly.

There seems to be a lot of red on this page and there are two more red blankets on the Nitschke loom so I better go finish them while the dyed wool dries.