Green scarf

 I guess its appropriate to be showing a green scarf on the week of St Patrick's day.  Monday would have been my Uncle Pat's 94th birthday.

 

I'm looking for ways to use up novelty/art yarns.  This is woven tabby, or plain weave, with 3 threads of TEX 110/2 between each fancy thread - ribbon, velveteen, silk, even some handspun.  The weft is a lovely soft merino, possum, silk in black.

(Now for sale at The Cargo Shed, Tauranga.)

Annis wrap

While travelling in Italy last year, mostly by train, I had some knitting with me.  I had done the lace and beads to replace the nupps in Annis, a free pattern from Ravelry, before leaving home.  The thread is some very fine handspun merino plied with even finer commercial cashmere.  The whole wrap took about 20gms leaving me with, oh, I don't know, maybe enough for 4 more wraps!  It looked so awful and small when I finished I threw it in a corner and forgot about it.  At Majacraft Camp I was admiring a friends wrap and she suggested I should start with Annis.  After sharing the story she encouraged me to block and I'm so pleased she did.  Its like warm nothingness around the neck.
Edit:  I did change the pattern slightly by adding garter stitch areas to the lace edge and working the crescent in garter stitch.

Unblocked

 

Unblocked



Blocking

Finito

Seminar at Coopers Beach

Well I have to say Seminar at Coopers Beach was a really really fun few days.  So wonderful to be with a group of fibre junkies who just want to talk weaving.  It was amazing to attend the opening of Agnes and Stacey's awesome exhibition "Nature in the Making" and I do hope anyone who has the opportunity to see it does.  Lots more photos on their facebook page (but so much better to see it in reality).

Entrance to Nature in the Making, Earth House, Peria

We had an excellent presentation and discussion about our next exhibition and though I'd seen most of the presentation about 6 months ago I'm still excited by the concept and looking forward to some design work.  Stacey gave two talks and Ian Spalding and Yvonne Sloan entertained us one evening with their journey from learning to weave to making a full time living from it.

Food was pretty good but some of my friends will understand the irony of my husband waiting at my pick up stop with a vegetarian CURRY pie.  I smiled and ate up not mentioning that it was my fifth curry meal in three days!!

I came home to two blankets ready for labelling, two ready for tasselling and two ready to go on the loom so guess what I'm working on? 

Weaving, spinning, dyeing

Yet another quick post as I get ready for another weekend away, and, of course, its always a 3 day weekend and 2 more days getting over the fun.  Its not so long ago I'd have come home and got straight to the loom or wheel or sewing machine but not now.  Must be called age!

 Tui

 Above are the two tui blankets with 25 colours in the warp with a multi dyed weft.  The near one shows the darker edge which moves through to teals and turquoise as seen in the second one.  I've used a mohair boucle weft which reflects the light beautifully.  (Very hard to catch a moment without breeze to click the shutter.)

Then I was off to Majacraft Camp for a very fun weekend with lots of woolaholics.  I did two workshops with Pat Old extracting muka from flax, preparing it and then spinning it.  Its not so easy and quite time consuming.  I have to say that while I admire the end product of Pat's work I think I love wool and merino more.

 I did 2 workshops with Esther Rodgers, the first learning about and using Majacraft accessories and, yes I do covet a blending board and maybe combs.  And then we did wild spinning to weave with tails and beehives and all manor of things.  Esther is a wonderful tutor and she's working on a book so keep an eye out for it, it'll be worth having.

 Tired as I was on Monday, ie nearly falling asleep at the loom, I had blanket orders to work on.  Below is a double layer warp with the fold on the right hand side.

 And these multi coloured "toupes" are the weft.  I figured if I stood them up in the dye pot and the liquid came halfway up the ball it would work.  With a bit of squishing with tongs the dye went to the centre though a little paler then flip them over for the second colour and, of course, there is a third where the dyes meet.  Blankets are off the loom and the warps and wefts dyed ready for the next lot.

 The silk in this silk/merino skein came from Beautiful Silks in Melbourne and was spun a month or two ago but I didn't know what to ply it with or should it be Navajo plied.  I needed the bobbin last weekend so plied it with black merino TEX 74/2.  I had thought to use it for weft for a scarf or wrap (depending on metreage) but its so gorgeous maybe it should be a knitted lace wrap. 

That's all this week.  Tomorrow morning at 5am I'll be on the road for Coopers Beach up north for Professional Weavers Seminar and the opening of Agnes and Stacey's exhibition "Nature in the Making" www.facebook.com/natureinthemaking