Thursday, December 26, 2024

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.

Friday, December 13, 2024

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.