Pounamu Wrap

It must have been in July a fellow fibre artist kept putting posts on faceboook for folks to enter the Franklin Arts Exhibition and as I had woven this rather special wrap I thought I'd support the exhibition by entering.  The parcel was left with my son to get in the post on the designated dates and Peter and I went off the Australia for a much needed break.  (We flew in to Brisbane and out of Sydney and explored the coast in between.)  We had only been home a day and I got a call to say I'd been award a prize and could I come to the opening so we repacked our suitcases and headed back to Auckland.  I received second prize in the Functional Textile section.  A thrill to be called up on stage and shake the presenters hand.

 The warp is 28/2Nm silk and the two wefts  are a devine merino I brought home from Rome last year.  I'll just say the draft is original, probably part of the twill family.  All yarns hand dyed.

Baubles and Beads

Every three or four years the Professional Weavers Network of New Zealand hold an exhibition.  These take a lot of planning and discussion and sometimes the best laid plans change as with the current exhibition.  The title and theme changed and I just could not get with the plan so decided not to participate.

Scroll back to our annual Seminar earlier this year and our long suffering Convenor put the hard word on us.  Not enough entries to make an exhibition.

 

Suddenly a light bulb lit up so I asked if I could enter even though the date for submissions had closed and she not only agreed, she liked my idea.

And so a couple of months of creation began.

I have to admit that if I wrote down records I have lost them but I'm pretty sure it was 48 thread per inch of Schappe-Seide silk which is beautiful to work with.  Two inches in the reed and floating selvedges for twill.  I wove one 6 inch length and stitched it to the cardboard hexatron and realised it was slightly loose.  Dropped two threads and that was enough.

Each piece of silk was dyed a primary or secondary colour to fit with the group instructions.

 

A friend had some black textured velour yarn I could "borrow" for the neck piece.

 

 

This piece I call a wall necklace and I loved working with the primary colours.  The small 1 inch hexatrons were a bit fiddly but fun when finished.   I found a necklace to repurpose with the perfect blue beads.

Ear rings and brooch complete the ensemble.

As they were displayed at the Percy Thomas Gallery in Stratford.

My regret is that I was working so hard to meet the deadline and didn't have time to remake the necklace in primary colours.  That would have held it all together much better.

A very fun project once I got my head around what to make for Angles.

Shadow weave wrap

 The last wrap on the blue and taupe possum merino silk warp.

I was determined I wanted to try shadow weave on the parallel (or echo) threading on the loom.

Shadow weave has a sett similar to tabby so I had to discard quite a few threads at the side and spread the warp out to 20 threads per inch (if I remember correctly).

 I was disappointed that the pattern wasn't bolder with a more defined line outlining the components of the design.

 A versatile garment which looks wonderful with denim.

Navy teal possum wrap

The wheels of weaving wind slowly.  (And blogging even slower!)

I posted this picture on facebook weeks ago and got great reaction but have been very slow to tell you about it.

Slow partly because I couldn't figure out how to finish the ends.  The warp is alternating threads of navy and taupe and the weft a teal.  The tassels just didn't look right.  Took me ages to figure out I could add a thread or two of teal to the fringe and that pulled the wrap together.  The tassels now look like they belong.  I can tell you it took ages to undo the navy taupe tassels.

The fibre is possum merino silk and look at the twist in the untasseled threads; makes me want to try some shibori as it would hold the texture.

Wrap woven as an echo weave.

Denim blue wrap

The many faces of this possum merino silk wrap.  Woven as turned taquete with a navy and taupe warp sett at 36 epi and a blue silk weft.

It can be worn with the buttoned edge down the shoulder as a poncho style garment

or with the buttons down the front.

Note how the lines increase in size to the centre back then deminish again.

Undo the buttons and it is lovely as a conventional wrap

or as a pull through scarf

or regular scarf.

My favourite style with draping on the shoulder.

Wrap available from Waihi Beach Gallery.

Possum merino wrap and Infinity scarves

Walked to Orokawa Beach this morning, glorious day and I had done my 10,000 steps before lunch.  Hence time to write to you.

I have the loom threaded with an echo warp so thought I'd use up a prewound warp I've had on the shelf for hur hmmm I don't remember.  One thread is possum merino silk and the other a fine cashmere.  The possum is about 2 1/2 times thicker than the cashmere so wondered how it would work out.  

 Worked out pretty good actually.  This wrap has a 60/2 silk weft in black.  All these luxurious fibres are devine together.

 Above is a double wrap infinity scarf and below a single wrap infinity scarf.  These have an elasticated merino weft which again is awesome, closing the warp threads up.

 The top scarf has a point twill weft and the bottom another version.  What is the difference between point twill and gebrochene - can anyone tell me?

We have a wonderful new gallery opened at the beach called Waihi Beach Gallery.  I took these in to Ana and Andrew expecting them to choose one, maybe two.  If you'd like one they are all on display at the Gallery.

We are going away for a few days to Mt Ruapehu to do some walking.  Well Pete will stride it out, I'll struggle along behind, catching up when he stops for a photograph.  Hence the training walk this morning.  Catch up next week, all gong well.

Indigo blue scarves

Sneaking these in before the year ends.

I realised my stock at The Cargo Shed was sadly lacking in variety of colour, particularly blues, so quickly tied a warp onto the 2:1 1:2 block warp and here we are ....

 Woven in blocks

 and stripes (below)

 The warp is merino 110/2 and the weft hand dyed silk.  Below the scarf on top is showing the silk dominant side and the darker one underneath shows the wool dominant side.

 The silk glows beautifully (below).

Devine to wear and non-gender specific.

Its not easy being green!

About 12 months ago I bought the first of these slivers from fibre2go at the Thames spin in.  I think I'm correct in saying the two on the left are both called Gone Bush.  The difference in colour is created by the different fibres in the sliver.  The far left skein is 100% merino, the second to left is 30% baby alpaca with 50% merino and 20% silk.  I decided they would be too dull together so at the next event I went to which was Creative Fibre Festival in Rotorua I went home with the multi-coloured rolag carded by Lyn from merino, alpaca, silk.  Not being a glitter type person I spent some time picking off the shiny bits (warning: it goes everywhere, found some in my bed last night) and thought this would be perfect with a few shots of orange until ...

 I opened up the rolag and found - fire.  

Took me weeks mulling over how to spin it and eventually decided to split the rolag lengthwise into 4 strips but realised that didn't achieve the separation of colour I wanted for highlights.  I broke a length off one strip and folded it in half to spin from the fold but that was still producing mud.  So then I took the length and pulled it outwards from the centre so that green was on green and the bright colours on themselves and spun from the fold a finer single than I had for the previous two skeins as I wanted to Navajo ply.  Would be easier to show than tell what I did.

Still not satisfied I then took home Spring Greens sliver, again alpaca, merino, silk combination, from the Cambridge open day.  I can't tell you what a pleasure it was spinning these fibres and how devinely gorgeous they feel.

Now what do I make from them?  Any suggestions?

I had thought of Color Craving by Stephen West but I've probably got enough yarn for two or three Cravings!

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