Anne's sliver

About this time last year my friend Anne passed away having put up a grand fight against cancer.  

I was gifted some of her stash (thanks Peter) including this sliver of 75% corriedale, 25% silk from Anna Gratton Ltd.

I spun a single and plied it with navy cashmere commercial yarn.

I don't know what this style of spinning is called (except not very good) but I held the commercial yarn straight and let the handspun semi wrap around it; except when Blindspot got exciting or when I fell asleep and then I found myself reverting to regular spinning.  

What, don't you keep spinning while you sleep?

My plan is to knit myself a Pfeilraupe wrap so I'm off to make a tension sample.

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!

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

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

The carder

The cupboard that takes the overflow.  When visitors come I tell them its Pandora's box and they open at their own risk.

I have a project and needed the carder to mix just two handfuls of fibre.  There it is, almost at the bottom, just under the green blanket.  Actually I couldn't see it either but I found its handle!  I valiantly burrowed through the pile (offcuts of handwoven fabric, bags of warp ends, yarn by the score, exciting projects started and left).  I had the carder box out and on the floor.  Wait!  What's in that ... and down it all came.

So I decided it was the opportunity to retrieve a box of fabric from the bottom of the far right of the cupboard so I could make some bunting for wee Zoe's room.  Did I find some treasures!  More about that later, probably after Christmas cause I know otherwise Zoe's mum will tell her what's coming!  But lets just say my daughter, the accountant, still has all the creations I made her.

 So above is the compost heap of fleece, sliver, locks of mohair, silk sliver, bits of yarn etc and below are the three bats I put through the carder with just one pass.

 And below is the sample of chunky spun, dare I say, art yarn.  Its not as thick as I thought it would be so time to go try again.

Creative Fibre versus commercial enterprise

I've been a member of Creative Fibre for nearly 30 years and this Society has a tradition of sharing information, helping and encouraging.  I know when I first joined Whangamata club way back 'whenever' I received heaps of help and encouragement.  Because I live in a reasonably isolated area I tend to not go to club meetings as it takes so much time travelling which is time away from my production so I like to help whenever I can.  But, at what point does Creative Fibre "help" become releasing sensitive commercial information?  Where do you draw the line in the overlap?

I wrote the above sometime ago with reference to another incident but then realised I'd done much the same.  The line does become very blurred.

A while ago the lovely Jessicah showed some gorgeous yarn she had spun and it seemed to be just the spinning method I needed for a project I had in mind.  I wrote to her inquiring but also said I understood if she felt this was commercially sensitive as she teaches spinning.  She kindly gave me the method (rather more organised than what we had learnt at Majacraft camp) and I adapted it to suit my project.

I was combining two variegated slivers of merino, one from Awakeri Woolcraft and one from Tracey White (Inspired Fibres) and a variegated sliver of silk dyed by Jessicah.  Having put all three through the drum carder with the silk sandwiched in the middle I took each batt off and split it vertically down the middle and put each of them back through the carder so I now had two matching batts partly mixed which I kept in order in seperate boxes.  I had parted the dominant sliver at colour breaks as much as possible.  It spun beautifully and pretty much kept to tone on tone with a little overlap when plied; just what I wanted.

Now to find time to knit it!

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.

Exhibition weaving and spinning

I'm still weaving away most days.  Have 4 sofa throws ready to go to Pauanesia next week and am working away at the clear filament projects for my exhibition later in the year.  It   is   so   slow!  I can't see if the threads are crossed, I place them neatly in the shed, close and beat, and sprong, they're all over the place and the selvedges ... just don't look, organic might describe them.  I seem to remember from the last time I used this fibre thinking if the shuttles (stick) drop one more time the whole lot's going out the window.  I was pretty close to it this afternoon!  So what do you do? take a long walk along the beach, that's what.  Relieves the spirit and the muscle tension.

Found this on my camera when looking for another photo.  This is the filament warp before winding on the loom, with many choke ties.

Remember the pile of compost (thrums) in a previous post, about three posts back I think.  Part of it is now yarn mixed with all sorts of things I found in the cupboard, combed silk, sari silk threads, Italian silk throwsters, slivers I deconstructed to pinch the blue.  I plied it with a very fine (Tex 1/18) navy blue cashmere I had to hand to emphasise the handspun variety.  I have about 220 metres so what will that make?