Puriri blankets

The Puriri tree is a native of New Zealand, found mostly in the upper half of the North Island, and grows to about 20 metres tall often with a trunk diameter of 1.5 metres.  The largish flowers occur in loose clusters of up to 12 blossoms and appear mostly over winter.

Puriri tree flower (from Wikipedia)

Puriri page in workbook

 On one of the pages of my brief I read the phrase "dilute rich burgundy with blood".  It actually said blond but I read it wrong and got the gist of what I had to dye.

Puriri blanket

If you fancy owning one of these blankets - tough!  They've found a new home already.  But you can always let the girls at Pauanesia know and we'll see what happens.

Recent walks

 We recently discovered the Golden Cross mine walk.  This track follows around the top of the tailings damn of the old mine.  Incidentally the mine was closed some years back due to the tailing damn moving so now it is monitored and measured frequently.  That water supposedly contains all sorts of undesirable metals and elements, among them arsenic, but there must have been several hundred ducks living on the water.  Strange how ducks know where to go to a protected area during shooting season.  I love the colours in the rock.

 We went to Orokawa Bay (again) recently and of course we struck high tide.  At the very start of the walk at the north end of Waihi Beach the waves were breaking on the cliffs so we had to time it and run like mad from one rock to the next.  I didn't get wet but the emphysema nearly did me in.

 That's Tuhua (Mayor Island) in the background.  The waves were huge and mighty.

And what do you do while DH spends a lot of time getting the right shot, bring out the knitting of course.  There have been several calls for peggy squares to be made into blankets for the people of Christchurch still suffering from the earthquakes.  As I have kilos of loom waste I thought why not, I can make a blanket.  Well, it takes longer than you would think to knit garter stitch squares.  All the knots are on the other side.

Injured skein winder

I had 2 skeins out of 8 to wind into cakes when this happened.

What to do?  I remembered my mother used to put two chairs together and unwind from there but

I wanted to use my cake winder and not put extra twist into the yarn by winding a ball first.

 So ...

This reminded of a cat we used to have called Tat.  At that time, maybe 20 years ago, I was knitting a lot of intarsia on the knitting machine and often had 20 or 30 different threads hanging to cakes on the floor.  Without fail, at 5 pm Tat would saunter over and quietly roll in all 20 threads; never failed to get a reaction from me.  It was his way of saying "Dinner time".

The good news is my fix it man, DH, has mended the skein winder with instructions on being more careful with its use and another lecture on the stupid uses chip board is put to and how it should never have been allowed and how it should be solved and ....

Exhibition scarves

This shibori string was painted black on one side and about 6 shades of blue and green on the other.

 Opened out it became this, another interpretation of Tui, which, for those Auckland folks who did my workshop, uses the summer and winter threading.

 And this I call Kakapuka's Cloak, another S&W threading.  I grew up at the foothills of Kakapuka mountain and remember it being covered with yellow flowers of gorse and broom and the violet of heather blossom.

Spinning A Yarn

This is the exhibition the tui wraps are going to be in so if you're passing Hamilton/Cambridge way between 10 June and 10 July do see the exhibition.
(Photo taken from computer screen.)

Tui Wraps

The tui is an iconic native bird of New Zealand and Wikipedia has an excellent page here.  The last month or so I've enjoyed watching the tuis swooping and diving from tree to tree and calling to each other:  "Here I am, aren't I handsome".  The boys are dressed in their breeding plumage and look magnificent when the sun catches them in flight.

Do you remember back here I said I had a plan for the gap in the warp?


And the next post I said there were two mistakes?  Oh yes, I treadled 1,2  1,2 instead of 1,2,3,4.  Well I went where no weaver would dare go and pulled out two rows then with the help of a tapestry needle manipulated the threads and now I defy anyone to find the error.  I can't.

Now do you see what I did with the weft threads?  Yep, combined knitting and felting with weaving.  I have actually felted the knit stitches so they won't pull or catch.

Black weft and white wattle.  Tears were shed over this one.  When I read Susan's post showing her beautiful Navajo shawl and she said she had picked out 43 inches I thought OMG, surely another solution.  I was weaving away and bent down to measure for the 1.5 metre mark and right at the 1 metre marker was 2.5cm, a whole inch, of floats right across the fabric.  Obviously more than one treadling error.  It was the weekend and the factory the merino came from was either sold or in receivership so I had no idea if I could get more yarn.  I new I had enough black merino to finish the wrap but if I cut out 21 inches I wasn't sure so nothing for it but to unweave   all   21   inches.  Every 4 rows I had to wind the yarn back on the pirn.  Just as well I did as I needed all I had.  Worth it don't you think?

Lipstick blankets

The Lipstick blankets started back here, warm and scrumptious.