Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Easter to dye for

Last view of the fabric I've been weaving since the beginning of January on my Jack loom. It's a herringbone twill in natural sheep colours. It's now off the loom and being tailored by Chantel from the Oamaru Textile Exchange into a vic torian style costume.Pictures to follow when we complete the outfit.I'm very grateful to Chantel for offering to do this, my sewing leaves a lot to be desired.
Hot weather still continueing so dyepot was busy over Easter holiday. The blue stuff below is Suri locks dyeing in an electric frypan.
Did loads of carding too on my electric carder some for the shop and the rest for my talk,demo, sales at the Dunedin Spinners and Weaver's meeting day in April.

What am I making crochetwise at the moment.
A shawl for myself, it's going to get cold this winter in out stone building at Tote, and a crochet rug (blanket) from an alpaca fleece for a commission.
Photos to follow when further along.

last 5 days have sped by, back to work tomorrow, sigh.......

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Back on track


Well finally got to blog again after a frustrating two weeks of frozen computer syndrome.
Just not enough ram in the old dear to cope with broadband. The upside being time for lots of dyeing of yarn. Just as well as the stock of hand dyed yarns has been drastically depleted by my customers in the shop.
So Bob swopped the old computer with his slightly newer model from his home office and has done a great job moving over all the important files, no quick job, especially as there were a few glitches to sort out.
Although I've spent a lot of time in my hot steamy dye room, I didn't get around to photographing the stuff. But here's a couple of pictures of one of my tapestry crochet bags. The yarn is handspun alpaca. It wasn't the softest fleece, but made very good bag yarn. The image is my rendition of a Pukeko, which is my favourite NZ bird, related to the rail family, sometimes referred to as a swamp hen. I love their long red legs and absurdly big feet. When they become roadkill which is a regular occurence sadly, they look like a mangled umbrella. They are so colourful and characterful. This design was also my most popular when I used to make bags for two galleries and so I got a bit sick of making them, but now after a break from using this design for 6 months I feel another Pukeko project coming on.