Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Holey scarf


I dug out some singles handspun wool yarn which I'd had in my stash maturing, no idea what it was, not overly soft but I'd spun the fibre which I know I dyed in long sequences of colour.
I read the instructions for the scarves which appeared in the winter 08 'Spin Off' magazine and used my rigid heddle loom to weave this one.
Then rolled it in tea towels and put it into a mesh bag and into the washer. I did have to rub it a bit by hand afterwards as I could still move the weft threads around a bit when the cycle had finished. First picture is the fabric straight off the loom and the others show it after a wash and steam press. Looking forward to using some more stash yarns for this technique, perhaps in a shawl.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

sssssuri.......

This is the second crochet suri shawl I've just finished. The fibre came from one fleece. A little suri goes a long way. A lot of spinning. When I was crocheting it it looked like a rumpled scrunched up mess but a soak in warm soapy water relaxed the yarn and it just dropped into this drapey shawl...phew......
Soon be on it's way to you Brenda.
A demonstration of NZ lichen dyeing on suri yarns at Flagstaff's alpaca open day led to these two skeins.
Ammonia added to the pink one's dye liquor and the other one was left as is.
Below some combed suri, silk and merino resting on my newly made spindle. I used the same wool dye to paint the wooden bead and dowel as I dyed the fibre in, good match hey?