Spinning Painted Roving!

Recently I spend time at the John C Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, USA, where I taught a class on spinning for Fair Isle with Martha Owen. We started with Shetland fleece in white, light grey and fawn which we dyed - natural dyes, of course - then carded, spun, and lastly each student knitted a sample swatch of their own design, with the yarns they have produced. An ambitious class but all good fun.

After all that hard work I though some fun was in order, so I took a class - spinning, of course, what else - with a good friend of mine, Melissa Weaver Dunning. A very different type of spinning for me. Not from my normal raw fleece and not Shetland fleece, but painted roving, and Merino and silk!!! 

It was a great week. The 'thinking hat' had to go on to begin with to decide on the colours I wanted, then after the first few exercises, how to continue to get the result I wanted, and also what I was going to do with the yarn when it was finished. I did most of the spinning and started the knitting during the week class and finished it at home.

Here is the result. I knitted a simple square with garter to mark where the changes in the yarn is. It can fit on either a single bed or a double (just), or round my shoulders, it looks nice over a chair or on the back of the sofa.
 



 

Work in progress...

.......so what have I been doing since I last posted a blog?

Well really just the same as usual, spinning, knitting, teaching. There is too much to detail here, other than to list a few highlights, namely, teaching in Norway, the USA; Shetland Wool Week; setting up a broken diamond twill on the warp-weighted loom to accompany the display of a tunic dating to 300AD; loads of spinning; a little knitting; then writing for the book 'Shetland Textiles 800 BC to the present'; and spending time with family, especially the grandchildren.

Here is what I am knitting at the moment. It is a copy of an allover I knitted for myself several years ago, and this will be the only copy I will knit from it. It will remain an exclusive garment.

Stock is low right now as I am spinning for further commissions, there is quite a full order book.

There is a stash of yarn but it is mostly being spun for commissions. These are yarn being set aside for 5 commissions. Mostly in natural colours, but there is one madder orange in there and some of the grey has to be dyed in indigo and logwood.

...then these

White and silver grey yarn waiting for a madder and an onion dye pot.

.. and the next fleece to be spun.

1.5 kilo of black, 1 kilo of dark grey and rowers (rolags), part of a 500 grms batch of charcoal. 

Trowie Allover in Blues

A blog post is long overdue, but my days have been too full of spinning, weaving, and writing (other than my blog) - it has been fun.

Now it is time to catch up here.

One commission I had was to incorporate blues into my Trowie design. And why had I not thought of this before? Blue is my favourite colour and I have never used it in a design. But a customer asked and I was in heaven, knitting in blue.

The request was to change the black and moorit to blue, and the customer had good colour judgement as well as good taste. The colours were now 2 blues 2 greys and a light fawn. Fawns always go well with blue, but the 2 greys I knew would pick up colour from the blues and look beautiful. I dyed grey yarn with logwood for a dark blue to repace the black, and a lighter grey yarn dyed in indigo for the lighter blue to replace the moorit.

The result was, I think, stunning - but I would like anything is blue. You can decide for yourselves.

Sunset

Sunsets never fail to impress me. Last night was no exception. Today has been a beautful , with warm spring sunshine, almost no clouds in the sky, and very light winds. Maybe tonight we will have a great sunset too.

But, here are last nights photos.....



 Starting with the western sky...

and moving a little towards the south west.......



now looking south west....



looking south........

and even in the eastern sky.

The north sky was a delicate shade of pink too, but too light to show up on my camera.

Next blog will be on textiles, I promise.

LACE CANDLE LIGHTS

So have I used any of the madder yarn yet? Well, yes I have, but not very much. Following the success of the Merrie Lace instalation at Mareel, our new music and cinema venue in Lerwick, one of my daughters came up with this idea for lace lights.



and the same candle lights taken with less light.



2 light shades of madder yarn







2 in darker shades



and then with less light to see their reflection























I made a few as Christmas gifts and now have them for sale. At the moment they are all in madder reds and will all be in lace weight yarns, but more colours will be added as I have them.



A Madder Shawl

The Christmas and New Year holidays are over, even Auld Yule here in Shetland has passed and it is time to get back to normal. Christmas decoration have been taken down and put away for next year, and hopefully most of the pine needles, the tinsel and the dust has gone too.

So I thought it was time to let you see the shawl I made for a birthday present. The birthday was on the 30th of November so I could not mention it here before then just in case the birthday girl saw it and made a connection.



The Madder Shawl





The request was for a shawl in Madder oranges. Getting the right shade of madder can be difficult. Usually getting the orange/red colour is easy except when you get really good quality Madder, which is what happened. I did a test dye but on dying the handspun lace yarn it was just too red. The second try was luckily just right. It did take time though as some more yarn needed to be spun.

Yarns used in the shawl

There are 11 colours in the shawl, 7 dyed colours and 4 natural colours. The dying was done on white, 3 grey shades and 3 fawn shades. I included a touch of the 3 fawn shades that had been dyed and a Shetland black. The lace edge and the centre was in the mig grey from the first dye batch after I reduced the red by cooking it again in onion. It adding just a little bit of madder red to the mix.

And I still have a nice batch of handspun lace yarn in beautful madder reds to use.

Its December, what happened

Wow, its December, what happened. The last 2 months seem to have passed by so quickly. So, lets see, what did I do.

Ok, October started with getting ready for the next 2 months. Housework all needed to be done; there was a plumbing problem that needed sorted out; the house and Studio had to be ready for visitors and a few projects; the shed needed to be tidied up before winter and ready to take in the winter supply of hay for my 2 sheep; the garden needed a tidy up (and that didnt happen); orders to be finished and the next work items to be sorted. So, what was I getting ready for?

It started with Wool Week. The studio was open for a spinning clinic on Mon, Tues and Wed. So was I going to be busy or not? Luckily there was a nice steady steam of people through each day, not too many at any time, just nice and time to talk to everyone.

Then I had to miss the end of wool week to head off to the States - I was teaching a Fair Isle class at John C Campbell Folk School in North Carolina the following week - bad planning. I love the Folk School though, I have taught there several times. The class went well, each student choosing colours and planning their design. Hats, gloves, and ipad covers were all knitted.

A hat nearly finished. This was a fairly new knitters first 2 colour knitting, first knitting in the round, first hat, and all designed - colour and pattern - by herself.

The 3 stages of designing Fair Isle - maybe - charting, knitting the sample, and scratching your head and needing more coffee when it looks as if it is going wrong - sorry, Mary Jane, both your designs worked beautifully.

An ipad cover nearly complete



A sample knitted as a wrist band.
Not my colours but my favourite design of the week. 



After a couple of days off to go to a craft fair in Ashville, do some Xmas shopping and repack the suitcase, I set off with Martha, a friend from North Carolina, for Seattle and then out to Whidbey Island to teach another Fair Isle class.

Visit http://nordichomecraft.blogspot.co.uk/  for a very good report on the class by one of the students.

That was the teaching over so it was holiday then with Martha and Wendy, except for the knitting we did round the fire in the evenings. We hired a log cabin overlooking the beach right out on the Olympic peninsular on the Pacific coast. Big beaches, big seas and big sky with huge trees as driftwood.



This was our beach. Can you spot the eagle - the big eagle? It gives you an idea of the size of the beach and the trees piled up on the top of the sand.

Cant see the eagle?

Try the next photo.

Can you see the eagle now?

Can you find it in the photo above now?

Big beach isnt it.

Check out the same eagle in the next photo.

Big eagle

Walking the beaches was great but then there are the forests, - and yes, you guessed it with big trees.....

Here is Wendy with the big Cyprus....amazing.

But then we were here in the fall and there are also rain forest here.

After a wonderful adventure, I took a flight from Seattle to Aberdeen, via Amsterdam, and with a couple of days to recover with family, I took the boat home with only 2 days to get ready for the Craft Fair in Lerwick.

I had visitors the next week to work on the warp-weighted loom so still no days off to settle in back home.

So now it is time for more housework, and I will forget the garden that did not get done, and work on more of those orders. It is also freezing outside and I have seen a few snowflakes this morning so inside is the best place to be.