More Spinning

Posted on February 12, 2005 by

I’ve been busy spinning and dyeing this week. I’ve managed to ply every bit of yarn I’ve spun so far and I’m now faced with the daunting task of KNITTING something.

I’ve stocked up on books and obtained some patterns, but I’ve decided to tackle another scarf first, just to get used to knitting with my hand spun wool.

The start of the scarf made from my hand spun wool. I think I’ll intersperse the ‘laddery’ bits fairly regularly. I also learned how to twist skeins so they are nice and compact and plump looking 🙂

A spool of the purpley pink colour. I was going to verigate the colours, but I’ve decided to do wide stripes of each colour. I might ply with white, but I haven’t decided yet.

I’m going to knit a big project with these colours and perhaps a yellow. I really need to get better at knitting first though!

I have been avoiding my sewing room, it’s messy and I need to spend an hour tidying before I can sew. I can’t put it off any further as I need to make a knitting bag for Monday night as promised.

Posted in Linocut | 2 Comments

Adventures with Dye

Posted on February 9, 2005 by

I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I won’t let it stop me from trying anyway:

The Raw Product

The fleece after washing. I forgot to pick the clumps apart in my excitement.

Note that I included GREEN

No green here! but some lush purply pinks! 🙂

A few (Umm) learnings…
1) Aren’t you meant to pull the fleece into seperate clumps BEFORE washing? it’s still all connected
2) Do you have to get ALL the poo out before dyeing? It’ll come out when I card it right?
3) Why throw purple into a perfectly good orange bath (when you know deep down it will make brown!!! That’s the one on the stove at the moment

I have no idea of the theory of dyeing wools, I just followed the directions on the dye jars (except for the stiring… wont that cause felt?)

I can’t wait to get spinning this, I hope I won’t have too much trouble carding it ekkkk!

On the quilting front: I ironed the fabric for the binding of the pear quilt… That’s progress right?

AND I was asked to donate one of my bags for an auction at work to raise money for cancer research. Which I gladly agreed to do since a collegue died of cancer about this time last year. I hope it gets a decent price.

Posted in Linocut | 3 Comments

The Things You See

Posted on February 8, 2005 by

I had to go to Buchan today (yes it rhymes with the swear word and I get a jeuvenile pleasure from saying it). On the way there is a town with this in the main street:

Monument on the Great Alpine Road, Bruthen, Victoria.

This is the plaque at the base of the monument. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

I also took the opportunity to drop into Jumbuck Wools. The lady was once again very helpful, I bought about 2kg of unprocessed fleece (white and grey), some landscape dyes, a Niddy Noddy, at carding brush and some 5mm knitting needles.

We had our new scanner delivered today, so no doubt I’ll be playing around with it over the next couple of weeks.

Posted in Spinning | Leave a comment

Drum Roll Please

Posted on February 7, 2005 by

I present here my first ever bona fide hand spun yarn.

My first hand spun yarn! Dark brown Corridale from Jumbuck Wools in Bairnsdale and dyed Ashford Corridale from Benambra Blue in Omeo. An East Gippsland Yarn!

You can see the colours better here.

I’m pretty impressed with myself and I’m engergised to do a heap more spinning now that I have seen the finished product. Bev thinks I will end up with enough yarn to make a beanie. The question is… are my knitting skills up to the challenge?! It has been 8 years since I knitted with a pattern.

I’m headed back to East Gippsland tommorrow so I plan on dropping back into Jumbuck Wools… I might even get some dyes (or is this the slippery slope??).

As thanks to Bev who has devoted two nights to my spinning education I have offered to make her a knitting bag. She sounded pleased with the idea.

If you read the original version of this blog you will remember that I planned to start a little production of bags made with my hand dyed fabrics and there was a shop interested in selling knitting bags… well I’ve done nothing towards this goal. So this week I will make my FIRST real knitting bag with pockets, perhaps this will be the start of something.

I will photograph the bag and send it to the shop lady and see if she is still interested.

How’s that for a plan!

Posted in Linocut | 2 Comments

Love Actually

Posted on February 6, 2005 by

We just watched Love Actually (again). I really like that film :-). Unfortunately that means I didn’t have time to completely finish my pear quilt… but I’ll show you the almost finished quilt anyway (just the backing and binding to go)

Backing and binding still to come

Detailed shot to show quilting

It took me all day to quilt the background, which is a bunch of vertical lines. I then attacked it with paint to get a mottled background… It went from looking pretty cool to looking like a high school art project (or more so) 🙁 I’m going to finish it and hang it though ’cause our walls are too bare.

If I really hate it after a few months, I can always make something else and put this one on the bed for the cat to sit on LOL.

My second spinning class is tommorow. I’m going to learn how to ply. I was all set to start another spool this afternoon, but it didn’t seem to fit my wheel.

Posted in Knitting | 2 Comments

Saturday, Saturday!!!

Posted on February 5, 2005 by

I’ve been quilting all afternoon. Here is a sneak preview, I hope to have the grand ‘reveal’ tomorrow night.

Sneak peek at a new quilt project

Yeah, Yeah, I know… those are pears (what a suprise!). I’m going to hang this quilt next to our bookcase, that’s if I don’t wreck it tommorow, a real possibility since I plan to paint the background after I’ve quilted it!.

I’ve also been spinning, trying to make a veriegated yarn. I find it hard to get a consistent twist, so I could end up with a heap of useless crap, regardless, I’m going to attempt to knit it.

Veriegated Ashford Corridale

I was listening to Cyndi Lauper tonight, she’s great to quilt to, She Bop gets me everytime LOL

Posted in Knitting | 2 Comments

Meme

Posted on February 4, 2005 by

Deborah tagged me with this Meme, I too didn’t know what that meant.

Total Amount of Music on your computer? We filled our 40G ipod, I’m told that’s a lot of music.

The last CD you bought? Cat Power, John Butler Trio, Missy Higgins

What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? Norah Jones – can’t remember ‘exactly’ which song it was as I was listening to her album in the car.

Not counting the radio this morning as I don’t know the songs on Triple J anymore, but we’ve switched back to them from a few years of listening to Classic FM (they took Classic Clive off the air *sniff*)

Write 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you?

I’m going to list albums instead:

Tori Amos, Boys for Pele
Ben Harper, Burn to Shine
Nick Cave and the Badseeds, Lyre of Orpheus and Abbitoir Blues
Red Priest, The Four Seasons (I LOVE the recorder, it’s a kick arse instrument)
Cake, Fashion Nugget

I don’t really have songs that mean a lot to me, these are albums I would take with me to a desert island if I could only take five.

What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
I think everyone has answered this Meme by now, so I’m just gonna let it go LOL (if you would LIKE to be tagged let me know hehe)

Leave a comment

Back to the Spinning Wheel

Posted on February 3, 2005 by

I’m tired tonight, going to bed early… but not before I post some pics of the progress I’m making with my spinning.

This is my first spool. I had a minor mishap caused by me overloading the spool at one end and the yarn getting caught in the shaft thingy… NOT pretty! I decided to start a new spool after that.

This is tonight’s progress… I have no idea how much ‘knitting’ this will get me. I am also wondering if I’m ‘over spinning’… if anyone can give me some advice about that, I’d appreciate it 🙂

I picked up my UFO from the longarm quilter yesterday. It turned out so much better than I imagined it would. I’ll get the binding on it sometime over the next week so I can show it off here. It’ll be interesting to see how it washed up, as I didn’t prewash the fabrics before piecing :-O

Melanie has made a delicious quilt and I’m itching to try something like it myself, but I’m gonna try it with a knitting bag (this weekend), and perhaps use triangles (we’ll see).

Well, I’m just about to grab a trashy romance (a guilty pleasure) and head off to bed. Ta Ta

Posted in Linocut | 2 Comments

Smoked Out

Posted on February 2, 2005 by

I got back to my sewing machine. It seems like forever (well it has been over a week!)

I previously posted that I love to draw pears… when I can’t think of anything to draw (most of the time) I draw a pear. Tonight I drew eight… on my sewing machine.

I’m going to connect them all together into with my hand spun wool and they will be a concertina book… like the one I’ve been talking about for the Straight and Narrow Challenge on the QuiltArt list.

In fact this may BE my peice for the S&N challenge, as my childhood memory idea isn’t working for me at the moment.

I was inspired by June Underwood’s burned edge post the other week, so I tried it out on my little pieces. I breathed in a lot of smoke and now my throat is feeling scratchy, so next time I will do it outside. I’m pretty happy with the results but the edges are quite fragile which means they wont make a durable book.

On the spinning side of things. I’ve finished one spool. I tried to spin some merino, but it sucked (as I was told it would), so I’m going to leave it until I’m more experienced, that’s if I don’t felt it first LOL.

Posted in Knitting | 3 Comments

The Journey

Posted on February 1, 2005 by

I almost didn’t blog tonight because as a quilter I’m doing a hell of a lot of spinning and there are only so many photos of a slowly growing spool of yarn that I can post here LOL

It’s mesmerising and I’m definitely making progress. below you can see three examples of the yarn I’ve spun so far.

The white one, I did last night after my first lesson with Bev it’s the precarded Corridale fleece from the Jumbuk in Bairnsdale. The pink is called Ashford Corridale from a little shop called Benambra Blue in Omeo, I spun it during my lunch break today. The grey one I spun tonight, it’s from some lovely fleece Bev gave me to practice on, I don’t know what breed of sheep it’s from but it is lovely and greasy and slides out nicely.

I’m wearing the yarns as bracelets at the moment so I can gaze at them when I’m not spinning LOL And I like to see my progress already from a lumpy yarn to a more even product.

I’m calling this the honeymoon phase, it is a general pattern with me (and others I suspect). I do the ‘new’ thing to the exclusion of other stuff (like sleeping) for the first while until I feel that I have somewhat mastered the basics, then I try to get the balance back… I have to work at getting balance, a continuing life goal for me LOL

With that said, I am determined to SEW tommorow. No sketching, no frigging around thinking about stuff, I’m just gonna get that sewing machine pumping! I WILL show something other than yarn tommorow.

Posted in Linocut | Leave a comment