Shades of grey

I've spun enough dark charcoal grey merino with white silk and white merino and silk to make a sweater but to me the white and charcoal were too eyepopping for the design I had chosen. So I decided to dye the white in shades of grey. After Tracy's course I had enough confidence to try repeat dyeing. My test skein (the top one) used from left no dye, black dye at 0.2%, 0.02%, no dye, black at 1%, 0.1%. The 1% was too dark - I felt it didn't have enough contrast with my other yarn, the dark charcoal.

I opted for no dye, 0.02%, 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.1%, 0.02%, and no dye. I put markers on the bench to show the length to paint each dye. With a large sheet of plastic over the markers, I lay out my cling film and started applying the dye. I"m thrilled with the result. It's what I wanted and each dyed skein is similar to the others. There is no felting and no runover of dye.

I did some other dyeing too and kept all the water I'd used to rinse the brush and the containers. At the finish I tipped this rinse water into the dyepot, added some fleece. This gave me a lovely soft mauve. Previously I would have thrown the rinse water onto the grass. Thank you Tracy.

Here's the two yarns knitted together. You can see the subtle gradations of the dyed yarn.

Tracy White dyes

After our Open Day some keen dyers took part in a 2 day workshop run by Tracy White called Double Dyeing. Here are some photos.

 My samples of alpaca, silk, fleece, yarn and sliver after the first day. Tracy organised the workshop so we all contributed to a colour card which had dyed samples of  each combination of colour the group had used. What I appreciated the most was Tracey's attitude to dyeing. She made sure she used every part of the dye rather than add toxic dye into the ecosystem.

 Samples after day 2.

Gael concentrating on dyeing.

"The Way We Were" display

Our theme for Open Day was "The Way We Were 1920s -80s". Here are a few of the treasures club members brought along for a display of handicrafts from those decades and in some cases even earlier.

CF Open Day Exhibition

Here's a sample of the work in our Thames Club Exhibition.

 Anne's delightful dolls                                           Donna's alpaca rug, hand spun, dyed and crocheted

Left, Pauline's felted table centre.



Right, Nola's rug with Donna's knitted and felted teddy bear

 Left Lynne's delicately
needlefelted faintails.



Right, Sheryll's silk and merino child's dress make in one piee

Creative Fibres Open Day - Fibre Fanatics

On right, our president
Sheryll
wearing a stunning jumpsuit.

On left, would you trust this born again hippie to spin and knit for your baby?
Will and Kate did!

 Gael adding to the stash from Kane Carding's felting sliver.

 Joanne with The Little Wool Companies fibres.

Creative Fibres Open Day - Parade

Flapper June

Elegant Casssandra

Creative Fibres Thames celebrated their Open Day with the theme "The Way We Were".  A fabulous selection of garments from 1920s to 1980s were modelled by members and friends to the oohs, aahs and laughter of the audience. Wendy Courtney generously supplied the clothes, some of her collection of over 2000.

                                                 






 Did you ever see anything like these sleeves?












Below: Paula looking oh so chic and some of our members dressed for the day. From left Margaret, Joanne, Lee aka Kiwianna, and June.

Fun Lion sweater

This lion sweater was fun to make. I knitted Perendale wool 4 ply wool, 2 strands together that I had dyed a deep blue and a yellow gold. For the mane I used handspun superwash Polwarth. The tail and face were embroidered after the knitting. I used a photo of a lion sweater in Ravelry to draw the design.

Felted skirt

 I thought a wrap around skirt would enable me to pick up the triangle motif from the top. I made a paper pattern and enlarged it by a third so I could lay out the merino fibre. I prefelted it slightly, dried it, and cut out the areas for the triangles of colour. I carefully positioned the triangles which had been prefelted by hand, no water. On the inside I put fibre across the "seams" to hold the triangles in place.








More prefelting followed. This time I rolled the skirt thoroughly. Once dry I used leftover yarn from the jumper to hand stitch a running stitch in the triangles.

Finally I fulled the skirt until it reached the size I wanted. I also rolled a long cord to thread through the waist which I had strengthened with 5 rows of machine stitching. It looked fine to me on my dressmaker's dummy.









My work was accepted for the exhibition. Unfortunately I couldn't go but a friend took some photos. The skirt was exhibited back to front and those sleeves on the jumper looked too big and flappy. I realised I hadn't actually tried on the jumper. When I got it back I unpicked the sleeves and with the help of Tasha of bygumbygolly.com I knitted seamless set-in sleeves using wonderful short rows. Thank you Tasha. As soon as I get the second sleeve done I'll add a photo.

Short row top with 16+ colours

My design involved a panel front and back knitted using short rows. I used steps of 7 stitches in a 42 stitch row and alternated 2 balls of wool. One ball starting a triangle beginning on the right, the second a triangle on the left. I discovered that it took about 3g to make a triangle. I was pleased the way the colours merged as I knitted from one colour to another in the ball. I made the back panel longer than the front one and curved the neckline.

The next step was to pick up stitches along the edge of the front panel, cast on some for the neck, then pick up stitches along the edge of the back panel (206 sts). I knitted in garter stitch until the work measured 21 cm. I left the armhole stitches on a needle and to shape the bottom of the armhole decreased 1 st every right side row until 64 stitches remained. A 3 needle bindoff joined the sides together. I was determined this would be a no seams garment.

For the sleeves I worked out a garter and stocking stitch relief pattern that was similar to the triangle shapes on the panels.

By now I had decided to enter the top in the Creative Fibres Experience show in Hamilton. What it needed was a skirt to complement it.

Knitted scarf from samples

Sitting at my wheel surrounded by my favourite spinning books I taught myself to spin these yarns. It was a case of read one, have a go, reread, have another go and read the other and so on. The books were Spin Art by Jacey Boggs and The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson.

I knitted the samples into a short scarf which has become much longer with wearing and tugging.

Bullions

Stacks

Beehives

Bullion loops

  

Lacy curtain from waste yarn

If you've ever wondered what to do with scraps of handspun yarn here's one solution. This technique was taught by Tracey White. I decided to use it to make a lacy curtain. Below you can see masses of handspun experimental yarn that have been dangled onto a sheet of plastic. It helps if some of the yarn is spun as a single with very little twist.

Here is a closeup.

These two photos are after felting.

The result is quite lovely and a great use for waste yarn.

Nasty neps and nits

I'm gradually spinning up the 16+ colours but I'm having multitudinous probems with neps. Every few draws I have to stop and remove those pesky little concentrations of short fibres. From the 33g of fibre I've spun today  I've removed 3g of neps. I've also let many more go through the spinning wheel. It makes the spinning arduous instead of a pleasure.

Nasty neps

Close up of a nep

3 g of neps from 33g of fibre spun

I contacted New Zealand spinning guru Pat Old and asked for help tracking down the cause. Possibilities were:

• Over dyeing in the microwave which would make the fibres brittle and more prone to breaking. I tested the strength of the undyed and dyed fibre but they seemed identical.
• Short fibres in the undyed fibre which could form neps in the carding process. I checked the length of the fibre and they all appeared long.

By this time I was wondering if it was my carding technique. I'd done the carding with one hand - the other was out of action - so maybe I wasn't as careful as I should have been. I tried carding some undyed fibre carefully. There were no neps of short fibres before carding but after there were plenty. I looked again at the length of the fibres and discovered there were short fibres amongst the long fibres. In my determination to master handpainting roving and dyeing in the microwave I'd completely forgotted to check the fibre quality. I'd assumed Ashford's merino sliver would be ok. However this is sold for felting as well as spinning so it wasn't surprising that it had a mix of fibres of varying length.

Lovely gradations of colour

During the spinning I've let many neps into the single. There are far too many to attempt to remove. I'm just hoping they don't bite me on the bum and cause endless nits on my knitted garment. Next time I shall test the fibre using combs. If there are short fibres they will be caught on the combs.

The good news is I love the colours and effect of short rows in the knitting. The triangles are knitted with alternating balls.

Smaller jacket

From the leftover Perendale yarn I'd dyed for my Noro jacket I made this sweet one for the youngest grandchild.

Finished Noro jacket

Interesting design with back shorter than front

 It's taken me a while to get these photos onto my blog. Way back last July I dyed some commercial Perendale yarn as one of the colourways for this Noro jacket. It was a massively long skein to dye - 300 metres in total. Together with the Noro colourway I had bought from Laughing Hens in England I made the jacket. I love the way the colours move across the garment and the way the short rows influence the shaping.

Brilliant design with short rows

Rows become vertical on the back