Love of Gotland curls

Back to blogging at last. The first half of 2016 has been difficult but now I'm back into my spinning, weaving and my new love eco printing.

I'm still in love with spinning Gotland from the curl. I hold each lock sideways and spin from the centre of the lock making a lovely soft yarn with little curls. I spun and spun and spun until I had enough yarn to make my husband a knee rug though I have to admit that since it has been finished I may have used it more often than him. Yes that's the warp and weft handspun.

 beautiful washed Gotland curls

 Dyeing the curls red gave an tan brown colour on the tips.

As my loom is only 50 cm wide I made 2 lengths for the rug and stitched them together. I didn't try to match the weft or warp threads. Most of the warp threads are 2 ply but most of the weft threads are spiral plyed with a fine commercial laceweight.

First length lying on part of second warp

Drying after fulling

 Those delightful curls in the finished rug.

Bunny

A spinning group I belong to chooses a different fibre each year for its members to experiment with. In 2015 the fibre was bunny
Two years ago I had a love affair with bunny. I was given two "fleeces" and I happily played with them, discovered mouse nests and sorted them by length into various boxes. I spun them into beautiful yarn for hats for small children and added bunny fibre to felted berets. Please see posts June 2013 . When I was offered some bunny I thought fine, that won't be too hard, I've done it before. But it was. In the meantime I had fallen heavily for Gotland curls. We've been together for over a year and there's no sign of the relationship ending. I coped with the first sample by adding Gotland curls as bunny tails. 

I forced myself to do a second sample many months later. It was supposed to be bunny whiskers. Fibres are my play time. It made no sense to force myself to spin a fibre I didn't relate to. I made a really bad job of it. The day after I'd knitted a sample of bunny whiskers I was back to my beloved Gotland.

Fingerless gloves

It's many months since I posted - now I'm in catchup mode. The wool I spun in the previous post became super warm fingerless gloves with a border spun from Gotland locks. I was lucky to be given some Gotland fleeces and I'm in love with their curls.

Mitred squares rug

I've seen many beautiful rugs at the annual exhibitions of Operation Cover-up in Thames, New Zealand. People from throughout the Coromandel Peninsula generously knit rugs, hats and jumpers for children in Romania. I was intrigued by the mitred square, also known as domino, rugs.

After I'd completed my Spinning course (see Creative Fibres Courses) last year, I found I had lots of small balls of experimental yarn in a range of natural colours.  When I sorted through my stash I found many others so I decided to make a mitred square rug entirely of yarn spun from naturally coloured fleeces. Since I began the rug, friends have given me more coloured fleece.

The pattern I used was based on one developed by Chris de Longpré. I found it on her website pattern for rug. 

The rug includes fleeces from Polwarth, Gotland, Corriedale, Romney, and Cormo and Perendale. I love the soft shades and the sculptural ridges of the squares.