spin-to-felt

We ll I decided to do a cobweb felt in black to make the spin the feature of this scarf. I lost some of the bouncyness of this yarn. It did tend to flatten out a bit. I had hoped the mohair would be less prone to this. Perhaps adding at a prfelt stage would help, but I doubt it. Lets face it felting is rough treatment for a delicate yarn. Not an altogether amazing result, needs some tweaking to find the best way to incorporate yarn.

from spin to felt but what to do?

 This is the latest spin and I'm going to incorporate it into fleece. I will be hoping that the texture of the spin isn't too lost in the felting. A scarf will be a quick test option I think. Something light and filmy.

basket case

  I'm on a roll now and spun up this yarn last night and had to make it up into a basket today.

Like wow, Spin out.

I went to an art yarn work shop with the most amazing spinner "Wooldancer" at the guild in Sydney on the weekend. It was jammed packed with frenetic fibre fantasticness. There were so many skills to learn and master all at once. Tell you what, it is a good one for the left brain right brain activity.
Here are some pictures of my hand spun beginner attempts. I even did some beehives Ginga.

Not dead, just busy.

I know I have been a bit conspicuous by my absence from this world of cyberness, but at times I find I need to step away from the usual commitments and have some "time out". This does not necessarily mean I have been lying on the beach cocktail in hand, Though a bit of beach lying was involved and the odd glass of wine has passed my lips. I have put some creative energy into our extremely slow renovation. Some of you may remember the dry stone wall made in the last christmas holiday hiatus, well I have finally got to the paving of the flat part behind the wall and it is almost finished! Ignorance is bliss in these cases. "Paving can't be too hard she says". "They do it all in a half hour program on the telly". I have decided that every second brick in my design has been cut at least once. It is back breaking work. I shall show more pics once the whole lot is done but here are some of the process. Please excuse my rather large bum but it seems it was unavoidable.We also went for a lovely trip down the south coast camping to Dalmeny. Great range of things to do there. I can quite safely say that I was the only one spinning in the camp ground.There were some rather lovely rocks with the most amazing colours.Oh and we managed to catch some rather yummy fish, no thanks to the seals who kept stealing the best ones of our lines. They had this rather annoying habit of taking the fish and then popping up nearby with the said fish in flipper as if to taunt us. I guess it may be debatable as to who was stealing whos fish.

eco wonder

I have been dyeing silk as a summer alternative for sales this season. Seems people don't want to even touch wool when its over 30 outside.
This process never ceases to amaze me. The colour variations from just one pot of onion skins with different metal additives is astounding.
I also soy mordanted some cotton and here are the results. The outlines have a wonderful smokeyness to them.

Allotment Garden.

An allotment Garden is what I need
To lose myself whilst planting seed.
To plant each seed in row upon row
with care and wonder each seed I sow.
Then to work with daily toil
I'll tend and nurture this allotment soil.
The sun and rain sustain and feed,
yes an allotment garden is what I need.

This is a response to India's blogging bee. The photo is some of the beautiful work to be found on Phoenix's blog

Confessions of a Teacher.

I must confess that in doing workshops it is often I who am the learner.
Isn't it amazing how the same set of instructions to all my students can provide so many different responses. Their answers coming from their own experiences, colour prefences, styles and personalities.
On Sunday I gave a nuno felting workshop. We all had a great time and the products were fantastic. Yummy examples of colour and drape. Thanks to everyone I learnt a lot!