Stainless steel and silk heaven

I've finally felt like working and with a commission as incentive, I ordered 5 cones of the gorgeous stainless steel and silk from Dairing.

As well, I've finally moved my knitting machine into oldest son's bedroom. It isn't technically his room any more as he lives in a shared house in Thornbury, but that's what I've called it! The knitting machine has been sitting idle in the garage since the closing of TSBtextile in Greensborough, so I was a little worried about the state it was in.

Really.....it was more about me than the machine. It's never been so well loved as I cleaned and oiled my way to finding that I'd put it together incorrectly......twice! It's now singing happily and I've finished the first scarf and working on the second.

I use the knitting machine because it creates the fabric quickly, but also, it is alot easier to simply create folds which give the fabric a 3-D bounce making it interesting. I create different sorts of folds, some just pick up stitches 5 or 10 rows below, sometimes I move the picked up stitches to twist the fabric. And this time with the last cone, I'll try something new.

As well, I'm trying to be efficient and recording what I do and how long it takes, always an interesting occupation.

I'm not buying any fibre or yarn in Bendigo!

As you can see, I set myself a pretty tough goal. The stash is just doing my head in, a little....

Success, I didn't buy any fibre!

Sock yarn doesn't count! That's just like buying clothes...not really stash!

And boucle yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills. Wasn't going to but a friend (?) mentioned the pink and black coco chanel jacket. Who could resist?

And the blue was different and I could mix the black with cream for that classic combination.

Three spools of silk from Yarn Barn in my favourite colourway....nothing to say!

And this isn't yarn, it's rubber and wool from Dairing. Knitted, ironed (with paper protection) looked amazing. Rough lace is the only way I can describe it. Anyway, it's an experiment, not stash.

I did manage to find some small equipment, this was on my list. I wanted more weave it looms and my favourite small tool maker is Petlyn fibre products and they had these little looms. I have two sets of their wool combs and they are always very helpful and their  products are beautifully made. More  playing and experimentation.

Anyway, I think I did ok. Now off to knit socks!

It's what inspires you that counts!

Inspiration can come from all sorts of sources, yet for many of us it is 'the yarn'. The 'must have' that gorgeous texture, feel, colour or just it's plain craziness!

I am having that reaction with the wonderful silk and stainless steel yarn from Dairing. I managed to get to their Richmond shop in Lennox St. to find a beautiful store. Yarns and more colours and their wonderful designs. I was there to buy yarns, which I did....

but I also checked out an amazing range of yarns, from the stainless steel to linen to linen paper. So now I have something to play with...

Linen paper! I saw a jacket knitted with this and, I think, it was the silk and stainless steel and it was gorgeous. It keeps suggesting to me, for some unknown reason, crochet, so I might team it with some mercerised cotton and a crochet hook and see what I come up with.

What I'd like to have a look at is their amazing designs, clothing and jewellery. Again, beautiful design and maybe a gorgeous something to wear for Christmas!

I was so excited by my purchases, that I've done three scarves for the market. They're done on the knitting machine and I manipulate the fabric to try and create folds that force the fabric to behave interestingly. I think it works!

I do feel a bit of a fraud when I say that ALL the previous scarves have sold.....I bought the first cone at the Handknitters guild and despite it being the only one it went, so next, at the Sheep and Wool show I bought two and a play cone. The play cone is still being played with but the TWO have gone. I did make a mistake and only bought four, when I'd written in my diary, buy SIX....next time. It is surprising, as usually people need a choice of colour, but there seems to always be someone who just loves them.

So here are the next three:

Now I have to go and put tags on all  the finished pieces, in time for Rose St. Market tomorrow.

Just cleaning up...silk and steel!

I thought I'd better see what was remaining on the little camera. Silk and steel! A lovely yarn picked up at the Handknitters Guild fair from Dairing a new crowd in Richmond with some wonderful yarns.

Because of the silk and steel mix this yarn has a memory. If you squash it, it stays somewhat squashed. I had to try it. However, it is expensive, so I ran it through my knitting machine. They recommended a tension of 8 which is quite loose, however, the added stiffness was probably the reason. I did it on 7 and tried to create folds to try for more 3-d effects.

I was reasonably happy with how quick and how interesting it was. It displayed nicely on my little neck stand and was sold at Rose St. Artists' Market last Sunday.

So it was a success and I will be definitely be making a trip to Dairing to see what goodies I can play with.

A silky gift

What a wonderful place Snb is! The delightful Dr. Bones has given me the most wonderful bag full of moth cocoons. They come from her kindergarten child's teacher who has these growing, I assume, much to the delight of her charges. I'm fascinated by the different colours, ranging from a creamy colour, through soft palest of pale greens through to the vibrant yellow. I wonder if these differences will be seen in the final product?

I'm so excited. Now I have to go and find out how to turn these cocoons into spinnable silk.

PS The boys all liked their new Christmas tree....hooray!

On the art of selling textiles

Selling textiles is a very seasonal pursuit. (And let's not talk about selling woollies in Australia....think hot climate, short cold winter...) In the warmer months, it's enough to try and get people to talk to you. On a hot day, they just walk past. This is one of the reasons that I've taken October and November off from the market. December is Christmas, even this has it's problems, as you have to give a present that will not be useful till the winter, but I am ever optimistic.

That's one of the reasons that I have an Etsy shop, to try and break into the Northern Winter. This is not having the desired results, at the moment. The GFC, high value of the Australian dollar, postage costs and this is starting to look like a long term assignment. Four sales, of which two have been cancelled is starting to make me less optimistic than I was last year.

Anyway,

One of the good things is that I've had two months to think of what I might to that could sell during our Australian summer.

I always think that it should be something I'm interested in. And I think earings! I didn't get my ears pierced till my 40th birthday, but my love of earings goes back to my college days. Every party was an excuse to buy an even bigger, more outrageous and cheap (I was a student!) clip-on earing.

Finally, I think I've got a good idea and here are the first complete set:

They're a little rough around the edges, but these are mine! They're handspun silk, handknit and finished with the buttons.

Hopefully, I'm on to something!

Beautiful Silks and Precious Purl

I've been waiting for a little while to visit Beautiful Silks. (100 Victoria St. Fitzroy) Friends have been regaling me with tales of the treasure trove that can be found there. Yesterday was the day. So on a wet winter's day we found refuge in the silk filled rooms that is Beautiful Silks.



As well as an extremely well stocked shop is a large workroom and a teaching room. We interrupted a double knitting workshop being run by the renowned Jude Skeers.



As you can see from my purchases I managed to pick up some silk yarn, more silk fabric for my silk scarves, some silk waste and fabric remnants, to play with and a couple of large beautiful yellow buttons. I think they're the wrong yellow but will be used another day!

Along with that are some yarns and buttons from Precious Purl. Unseen is more waste silk fabric already used in the chocolate wrap yarn.

After Beautiful Silks, coffee was in order. Then a search for the address and off to Precious Purl (397 Brunswick St. Fitzroy), 'just around the corner'. They are the outlet for Lara Downs and used to be in the same building as Beautiful Silks. A little shop on the mezzanine floor in a shop I didn't know about Calico House(?). Another treasure trove......amongst other things fabric for printing.

They're a little shop but well worth the visit.

On the way back, I called in at Incube8r to say hello to the lovely Isy and found two more sales, hooray.

A tale of two skeins

Remember my CD drop spindling on my holidays, well this is the second half of the 100gms of First Editions tops.



I then plied both with some soft beautiful light blue reeled silk that I had in my stash. (Don't know how it got there, I'm not really a light blue person, but how can you doubt the wisdom of the stash and the choice of the perfect colour?)

These are the resulting skeins:







Now I don't know if you can tell but they're differents.

The one on the right is the holiday skein. It's beautiful with a slight wrapping to ensure the tops are highlighted. I love this skein.

The other is the home skein. It's finer - I was trying for the same, it's pulled apart in several places and whilst, on it's own is a lovely skein, I can't sell it.

I can't in all honesty sell a skein the knitter is going to have to manage. I'll knit it up and where it's week, I'll rejoin and generally work around. This is definitely NOT what people expect when they purchase handspun wool.


But what is the difference? Spinning on holiday, Spinning at home in front of the television. And maybe I've answered my own question - relax and concentrate!

Happy spinning!

Onion skins

Friday and today have been days to cook up onion skins and create some new yarns to work with.

The idea was to mordant with copper coins then dye with red onion skins.

Unfortunately I think I've learnt something I've suspected for some time: silk is selfish and steals all the mordant and dye. The change from the previous dyeing wasn't great, however, upon first putting the silk in the dyepot it turned yellow then proceeded to take up the brown.

They all did turn out lovely as I removed the silk early, put back the copper coins and left the wool in.

It's a lesson well learnt, but now I have some lovely yarns for next week.

Fractal spinning

Yesterday was the meeting of the Experimental Spinners group at the HWSG. This meeting coincided with the Weaving Certificate class so we were surrounded by lots of colour and texture as they were working on their cram-weave scarves.

We were working on Fractal spinning, which was inspired by a skein called 'George' and two articles in the Summer 2007 issue of Spin-off.

Definition: A fractal is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole, “a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured."
(http://www.wikipedia.org/ – search for ‘fractal’)

For the purposes of spinning, it is applied to multi-coloured tops where we split the top into ever smaller lengths. There are, of course, variations on the main idea, and these can also be applied to any series whether, tops, fleece or textures.

I chose these beautiful silk tops, of which I only had 10grams. Enough to finish in a short time. I split them down the middle and spun the first half as it came from the top. I did a little pulling apart to try and maintain some blocks of colour, but I wasn't very precise or finicky. This was my first bobbin.

The second bobbin, I split the remainder of the top and spun half, and, continued splitting in this way until I wasn't drafting when I was spinning. I managed to split it four times (five lengths). I wasn't sure of the result, as at times, the second bobbin seemed quite different, but then at the end I couldn't really tell them apart!

I then plied these two together to get a beautiful yarn, which is quite reflective of the original tops, but far more subtle. Unfortunately, my halves weren't exact and I had a little left over, so I Andean plied that off. Having scales on hand would have been good!

I now have a small 10gm skein of silk...but what to do with it?

Silver jewellery & silk scarves

I spent yesterday playing around with Precious Metal Clay in a lovely class full of friends. This clay is moulded just as you would any clay, but when fired parts are obviously melted away and you are left with pure silver.

We all made at least two pieces: a lovely filagree heart or round shape; I made a heart! and, a flat shape with texture, which I turned into a round not quite bead that I'm going to use to add to a very special bookmark for the owner of my borrowed and hopefully soon departing weaving loom.

Over the weekend, I did manage to dye the rest of the silk and wool in red/blue/purple shades. Not actually as striking as the green, but still successful. I have made a start on that scarf. I'm knitting the middle stitches combining with the wool. The edges are silk only, but as an added bonus, instead of knitting straight rows, I've done a couple of short rows so that hopefully it will have a little flounce.

The green scarf I was happy with, in the end. I started by doing a thin angled scarf. (K2tog at the beginning of the row, Increase 1 at the end of the row. Knit back.) I started playing around with this, making a larger end, and finally, I pulled it all out and went back to the original idea.

I