A scarf remake

 I have a very special scarf that I spun and knit many many years ago. At a time of deep pain, it was the only thing I felt like doing. I was a new spinner and yet to embark on my textile studies. 

Now, I don't wear it, as long scarves don't really serve their purpose. So, it is time for it to be reknit and reworn. A new life. It seems to be the right time.

So, I've unpulled it all and washed the resulting skeins. 

I did a favour for a friend and as a reward she gave me the book 'Knit Fold Pleat Repeat' by Norah Gaughan. On first looking at this book, I wasn't sure if I really liked it, but as I was getting it for free, I thought I'd give it a go. Well.....I've knit the cover scarf, which is named Pinion, and am in the process of knitting one of the tops inside. And now there are a few other things on my wish list.

For this I knit my yarn trying to use as much as I could, whilst leaving enough to knit a pair of matching fingerless mittens. To make the cowl effect, I twisted it in the grafting to make a mobius scarf. Am very happy with the big bulky warm scarf. Just right for Winter at the beach.

It feels like quite an achievement to give this scarf a new life. Warming in all the right ways.

Side-tracked by leftover handspun

 I don't really know why, but whilst working on Stuart's jumper, I decided to stop and wait until I can measure it against him. I think it's way too big, but he is big and I might be underestimating his size. It's been awhile since I knit the last jumper.

Anyway, I decided I would do some more stash busting, this time with all those leftover bits of handspun that I can't bear to throw away.

I decided to do mitred squares as they're easy to do, can take small amounts of yarn and look pretty effective. My squares are 20 sts sides (work on 40sts) on 4mm needles and measure 9.5cm square.

There are all sorts of different yarns and even though some are a bit fine and a bit thick, it seems to be working ok.

I did sort them into colours: broadly blue, purple, red, orange, yellow and green. I think if I did it again, I would be much more random. The effect gets better as it gets larger. I'm aiming for a Queen size blanket for the spare bedroom. Just right for our Western Australian guests who feel the cold!

I've still got the green to go, then I've got all the natural coloured yarn and then I'll probably have to wait for more yarn. I'm thinking of edging it in cream with half size mitres.

Making fabric

Back in the day when I was studying Studio Textiles at RMIT, by the way, no longer a course, you can do fashion instead. Anyway, we had to come up with a business plan and mine was to make fabric, till the reality was that even a small designer needed a run of at least 30metres!

However, I've come back to that abandoned plan and am trying fabric lengths. I've started by diving into my handspun stash, and creating open warps. Simple weaving but, I think, quite effective. Then I'm putting them on Etsy (I'm teesjourney on Etsy) and am waiting to see what happens!

Here are my efforts so far:

The first using cream 3ply as the starting point and the warp. All the cream based yarns with the most gentle textures and colours.

Cream 3ply commercial cream warp with handspun yarn weft.

Lots of lovely soft textures and colours.

 The next was a full five metres starting with a fine black mercerised cotton warp and alternating stripes of black and colours. There are two repeats and I used the Fibonacci sequence as my starting point.

Five metres of black and coloured stripes.

I love the fabric all rolled up and waiting. 

The next one is sorted and waiting. Purple warp and, hopefully, matching weft yarns.

And would you believe, my handspun stash box seems quite full!

An ode to Petlyn wool combs

Dear Julie and Joe,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know how much fun I'm having with your English wool combs that I bought from you at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo this year. I also purchased some of Coral Stewarts' dyed fleece. More of a sentimental purchase, as I don't need any more fleece, but I do love her work and have a jacket and a jumper made from her dyed yarn, which I love.

Now I know that this was not the perfect start, whilst the fleece is dyed it was still very greasy, but I thought that knowing this was not the best start would allow me to experiment to find the best way to process it. Fleece is always tricky as you tend to get a muddying effect as there are no distinct blocks of colour. Well, this fleece, anyway.

I found the best way was to load a rough colour block at a time, then take it off with the free comb, load more, take off more, and keep going till I had this:

You can sort of see the layers that were created and when I 'dizzed' it off I got

It spun up beautifully, as you would expect using wool combs, I navaho plied the resulting single to try and keep some colours. It did turn out muddy in places and I did really lose the blue, but I love the yarn so much I didn't take a photo before I knit it up into a shrug to sell in my Etsy shop.

I really love the combs and have started work on my next project, and, as convener of Experimental Spinners at the guild, we're going to have a session playing with wool combs. A couple of us have wool combs and so does the guild. We're going to try colour blending and see what happens.

Thanks again for your marvellous products and your generosity in sharing your knowledge.

Cheers, Teresa

PS Hints on blending colours on wool combs would be appreciated!

Letter to the unknown customer

To whom it may concern,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I've finally listed all my current fingerless mittens on Etsy. I know this is a little old fashioned writing a letter, but it feels better to be actually writing to someone, albeit unknown, than just speaking into the ether and wondering who is listening.

So let me tell you about my mittens. There are three different types that I've listed:

These are the last of the handspun yarn crocheted into a simple shape. I need to make more of these, but there's alot of spinning to do. I do have some gorgeous coloured tops in my stash waiting for me.

Then there's my new range:

I've made them with the boys in mind, but they do look good on women too! Currently, they come in black, grey or natural colours. I like addiing something different on the band and down the back of the hand.

Then there's my standby fingerless mittens, the ones with the buttons. They started this whole fingerless mitten making run.

There's the black and cream ones I always have, though I do need a couple of grey gloves, I am from Melbourne!

Then there are the couple of colours I currently have.












And, finally,

the chunky ones! Two are handspun and the other is from a stash dive with amazing buttons.

I have made an aweful lot of these fingerless mittens with buttons, over 150 if my records are to be believed, and the spreadsheet never lies, though I can hardly believe it! What makes it even more unbelievable is that each one is different. Sometimes it's just the yarn and I knit the square in stocking stitch with the thumb and the borders in moss stitch. That's my standard pattern, but alot are diving into the stitch books and playing with different stitches.

Anyway, I hope you like them and if you want to become a known customer head over to the fingerless mitten section of my Etsy shop.

Hope to hear from you,

Cheers, Teresa


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