Fibre and Clay

I have been quite busy of late turning these beautiful nylon warps into hopefully, some lovely works. I've been working toward my first 'not quite' solo exhibition.

I do love warps, they often intensify the colours and textures you're using and they hold such promise.

The thinner is 60 ends and the larger is 540 ends. However, after much angst, accidents (don't drop partially dented warps!) and redesign, the big warp was slightly smaller (320 ends!) Despite all this, all the new works that I've made have ended up achieving the result I wanted.

Today was the hanging. I spent all morning trying to get it all just right. Thank goodness the lovely Heather Wilson is there with her wonderful pots and dragons. The Bolin Bolin gallery is much larger when you have to put the work up. Finally, it's up and even looks OK.

If you're free Thursday night 6-8pm, we're having an opening, so please come along and help us celebrate our achievements, we'd love to see you.

Fibre & Clay

Teresa Bennett& Heather Wilson
9th October to 3rd November

9am to 5pm, 7 days a week

Bolin Bolin Gallery at Bulleen Art & Garden,
6 Manningham Rd W., Bulleen. 98505155.

www.baag.com.au

Inspired colours galore

Hugely busy, in need of some gentle recreation, off to Experimental Spinning for the afternoon. Whilst the lovely Charley of Ixchel Angora Bunny and Funky Fibre gave a talk to the spinning certificate group, we carded colours to create all sorts of colours, using basic blue, red, yellow, black and white wool top.

Charley even had one of her absolutely gorgeous, fluffy Angora Bunnies to show.

So an excellent afternoon all round.

On one of my trips to Angus and Robertson in search of bargains I had picked up this book, full of the most wonderfully colourful pictures.

I chose this picture and these are the colours I managed to create.

When the rush is over I'm going to create some more and combine them into a single yarn, full of wonderfully exuberant colour.

Recharged, ready to go, thanks everyone.....

The x-factor team wins!

Sarah, Jen and I competed in the Sheep to Shawl competition held yesterday at the Royal Melbourne Show, and we won, in a time of 3 hours and 15 minutes, setting a new record and being the first winners of the Crossfibres Perpetual Trophy. What a day.

The aim of the event was to spin enough yarn (we spun too much!) ply it, and knit it into a simple shawl. We were provided with a beautiful fleece from the Black and Coloured Sheep Association, and was a beautiful grey from Helen Wright. It was a lovely fleece to spin from.

Everyone had the same pattern, which consisted on three triangles and 3 diamonds, which we could lace together.

In the end we won by 1 minute.

We all went home tired and happy and planning to compete next year!

A busy weekend

Yes, it's going to be a busy weekend. Saturday is the Ivanhoe Makers Market, new name, bright new logo and hopefully a busy day to celebrate the end of Winter and the start of Spring. I'm going to have a 20% off everything sale, to celebrate. I hope that everyone comes and says hello.


These are the latest neckwarmers that I've been working on. Handspun, dyed, knit and finished with a button (of course).









And a few more fingerless mittens.









Then on Sunday, I'm part of a team that will be competing in the Sheep to Shawl competition at the Royal Melbourne Show. The competition starts around 10.30am and finishes when all the teams have spun and knit a shawl, however long that takes.

I've always wanted to have a go at competing, should be fun. It would be nice to have a cheer squad?

Snb dyeing

Last Friday, a few of the members of our Snb group came over to my house and we did a little random dyeing, by way of introduction for them. It was alot of fun and some ordinary yarns were transformed into a myriad of colours.

The basic rule for random dyeing is to minimise, as much as possible, the amount of water in the dyepot to reduce the amount of movement the dye particles can make. Dyes are sprinkled on in varying levels of randomness. (I know, it's either random or not.....but bear with me!) You then continue dyeing as usual, with some housekeeping (read 'poking') throughout to ensure that all parts of the yarn has some dye.

I did my dyeing after they'd all left, trying to get a good red. Again, I did succeed but couldn't help adding a little green. I love the yarn and am ready to knit it up! (Apologies for the picture....I'm recharging my battery....)

I have been determined to use the travelling vine pattern. You know how something gets into your head and won't go away, well....

I've rewritten the pattern adding four more rows to the pattern to give bigger blocks of colour, and, changed needle sizes several times.....back to 4mm needles, sometimes the right size IS the right size.

I'm happy....hope I can finish this by the next market.

I do love stitch patterns

Two projects this month have given me the joy of having to find an appropriate stitch pattern to highlight the yarn. As you may have gathered, I do love stitch dictionaries. I can walk past many a pattern book, but will walk over hot coals to get to a new stitch pattern book.



The first yarn was bought from Wendy Dennis at this years sheep and wool show. I had no idea what sort of pattern might suffice.

I have a lovely book: 'Traditional Knitting Patterns from Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Italy and other European Countries' by James Norbury, which I do love. I found a pattern called 'Mrs Hunters pattern. It's a lovely simple four row pattern and it worked. However, it did skew to the left and would need a little blocking when finished.......This is where I made my mistake.




I decided, in my folly....I had found the perfect pattern....to try and find another. Of course none worked and eventually, giving in to common sense, went back to Mrs Hunter.











It only needed light blocking and is just gorgeous. Lots of movement and of course the yarn is just gorgeous, as you would expect from Wendy Dennis. The joy of knitting is every single length of a beautiful yarn passes gently through your fingers as you watch it grow.




The next yarn is my fine fractal yarn. If you recall (I think I blogged about it?) I was a bit disappointed with the result. However, I now have a request that I knit the yarn up, if the person requesting can have first choice. I am very happy to do this.



The journey for this yarn was a little different. I knew exactly what I wanted and explaining to a friend, found it in a Barbara Walker book (which I don't have, but will one day....), but I then was able to find it in my Traditional knitting book. Hooray! I just love the way the fabric moves, it will work perfectly.....







No, it didn't......it needed larger areas of colour, so I went in search again....how about this one?







Yep, I think I like it!







aaaagh, knitting.................

Weaving way too slowly

Early this year I applied to have an exhibition at the Bolin Bolin gallery at Bulleen Art and Garden, a nursery not far from me that has resisted the temptation to put in a coffee shop, but has a really lovely gallery instead. The exhibition is in October, and while that seems along way away, it's not!

I am going to do a series of three woven structures, this is the first. They should have been completed. I will get this off in the next couple of days, and hopefully the next two (copper wire and plastic piping) will be quicker. At least I don't have to collect my insert supplies.

I am, however, very pleased with the way it is weaving up. Using fine nylon wire can be annoying as it does like to do its own thing, but the effect is fine and ethereal.