Sunday, January 14, 2007

Spinning

I am currently involved in 2 spinning swaps. The first is Spin to Knit and I received my first skein from my pal yesterday. 70 m of a lovely tussah silk in beautiful hand dyed pinks, greys and mauves with a lovely subtle sheen. I must find something special to make with this.

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The second is
Spin me a Treasure an international swap based in France. My spoilee is into natural colours rather than vibrant colours so this was my starting point.

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A creamy carded wool from local sheep. A mixture of carded kid mohair (from a friends goats), angora (from local rabbits) and silk. The ball is a very fine 2 ply silk and a necklace of mother of pearl chips. I intend to spin the fibres into quite a bulky yarn, possibly flamme and then ply with the silk 2ply threaded with the mother of pearl. Something completely new for me.


The result is slightly coiled which I quite like.

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I wasn't sure how frequently or how evenly to place the mother of pearl so I went with every 30-120 cm roughly and tried not to make it regular. I was concerned that the beads would wear on the thread as I slid them down and it did in fact break twice. I just tied a knot and trimmed the ends and it hardly shows.

Getting back to Spin to Knit, this is what I have organised for my spoilee.

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My spoilee likes orange and is very easy to please so this is my starting point. Orange wool (left), alpaca (middle), and mohair (right). In front from left tussah silk, trilobal shiny stuff in a copper colour, soysilk and recycled sari silk fibre. Time to get the drum carder out.


I have joined the Friday Night Spinners an will get the button up soon.

Here is some recent spinning.
The pink is local wool plied with a grey/purple mohair (my own goats)
The blue is shetland and kid mohair.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Papillon girl said...

you talk about me being busy! I love the wools in this last posting ...especially the creamy white with the mother of pearl. Luscious and rich and very very sophisticated. Like looking at a beautiful bowl of fresh rich full fat dairy farm cream.

5:11 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Wow, you should win the prize for best yarn in Spin Me A Treasure! I love that mix so fab :-)
I was restricted to spinning boring laceweight. My swoppee hated anything not sheep and wanted no frills or fancy bits, sob. 150g of laceweight can be so boring that way....
Glad to see you'll be Friday nighting. It will be great to share piccies on the blogs.
I'm waiting for fibre to arrive, but may give in to some impulse dyeing...

11:41 AM  
Blogger Lorena said...

Did I not comment on this? I could have sworn that I did. Well, I'll just commeng again, then! Your spinning talent amazes me. And I love, love, love the stuff made from YOUR VERY OWN GOATS! How cool is that?! Pretty dang cool, I tell ya.

9:24 PM  

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