Preparing for Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! There are so much going on in the fibre world at the moment, the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show is only three weeks away, Sparrow and I are busy planning and preparing for the stock. This will be our first show as Cat & Sparrow because last year I piggy backed with her, we are so excited and slightly panicky, but mainly excited!

Here are some sneak peak of what we are taking to the show:

This is a new colourway called Brass Monkey. I like the funkiness of it and the fibre base is a luxurious blend of Polwarth, Baby Camel and Silk, the same base as the 'Go Lassie Go' I showed you last week - it's our favourite blend, so easy to spin.

Here's another one, which is part of a theme we are bringing out, think Game of Thrones (yes we are both obsessed!) it's all I can say for the time being ;)

Now show us what you have been up to!

Oh, yes, I also got this...

... but I'd better not start on these just yet or I'll never get anything done, besides, hubby and son number one are both champing at the bits to lay their hands on these, so maybe I'll just let them fight over it for now ;-)

Thanks for dropping by, please hop over to Andrea's at Wisdom Begins in Wonder for more fibre fun.

Shrop-A-Sock Heathery Moors

Happy Firbre Arts Friday! I'm still battling on with my study which is gradually coming to an end, there is definitely lights at the end of the tunnel, I just need to hang on in there a wee while longer. In an effort to keep my sanity and calm those hyper-go-crazy grey cells inflicted by the said study, I spin a little everyday - it's my ultimate meditation.

I finished spinning a bump of Shrop-A-Sock carded fleece, it's from a breed called Shropshire. Apparently Shropshire used to be the number one sheep breed in England, US and Canada (ShropshireSheep.org), it's origin can trace back to the 1700s. It is a down type fleece which means it's hard to felt, and that makes it a perfect choice for socks. I got my bumps from an Aussie breeder, unfortunately she doesn't have a website so I can't link it to her.

The bump was divided in half and spun separately then plied, I then dyed the yarn in the crockpot.

This will become a pair of socks for myself.... one day :)

Thanks for dropping by, please hop over to Andrea's at Wisdom Begins in Wonder for more fibre fun.

Creeper Alert!

If you have a son who is 8~12 years old you will probably have heard of Mincreaft, if you don't, well, lucky you! Minecraft is a game where the world is square and everything is built of 3D cubes, there is no specific goal, instead it allows you to make it whatever the imagination fancies. Needless to say Master E is a covet fan who frequently lives in the cubes wonderland. He's been invited to a birthday party this weekend and the birthday boy is also a Minecraft fan, so he requested a "Creeper" for his friend.

Please excuse the terrible photo, I left it a bit late so by the time I finished it it's already dark. It's a fairly easy make as it's just a combination of cubes, actually it's one cube and five cuboids, but you get the drift. I used a 4mm hook and some stash yarn from my dyeing experiment, the stuffing is the wool fluff (clean) I saved from carding and combing. The head is not as square as I would have liked but this will do. Apparently in the game the Creeper would get close to the player and explode to cause damage, but this one is pretty safe ;-)

When not playing Minecraft Master E has shown some considerable interest in fibre art, he helped me with this breaking violet experiment:

I think we could have used a little more dye stock, the finished braid has quite a bit of white in it even though the colours seemed quite strong during application. Also, I think if I didn't add vinegar in the pre-soak it might encourage better distribution, because I did notice the dyes being taken up by the fibre as soon as they hit so the "massage" only helped a little bit. But overall I am still happy with the result.

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

More on playing with sticks, and onion skins :-)

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! Last week I talked about playing with sticks and strings in my new fad backstrap and tablet weaving, this week I have been playing with sticks of a different kind :-)

I made these DIY turkish spindles during the Tour de Fleece when I had to be on the road for a few days, then I just neglected them after I got home. But recently my wheel has developed a clanking noise and I can see that the brackets holding the spokes are becoming loose, I sent an email to Ashford asking for advice but in the meantime I daren't use it in fear that it may get worse. So I'm back to these sticks, the one on the left was made of cardboard decorated by Elli my youngest son:

I've been spinning on these interchangeably, the theory is that they will finish around the same time so I don't have to wait to ply. As you can see the progress is not great, especially when you are used to the speed of the wheel. But I'm perservering, not that I have much choice at this moment... I think I'm about halfway. The spinning is quite fine so I'm hoping for a nice lace weight :-)

Now you all know I like to play with all kinds of stuff that can be used for dyeing, this week I'd like to share my latest experiment with onion skins. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time but kept getting distracted, I was prompted by the fullness of the little tin I used to collect onion skins - that was a couple of weeks ago.

At that time I happened to have some leftover white wine on hand... how can you have leftover wine you might ask? That's because I prefer red, but I use (cheap) white for cooking. Remembering reading somewhere that alcohol could enhance the colour in dyeing, or was it for mordant? anyway I chucked the leftover wine in the soaking pot and left it for a few days. The colour/pigment gradually came out and got stronger each day, I then drained the juice and marinated my yarn (alum mordanted) in it, and just left it... Oh OK I forgot about it... a week later I suddenly remembered about the yarn marinate and was surprised to find the water clear. So I gave the yarn a rinse, no colour came out, and ta da!

Who could have thought a handful of brown onion skins could give such vibrant colour? I didn't even need to use heat, just some time... it must be the white wine ;-)

That's me for the week, what have you been up to?

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Mordant Wonders

A few weeks ago we had some storms which resulted in many fallen branches... and yes, you guessed right, this branch followed me home ;-)

This is a different species to the one I used before, although I haven't confirmed what it is yet as the identification of eucalyptus is proving to be a real challenge - that's another issue entirely, one I would like to learn more about but don't have the time right now. But even I can tell the differences: the leaves are of a slightly darker shade with a bluish tint, also the bark of the tree was rough and dark rather than brown and stringy like the last time, etc. However when I fed this information to Google it turned up a dozen possibilities, I'm just not skilled enough to pick this out from thousands of varieties of eucalyptus. So for now all I need to know is that it came from a tree in the park near the train station.

Anyway my initial attempt at dyeing a white skein pre-mordanted with alum returned a dark beige, not very exciting. Then I remembered from reading Spinning Around that you can change the colour by using different mordant and there were recipes in the book for making different "mordant teas"...  these are not real teas of course but a way of acquiring mordant without the use of chemicals. So I made a "iron tea" by soaking some metal hairpins in white vinegar, then I added the "iron tea" to the dye bath and added the beige skein, not knowing what to expect. Imagine then my surprise when I lifted the skein after simmering, a cool olive green, how's that for a change!

I was encouraged by the result, and as the dye bath was not exhausted I looked for something else to dye. There were a couple of balls fingering wool yarn in my stash that I was not crazy about, so they became the next experiment. The photos below are before and after:

The before colourway reminds me of German flag for some reason, not that I have anything against Germany, I mean I love sauerkraut! I'm just not too keen on these colours in one ball/skein, the afterwards muted tones are much more appealing to me :)

I am going to suspend any project that is intricate for a while, as I just started working on a trial which is likely to run for the next three weeks or longer, the demand on those little grey cells in the courtroom is a bit taxing on the old brain that I find it hard to concentrate when I get home. So for the time being I'm favouring mindless activities, like spinning...

This was an experiment with a merino/sparkly blend, I think the sparkly might be angelina but can't be certain. It came out rather well, n'est-ce pas? :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Breaking Black: An Experiment (and what all those colours mean!)

When I wrote my last week's post I wondered if any of you would pick up on the hint of my possible travel plan, and sure enough some of you did ;-)  Yes, we are planning a trip, a big one, around Christmas/New Year time. As we are still finalising the details I won't say more until we have a definite itinerary, won't be long now (fingers crossed!) :)

This week I would like to share with you with some experiment I did on using black food dye. There is an interesting article on Breaking Black at DyeYourYarn.com. I've been wanting to try it for sometime, then I saw someone's wonderful result on Raverly and decided to have a go myself.

First I put some dry wool lap (leftovers from Bendigo Woollen Mills) in the crockpot and dropped some black food dye in small dots:

Then I started pouring diluted vinegar onto the wool, you can see the colours started to break already:

I set the crockpot to low just before we went to J's martial arts class, and by the time we got back (about 1.5 hours) the water in the pot was clear and here's the result:

Now the reason for the colours to break is because there is no true black dye, all blacks are a combination of other colours. For my experiment I used Queen food colour black. The label lists colours 123, 102, 133. A little research turns up the following findings:

Colour 123: also known as Amaranth, FD&C red 2 or E123, it's a dark red to purple colour. Traditionally it was made from Coal Tar, the modern ones are more likely to be derived from petroleum byproduct. It is banned in the USA but still legal in many other countries - evidently it is legal in Australia!

Colour 102: also known as Tartrazine, FD&C yellow 5 or E102, it is a common yellow food colour and it's derived from petroleum. You can find this in many food items such as ice cream, candies, soft drinks, snacks and cereals, etc. There are some findings linking certain allergic reactions to this colour, in some cases children with asthma could have a bad reaction, it's also been linked to hyperactivity in children.

Colour 133: also known as Brilliant Blue FCF (blue 1) or E133, it is derived from... surprise surprise! petroleum. This colour was previously banned in many European countries but now has been ruled as legal by the EU. It also has been linked to causing a reaction with asthma.

If you are interested to learn more about these colours you can click on each name which will take you to the Wikipedia site (ok Wiki is not the authority on sciences but it's good enough for a layperson like me), or you can conduct your own research. Frankly it does not make cheerful reading, I don't know about you but I think the best use for these colours is on fibre and yarn. Smarties anyone?

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

So We're Still Here :)

Yep, sorry to disappoint those staunch Mayan calendar enthusiasts out there, as I write this post it's already past midday on 21 December 2012 Australian Time, looks like it's doomsday no more and we can all get on with our lives.

Well, for those of us who are lucky enough to do so that is. My thoughts go to the families and friends of the victims of Newtown shooting, I know I can never fully comprehend what they must be going through right now but I sincerely hope that somehow they will find strength to pull through. My Christmas wish for this year is that the US government and the NRA will collaborate on working out a solution to curb these senseless shootings so that those little angels and their teachers did not die in vain. I know being a non-American I shouldn't get involved but I just couldn't help this time, as a parent I feel the pain of those who have lost their children in this horrific tragedy, especially at this time of the year.

Sorry about my off topic ramblings, now back to fibre arts...

I finally finished the Skyp Socks for the old man, I started them back in November but only worked on them when I was doing the waiting around. The pattern is nice and simple but the result is rather elegant, of course I reverse the process and did them toe-up with short-row heels.

The sock blockers are homemade by following this tutorial, I think the heel part could do with a little more shaping but otherwise they work just fine :)

I also did some experimenting with dyeing the wool locks to spin a gradient skein, I used one of the small fleeces I bought from my sheep farm visit, it came out rather well I think :)

Three more days till Christmas, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas wherever you are :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

One Two Pickle My Wool ... ...

Summer in Australia can be very hot, which is perfect for solar dyeing :)  I've been reading up on different dyeing methods ever since I started spinning, solar dyeing jumped out particularly because it's energy efficient and easy to do. Now that summer's finally here I'm eager to try it out!

I had some of my own hand carded hand spun 75/25 merino tussah silk blend that I wanted to dye, my little man helped me mixing the colours because he wanted to create Cyan. First the yarn was pre-soaked in a white vinegar solution to help set the colour because I was using food dyes, then I filled two jars (a pickle jar and a recycled Chinese sake jar) with my dye stock and submerged one skein in each jar and left them in the sun to cook:

... ... and when the water in the jars was clear I rinsed the yarn and hang it to dry, and tah dah!

I'm not sure it's Cyan but I quite like the effect,  it's been named Summer Seas :D

Finally I can show you my finished Fern Amiga Cardigan, it's very comfortable to wear and weighs hardly anything. This is the eleventh of my IntSweMoDo2012 challenge, I'm still one short, yikes!

The response to my story last week was good, Vivian was particularly encouraging (she always is!). I wish there was something exciting to share with you this week but it has been an ordinary week with lots of to-ing and fro-ing, including visits to dentists and GPs, lawyers and barristers, oh and I went to prison again (that doesn't sound right!).  The story I'm sharing today didn't happen in this week but it concerned the same client that I saw in prison which I think highlights the challenges we interpreters face in Court Interpreting.

The visit to prison this week was by a psychologist at the request of the defence lawyer. The inmate, let's call him H, he might appear in other stories, was accused of murder. I have been working on this case for about two years now and H is still in remand. He was due to be sentenced a few months ago, I went to the meeting with his lawyer and barrister a few days before the hearing and during the meeting H agreed to plead guilty in the hope of a reduced sentence. I thought that was the end of it, but a week later his lawyer called me to attend another meeting with him. Apparently during the arraignment H first pleaded guilty (through an interpreter), but when the judge was going through the particulars for the next steps H had an outburst saying that he would never admit to murder. You can imagine the confusion and kafuffle! During that follow up meeting H insisted that he Did Not plead guilty in court, that the court interpreter got it wrong. However as a result of this misfortune his lawyer and barrister could no longer represent him, as they themselves might be called as witnesses when the matter was investigated. H had to find another lawyer.

The new lawyer kept me on the case and obtained the court recording to find out what had happened, I went through the recording countless times and did a transcript verbatim. The recording did show that H pleaded not guilty and when the interpreter interpreted "I plead guilty" H was visibly surprised (he did understand that much in English), and the outburst ensued a minute or two later. Now I'm not criticising that court interpreter in any way, in fact I sympathise and feel sorry for her because her competency and reputation will be put under scrutiny. The acoustics in courtrooms are generally bad, particularly in the supreme court where this hearing was held. Interpreters always have a hard time at catching what everyone's saying in court as we don't get headphones like conference interpreters do. Added to the difficulty was that H did not appear in person but via video link, I can only imagine the sound quality, plus H has a tendency to mumble anyway. When I did the transcript I had the luxury of going over the recording numerous times but, when in court, blink and you'll miss it and then your reputation is on the line. Such are the perils of court interpreters. And that's my story for this week.

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Baa baa black sheep ...

I visited a sheep farm with my spinning friend Deb on Monday, it is a small farm in the Macedon Ranges called Fairfield Finns. They have around 130 sheep and specialise in Finn sheep and Finn crosses. The owner Maureen is a lovely lady who took us to the field to meet her flock which is guarded by two gorgeous looking alpacas, some of her sheep are coated so the fleeces from these sheep are nice and clean. She also took us to the wool shed where she stores her fleeces, as it's spring in Melbourne her sheep have just been shorn. She has all these fleeces hanging up in pillow cases (to let them breath and to prevent moths) as you can see here:

Maureen is very organised, every pillow case has a label with the breed of sheep, weight of fleece, colour(s), staple length, price and a code to indicate which sheep it's from. We were encouraged to look around and spread out the fleece on a table if we saw something that we might be interested. Maureen insisted that we should check out the whole fleece and feel it before we made a decision, but making a decision was the hardest part because all her fleeces were just so gorgeous, it was really hard to choose from. I'm sure if we were able, physically and financially, Deb and I would have gladly taken a lot more! In the end Deb chose seven and I chose six, mine were three coloured and three white. I won't bore you with photos of bags of wool but I would like to show just one:

I got two bags of this lovely black fleece, both from the same sheep and totaling 1.7kg. Maureen was disappointed with the brown tips as the fleece came from a coated sheep, she thought that the coat would prevent the sun bleaching the tips. But I love it! I think once spun up it's going to be beautiful. My plan is to make a jumper for the old man, I don't often knit jumpers for him because, well, men's jumpers take too long to make. But he's turning 50 (shhh!) in a year's time so I thought I'd make him one with my handspun. I don't know how long it will take but at least I have a head start :)

Other than my little fleece hunting adventure life ticks along, but this week I was reminded of something important by my little man Elli. I was experimenting with dyeing (of course!) and I thought I'd try a semi solid effect, and I followed the instructions from Teach Yourself Visually Hand-Dyeing by Barbara Parry, which involves making up the dye at a certain temperature and dip the prepared yarn in the dye bath to allow certain colours to strike first before simmering it. Sounds easy enough but my yarn didn't come out as I envisioned, it came out all uneven with light and dark patches...

 ... so I was grumbling to myself when Elli said to me: "Be happy with what you have Mummy, because we're lucky." So we are, my dear boy, so we are! On that note, I wish you all good day and have a nice weekend!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

I dream of Monet

In this week's post I had hoped that I would be able to report that my Paris in Melbourne tunic was finished, unfortunately that was not the case. But I'm almost there, (most) definitely next Friday...

I am rather pleased with myself on my recent dyeing and carding experience though. Remember when I first started spinning I had some bright blue fibre on a spindle? Well, my spindle spinning hasn't improved much since then because I got completely obsessed with the spinning wheel, and I used some of that blue fibre and some silk hankie to spin up this. But I still had some left over that I wasn't sure what to do with, then I got some sample fibre in a jade marble colourway which was also too little to spin on its own, apart from that there was still a handful of scoured corriedale locks left from my spinning class... and all these little bits of fibre just sitting there looking at me as if to say "Come on, you've got to do something!" So I did, first I over dyed the blue fibre with some yellow food dye to match the jade marble, then I dyed the corriedale locks with blue food dye, and I carded all three together:

I really am quite pleased with the result, the colours blend well together and they remind me of Monet's Waterlilies. I can't wait to see the spun up yarn!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Dyeing Experiments - A Chance With A Spinning Wheel: Part IV

In this week's spinning class we experimented with rainbow dyeing, in a nutshell it's just cooking the yarn/fibre in a frying pan with just enough water. I say cooking in a loose term, simmering would be more actuate. Of course you need to add dye to the yarn or fibre, we used Landscape Dyes that come in powder form and just sprinkled whatever colours we fancied on top of the yarn/fibre, then you just stand back and watch the transformation take place.

The colours I used were Cyclamin (purple), Citrus (orange) and Sandstone (deep yellow). I had no idea how it would come out, the colours in the pan were quite deep and I was having doubts while watching but once rinsed and dried the colours just took on a new life, it's amazing!

In my excitement I forgot to take photos of the process, I might write a separate post for Rainbow Dyeing at another time with instructions.

I also tried a little KoolAid dyeing in my slow cooker: 

A valuable lesson learnt from this exercise was that do not tie the skein too tightly unless the tie-dyed effect is a desired outcome ... you can see where the tie had been the colour is much lighter, there are actually uncoloured spots if you peel back the top layer. But I'll call it a designer feature, like my thick and think yarn ;)

After last week's lesson I was eager to experiment with mixing different fibres, the skein above is plied with 1 strand of merino and 1 strand of merino/tussah silk blend (first carding by myself). The merino silk blend was so easy to spin, the long staple from the silk makes it easy to spin very think yarn and I just love the luster from the silk. Another experiment I did was combining a silk hankie and a corriedale top, I'm not sure if the little bumps are part and parcel with silk hankies or if I was doing something wrong, but there were quite a few of these in the otherwise very smooth and almost cobweb like strand. Thankfully once plied the little bumps are not very visible.

It's the school holidays here and our teacher is away so there will be no class next week, but that won't stop me from spinning - just as soon as my finger feels better, burnt my right middle finger last night, it's not serious just a bit sore. I might stick to knitting for a few days :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show

We missed the Sheep & Wool Show last year, so for this year I marked the dates on the calendar so that not to miss it again this year. Unfortunately we could only make it on the last day which was last Sunday, the day started off sunny when my younger son played his usual Sunday football match, but by the time we arrived in Bendigo it turned overcast, but there was so much going on we hardly took any notice of the weather.

My little boy had a lovely time in the little patting zoo with baby lamb, alpacas, chickens, ducks, turkeys and a calf. He loved feeding the animals, one of the alpacas even had it's nose in the feed bag he was holding; but he didn't like being trod on by the little (but certainly not light) calf.

<- one of the three alpaca in the patting zoo, isn't she beautiful! 

I, on the other hand, wanted to see alpacas. I've often admired how lofty the alpaca wool felt, and I have heard how they were such gentle animals; but I have never seen one up close. There were three alpacas in the patting zoo and they were very patient with all the children fussing about them. As soon as I put my hand in their fleece I was in love, their fleece was sooo soft and fuzzy and warm, I wanted to caress them all day!



And we found a lot more alpacas in several other tents.

Suri alpacas (they have long hair) ->

<- The colour of this baby reminded me of rich dark chocolate.

The colour of this one is actually of golden honey, but I couldn't get it to show on camera.  ->

Ok, I was bit over-enthusiastic about alpacas, but they are just too cute! We got to chat with one of the breeders and he told us that alpacas are hardy animals and are very easy to look after. They like being in a herd and they seldom get diseases. Oh, and they are head-shy, which means if you want to pat them you shouldn't raise your hand in front of their eyes or you will startle them.

I wondered if I could keep a pair of alpacas for pets ... 

Of course, no self respecting knitter would ever go to a wool show without acquiring some new stash, it would have been a waste of opportunities! But there were so much to choose from, I wondered from booth to booth, sinking my hands in wonderful skeins of silk and wool and taking mental notes of all the possibilities, but temptations were everywhere and I couldn't make up my mind. Then one particular booth caught my breath and stopped me in my breath, bundles of hand dyed skeins piled on the tables, each of unique colours, I picked up a skein to savour it's delicious colours, only to be drawn to another, and another... I battled with myself, we were suppose to be saving money right now because we were going on holiday in September, but I couldn't move! 

After much deliberation I decided to be good and not to go too mad, and settled on these ...  they are hand dyed 4ply from Waratah Fibres, I was lucky that there were 2 skeins of the same lot, and the lady even gave me a free scarf/shawl pattern :)

Before we left, we visited the Kids Korner and my son saw a lady and had his personalised spider made for him. While waiting I was drawn to a booth by Try Dyeing - I've always wanted to try dyeing my own wool and this booth had read my mind! I bought a skein of 50% silk/50% wool fingering yarn and a two colour kit complete with spoon and gloves, and of course instructions on how to proceed. But I was also pleased to find that they had blocking wires for sale and at only $20/set. So I had to have them and a little tub of blocking T-pins.

It was a exhausting day but I was happy as Punch!!