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!

Sticks and strings make beautiful things :)

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! As you may know that I was bitten by the weaving bug recently, not content with waiting until January to lay my hands on a Cricket Loom I started searching for things I could do right now and I found just the thing - backstrap weaving :)

Backstrap weaving is an ancient craft that is still practiced in many countries around the world today, especially in South America and Asia. I found a very good online resource for getting started on this ancient craft on WeaveZine - it's written by a wonderful lady called Laverne Waddington, otherwise known as warmi on Ravelry, who has been learning, documenting and teaching this technique for the last 20 years.

So, with the help of her article and Ravelry group I started making my own backstrap loom. The first step was to make a backstrap...

I found that the poles on my "fibre cave" was perfect for warping:

And if you have a son who does army cadet he can be very useful for securing poles to table legs :)

Here's my very first woven piece - a backstrap, and my backstrap loom is complete (I bought the different sized dowels from Bunnings and they cut them for me).

The backstrap is far from perfect, the two ends are not of the same width and the edges at the beginning look like they have been chewed by a dog, but nonetheless it's a functional piece, so I'm fairly happy with it.

Then I got a little adventurous and tried tablet weaving, where you use a pack of cards with holes to make patterns. An explanation of tablet weaving (or card weaving) can be found here.

I started with a thin band:

... then I got a bit more daring:

Tablet weaving is a lot of fun, even though it can be tricky to thread the cards correctly and keeping to the correct turning sequence, there is so much learn and I'm eager to explore more.

On the other hand I really should go back to my knitting and finish some WIPs so that they don't become UFOs... And 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!

TdF round up, Bendigo, and Etsy!

Welcome to Fibre Arts Friday! I'm sorry I missed posting last week, got a bit carried away with TdF and other stuff... anyway, this will be a longish post so please bear with me :)

First up, Tour de Fleece has drawn to an end last weekend, it was my first TdF and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially with Team Wonder - such a wonderful group of like minded people. Thank you everyone on the team, I wouldn't have had so much fun without you, and the beautiful creations are so inspirational.

Here are my achievements during the tour: a total of 7 skeins and 1620 meters, not bad for a rookie :D

Before the TdF started I'd set myself some challenges, posted here, these were:

• spin 100% alpaca (I only spun alpaca in a blend before)
• intentionally spin sock yarn
• perfecting the woollen long draw technique
• spin from stash

How I did: 

• I can honestly say all my spinnings were from my stash that's at least three months old. 
• I spun two 100% alpaca skeins (top right in the collage), the natural coloured one was from alpaca fleece and the brown one was some mill end rovings (actually only one single was spun during the tour). Out of these two I prefer spinning from the fleece. 
• I "intentionally" spun two sock yarns (first & second in the right column). The first, dark red, was spun into a thin single and Navajo plied, it did come out at a fingering weight. The second, candy sherbert, was spun into three singles and plied, also at a fingering weight. The verdict? you will have to wait till I knit some socks with them and give some wearing ;)
• I practiced and practiced and practiced woollen spun: the first alpaca, the two in the left column, and the bottom right, were all spun using the woollen technique. Apart from the alpaca which was spun from rolags, all the others were spun from the fold. I DO love woollen spun, and I got better at it, but far from perfection. So I need to practice some more...

Last weekend was also the Bendigo Sheep & Wool Show,  the weather was terrible, it was cold and wet and miserable. But the spirit was high, my friend Rachael did a fantastic job manning the booth for three days, she told me that about 1/3 of my stock sold. That's not bad for a first timer, consider the allocated booth was in the very end row of buildings.

We went up to Bendigo on Sunday, I helped a little bit at the booth and made some sales, yippee! And of course fun was had by all as you can see from the photos here :)

Elli was stuck at the Ashford booth for ages playing on their knitter's loom, we met Mr. Richard Ashford himself, who was doing a really good job trying to get us walk away with that loom and a matching bag. I felt a bit mean not buying it for Elli, but I'd set my heart on a cricket loom - thanks to Andrea's raving review :) ... we will be getting the cricket loom when we visit America in January, can't wait!

And the last but not the least, I have finally managed to list something in my Etsy shop: Cat's Cauldron Fibres.

At moment it's mainly my handspun, once the weather gets better I will be dyeing again. So stay tuned :)

Oh yes, you might have noticed that my blog has a new look, I've adopted a more traditional format because Vivian brought it to my attention that sometimes the comments don't load properly in the other format. Fingers crossed it should work now!

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

Tour de Fleece 2013 - Week 2, and more...

Phew, What a week! I'd travelled 1300km and visited 5 destinations across 2 states in the last 4 days with a Chinese delegation; then I attended a Committal's Hearing this morning which signaled that things were back to normal ;)

Before the long week began we went to a Folk Festival in a neibouring town last Sunday, where we all (Except J the teenager) tried our hands on a weaving loom - it was a knitter's loom by Ashford. It was a lot of fun!

On the left was my effort... as it turned out Jelly was a natural at weaving, he even showed his dad how things worked. I definitely want a loom now, the question is which one? Any suggestions? :)

Now before I show you what happened with my TdF I have to share with you this cool tutorial for making a DIY Turkish spindle. I wanted to bring a spindle with me so I could still spin while on the road, then I saw someone on Team Wonder who made a Turkish spindle with double pointed needles. After reading her comments I also did a search and found the tutorial linked above, the instructions were very easy to follow and I made one in 20 minutes, all I used was three bamboo skewers from my cupboard, it didn't cost anything - always a bonus ;)

As you can see from the progress photos below it "does what it says on the tin" - I love it!

The photos show my efforts from Day 8 - Day 12 except day 10 which was a rest day. I came home for a pit stop on Day 12 so I was able to work on my wheel for a little bit. Day 13 was a total wash out as it was a long day (14 hours) of travelling/meeting/travelling, I only managed about 10 minutes or so on the spindle while waiting for the return flight, and there was no photo. Today is Day 14 but I'm not done yet ;)

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Tour de Fleece 2013 - Week 1

Wow, what a week it has been! I'm having so much fun at my first Tour de Fleece, look at all the spinning I did! :)

6 days of spinning :)

Day 1: 1.5 bobbins of 100% alpaca, spun woollen.
Day 2: finished my first skein of 2ply alpaca, 110g / 153m approx.
Day 3: finished 1st bobbin of BFL/silk.
Day 4: finished 2nd bobbin of BFL/silk.
Day 5: plied the 2 bobbins and I have my second skein of the tour. 100g / 400m approx.
Day 6: started on a new braid, a blend of Shetland/BFL/silk.

Unfortunately you won't see such productivity next week as I have to be away for 4 days (working, nothing exotic). I'm going to bring my spindle with me, not sure how much I'll get done but it would be a good opportunity to practice on the spindle, it's been much neglected.

Have a good weekend everyone! Happy spinning/knitting/crocheting/crafting... :)

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

p.s. Team Wonder rocks!! :D