The Little Yellow Duck Project

It's been a while since I posted anything, just been so busy lately. Today's I would like to share with you a very meaningful initiative called The Little Yellow Duck Project. If you hang around Ralvery a lot you'll probably have seen it already.

So what is The Little Yellow Duck Project?

"The Little Yellow Duck Project involves people around the world handcrafting little yellow duck gifts as random acts of kindness that are left in public places for others to find. A special tag on each one invites the finder to take their gift home to brighten their day and to visit this website to register where they found their gift. We hope that the stories and information found here will encourage them to pledge their own random act of kindness by registering to donate blood, bone marrow, organs tissues. " - copied from their website

There are some free patterns on their website you can use, so whether your craft is knitting (pattern by Allan Dart no less), crochet or sewing, there is a pattern for you.  

I made a crochet one today, during my study break, ahem.... it's a quick and easy make, but the only yellow yarn I have is some 4ply/fingering cotton yarn, so I doubled the strands and used a 4mm hook. It came out smaller than I thought, but it's rather cute.

There is even a special tag. I named her Yaya - Chinese for little duck, or can also mean little girl. Now I just need to find somewhere to leave her to be found :)

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

Fibre-therapy

It has not been a good week for me, for most of the week I was sick with diarrhoea and severe migraine. Luckily things started to lighten up late yesterday and today I felt much better. Feeling sorry for myself I desperately needed some fibre-therapy to help me relax, so I warped up my Cricket Loom for a scarf.

It's not my handspun but I did dye the yarn, both the warp and weft were actually the same yarn in a colourway called Barley (a kind of yellow) but I wasn't so keen so I divided it up dyed half in green/blue and the other half in plum black. I'm calling this The Forbidden Forest Scarf.

I also washed some Cria Alpaca fleece in a beautiful honey colour, it's so so soft. This is going to be made into a batt for the shop but I really want to keep it. Maybe I'll keep the next batch for myself ;)

That's it from me, that's my therapy for the day. Have a lovely Easter weekend if you celebrate.

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

A piece of handwoven history

Happy Fibre Arts Friday!

A member of our spinning group, Liz, brought along two pieces of wall hanging to the Wednesday night meeting. They were woven by her mum's friend, Liz told us, and because the friend's husband didn't like them she wanted to give them away but preferably they went to people who really appreciated them.

Here are the two pieces:

I liked them both. One of the other ladies claimed the one on the right so I got the one on the left. It's actually a double weave, the back looks like this:

Isn't that gorgeous? There is a label on the back:

The artist's name is Lilija Duks, woven in March 1984, on a draw-loom with double harness set-up and 20 shafts (20!). The craftsmanship is incredible.

So I did a little research when I got home... guess what I found? Museum Victoria has a piece of Ms. Duks' wall hanging in their collection;

Craft Australia also has a piece among their collection.

And there's more... I found a record for the Education Committee of New Zealand Spinning, Weaving and Wool Craft Society.  Lilija Duks was listed as one of their overseas tutors, among the likes of Peter Collingwood, Kaffe Fassett, and Elizabeth Zimmermann. Well, how about that!

I feel so honoured to have this piece of handwoven history in my possession, it now hangs proudly next to my 8-shaft floor loom as inspiration... I will update you on the progress on the loom when I finally make some, erm, progress.

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

Little Penguin Jumper

Last week the ABC put out a call for knitters to knit pullovers for penguins, the request came from the Phillip Island Penguin Foundation.  The foundation use these jumpers for oil contaminated penguins because the oil causes the feathers to separate and mat, and when that happens the water will get into the feathers so they become non-waterproof, which can make the penguin cold and some even die of hypothermia. The penguin jumpers help keep penguins warm and prevent them from ingesting toxic oil when they try to preen themselves.

As I am pretty much swamped with my study now that my semester is in full swing, my crafting time has been vastly reduced. But these little jumpers are fairly quick to make and they don't require much concentration, and they're portable. So I opted to knit one of these, I only managed to make one this week.

The pattern says to make two pieces and sew together, which I did. But next time I'm going to make it in the round to eliminate sewing (anything but sewing!). My toy model is a tad too small for it but I don't think he'd complain ;-)

If you would like to learn more about how the foundation use these jumpers to help the penguins or to get the pattern you can follow the link here. There's also a Ravelry pattern page here.

Thanks for visiting. I'm linking this to Fibre Arts Friday at Andrea's place, you can find more fibre arts goodies over there.

Weaving frenzy

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! I'm doing a show and tell for my weaving projects this week because I suddenly had an urge to weave lately.

I had some variegated pure wool yarn and I wanted to explore how they behaved in weaving, so I wove two scarves: the first one using the same yarn as both warp and weft, the second only using the variegated yarn as warp and a plain matching yarn for weft.

I think I prefer the one on the right, i.e. variegated yarn for warp only but not for both. 

But what I love the most is the third one I made, this time using a space dyed yarn for weft.

It turned out really well, the bamboo in the weft yarn gave it just the right amount of drape without being too heavy, there's also a soft sheen to it. 

When I first finished it I wasn't too happy with the overlaps where I joined the new balls of yarn, so I appealed for help on the Rigid Heddle group on Facebook, it is a fantastic group for weavers by the way. From the advice I received I decided to pull out the overlaps, split the yarn (a single) and weave in the split ends separately. The result was amazing, you can hardly tell where they are. 

That's me for the week, now it's your turn.

I'm linking this to Fibre Arts Friday at Andrea's place, you can find more fibre arts goodies over there.