Spinning & Spun Sugar

So what have I done with the wool that I dyed & showed you in the last post?

The brighter of the 2 yellows has been spun together with some commercially dyed roving (aka sliver) to make this.

The brown is Bendigo Woollen Mills ReadySpin  in  Russet.

The inspiration is the 'egg and bacon' flowers that are so common in the Australian bush.

The proper Latin name for the genus is Dillwynia, they are part of the 'pea' family - endemic to Australia.  There are lots of species - most have yellow & red/brown flowers that remind hungry Australians of  breakfast.  I've reversed the colours; in the flowers the yellow is dominant - in my yarn the russet brown in about 75% and the strong yellow only about 25%.

I'll be selling most of my Dillwynia inspired yarn in my Etsy shop - should get it listed in the next couple of days.

And now for that Fairy Floss pink dyed wool ... most of it has become "Fairy Floss" (aka Spun Sugar / Cotton Candy / Candy Floss / barbe à papa) for Blythe dolls.

 

There is to be a big meeting of Blythe Fan(atic)s in Sydney on the 23rd June - the theme is "Candyland".  Here is the Poster ...  and here for More Info

Candy - Lollies - Sweeties -  num num   

The Fairy Floss is my contribution to the Goodie Bags ... 

Might have to put in a note that it is not actually edible.








Audrey helped me to make all that "fairy-floss"  and took her job as Quality Control Officer very seriously.

"Now, let's see, the colour is good, but the construction of this stick is a little loose.  Does Not Pass."

Spring Things

Wanna see wot I've done with the wool I'd dyed a pretty peachy pink? This:

A celebration of blossoming fruit trees - fresh new green leaves and lots of white blossom with that blushing of pink in the middle of the flowers. Slightly thick&thin it's a 10/12 ply, nice and soft. Pretty??

I do love spring and the magnolias have been wonderful this year - we've a star magnolia:

Pretty Pretty

I've also been busy on the sewing machine: I made grandson a dress-ups cape early this year and it has been a great hit with both grandchildren so I thought I should make granddaughter her own.

Mad purple fake-sequin fabric (strange but my digital camera does not like purple and always tries to make it blue). Cape is a full circle, lined with silver fabric like the first one, I used the rather wide "selvage" which lacked the fake sequins to make a frill collar (quite regal!). I'm quite proud of the SuperChild logo on the back:

B for Blythe (granddaughter is named after the dolls) and a ducky because she loves them.





Rather less fun has been work on another shawl - this one bought on eBay and quite a bargain, lovely silk and a splendid fringe ...





only the fringe needs a lot of TLC. It has become seriously tangled ... Before






It takes quite a while to untangle and iron it out - luckily it is so very long it can take a bit of trimming. The result is definitely worth all the work ...

Mostly Brown

There are many browns, some are evocative of the earth and nature, some speak of chocolate and cakes.

Current knitting project is a quick, big, warm cardigan for my daughter - Bendigo Woollen Mills 12ply Classic in a sweet tan colour they call "Ginger". When it arrived it reminded me of those South American Alpaca / Llama jumpers worn by all cold uni students and hippies in the 1970s - yes, you know the ones! They usually had a row of alpacas / llamas marching around the chest or hem and they are vaguely trendy again. So, I grabbed another ball of the 12 ply in almost white and consulted daughter about what sort of critter? Answer: rabbits.

I've a lot of charts for rabbits and bunnies, mostly from vintage knitting patterns for children - decided to use them in a random manner. So Random Rabbits and Bouncing Bunnies ...

That's the back - this chap is on a sleeve.

Picture knitting / intarsia is my least favourite style of knitting, I just can't get the stitches to stay neat, they always get twisted about and there is always show-through of the un-used yarn. However, with a bit of blocking and some over embroidery I'm sure these bunnies will look OK.

Have also been spinning - and whereas that knitting is definitely in edible brown, this is brown a la nature.

Naturally soft brown coloured, corridale fleece spun with about 12% alpaca, also natural and undyed. The alpaca is mostly a light tan colour but there are cream bits too, the alpaca had patches or a pale chest? I spin this deliberately thick&thin with the alpaca thrown in as tufts - then it is plyed with the corridale done plain and quite thin. The result looks just like wood or bark, and it knits up like that too; really natural.

Not Brown. Just can't resist sharing this with you - the sunlight was shining through the petals.

We've 2 of these camellias, darling hubby rescued them 10yrs ago, they were very nearly dead when he brought them home - poor thin twigs in dried up pots. Well it has taken 10 yrs but they are glorious now.

Nothing but Blue Skies from Now On

The weather has been all grey and wet here for ummm (feels like) ages ... so on the weekend I spun this up to remind myself that sometimes the sky looks more like this:

It is "ReadySpin" from Bendigo Woolen Mills - which I dyed with Sandolan dyes to a pretty sky blue - then I spun it with approx 16% undyed bamboo fibre. I think the shiny bamboo looks like Cirrus clouds - perhaps with silver linings :-)

I'm going to sell this in "a Coffee and a Yarn" - which is a fab combination of yarn shop + cafe in Newtown. Ellie, whose shop/cafe it is, has taken some of my hand-spun yarns and beanies on commission and they've been selling quite well :-) Yea!

Beanies

In January I blogged about spinning up yarn in "Manly Colours" (as in masculine) ... time I showed you what that yarn has become.

Beanies -
Here is one in close up - this colour-way I've named "Green Shoots" :-)
And this colourway is called "Sydney Harbour " - when you sit on a wharf and stare into the water of our gorgeous harbour - these are some of the colours of the water. A mix of deep blue / greens with pale, almost yellow, shafts of light a quiver through the water ...

"Deep and dissolving verticals of light
Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells"
Only you have to think falls of sunlight instead - sorry Kenneth Slessor. I've knitted a child sized beanie in the Sydney Harbour colourway - so it is a Father & Son set.

All those yarns are handspun from Bendigo Woolen Mills roving (or sliver) the charcoal and dark navy are BWM dyed, the other colours I dyed.

This beanie is made of re-purposed yarn. I found a half knitted jumper and lots of unused yarn in an op-shop - un-ravelled the knitting and used my spinning wheel to ply two colours together for a tweed effect.












And finally - a Gumnut - I spun this yarn from undyed, naturally brown fleece and undyed alpaca - using the alpaca to make tufts. It really does look like a gumnut that has been on the ground for a while.

All these Beanies are currently for sale in a friend's hat studio in Newtown.

Spinning with Manly Colours

No I don't follow the Sea Eagles - or any other form of Rugby actually - that's manly as in masculine. Because there are lots of hand-spun yarns in pretty feminine colours but very little in colours suitable for a bloke.

In the Christmas / New Year break (it seems so long ago now) I got out my lovely Majacraft Pioneer wheel and made...

charcoal with green about 65:35, plied and set
and
more charcoal about 80% with a little green and a very little yellow, plied and set.

Both are about 10ply (worsted weight). It was all Bendigo Woollen Mills sliver (it is not listed on their web site!) the charcoal is their colour, I dyed the green & yellow.

By Gum - A GumNut and some catch up

Yea - my GumNut Beanie for an adult is on the Dust Team Blog list of gift suggestions for Father's Day :-) the yarn is hand-spun undyed, natural coloured sheep and alpaca fleece.

My Etsy shops have been rather neglected in the last few weeks - and neglect is always immediately reflected in sales :-( but yesterday I listed some very old newspapers (from 1930) and they sold almost immediately VBG

I don't like to boast about knitting I've made for stage productions until the run is over - but I think I can show you a bit of the last Theatrical Knit now. It was for Bell Shakespeare Company's production of "Pericles" - wonderful costume and set designs by Julie Lynch. I knitted a striped vest for a fisherman - a very loose knit in banana silk yarn and self patterning sock yarn.

This vest featured some-what in the action - when Pericles is ship-wrecked for the 2nd or 3rd time (he makes a habit of it) he is rescued by some fishermen and when he complains that he is cold, one takes of his vest (the one I knitted) and gives it to Pericles.

Dye & Spin Experiment a Success - Resilience

Last post I had just dyed a whole lot of wool roving and was being mysterious about what I was planning to do with it ...

Voila!

I like variegated yarn with long lengths of colour, when knitted up it gives a banded look, however, most of the commercially available yarns with long length colour variegation are really expensive and/or single construction (not plyed) which means they wear very poorly. So I've been dreaming of spinning up my own for ages and at last I've worked out how to do it. Long lengths of colour, plied and nice and thick (about 12ply).

The yarn is mostly Bendigo Woolen Mills 'Readyspin', the charcoal came that colour, I dyed the green and yellow.


I'm calling this colour-way 'Resilience' because it is inspired by the way the Australian bush bounces back after a fire. It is amazing how (when the bush-fire has been fast and not-too-hot) only 6 to 9mths later those apparently dead trees are sprouting new green growth all over their blackened branches and in the spring there are wildflowers and wattles in bloom. Amazing resilience! The charcoal is for all the burnt branches etc, the green is the new growth and the yellow .... that's the wattle blossom.

Now, what to knit with it ??