Spring

It has been glorious spring weather this past week. I took these photographs a couple of days ago. The apple blossom and the bluebells were taken when we were out for a drive and the clematis is in our garden.

The bluebells were growing along a country road side - the apple tree in a hedge near by.

The clematis has been outstanding this year and along with the blossom on our old apple tree and the flowering cherry the garden has looked lovely.

New Addition - Ashford Traditional Spinning Wheel

Since my last blog I have aquired a second spinning wheel. It is on long term loan and is an older Ashford traditional. I have had it for about three weeks now and it has polished up beautifully.

Introducing 'Leena'

Well I am now the proud owner of a four shaft table weaving loom. It is a Toika 'Leena' and although it is an older model it's in pretty good shape and has pride of place in the 'new' shed. It arrived on a Saturday nearly three weeks ago and although it was in pieces it quickly went together.. but...the heddles were in a real
mess and not having any experience
with string heddles it took me ages to get them sorted.

Likewise it took me ages to sort out the warping process. The book 'Learning to Weave' by Deborah Chandler was invaluable.









After a lot of trials and errors I finally got to the stage where I could start weaving....



I used acrylic 4 ply left over from my
machine knitting days and set about trying out my new 'toy'. I followed some of the advice in the Deborah Chandler book and followed some of the twill patterns from the 'Ashford Book of Weaving' and also 'did my own thing'. Hopefully next time I blog about my new loom I will have actually made something..... It's OK doing a practice piece but much more interesting actually making something....

Natural Dyeing with Apple Twigs

I couple of days ago I dyed handspun BFL with apple twigs. Before Christmas my daughter collected and cut up half a bucket of apple twigs for me. When I came to look at them I was a bit concerned as they were showing some signs of mould but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and left them to soak for three days. I then drained the water off and using about half of the twigs (more would have been to much for my pot) put them into my dye pot and covered with water and boiled for about at hour and a half. I used a sieve to remove the twigs and debris and topped up with enough water for 100 gr of wool in two separate hanks. 50 gm had been mordanted in alum and the other 50gm had not been mordanted. I brought to the boil and simmered for about one hour. I then removed both hanks and added half a teaspoon of iron (mixed with warm water) to the dye bath and returned the unmordanted hank to the pot for about 5 mins.









As you can see the contrast is very clear between the alum and the iron. It is the first time I have used iron so I was very interested to see the difference.

Goosey Goosey Gander

We made an unscheduled stop at Crewe Park last week only to find that they are renovating it and most of it was cordoned off but I did manage to take a few photos - I particularly like this one.

Dyeing

I have done my first dyeing in 'the shed' I can't claim a great success - it didn't turn out how I had anticipated - much more colourful. I used Landscape Dyes (Christmas present) with an Ashford yellow. However, although it is still quite cold dyeing in the shed was successful so it is great to be able to get out there.

On the natural dye front I have some apple twigs soaking so I am looking forward to seeing what they produce.

Spinning

I have been spinning Shetland which
I bought from Andy's open day. It is really nice to spin and I have achieved quite a fine two-ply 15 wpi - my problem now seems to be achieving a double knit. I want to use the spun Shetland for natural dyeing.








Previous to the Shetland I spun some BFL which I had dyed some months ago with Ashford Dyes - this also spun up quite fine.








I have also been a bit more adventurous and spun a Baby Camel/Silk mix from World of Wool. It proved more difficult to spin than regular wool resulting in more unevenness but it is lovely and soft and has quite a sheen - it is 13 wpi. The downside is the 'camel fluff' seems to get everywhere and sticks to carpets and clothes.