Pages

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

On My Spinning Wheel

Here's a pic of the fibre I'm currently spinning.
Above, you can see the fibre as it comes out of the bag from the back room at Bendigo Woollen Mills and on the bobbin is how it looks when it's been spun and plied up. Below is how it looks spun on the bobbin, before I get to plying it.
It was an impulse buy a couple of years ago, and it's been on my mind. So I decided to just start spinning it. One thing about spinning is I get plenty of time to think and get to know the fibre as it passes through my fingers!
I've been thinking a lot about newsprint--I did a couple of papier mache projects last year and am wondering about how the marle texture would look in a garment just as is. Of course I'm also thinking about how it would go in a dyepot because only the white fibre would pick up the colour--that's an exciting thought. Of course "nowadays" newsprint isn't just black and white as it was when I was a girl:) so I could do both.
And then this bag has an alpaca-wool blend roving cousin stashed in a box under my bed, so putting the two in the same dye-pot could be fun--two closely related but different colour combinations.
Yesterday the temperature got up to 40--that's Celcius for those of you who speak a different temperature language, let's just say several degrees above human body temperature! So it was definitely not a day for spinning. Today the forecast is for 29--still not great for spinning. Sweaty hands and spinning are not a great combination. So I think I'll do some cold-water dyeing today. I have a few balls of cotton that need a colour lift. I suspect by lunch-time I'll need a cold water lift. Win-Win!

No comments: