Growth

If my word for the day yesterday was, "irresistible", today's word is "imperceptible". That's my word for the growth of my "bushfire blanket". I'm averaging a row a day. At 2 1/2 metres per row, that's still a fair bit of crochet, given that this is my armchair project. Some days, like today, I sit for a bit longer and get several rows done. Other days I just spare it a glance and get on with something else.

Here's how it looks today. It is growing slowly: My approach to the colours combinations is what I call, "regularly irregular". I have five colours to work with. Of those five colours, three are limited quantities and two are more than adequate. Of course, I don't have the same quantities of the three limited colours. That would make it too easy! I guess some people would calculate out a quantity of yarn per row and calculate a pattern to be sure it was all going to work out right in the end. That's not my approach to this sort of project. Instead I just keep varying the colour combinations. I keep an eye on the approximate proportions of colours, according to what I have available and I keep an overall rough pattern of colours to give a sense of unity. That way I can adjust the colour combinations as the project develops and keep my options open. At the moment I'm gradually working in more of the grey and caramel alpaca colours, because these are the ones I have most of. That will allow me to space out the chocolate alpaca and blue wool mohair in the centre of the blanket. The fifth colour is a variation on the caramel--just slightly lighter and not quite as creamy--so I'm just using enough of it to make sure it looks as if it's not an afterthought.

Simply Irresistable!

I came home from class today with an extra 2 kilos of fleece. Beautiful, fine merino fleece bought from the grower. It looks like this:
In fact it looks better than the pic, and I can't begin to describe how it feels or smells, or, or, or . . .
I could say,

• I'd had a bad night
• it was sooooo soft
• my resistance was down
• I had to buy it

I could say,

• I'd bonded with the fleece after hearing and seeing its characteristics up close
• I know exactly where it came from and the quality of its breeding
• it's a beautiful fleece
• I had to buy it

I could say,

• I'd decided to use fine merino for my end of year project
• this is a 2 kilo lot of consistent quality, enough for sampling and my final product
• this puts me ahead of schedule
• I had to buy it

Whatever I say, the truth is, it was simply irresistable . . . I bought it!

Now What?

Well, this blog was intended to keep me honest and motivated, while perhaps entertaining you, the reader . . . and I guess it's doing its job!

The question of "now what are you going to do with that skein?" is the obvious one. And here's a really quick answer, because I'm supposed to be leaving for my computer course in under a minute, but I'm just brewing myself one more cup of coffee!

Here are the options

1. leave it hanging around the house as a "pet" for a bit and see what happens
2. put it in the "good intentions box"--NB, that's not the same as the "too hard basket" even though there may well be similarities.
3. pull out the calculator, put on my thinking cap and see how far it will go in a given weaving project.

So, just to pick up the sense of that, here's my calculator in my "good intentions box" and I'm off.

Here's What I Got

Here's a skein from yesterday morning's experiment: I'm happy with the texture and colour combination. I'd like to try with a bit more of the very pale green colour--the one you can hardly see. The major difficulty with what I produced is that it's very fragile. I don't think I'd dare knit with it, but I'd like to try it in some weaving. The reason it's so fragile is that the commercial yarn I used to ply it is extremely fine, and being wool, it's not very strong. Also the process of plying to get the bubbly texture that I wanted took most of the twist out of the marle spun single. So I'm relying on the fine wool to provide the strength and it's not really up to it. If I'd used silk to ply with--I did consider it--I would have more strength for the same thickness of yarn. Or I could have doubled the fine wool yarn. That's ok by me. It was an experiment and that's what experiments are for. I have another 50 g of this colour combination in tops that I can play with.

Colour Mixing--Multi-Marle

Remember this . . .

. . . a photo I took in January of a tree in the rain. I was drawn to the freshness of the colours and the texture of the creamy white blossoms. I took that idea and chose some coloured tops: three shades of green and a natural white. I stripped down the tops and laid them side by side ready to spin:
This is my multi-marle approach to colour mixing. Here's how it looks on the bobbin today.
It's quite high twist, so I'm thinking of plying it back onto a fine commercial wool yarn. I hope the texture as well as the colour combination will pick up some of my feeling about the photo.

Badge of Office

As a textile artist I'm fascinated by the ways different trades and occupations have identified themselves in years past. People of all sorts have found ways to tell the world , "this is what I do" by means of their clothing and accessories.

Often the Twenty-first Century version of that occupational identification involves a lanyard. So, as I set out to thread my loom ready to start a new year of weaving, here's my lanyard:

Blue cord to go around my neck, to set off my eyes and make me smile:). The thread snips are extremely handy and the way the spring is set up, they hold themselves in to the little cap which keeps them secure. The other accessory is to measure the thickness of my yarn.

There are much more conventional and sleek gadgets, for measuring yarn thickness, but I do like my personal take on it. I've carved an exact inch and two inch length out of a small eucalypt branch. To plan my weaving I need to know how many times the width of the yarn will fit into a one inch length. The measurement is called "wraps per inch" or wpi. The wpi of the yarn allows me to calculate how many warp threads I need per inch of weaving so that the fabric will behave the way I want it to. Likewise when I'm spinning the same measurement gives me a good idea of what sort of yarn I'm producing. So I keep this little carved stick hanging around my neck. I like to think of it as my "badge of office".

Eight Shaft Weaving

Weaving Certificate, Year 2, Lesson 1: Introduction to Multi-Shaft Weaving:
Eight shafts, count them: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!

I'm starting to get to know my new loom. It's just like the one I used last year, except of course, being made individually by hand, it's not just like the one I used last year. I was delighted to discover that the levers that lift the shafts have turned out with different shades and textures of wood.

The theory topic for yesterday morning was "Introduction to Multi-shaft Weaving". Apparently multi-shaft, by definition, and contrary to numerical logic, means more than 4. This year we will be working with 8 shafts. The take home message, as far as I could gather, was, "expect more complexity". We will also be working with finer yarns than we did last year. So there are a few challenges to look forward to.