There are some great yarn bombs going on in Christie Downs right now. I had a tip from a friend!
The snakes are extra good…
But they’re all pretty splendid, I reckon.
Evidently these yarn bombers have plans to yarn bomb the railway station, which could really use a little love… if you want to help out you’d be welcomed.
Filed under Knitting
There has been quite a bit of tea cosy action around here…
This was the leftover from a yarn with felted leaves on it. As it turned out, there were only a couple left! I like the pennant effect… like a ship’s mast, or perhaps a circus tent. Then there is this corespun yarn, complete with silk and sparkle.
It went home after a film viewing at our house recently, to a happy new home.
Corespun but with the tips of the locks left to roam free… incredibly silly…
Oh… and there is this natural grey single with leftover silk thread from a friend’s handspinning and card weaving… and mohair and sari silk thread and suchlike…
… and there are a few others from previous tea cosy jags lying about too…
I have been working on some slippers… with long breaks in between activity… for such a long time! They came of some polwarth fibre that was not promising enough for fine spinning and that I thought would be best rendered into felt. This is my go-to classic felting pattern, Bev Galeskas’ Fibertrends Clog pattern. If you’re a regular around here you know by now that I have made many dozens of them. I still think this pattern is genius… but I am a little bit over it just at present, personally. Anyway… some of these pairs had already suffered the indignity of being unsuccessfully dipped into indigo. Time to try again! I decided to pre-wet for evenness for once in my life.
Finally, the time came for unnatural dyeing. I have two burners, and four pairs of slippers. They’re big! I decided to exhaust the dye and re-use the water on the second round of dyeing, which worked well. It seemed a perfect opportunity to try this strategy out–after all, I am dyeing over chocolate brown wool for the most part. Fine details of colour are not of real moment.
Finally, I give you purple over brown, green over brown, red-brown-black (using up the leftovers of dyeing adventures past) and blue over brown.
Sadly I’ll not be able to hand them over in person but I can’t bear to make my friends wait any longer! We have had unseasonably cold weather here of late, and credibility on the question of whether they will ever see these slippers must be stretched to a very fine thread already! So I am going to give them to a mutual friend who I am hoping will be happy to drop them in to warm chilly toes at the next opportunity.
Some of the recent trash batt yarns and some other odds and ends have begun their life in the wider world as yarn bombs. I set out for a stroll with three swatches.
This was the first to go up. It’s an all trash batt–including overlocker waste. As I began to attach it to its wonky, leaning pole, a father rode past on his bike accompanied by a child, also on a bike. He called out to the child: ‘Look, there’s someone yarnbombing!’ and stopped to tell me about the best yarn bomb he ever saw (on Kangaroo Island). I admit, I had not expected to be the subject of instruction to small children. Since I was in my own neighbourhood, next came a friend who lives nearby, and then another (I introduced them) and there was speculation about the Viva La Broad Bean yarnbombers/guerilla gardeners and other yarnbombs in the vicinity. The Broad Beans were appreciated and complimented in their absence.
This one has gone up on a pole which is topped by a mirror to allow visibility around a tricky corner. It turned out the tea cosy I made from this yarn contained all but the last few felted bits and bobs, so this is mostly a natural grey yarn bomb. Yes, the stitching is going in two directions. In a moment of whimsy I decided to pick up and knit the second half at ninety degrees to the first, partly so the felted parts wouldn’t all be along an edge.
Finally, this is on one of the main access points for the local train station (yes, that is a suburban train in the background). This yucky greenish paint is the one preferred for public transport infrastructure and fencing in our area, and it could certainly use improvement. These colours are from coreopsis and indigo.
I have placed these friendly emblems on either side of the Viva La Broad Beans’ guerilla garden and yarnbomb festival in hopes it will encourage the Broad Beans and contribute to the neighbourhood cheering up programme. The evening I saw the Broad Beans’ handiwork for the first time, a neighbour engaged me in a painful, heartbroken conversation about all that has happened locally in the last year. I took her to see the guerilla garden to cheer her up. As I left home this time, and before I could apply crochet hook to pole, she chased me down the street and I had a long conversation with her about anger and grievances, loss and grief.
As one of the friends who came by and stayed to chat while I was applying knitting to pole said, there has been a lot to contend with and a lot to make people feel discouraged in our area over the last year. She said the Viva La Broad Beans’ handiwork had made her feel a whole lot better and uplifted her. I hope I can make a small contribution by their side.
Filed under Knitting, Neighbourhood pleasures
The very last silkworm went to silk yesterday, so there’s an end to silkworm updates for this year. I can’t pretend to be sorry. There have been a lot of weeks of feeding the hungry caterpillars multiple times a day and foraging on their behalf, and I’m happy to wait until next September to do that again. I found an extra two cocoons under the guitar case on the floor below the silkworm raising station. They must either have crawled there to pupate (music loving caterpillars?) or fallen after chewing off the piece of leaf that connected them to the rest of their mates. Happily, I don’t think we lost a single silkworm, which is good, since stories of silkworm tragedy came back to me from some of the people who took them home from the Guild!
Meanwhile, a breakout of meetings and presentations at work has enabled the completion of these socks in Naturally Waikiwi Prints.
I have only had them on the needles since August! While the other hemisphere is celebrating Wovember, here we have had our first days over 30C. These socks will be waiting a while to go onto a foot. They contain possum fur, which makes them delectably soft, while making use of the oversupply of possum fur in New Zealand/Aotearoa. Possums are incredibly cute, and as an Australian I am in a good position to know this because the possums in Aotearoa are feral. They are native to Australia. Without intervention, they would be well on their way to denuding those lovely islands and making life impossible for the plants and animals native there. Since Australia also struggles under the weight of feral animals (including cute ones like rabbits and cats), the damage that can be done is very obvious even if the sadness of having to cull them is equally clear. My apologies to any Kiwis who might be reading, for the introduction of our cute but damaging possums to your lovely land!
Filed under Fibre preparation, Knitting
The other night, treasured friends came round for dinner and brought with them someone I hadn’t met before. She saw the display of tea cosies and loved them. She collects. The honest truth is, I don’t even drink tea. Nor does my beloved. I just buy random teapots at the op shop and make them cosies for my own entertainment and the joy of giving them away.
Naturally, I said ‘would you like to take one home?’ She struggled to choose and I offered that she take two, but that wasn’t happening… it is difficult to make people understand just how far I am from having a yarn or tea cosy shortage. So a particularly ugly teapot was disrobed and a corespun cosy with recycled sari silk threads went home with her. That had me in a tea cosy frame of mind… So I delved into the stash and came out with this the very next night:
The yarn is felted wool blobs spun onto crossbred wool from a sheep known by the glorious name of Macchiato the Mongrel. I believe the epithet was added after Macchiato ate the neighbour’s pea crop and had to be found a new home. That fleece came to me from a friend of a friend who lives in the hills. The pattern is a fast and loose adaptation of Funhouse Fibers’ Fast and Fun Tea Cozy.
This twining vine yarn (commercial wool top, felted leaves) was in the same bag. I started in on a cosy and the audience decided it was too cute and really should be a child’s hat. I guess we’ll wait to see who it fits come winter! I started with a three stitch i-cord and made the rest up, ending with a stitched cast off for stretchy edge…
And, some silk cocoons went off to be reeled by a friend with a lot more patience than me, and here are the rest. I have no idea why they are in two colours, but if anyone else knows, please tell. I keep thinking I will finally get back to the nettle stems, but I fear it won’t happen today…
Filed under Fibre preparation, Knitting
Sometimes people ask me how I manage to fit so many things in… but I am not sure they are really keeping track of how long a project might take me from start to finish! Many craft projects at my place involve large numbers of tiny steps. Sometimes it is the nature of the crafts involved and sometimes it’s the only way I can figure out to make things happen. So projects progress slowly at times, as whim, interest, the right weather, or the availability of time permit. Today I can report that a couple of items reached the out spout.
The eucalyptus dyed grey corriedale which started here and continued here has finally come to an end, with every last bit now converted to yarn. The middle skein is chain-plied (and to be honest, I really do prefer this yarn over the one I have created for my cardigan) and the one at the bottom is a true 3 ply. Some of this yarn is destined to become a cardigan, but it will not be for winter 2013, which is over now for us here in Australia.
I have also finally finished making a jumper for my fairy godson. He is a tall and slender individual (just in case you’re wondering if the proportions are right), and if he’s lucky there will be one or two days cold enough to wear this jumper before winter 2014. I hope it will still fit him then! It was slowed down by misjudgment of the amount of yarn needed, and thus several stages of dyeing and spinning as knitting progressed, breaking all the rules of good handspun-handknit practise. It is 3 ply eucalyptus dyed alpaca in 4ply/fingering weight.
Here it is, tied up with handmade string crafted from the leaves of our daylily. When it was raining this morning I decided to steam press it and just take it over on my way to work in hopes it might be cold enough to wear it, and was lucky enough to catch my friends at home. It never fails to gladden my heart to give a gift that is really warmly welcomed… but it is an additional exquisite pleasure to find the handmade string to be just about as exciting as the jumper to its recipient. It fills life with pleasure to find folk who feel just as intrigued by string from the backyard as you do, and just as curious about how it could be made.
Someone who works in the same hallway as me exclaimed over my looking happy at work on a Monday, just as I walked in this morning… and may not have understood if I’d said it was all about late but welcome presents and homemade string and love. Sometimes you have to be there.
Filed under Eucalypts, Knitting, Natural dyeing, Neighbourhood pleasures, Spinning
Experiments in diverting textile waste from the rubbish bin or compost continue… The lavender wool and the entirely waste batt are all spun up. In the end, I plied the trash batt with a single of the lavender wool. I can’t say I expected loveliness, and to my mind this is not lovely. As for the spinning experience: it was fine to spin though my lack of foresight about a plying strategy wasn’t ideal and I didn’t think a chain 3 ply would work. I also have to say that even with a generous apron under my drafting zone, this yarn shed loads of pieces of chopped thread at every stage, which didn’t make me popular with my beloved.
These yarns are destoned for yarnbomb glory. I knit then into K2P2 ribbing and will apply them when I’ve chosen a suitable spot and the rain and wind abate!
On the other hand, here is a corespun yarn made from the batt composed of white polwarth locks, eucalyptus dyed corriedale carding waste and overlocker waste (much of it from leaf printed fabrics). I like this very much. I think the ratio of polwarth to other inclusions is part of what works, but so is the texture of the polwarth–it helps hold everything together. The happy combination of colours doesn’t go astray either…
Yarn bombers have been out and about in our neighbourhood! They have improved a neglected spot a short distance from our place, cheering up people who’ve had a year of more construction noise, dust and reverse beeping than most of us can readily stand. Bless them!
Not content with tree decorating, they bombed the odd pole as well…
Plus a raised herb garden for the locals to enjoy…
They even left a potted lime tree and a bougainvillea. I took a down-at-mouth neighbour along to see and she was quite cheered up by the constructive neighbourhood reclamation and whimsy of it all. So was I.
They go by the name of ‘Viva La Broad Bean’ and I can only congratulate and cheer them on. I met one of them when I went to take these pictures and congratulated her in person. I was able to share our neighbourhood revegetation projects with her, too.
Meanwhile, the streets nearby are full of bottlebrush (callistemon) trees in flower. Thousands of blooms, each the size of an old fashioned bottlebrush–but splendidly red. It occurred to me that this is a form of wonder and beauty that non-Australians mostly don’t experience.
The abundance of flowers has brought lorikeets into the neighbourhood to feed on the nectar and hold high pitched, apparently gleeful conversation. They don’t hang about to be photographed, but I managed to take a picture of this rainbow lorikeet before it flew off like a green comet.
Filed under Knitting, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing
For those who are wondering… the nettle stems are back in the retting wheelbarrow for now. So I return to our regularly scheduled fibre–wool.
All I want to say about this last Polwarth fleece, with the prickly seedheads and the tips that were spiny and pulled off… is that I have reached the end of it. Here it is–the last of it–! It will be keeping toes warm for years to come once these slippers are felted. I do not need to spin more of it, ever. The fleece from this sheep’s sibling, and fleece from this sheep in other years, are lovely, and I will return to those in time.
Next stop on the fibre processing journey is a Corriedale fleece one of my co-workers gave me (in 2011!! I wrote the date down). I dyed some greasy a year or so ago and it came out badly. I can be put off by experiences like that, which so often indicate the current limitations of my skills or patience, or both. I put the Corriedale down and haven’t come back to it for at least a year. It does have vegetable matter in it, but it is otherwise a lovely fleece. I weighed the remainder and there was 2.3 kg still to wash. It’s in a yellow plastic bag designed for a double bed feather quilt.
I sat a kilogramme of it to soak cold for a few days, because I’ve seen this suggested on Ravelry and it makes good sense as a first stage in getting mud, as well as grease, out of the fleece. having tried it now, I would definitely use this process again.
This kilogramme is now clean and drying, and that leaves only 1.3kg of this fleece yet to be washed. After that, only one more Polwarth fleece left to wash. I admit, a Polwarth is a mighty big sheep. However, this is the closest I have been in years to having the fleece stash clean and ready to spin!
Filed under Fibre preparation, Knitting, Spinning
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