I've been shopping online at World of Wool

Oh gees, all these special offers and sales on at places that sell spinning fibre and such.  I've bought more fibre.  I need to find room to put all this stuff!

First we have a mixed back of 25g of each colour of Northern Lights.  They sell these as full size braids but I chose to have just the sample packs as I want to use them as ingredients on my hackle.  100% Merino wool in colours, from left to right from top to bottom: Bliss, Harmony, Tempest, Calm, Whisper, Passion, Heavenly, Typhoon, Tranquil, Blaze, Rainbow

100g of Worth Melting For, 94% Merino Wool, 6% Stellina

500g of Botany Lap Waste, a mixed bag of all sorts of stuff, nothing labelled, all mixed in together so unfortunately some of the fibres were stuck to each other and I've had to sit and clean them all off by picking off lots and lots of stray fibres etc.  Some are small amounts like 1g or 2g and then others are huge amounts like the purple merino/sari silk blend on the top row that is 71g.

December's Fibre is here - Pink

It has arrived a few days after the letter.  My worst nightmare has arrived this morning.  Thank you Mr Postman, not!

It is definitely very pink and very, very soft but it is extremely pink, I don't see this as an accent shade of pink.  The natural grey of the Peduncle Silk definitely softens the vulgarity of the pink a little though.  75% Merino, 25% Peduncle Silk.

So, Peduncle Silk, what is that?  Well it comes from the tropical Tasar Caterpillar in India and when it spins a cocoon the first thing it makes is a kind of stem, which is called a Peduncle, and the cocoon hangs from that.  It has a shorter staple and greater bulk than many other types of silk and is a gorgeous natural grey-brown colour.

I don't like this one, its just the colour of it but then I have to knit and spin for my customers who do like pink so I will probably get around to this one at some point and if I really, really can't face it I could always over-dye it with blue to get something in the purple range.

Spinning up Il de France, Demeter

A few months ago I bought some unwanted spinning fibre from a fellow spinner and I am now spinning up the first of these that I have chosen to spin.  Its the Il de France in shade Demeter that I'm going to start with first.  There were just under two full braids of this so I started work on the full braid first, splitting it down the middle as best as I could and pre-drafting before I spun as it was slightly compacted and wouldn't draft straight from the braid without a bit of work.

My dream would be if this spun up as a yarn with long colour changes that transitions from one colour to the next as smoothly as possible with as little mudding or barber poling as possible.

I spun from the same end on both singles and when it came to plying the singles it started off good but didn't last.  The second braid worked out much better and when I finished plying and compared the skeins in good light I could see that one was predominantly barber-poled with smallish sections of smooth colour and the other braid was the complete opposite.  The OCD in me told me to snip out the sections that didn't belong in each skein and swap them over.  It took me a while to do this, re-joining the yarn with Russian joins whilst also making sure the colours still flowed as correctly as I could get them to.  In total, this took me over a month to complete as there were two large braids and with all the Christmas preparations going on but its not a race, I prefer to take my time and get it right.

The finished skein of yarn above is the one that barber-poled whilst still transitioning from one colour to the next.  There is 91g/328m of double knit weight yarn. 

The second skein of yarn above is the one that came out as I wanted it to, the colours matching up and no barber-poling whilst still transitioning from one colour to the next.  There is 91g/318m of double knit weight yarn.

A side by side view of the two skeins to show the difference between them and the different results you can get, accidental or intentional, from spinning the same colour braids.

These two braids will be used together with some natural white wool to make a pretty shawl that I have been itching to make for a long time.

Decembers Fibre Club Letter

Ok, so she was already giving a few hints away about the fibre before we even had the letter.  Apparently its going to be very, very different and its a colour she loves but has not used it in the club yet.  Oh gees, my immediate thoughts sprung to bright pink as that has not been used in the club, I checked the images of the all the fibres going way, way back before I joined the club.  I am not a fan of the colour pink.

The letter reads:

Rather than looking at a specific period in history this month we’re taking a long-term over view of one of the most divisive of colours… 

The link between femininity and pink seems to be so hard wired in our brain, but the link is comparatively modern. Even as recently as 1893 an article in The New York Times stated that “you should always give pink to a boy and blue to a girl”. Even in 1918 a trade publication reconfirmed this “rule” because pink was “the more decided and stronger colour”. Blue was considered “delicate and dainty” Quite why the colours swapped is unclear, but it took until the 1940’s before pink really started to become a colour that was strongly associated with girls. Historically many men would have ended up wearing pink. Red dyes tend to fade over time, and the highly masculine red coated soldier would have often ended up wearing a pink jacket by the end of a long military campaign. Blue meanwhile was the colour associated with the Virgin Mary, that shining example of femininity. However that didn’t mean that women never wore pink. Madame due Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV of France loved pink. We featured the colours of the Sèvres Pottery in the club in February 2017. 

Pink wasn’t used as a colour description until the late seventeenth century, until then it refers to a type of pigment, in the same way as some pigments are described as being a lake, the most commonly known being crimson lake. Pink pigments (which weren’t necessarily pink) were made by binding an organic substance to an inorganic substance like chalk to make the colour easier to use. The plant matter was usually from the broom shrub, or buckthorn berries, and like most plants, the colour they yield is yellow, so the most common colour was in fact a Yellow Pinke called Still de Grain. Pinkes could also be green or brown as well as rose. Pink as a colour name is also somewhat unique. After all pink is just a pale version of red. English doesn’t have a specific word for pale yellow, or pale green. Quite why pink stuck around as a colour to describe the pale red is probably due to the flower Dianthus plumarius, commonly known as Pinks. 

In modern times the colour has been linked to many feminine causes, a pink ribbon has been the symbol of breast cancer awareness since 1991 (though it is worth pointing out that men can also get breast cancer). The Pussy Hat Project used bright pink hats knitted to look like cats ears as a symbol for protesters to wear in the Women’s Marches of 2017. Time Magazine featured a Pussy Hat on the front cover with the caption ”The resistance rises- How a march became a movement.” Over time pink has gone from being a yellow pigment, to a colour that was worn by young boys, to a colour representing a women's rights movement. Love it, or hate it, that’s a pretty impressive story!

Oh. My. God.  My worst nightmare.  It IS going to be pink!  She tells us it is going to be soft, next to skin soft, with 25% silk and will be fantastic for shawls and then goes on to divulge that it is Peduncle Silk.  I've not heard of that so will have to Google it later.  She also says that if you don't like pink not to worry as it is an accent shade.  I am hoping it is a subtle shade then.

I've started another of my favourite vintage shawls - LF433

I've started making another one, I love them, people looking at my shop don't seem to take a look at them though, maybe its the rubbish photos.  One day I will be able to do something about that, I'm sure I will.

Anyway, light gold, turquoise and midnight blue.  I'm having to use a different brand of vintage thread for the petals this time but they are almost identical threads, same thickness, same length, same fibre content and probably made at the same factory with just different labels added to them for the different companies that sell them.

I have made a start, I have all the centres done and started on the flowers but I have to leave this for a little while as I have a custom order coming in and loads to do before Christmas so this will be finished in the New Year.  Sorry for the rubbish photo below, my phone is not the best for taking photos.