I've made something for myself

I needed to make something for myself, I never make anything for myself so now is my chance.  I started this way back in September and it got put the side whilst I dealt with all sorts of family issues and you may notice a little bit of a line on the second work-in-progress photo.  This is where I stopped, left it for a while, and then picked it back up again and just shows a little bit of difference in the tension but it all washed and blocked out.  Blocking helps to even the stitches out.

I made it using this Whistlebare Yeavering Bell yarn that is 60% Mohair, 40% Wensleydale and I found that it shed like hell.  I was covered in Mohair every time I knit.  I have no plans to add this design to my range as the pattern designer does not allow you to use the pattern for commercial purposes, however small amount of sales you might have, so I won't be going there.  I will be sticking to patterns from designers and yarn companies that allow you to use their patterns to make items to sell.

I apologise for the variation of colour in the photos, I just can't get them all the same due to different lighting at the point of photography.  I have tried to edit them as best as I could to represent the actual colour but I'm still finding this almost impossible.

December's Fibre is here - Renoir

Oh my gosh, this is gorgeous, one of my favourite colours.  I love blue-greens, turquoise, teal etc.  This is really, really nice and its ohhh so soft too.  Its 80% Merino, 20% Ramie which means it will be soft but strong.  Can't wait to find time to spin this one up.  I love it.

December's Fibre Club Letter

December's fibre club letter has arrived. I'm pleased to say that it has nothing to do with politics or activism this month.  Phew!

The letter reads:

Colour theory and art go hand in hand, all the great painters have a very clear understanding of how to use colour to bring their painting to life. How we think about colour has changed over time (I wrote an article for Ply magazine, which was published on their blog, there’s a link in the Further Reading section.) But one of the key changes in recent history was the development of complementary colour theory. By arranging colours on a colour wheel, the colour that is on the opposite side of the colour wheel provides the greatest contrast. 

The Impressionists were amongst the first to notice that shadows are not neutral, but instead are the complementary shade of the object casting the shadow, eg a yellow object casts a purple shadow. By using this theory they created painting with great vivacity. The Impressionists were a group of painters, primarily based in Paris, who produced work from the 1860's. The painters tended to work in the open air rather than a studio, working quickly, with loose brushwork, and a focus on capturing the fleeting quality of light. 

One of the leading impressionists was Pierre Auguste Renoir, he died one hundred years ago on December 3rd 1919. Born in Limogies, south-west France in 1841, poverty forced him to finish his education early, and he became a painter in the nearby porcelain factory. As a young man he moved to Paris to begin studying painting, despite frequently not having enough money to buy paint. In 1869 he started sketching with Claude Monet, and the two men together developed the techniques that will come to characterise the Impressionist style. 

Over his lifetime he evolved to paint in many different styles, at one point almost completely abandoning Impressionism and going back to the style of the old masters and focusing on technical accuracy of draughtsmanship. The reception at the time was not enthusiastic, and he gradually went back to the looser style seen in his earlier paintings. 

One of the things I love most about Renoir’s paintings is their punchy use of colour. Our inspiration this month comes from the beautiful shades of blue he uses as shadows when painting trees, combined with the vibrant lime green he used for the leaves. At this darkest time in the year in the Northern Hemisphere think of this as a promise of spring to come. 

Blues and greens, I'm liking the sound of this one.

From the spoilers chat she has revealed that it is incredibly soft but as it contains Ramie it will be incredibly strong and will make great lace or cables as the Ramie will give good stitch definition.

Making a thicker yarn from a thin one

Many years ago I bought a big box of yarns on cones.  All sorts of colours and thicknesses, most of which have been used but I still have the fine yarns still on cones waiting to be used.  They're just sitting there, taking up space, it would take forever to use just one cone so what do you do?  You take one of them that you have two cones of and take an end from each cone and ply them together and fill two bobbins.  Then you ply those two together the other way to effectively create a yarn that is now four times thicker than it was originally.  I done this for the entire two cones, each of this size.

I made 7 skeins, each of about 145g-150g each, all of them are now sport weight.  5 of the skeins are Z-twist and 2 of them are S-twist.  They should have all been the same but I messed up and plied two of the bobbins the wrong way, meaning that the finished skein is plied in the opposite direction to the other 5 skeins.  It does mean that I will have to use the two different plies in different projects.

November's Fibre has arrived - Red Canary

When the letter for this arrived in my e-mail I did think it was going to be more of a pinky red rather than this orangey-red but its different.  The little bits of Sari Silk won't pose a problem for me as I've spun Sari Silk in blends a couple of times now.  A little bit of texture and colour really adds something to the finished yarn.  This one is 62.5% Merino wool, 25% Sari Silk, 12.5% Mulberry Silk.

November's Fibre Club Letter

November's fibre club letter has landed in my inbox.  I've still not got round to catching up with spinning so its really building up.

The letter reads:

Before I was a dyer I was a science teacher. None of my formal education was arts based, I have Science A-Levels and my subject at university was Biology. It’s always surprising how many people in the fibre arts come from a science or engineering background. There are times when I do sometimes wish I had done a more arts based education, but there were real benefits to studying science, and I was lucky to have some very inspirational teachers. 

My tutor in my final year of university was Professor Tim Birkhead. If you like listening to science programmes on BBC Radio 4 you may have heard him on various programmes including The Infinite Monkey Cage. He’s a very funny man, and excellent at communicating scientific ideas. On the back of the door of his office was a publishers advertising poster for a book he’d just written. I wasn’t the worlds best student, and by that point it was becoming very clear that I was not going to be a career scientist, but I did still love the subject. So I went home and ordered a copy. I still have it, I still read it now and again, and it’s the inspiration for our fibre this month. 

Ask anyone to name the first genetically modified animal and they will probably say Dolly the Sheep. It may come as no surprise that I am about to tell you that she was not the first. The first genetically modified species (ie. containing the DNA of a completely different animal) is the canary. The title of the book is The Red Canary and it’s the story of an amateur bird breeder, a scientist and a rich philanthropist and the quest to take an ordinary yellow canary and breed a bird that was bright red. 

The canary had been kept as a domesticated bird since the 17th century, the original birds were green and yellow and found on the islands just off the coast of Africa and Spain. In Germany the breeders focused on producing birds with a beautiful song, including an incredible variation known as the Mountain Roller. The amateur bird breeder of our book was a master. 

Karl Reich had managed to breed a bird capable of replicating the song of a nightingale. He did this using careful breeding, and crucially, the right environment as the bird grew up, as canaries learn their song by listening to other birds. Karl Reich met the scientist Hans Ducker, and together they set about trying to breed a red canary. Throughout the 1920’s and into the 30’s they tried to breed a red canary by introducing the genes from a Red Siskin. This was long before the technology of genetic manipulation that allowed precision splicing of the genetic code. Instead they bred thousands of birds, selecting for the best colour, and hoping that the hybrid birds would be fertile. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that they succeeded, but the story of how they got there is fascinating. The book tells this much better than I ever can, so I will leave the tale there, and as ever the further reading links will take you in the direction of pictures, videos, and much more.

So its going to be along the red theme then.  I have heard about people trying to breed red canaries from my time spent as a member of a local bird keepers and breeders club years ago.

From the spoilers chat she has revealed that it is a textured blend and won't spin smoothly and its sturdier than last months merino.

New Wedding Shawl Photos

Ha, I did it.  I lost enough weight to be able to fit back into the wedding dress that I bought to use as a photography prop.  In fact, its a little loose on me now.

I tried the dress on first this time, to make sure, before I spent ages preparing the photo set up.

I've taken over 300 photos but unfortunately I did run out of time and light and so haven't been able to take new photos of everything I need to photograph, maybe about half of them but I am very happy with them so far and all I have to do now is edit them and get them exchanged with the old ones that are in the shop.

I will have to do at least another one photo shoot to photograph the rest of the shop items and improve the photos but we will have to see on the weather and the light as at this time of year its really hit and miss.