opalescence

One of the workshops I did while I was at Bicheno was on creating an opalescence yarn. It was inspired by an article by Stephenie Gaustad and is about light and colour effects within a yarn. This is created by carding ( over and over a range of white and coloured fleece, silk or mohair together.  The base is about 95% white yarn with no yellow undertones then a blue/black is added to get a light grey. This gives you the opal milky base. To this is added the sparks and embers in a combination of hot pink, magenta, turquoise, aqua, purple violet and neon gree( I didnt use this). These are added in tiny whisps of colour.

1970's Bicheno style

As I was saying, the theme of the handspinner, dyers and weaver guild weekend away this year was the 1970's and here is just a little of all the fun we had.

bicheno escape

I have just been away for three days up the east coast to a wonderful little town called Bicheno. It was the HWSD Guild annual weekend away. For those of you remember last year it was all about socks, and sock blanks. This year it was all about the 1970's nut more about that in a later post.

I had the best time going for a pre breakfast walk along the coast. There are lovely beaches and fasinating rock scenery. Even though I kept my eyes peeled I did not come across a whale.

swallow tail shawl

This is my recently finished swallowtail shawl, you can find the patern on Ravelry. It was such an easy knit and I really like the finished shawl. I would have liked it to be a little larger as it is for a gift, but I like the pattern and even started to like nupps a little after doing so many of them.