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.

Just a girl and her carder

Well I have been a little bit busy lately doing a bit of carding. This is our boy Jack who gave me all this lovely wool. It just goes to show that even a grumpy old ram can have a fantastic fleece. Lets hope we get some nice lambs from him again this year.

Now that I have carded up all this wool I will have to find somewhere to keep it. I dont think the kitchen table is the right place for it so I will have to stash it somewhere. hmmmmm but where. And then of course I will be spinning it up. I think I will have to hang up my knitting needles for a while. I have been having loads of fun with this fleece. It has been so nice to work with, so fine and shiny. I think this is a new passion that only other fibre holics will really understand.

I came across this 2ply and have been trying to re ball it. As you can see it has been a little tangled and has taken some patience to work out. But it did give me a break from all that carding. And I wonder why I run out of time to do all those other things in life.