beach weather

 

It is that time of the year. Yes beach, beach, beach.
It has been a very warm and very dry summer for us in Tasmania. We have had bad bushfires and gum trees are dying from the dry near to our home. It is soooo nice to see and walk on green grass at the beach. The water has been almost warm, and for Tasmania that really is a change. If only the water could stay like that for a little longer. There have been reports of new fish species being caught in our waters as the warm currents travel down our coast.

 

Eco Dyeing results

As I promised here are the results of my Eco bundle dyeing.
This is cordata dyed on silk. I love the intense orange gained from the first dye bath.

Another cordata silk scarf. 

This is also cordata on silk but I put this in the dye in the second bath. As you can see it is nowhere near as bright as the first ones.

And this is a linen serviette that I had pre boiled and then dyed with flowers from the garden.

longest thread compitition

Every second year in a little town called Bothwell there is a wonderful event called the Bothwell spin-in. It was created many years ago by one of the local residents, Barbara Fowler. She also started a competition for the longest thread. This has to be handspun from 10 grams of raw fleece.
I thought I would give it a go and tried to encourage as many others to join as well, just for fun. Anyway for a while at the end of last year my life seemed to be consumed with the spinning of my personal longest thread. I knew my entry would never be anything like a winning entry as these have been over 1 km long. So I kept trying, threads broke, and I kept trying.

 

In the end I was just happy to have a thread that did not break when I wound it into a ball. Now all I hope is that it will not break when it goes through the measuring machine, and be disqualified.
As frustrating as I found this at times I am very happy to have challenged myself to spin a fine, strong thread and what fleece did I use? I was luck enough to have part of a fleece from Barbara Flowlers own merino flock, handed to me by my Mum.
Keeping my fingers crossed for the end result.

eco dyeing

For christmas my children gave me Eco Colour by India Flint.
I had been playing around with bundle dyeing and though I should study her information a little more closely. She is such a wealth of knowledge and her book is fantastic.
Stay tuned for the results

green panache shawl

This is my latest shawl. It is the panache shawl ( you can find a link to the pattern on ravelry. I knitted it in lace weight yarn. I really like this pattern, it has easy repeats and the finished designs is stunning. This was sent across the seas to Italy to a relative.

art exhibition opening

Today I went to the opening of the Tasmanian Art Groups exhibition. It was held at the Botanical gardens and the theme was four seasons. It was great to see a gallery filled with such diverse and talented works.

This stunning work is by my father, called four seasons.

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.