Fibre Fayre

My local Spinning and Weaving Guild have a Fleece Fair once upon a year in a little village hall. It's a passionate affair with lots of local alpaca farmers and fibre milling around amid bags full of unwashed fleece and baskets of brightly coloured roving tops. The buzz and burble of shared techniques and expertise, heads bent over a piece of work or bundle of fibre, is accompanied by the rhythmic sound of spinners' treadles and the clink of tea cups. In my exploration of this Aladdin's cave I discover the most generous portions of the most hedonistic chocolate cake are served up with a beautiful milky brew in return for a single gold coin.

I come away after many hours, head spinning, clutching my many prizes. Out into the bright sunshine that spills across the expanse of grass as if there never was a cloud in the sky.

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Treasure guide:

Top = 100g Falklands wool roving, space dyed in Victorian Velvet colourway, from Mandacrafts.co.uk

Left = Two 50g Merino tops, from Spinningweal.com

I also purchased half a Zwartbles fleece (Isn't that a fantastic name!) , which is naturally a beautiful dark brown and will sit with what's left of my other unwashed fleece until I get up the patience to clean them.

I should probably also mention, for the spinners reading, that I received some invaluable advice, leading me to realise I'd been spinning without using my tension thread since I first got my wheel. This was inevitably giving me problems with the way my yarn was being fed onto the spool, but since configuring it correctly everything has been running smoothly..

Dream Embroidery (WIP)

This piece has evolved organically and on impulse. I'm not an avid embroiderer although I keep an eye on the contemporary scene thanks to Mr X stitch. There was no grand plan at the start -no plan at all in fact! I started with the lettering and stitched the outline of the cloud it sits on before moving onto the blue swirly space behind.

It' s mostly couched yarn, of varying materials, with a few small splashes of chain and cross stitch for good luck and annoying gaps. I'm at the stage now of adding embellishments of silver thread and considering beads. I've used embroidery threads as well as various sewing cottons already. The textures that have emerged are really pleasing.

It's still not finished, although there are areas that are fully covered now. I need to work on the cloud and define the lettering and the frame shape isn't decided. It may well become an odd shaped patch to be attached to a different background. On a bag perhaps? I'll try and wait until it's complete before I let me imagination run away with me!

Simple Things

I'd heard so many horror stories about people sticking themselves to things over the years, that I used to be irrationally wary of strong glues. I took my life in my hands some months back and fixed some precious broken earrings with startling ease. Obviously not at all scary. Having passed this hurdle and with the realisation that I won't inevitably end up in A&E, I bought some strong epoxy resin glue to create some button stud earrings using fixings I've had squirrelled away for this exact reason. A broken wooden bracelet gave me an excuse to get round to it. Results:

I made four pairs in all; White, Silver, Black/Purple and Brown. I wore the silver ones for a couple of days to test them for wear and tear and managed to rip one of the beads off (with no small amount of force) but other than that they seem indestructible -The buttons themselves are inseparable from their findings, which was expected, but a relief none the less.

It was quite a strange experience to have a project finished so fast. Refreshing. So much of what I create involves a long drawn-out process, whether it be because of drying times or pure input time with things like tatting, which has to be spread over several sessions. I don't often get things this close to instant craft gratification.

I've also started a piece of embroidery I'm quite excited about.

Darn it.

I put on a pair of long black socks today to find a hole with an accompanying ladder that had started creeping up from my big toe. I'm a big (and vocal) advocate for make-do and mend (Cultivating an appreciation and awareness for the lifecycles of goods, and not taking things for granted). The environmental impacts of a disposable culture terrify me and I attempt to live my values as much as is feasible. Having said that, I've not done a vast amount of darning in my life and never achieved anything that looked vaguely neat or matched the fabric around it. Until today.

I located an old incandescent light bulb, long ago changed over to an energy saving one - and stuffed it down into the toe. I stupidly made a start with some black sewing cotton, creating some warp threads where the hole was before I remembered I was lucky enough to get given, through freecycle, a load of vintage darning wools all coiled onto beautiful cardboard bobbins. Sure enough I came across a black spool and loaded up my needle.

I can't say my technique had any finesse but the result is indistinguishable from the rest of the fabric as far as my toes are concerned and I got a wonderful sense of satisfaction from the endeavour.

I should probably mention that I have a mending pile full of little jobs that could have been done in half the time so I'm in no way an exemplar of fastidious care - But I do feel a little smug.

Old Friends

Some old Art School friends, A lovely couple, got back in touch recently and came round for the first time in two years to catch up on all that's been happening in that time. Co-incidentaly a similar period of absence to my hiatus here. It was an interesting experience to look over how much I've done, made more prominent by the diversity of my activities and outcomes. It was nice to find that we could fall into an easy companionship after this long period without contact and it was inspiring to hear all their struggles, triumphs and dreams. She's very stylish in that casual, effortless and understated way, with a wardrobe full of neutral colours and nice natural materials that drape beautifully. She was wearing a flip-flop with leg warmers and wide leg trouser combination that made these fantastic shapes - and inspired me to design a piece of tatting (pictured above). I made it with very little preliminary work or calculation. All things considered it's an awesome prototype although it could do with beads being added and some tweaking to help it lie flat more naturally.

I also found time in one of those precious quiet moments to go through some of my 'Art Room Junk'. I'm lucky enough to have a corner to fill with my various bits of craft detritus and like many creative people I tend to start many more projects than I seem to finish. One of these abandoned treasures recently re-discovered is a purple and black stripy chevron top that I started in 2008 (bless Ravelry for keeping track of these things!). The design is loosely based on a jumper I saw worn by a girl on a ferry journey from southern Spain to the African continent - with alternating red and yellow zigzags going from wrist to wrist across the chest.

The piece was relegated to hibernation when in my exuberance and without any forethought I bodged a black body onto the chevron arms in a yarn far too chunky and with no real transition from the zig-zag pattern to the straight, leaving it bulging unattractively. I have now frogged this yarn horror and come back to it with more black DK (the stuff of which the main is constructed). I enjoy crochet and it makes much more sense to me than knitting, probably because I only have to concentrate on one point at a time and that level of focus appeals to me. I'm not adept at multitasking. I hadn't picked up my hooks in a while having gotten carried away with tatting, and while I've previously tended to work and design in a basic double crochet* I've decided to work in trebles. It's a taller stitch which works up faster. I've evened out the wobble by slip stitching into the points and doing trebles into the troughs which is probably not technically correct but is certainly an improvement on the last attempt! *(annoyingly american and english names for crochet stitches are different and yet use the same terms to mean different things, but I'm in the UK)

New Things

It's been an age (2 and half years!) since I posted anything here, but I wanted to share a few pictures of recently finished treasures and celebrate the beginnings of my new website. It's in very foetal stages at the moment but I will hopefully (with some help from the wonderful people at Original Webware) be developing it over the coming months to showcase my work and enable me to take bespoke orders from around the globe. The main bulk of this to start with will be my handcrafted beads which, although they're elaborate and time consuming to make, are an absolute joy. I search my everyday encounters for colour schemes and design motifs but much of the time I work intuitively, trying to discover the design rather than impose it.

I've also (inevitably) gained new skills since 2008 which no doubt will crop up on the new site, most noticeably shuttle lace or 'Tatting' as it's more commonly known. I've always felt at home with yarn craft and this one really suits me. I've got a number of designs I feel happy with and I'm still developing. There's so much to say about it - I'll have to do a dedicated post at another time! Thankfully I've acquired a camera with a Macro setting so I can finally get decent pictures to share with you!

A shiny pot of treasure I have made.