mcknitty’s blog

Student Penny has a gansey pattern and article in Yarn Forward (issue 18), it's in the shops now - rush out & buy it!  Well done Penny!I really enjoyed the article too, it's well written & very interesting.  I think you can be confident that they will use you again Penny.  

I met this lovely group of ladies just before I left.  They run spinning & dyeing classes, and use fibre from the farm sheep (and llamas I think) and natural dyestuffs grown on the farm.  This is a brilliant charity project and I hope to get over there one day when I'm in London.  Maybe we could have a meeting there? I was so busy hearing about the set up that I forgot to buy any yarn!  http://www.vauxhallcityfarm.org/2008/12/spinners.html

http://www.dyework.co.uk/index.shtml they use historic dye recipes and methods

Vauxhall farm

Vf handspun yarns

Vf yarns 2

Vf handspun

Vf handspun yarns

Vf handspun & dyed hanks

Vf dyestuffs

Vf madder

Vf stand 2

Handspun stand

The Fibre Factory, lovely yarns handspun and dyed by Julie Draper.  The (green) tencel was so gorgeous. She was really nice & just loves spinning & dyeing.  Her prices were reasonable for such a work intensive product.  The Tencel handspun was particularly unusual & interesting and the heathery colourmixes of the wools, etc. were beautiful.  All for less than the price of a ball of mass produced Noro!  www.fibrefactory.co.uk  01825 763857 and she lives in Uckfield. 

Fibre factory tencel detail

Fibre Factory handspun

Roving for knitted felting

Fibre factory handspun and dyed yarns 2 JPG

Fibre factory handspun and dyed yarns

I posted about 'Knitting4fun' after Ravelry at Coventry, Bev is lovely, very helpful & really knows her stuff.  I bought some 15cm / 6" long 5mm needles from her, perfect for stitch sampling or teaching kids to knit.  She has them especially made and wants to know what sizes people might want.  bev@knitting4fun.com   www.knitting4fun.com  0115 9148774.  Her yarn selection is excellent (I bought some Katia Paillettes sequin yarn and Katia Imagine, a fab mix of different textured tonal grey yarns on one ball) and with competitive prices.  She did a C&G and has a good understanding of what you are doing.  Nicki says: "Bev also sells singles and roving for felting, as well as a lot of felting kits"

Short wooden needles

Stand with teacosies

Had a great time indigo dyeing at Sandra's on Thursday. 

Yarn winding

Tied fabric

It's so exciting to watch the unpromising greeny-yellow colour turn magically to a glorious blue as it hits the air & oxygen floods in.

If you want to have a go Fibrecrafts sell kits.

Removing from dyebath

Just removed from dyebath

R: using a plate to catch the dye drips & ensure no oxygenated water gets back into the dyebath.

Before oxidation

The yarn/fabric turns blue as the air hits it

Colour change 2

R & below: part changed fabric

Colour change

Colour changing

Turned blue

R: partway

L: fully blue

Cling film resist binding

R: using cling film to bind areas to resist the dye.

Fabrics

L: fabric, the resist patterning was made by bound up chick peas! (dried, not tinned!)

Silk 2

Silk

Colours vary a little between fibres, the silks were a cooler, turquoise blue

Cotton

Indigo hanks

Wool

Unbound hanks

R & below: bindings removed so the background colour shows through

Indigo fabric & hanks

"We got to be featured seller for this week on Coriandr, the British equivalent of Etsy - front page and everything...!"

Well done Sue & Emily! 

See it here http://blog.coriandr.com/2009/06/22/featured-seller-%E2%80%93-22062009/

Thank you to those of you who brought to my attention that the current edition of Slip Knot magazine (the Knit & Crochet Guild) has a large advertisment for my courses containing many typos and spelling mistakes....

I had cancelled my advertisments some months ago so have no idea why it was in there anyway.  I know they have a new typesetter / printer and can only assume he transcribed this but it wasn't sent to me (or anyone else!!) for proof reading.   What people reading it must think about my suitability as an educator I can't imagine...!   I am very angry and emailed yesterday - but have not yet received a reply. 

I thought I'd show you a few of the paper samples I made on Saturday.  I didn't want to just make sheets of plain paper (can buy those!) but some embossed sheets exploring the ideas of random textured marks in sand that I can put in my sand marks sketchbook (seen in earlier posts).  After making a sheet of paper I drained it on a J-cloth and then laid on textured paper, etc. and left it under a weighted board to impress their pattern.

Materials for impressing paper

Paper 1

L: some of the textured surfaces I used.
R: a sheet of paper (leaked through ink has coloured it) showing the impressions

Embedded string

L: string embedded between two layers of paper pulp

Paper & lace

Paper 2

Above: (out of focus) shows the lace used to impress a pattern and the marks it made in the paper.

Embossed paper & original surface

Below: these marks were made manually into still damp thick paper.  Spot the potato masher! 

Paper 3

String embossed paper

String embossed paper reverse

Gary paper

Gary paper 2

Strips of cut up felted knitting were used to impress this pattern

Gary paper 3

 

Gary paper 4

Gary paper 5

Decided it was such a lovely morning that I must go for a beach walk before sitting at the computer all day.  So pleased I did, the earth movers (lots of work building groynes this winter) were putting the sand back where it belongs and the tracks were great - Mark-making (M3) on a grand scale.

Beach with tracks

Beach stripes

Reducing things to blocks or stripes makes them easier to translate into knit.  The blocks can be colour, texture or pattern.

Sand prints 2

Sand print 3

Sand prints

R: looks like blocks of textured sts divided by plain St St with textured st stripes top & bottom

Sand print 6

Sand print 5

Texture shows best next to a smooth surface, it's the contrast that shows it up

Sand stripes

Sand stripes 2

R: a ready made cushion design!  Top bit looks like chenille Rev St St, middle  Stocking St bands with Garter ridges & Honeycomb Slip St, then tweedy St St at the bottom

Sand tyre track

Sand stripes 4

Sand stripes 3

Sand prints 6

Sand track stripes

Tonal stripes

R: the centre section could be laddered knit, a column of buttonhole type openings, a double cable or knit / purl stitch patterning

NG pic

This amazing image is from the December issue of National Geographic magazine - this publication is a wonderful source of inspiration for design.

Sea stripes

Planks

L: stacked painted wooden planks, waiting to become beach huts. Or could become a stripy knit design?

Stacked painted planks

Plank ends

I Knit London have announced the dates for their annual London big knitting event - Friday & Saturday 11 & 12 September & tickets are on sale, £8 for one day or £15 for both days.

http://www.iknit.org.uk/news.html.