Monday, September 23, 2013

Felt: :Feutre - Contemporary Canadian Felt

I am off to felt: :feutre tomorrow on Salt Spring Island, BC. There are workshops, exhibitions and a fashion show all celebrating contemporary Canadian Feltmaking.
I look forward to 5 days of felt making, advancing my techniques and working together with fellow felting enthusiasts.
When I come back I will be teaching felting classes at the Art of Yarn and ready to share some of the new things that I have learned.

 https://www.artofyarn.com/product/byCategory/workshops/

How can it get any better than that?

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Plant Dyed Yarn....


 I've been dyeing wool fleece and yarn for years. I began my ...shall I call it an obsession...when I was studying to become a Waldorf School Handwork teacher. I was fascinated by the variety of colour you could get by just dyeing plant material. I read all the books and for a whole year I dyed only things I could find....leaves, bark, flowers, lichens.. By this time, I had over 60 shades of yellow.and then I branched out into madder and cochineal and added the reds and the pinks.
My first indigo recipe was complicated but once I mastered it I finally had a whole range of colours including the greens blues and the purples.

 It's not that  easy, you have to dye enough of the yellows and pinks to get the greens and the purples.....It just seemed I never had enough.

So now, quite a few years later...I begin again. This time I am using superwash merino from Louet and 10 skeins later all I have are 1 of a kinds. Nothing to add to the madder or the indigo....Oh well...the next time will be different again.