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Our newsletter has an earthy theme this month; stories include mud dyeing, a Beauty in Soil biodiversity exhibition and a geology-themed boneyard shawl.
Cotton crops up too with an attempt at the longest thread, growing at home from seed and lab-grown brightly-coloured cotton.
I don't keep a count but this feels like a bumper issue. The stories have just kept coming.
Read on for this month's cunning curated collection of inspirational information and entertainment for spinners, knitters, crocheters, dyers and weavers. This is the full issue for September 2020.
Photo right: sweater, heybrownberry. Cover photo: The spinning wheel (Oil on Canvas) by Giovanni Battista Torriglia.
Contents
In the media
Farmers welcome pledge to increase use of British wool
Handspun stories
using handspun yarn with a knitting machine, hefted sheep, washing alpaca, harvests of indigo, woad, deconstructing yarn, growing cotton, spinning the unusual
This finished skein looks overplied but it may not be. Singles relax, you may deliberately leave your singles to relax as Knit/Wit does. That means that if you test for balance as you ply then your yarn may be underplied.
Sarah discusses the subject as she plies and soaks this 'Stash Dash' yarn.
If crochet, particularly granny squares are your bag, then you may already know that 15 August was granny square day.
You can use the hashtag #grannysquareday2020 to see a million (ie more than seven thousand) pictures of people's 2020 granny squares. Hosts Simply Crochet encouraged people to crop their pictures so that the hashtag page makes a 'virtual blanket'. There are lots of resources on that page too to help you learn how to make and join granny squares.
When I dealt in new and secondhand wheels, a very frequent enquiry was from people who had bought an old wheel, expecting to be able to buy parts off the shelf.
It's very common to find vintage wheels with no name and with parts missing.
If you're prepared to do the research and pay for specially-made parts, it can be rewarding to get such wheels working and to use them.
Heather Fulford has put together a list of books, forums, wheelwrights (U.S.) and useful supplies.
Complementing the story above nicely is this picture of Jenn with her Woad harvest. Explore her Instagram feed for more pictures, this year she has extracted and dried 36g of indigo dye from 9kg of woad.
Jillian Moreno has taken half a dozen different novelty yarns apart to see what makes them tick.
It's an interesting exercise, and we may be able to make something similar on a spinning wheel. But Jillian has made swatches from these characterful yarns to see how they behave in regular knitting.
Eight reasons why knitting should be taught in schools
Yes, it's a clickbait headline and on a topic we've seen before. Some of the points here may be surprising though. I wasn't expecting mention of life skills such as patience and breaking the need to be perfect.
We've seen plarn being used to make sleeping mats for homeless people.
Kitty Quitmeyer enjoys making all sorts of items using old plastic bags. She uses a laser cutter for fine yarn, but says that you can use lower-tech methods too, such as a rotary cutter or just scissors.
In this post, Jillian explains how she divided four ounces of singles into 12. (The bobbin that holds the 4oz is huge, so it really doesn't look that much)
Spoiler: It's not rocket science. She doesn't reveal why she needs 12 equal lots of singles. it's for her next Knittyspin column, so it's bound to involve sampling and swatching.
I haven't seen a treadle quite like this before. This is hemp fibre being separated after retting. There are some more pictures alongside this video showing batiked and indigo dyed fabric.
Evanita has spun this very fine cotton as part of Tour de Fleece 2 and also as part of a 10g longest thread competition. Her 211.5 yards is a personal best.
Adventurous handspinner Jeannine Glaves enjoys trying unusual fibres. In the past she has tried spinning a native American's long hair, toilet paper and steel wool scrubbing pads.
In this Spin-Off magazine article she writes about three unusual fibres; chinchilla, cactus cotton and Spanish moss.
This is a cake of pineapple threads. Peggy Osterkamp explains with pictures how they are stripped from the leaves of the plants. They appear not to be spun, instead, individual threads are knotted to make long continuous threads which are then used held double for warping.
From one extreme to the other. I'm a fan of subtle and this is about as subtle as you get .
Anna recently acquired a blending board and is excited about the colour possibilities for rolags as well as batts.
I love seeing side-by-side pictures of fibre, singles and plied yarn so that we can see the transformation and we do have all three here. The yarn has a mother-of-pearl effect.
In order to try and make the colours more uniform, Kaitlin has been blending chunks of this Malabrigo braid on hand cards and then pulling the fibres off (similar to dizzing).
There is a disclaimer with this tip; thecrazysheeplady says that she is a redneck spinner and that you should bear that in mind.
Here she's using steam to 'wake up' the crimp in combed top. I'm not sure that I know what a 'redneck spinner' is, and how seriously this tip should be taken, but I like what it appears to be doing to her top.
Mosaic crochet uses a single colour per row and basic crochet techniques to create colourwork designs.
DANIELA NII outlines two techniques; a right-side-only method which leaves a fringe at each side (which you can work in if you like) and a back-and-forth method.
She gives a chart for the design in this article and suggests patterns that use these techniques.
Kitchener stitch mnemonics and rhymes have featured regularly in this spot, but I still have to search online for the instructions every time I need to do it.
Thanks to Dances with Wools for the link to this cheat sheet. Look for the link to the free pdf. It prints four to a page and I have now printed, laminated and cropped four little cards for myself.
Blocking is another subject that comes around regularly. Like me you may have become used to pinning everything out on a foam mat.
Kate Atherley says that you don't need to. She says that there are only a few cases where stretching out with pins and wires is really needed.
She has made a flowchart with her recommendations for drying various types of garment and various fibres. That's near the end of her article below the heading Clip and Save.
You may have tried both snapping and thwacking your skein after soaking. Emonieiesha Hopkins explains that they each have their place and lists when to use each method.
This is a very straightforward explanation of something that can look quite daunting.
If you're a rigid heddle weaver, or have not woven before, this article may encourage you to go beyond plain weave, either with multiple rigid heddles or a multi-shaft loom.
Australian scientists believe they have found a way to modify cotton so that it grows in a variety of bright colours. They hope that these cotton plants can be spun and made into colourful clothes which don't require any dyes.
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The Coronavirus pandemic is causing havoc in all our lives at the moment but what about the charities and organisations that rely on public fundraising to maintain their care services? Martin House Children's Hospice is such a charity, with an annual running cost of around £9 million to provide their vital services to families, they need our help.
As a way of offering support to Martin House, Adam Curtis Online are donating a percentage every sale of their two most popular ranges, the Best of British Wool Throw Collection and the Real Shetland Cushion range.
Please see their blog for more information about Martin House and the fundraising products.
Evanita has microblogged her review / demonstration onto Instagram as a series of short videos with comments.
You may have seen the Akerworks Super Skeiner already and been intrigued. It looks easier than a traditional niddy-noddy to use and has a built-in counter.
I'm linking to the 'in use' video, explore Evanita's Instagram feed for videos showing the assembly and disassembly.
Kicking off our gallery this month is cronalicious_lwg modelling her Boneyard Shawl.
We may as well stop here because there won't be a better picture of a handspun project ever.
It continues our mud / soil / earth theme; the colours in this Boneyard shawl are geology-themed. (Inglenook Fibers' geology blend series plus heathered Jacob). She says that the shawl was "fast and fun" but is itchy against the skin!
Pamela has finished this large square shawl. In my thumbnail it's folded to make a triangle but opened out it is large.
It replaces a shawl that she loved but lost. Follow the link in this article to find details about the spinning and the jewel-like colours in the yarn.
The pattern isn't written - "it's just a square shawl, worked from the center out, with three different motifs that I liked," says Pamela.
Claudine Celebuski made this jumper using two raw fleeces: a black Border Leicester and a white Texel. She had hoped to enter the finished garment into a Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival contest, which of course has been cancelled, but she hopes to enter it into the 2021 event.
This article from Spin-Off has lots of detail about the jumper; materials, design process, specific challenges and favourite parts.
Following a suggestion that the shape of the coronavirus may make a good spindle whorl with weight distributed towards the outside, Jame A has made some using polymer clay, toothpicks and dowels. She says that the creative act provides a distraction and comfort. She admits that there's a little black humour here too.
The trouble with finishing a sweater in the summer is in the word 'sweater'. Here's Meaghan suffering so that we can admire her finished Shifty sweater which includes her handspun yarn.
She's taken care that the colour changes in the sleeves line up.
the_village_weaver is ready for Autumn with this handwoven cowl which includes hand dyed and handspun yarn. The textured yarn is corespun hand dyed merino and silk
Fibre is from John Arbon, Babbles Yarns and Cat and Sparrow. I like the transition from light to dark.
heybrownberry highly recommends the pattern, JUiST No2 by ANKESTRiCK. She says that the "details on this are subtle and awesome". See her Instagram feed for some close-up pictures of the sweater and her impressive work.
I don't think the colours are as 'clown barf' as Araignee says. She doesn't hate the colours in the finished shawl as much as she thought she would, but suggests that she might overdye it at some point. Her finished project is here, link to the pattern on Ravelry is below.
My thumbnail shows pinedove's Tiny Tassels made from Halcyon fibre in purple/gray/orange/red for a "2-ply sunset dream".
Thanks to Helen for the suggestion, read her blog post if you're interested in making this shawl because the tiny tassels can be tricky, and she has some links and tips to help with those.
I'm pretty sure I've shared Flax before but this picture has appeared. It shows Em of Tin Can Knits wearing one that she spun and knitted herself using fibre from both John Arbon and Spin City.
She thought that spinning for an entire sweater was "slightly unreasonable" but it came together pretty quickly and she says it's her favourite knit of all time.
This picture shows Thread Head Joanne's Stone and Fire Cowl, which she's renamed earth and water due to the colour of the yarn that she dyed and spun especially for the project.
She says that the pattern is "lovely, with an easy to memorise stitch pattern".
Designer Linnea Ornstein says "this shawl is perfect for your handspun yarn in various colours, combined with a plain white or solid colour yarn. Or perhaps a bunch of mini skeins as the contrast colour?"
It calls for 820 - 930 yards of Sport / 5 ply (12 wpi) yarn. Mostly in the base colour with a small amount of the contrast colour(s)
She keeps having to stretch it out to remain optimistic and remind herself of how the finished result will look.
The pattern is written for either worsted weight yarn, which makes a "bold and gutsy" shawl, or fingering weight for a very different look. It has a construction that eliminates the traditional point, and keeps the knitting interesting by working side-to-side with a different pattern in the central panel.
The pattern comes in a paperback or ebook containing five patterns altogether.
This is hsuv's Hecate, which includes handspun yarn from Corriedale combed top.
Imperceptions is a new collection from Woolly Wormhead. The patterns use "unconventional stranded colourwork to create the illusion of manipulated fabric".
Also from the same collection in handspun yarn is fitzie's Circe
The University of Wyoming's Biodiversity in Art project is both art and education. Karen Vaughan and Diana Baumbach decided to depict soil through weaving in a variety of works.
Faig Ahmed began this piece, titled 'Doubts', before lockdown. The studio had to be closed during the quarantine and the work was "waiting for its time".
There is no entry fee to register a team. Spinners will be invited to donate a minimum of £5 each and ALL funds raised in 2020 will be donated directly to the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution)
A final word of thanks to everyone who blogs, writes articles or posts pictures on the subject of spinning, knitting, crochet or weaving. This newsletter wouldn't exist without people writing interesting and useful things.
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