Injured skein winder

I had 2 skeins out of 8 to wind into cakes when this happened.

What to do?  I remembered my mother used to put two chairs together and unwind from there but

I wanted to use my cake winder and not put extra twist into the yarn by winding a ball first.

 So ...

This reminded of a cat we used to have called Tat.  At that time, maybe 20 years ago, I was knitting a lot of intarsia on the knitting machine and often had 20 or 30 different threads hanging to cakes on the floor.  Without fail, at 5 pm Tat would saunter over and quietly roll in all 20 threads; never failed to get a reaction from me.  It was his way of saying "Dinner time".

The good news is my fix it man, DH, has mended the skein winder with instructions on being more careful with its use and another lecture on the stupid uses chip board is put to and how it should never have been allowed and how it should be solved and ....

Exhibition scarves

This shibori string was painted black on one side and about 6 shades of blue and green on the other.

 Opened out it became this, another interpretation of Tui, which, for those Auckland folks who did my workshop, uses the summer and winter threading.

 And this I call Kakapuka's Cloak, another S&W threading.  I grew up at the foothills of Kakapuka mountain and remember it being covered with yellow flowers of gorse and broom and the violet of heather blossom.

Spinning A Yarn

This is the exhibition the tui wraps are going to be in so if you're passing Hamilton/Cambridge way between 10 June and 10 July do see the exhibition.
(Photo taken from computer screen.)

Tui Wraps

The tui is an iconic native bird of New Zealand and Wikipedia has an excellent page here.  The last month or so I've enjoyed watching the tuis swooping and diving from tree to tree and calling to each other:  "Here I am, aren't I handsome".  The boys are dressed in their breeding plumage and look magnificent when the sun catches them in flight.

Do you remember back here I said I had a plan for the gap in the warp?


And the next post I said there were two mistakes?  Oh yes, I treadled 1,2  1,2 instead of 1,2,3,4.  Well I went where no weaver would dare go and pulled out two rows then with the help of a tapestry needle manipulated the threads and now I defy anyone to find the error.  I can't.

Now do you see what I did with the weft threads?  Yep, combined knitting and felting with weaving.  I have actually felted the knit stitches so they won't pull or catch.

Black weft and white wattle.  Tears were shed over this one.  When I read Susan's post showing her beautiful Navajo shawl and she said she had picked out 43 inches I thought OMG, surely another solution.  I was weaving away and bent down to measure for the 1.5 metre mark and right at the 1 metre marker was 2.5cm, a whole inch, of floats right across the fabric.  Obviously more than one treadling error.  It was the weekend and the factory the merino came from was either sold or in receivership so I had no idea if I could get more yarn.  I new I had enough black merino to finish the wrap but if I cut out 21 inches I wasn't sure so nothing for it but to unweave   all   21   inches.  Every 4 rows I had to wind the yarn back on the pirn.  Just as well I did as I needed all I had.  Worth it don't you think?

Lipstick blankets

The Lipstick blankets started back here, warm and scrumptious.

Unweaving before lunch

I love feijoa season; apple and feijoa crumble, feijoa muffins.  In the vocabulary of my grandson, Mmmmm.

Guess what I had for lunch.

Recently the Yarn Harlot wrote about ripping knitting and winding the used yarn around the ball and the feeling we get when we've reknitted the old yarn and are back to the virgin stuff.
I'm feeling the same way with my weaving, or unweaving.  You would think I could count to four by now, its pretty simple 1, 2, 3, 4, uncomplicated really.  But the number of times I've woven 1,2 1,2 is unbelievable.  Unfortunately, I know there are at least two places where I missed the mistake until too far on to unweave so I'll have to needle weave in two rows and hope it won't show too much.  This might end up in my wardrobe.
The moral of the story is that if it doesn't look right it probably isn't.

Some production, some exhibition weaving

One of the things which stands out in my mind from the lectures by Maryann Stamford at the Professional Weavers Network seminar in March was her saying that it was near impossible to be a production weaver and an artist weaver at the same time.  I'm very much inclined to agree with her as I feel I'm being torn in two at times.  I do a lot of production work for Pauanesia and thoroughly enjoy the collaboration we share.  This year I have two pretty big exhibitions I am working towards and that doesn't take into account the Creative Fibre exhibition showing now in Blenheim or Creative Experience later in the year in Hamilton or Fibre and Fleece at Opotiki.  So I keep weaving, not very time efficiently, but one brings in the pocket money, the other inspires creative development and I want both!

Now on to the important stuff.  Remember back here, well here it is drying on the deck rails

and a close up of the twill structure

and now production has started

and just so I don't relax too much I've started on an exhibition piece.  Inspirit Gallery invited me to join several other artists in an exhibition called "Spinning a Yarn" to honour wool and the land while the Field Days (a huge agricultural exhibition) are on.  The warp reflects the colour of the tui and I'm crossing it with wool called blue lagoon though it also reminds me of the Coromandel seas I look at each and every day.  The structure is false damask 3:1 and to make it easy on myself I'm lifting the "1" shafts but all the glorious warp colour is on the bottom and I see the weft dominant side.  You'll have to wait and see what I do with the "gap" in the warp.  I have a plan!