About this blog space

This blog space is a place for me to primarily put all my wool gatherings, adventures, experiments. I am now a mum of two astounding daughters, and I used to be a DIY musician and co-ran a tiny independent label (Slampt), so this punk can-do attitude plus feminist analysis and Art school experience somehow informs my wool work! I am also deeply moved by GREEN, trees, weather, colour combinations in nature, and texture. I aim to source wool from round the corner or at the very least UK grown and processed, and to create no toxic waste. This means I get to see sheep as often as I can, sometimes at wool fests.
I am on Ravelry and Etsy as FatHenWildWool and Facebook as Rachel Holborow.

Sunday 17 July 2011

Tour de Fleece week 2


In the end I've spun one ply of  different moorit shetland shades, and one ply of  blends of  naturally dyed + tussah silk and a slight dash of copper triloban. The overall impression is one of coppery brown ( the colours are slightly browner than the way the photos are showing up) with orangey yellow, pinkish, greenish sections: Natural dyestuffs used include Eucalyptus ( my first time dyeing with it as loads of Eucalypts had a bad winter round our way and lots of friends are getting the dead areas lopped off, to my benefit : Thanks Jo, Sam and Theolyn!), lac, madder, goldenrod and indigo. The skeins are still drying, but weighed 92 grams when finished, so I must've lost a fair amount of fluff on the way as it weighed 98 grams before spinning.... Certainly the moorit I prepared was horribly flakey, which I felt the need to tug out as I went along, in truth it was a pain to spin, and a lesson learned. I will not buy flakey fleece ever again. ( I didn't check this one properly...Serves me right)
However, that prepped by me moorit was only a quarter of the total yarn, my blended batts were delicious to spin, as was the commercially prepped moorit, and I mostly spun the yarn from the fold longdraw, except where flakes hindered me.

I do love the colours and how they work together, I expect they will give a "heathered" textile when knitted up, a kind of brown with largish flecks. ( I am currently hoping to venture into a Jane Thornley inspired freeform shawl in autumny colours...)

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