Christmas Party 2011

Updates

The North Peace Spinners and Weavers are updating their blog.

Currently the North Peace Spinners and Weavers will be starting their annual Fibre Academy.
The following schedule is for the NPSW Fibre Academy has been currently adopted.

NPSWG Fibre Academy Schedule for 2011/2012:
All classes are planned for 10:00 – 12:00 Saturday morning at the Studio.
October:
22nd – Drafting for Weaving (continued) - Cheryl
29th – Intermediate Study Group
November:
5th – Kumihimo – Frankie
12th – Cotton Spinning on a Tahkli – Marjo
19th -         “
26th – Intermediate Study Group
January:
7th – Introduction to Inkle Weaving – Rene
14th -         “
21st – Felt Pictures -Jill
28th – Intermediate Study Group
February:
4th – Chinese Knotting – Sue
11th -         “
18th – Blueberry Retreat
25th – Intermediate Study Group
March:
3rd – Inkle Pick-up – Rene
10th -         “
17th – Card Weaving – Debbie
24th -         “
31st – Intermediate Study Group
April:
7th – Lace on a Rigid Heddle Loom – Frankie
14th -         “
21st – Open
28th – Intermediate Study Group

Check back here often for changes.

Update 2010

Saturday past was the annual trip to HH for a day of spinning with our sister guild in HH, B.C. It was a great day as we visited Frankie's home and had a look at her new lambs and got to walk in the nearby woods to check out the wild flowers growing at this time of year before settling down to an afternoon of eating (what we do best) and spinning, and showing off what we have accomplished over the last few weeks. I wish I had thought to take pictures but as usual I think about the camera after everyone has left and gone home! Rene g. had some awesome scarves woven and some tea towels that she was taking to her sisters as gifts. I unfortunately cannot figure out why anyone would want to waste all that time on weaving tea towels when you can buy them for a buck at the dollar store and I wouldn't want to use towels that someone spent hours weaving to wipe my dirty pots and pans. But everyone else swears that once you use a hand woven tea towel you will never go back...... I have yet to use one! The scarves on the other hand were awesome. One scarf was woven in a multi-coloured tencel warp with an undulating twill as the pattern and she used a chenille..... I think cotton..... which was gorgeous. The other scarf was knitted in a variegated bamboo (I think) and was also lovely.

Marion brought along beautiful woven baby blankets in huck lace with soft pastel blues, greens, yellows, and pinks..... very pretty. I did a demonstration on how to spin on a Navajo spindle and then demonstrated how to Navajo ply. then I gave a short demonstration on how to spin cotton on my charkha.

We also had a chance to look at some fleeces one in particular that I had just bought from a friend who is a shepherd. the fleece was lovely and unique in that it came from a Shetland cross ewe that had a fading gene. The fleece was white but it hadn't always been that way. I haven't spun any of it yet but I am hopeful to try it very soon.

we will be getting together again next month at Mary T.'s cabin on Ch Lk. i look forward to that and seeing what everyone is working on and hopefully I will be able to show and tell a little something myself.

Christmas Celebrations & All That Jazz

Our objective this year was to send our parcel off to the Pembrokeshire guild in late October, so that they would have our gifts in time for Christmas. The theme of our gifts to them was bookmarks with quintessential Canadian fibre or embellishments..... Rene packaged up the parcel and got it in the mail with assurances from Canada Post that we were sending it in plenty of time. It still hasn't gotten to them and it is now after New Years... You can count on Canada Post to be on time (not!). Go figure!

In the meantime that didn't stop us Canadian girls from celebrating our Christmas with our annual potluck and gift exchange.
We decided that we would all make Art Hats for our gift exchange and so there were quite a variety, with everything from the sublime to the rediculous, as they say. But don't ask me which is which... that would be too unfair. It was a lovely day, hosted be the wonderful and very gracious Rene. With the exception of Anita all the gals whoexchanged hats are in the following pictures. I have to appologise to Chrissy as I promised to get a picture of Anita in her hat and post it here but suffice it to say that Anita is not co-opperating on that score and so I will hopefully post one later of Anita in her hat.


Group photo!



Our gracious hostess Rene G.



Mary T. looking like a day skiing in the cross country fashion wouldn't go astray.



Marion J. looking like a flower in her garden hat.



Sharon K. reminded us of Jackie Kennedy with her lovely curl peeking from her Peace River landscape hat.



Faye E. smiles radiantly in her lovely chicken bonnet.



Marjo W. looks glorious in her seashells by the shore hat against the beautiful afternoon sunshine.



Lauralee L. looks spritely in her Tam O Shanter.



Chrissy looks marvelous in her Thistle shapeau!

Yarn Snob

My clock is chiming 6 am as I sit here. I have been awake for awhile watching my new kitten freaking out at everything that happens to move.... my yarn, my nightgown, my toe... ouch! Hang on, back up, what was that I said?.... Yarn?.... Yes, I have knitting on the go and yarn that I am using. Now I will admit that I am a bit of a snob when it comes to my knitting. I do tend to think that wool is better than acrylic, and that alpaca is better than wool, and silk is the ultimate... well maybe not the ultimate.... there’s always bamboo, and soysilk, and yak and quiviet...... but you catch my meaning I’m sure. I need to talk here a little about being a yarn snob. I became a yarn snob slowly over a number of years without realizing it was happening. How did I discover that I had become a yarn snob you ask? Actually it happened quite recently. I was offered several bags of yarn from some quite nice ladies in my guild at my last guild meeting. They are the type that go out garage saling each Saturday morning and are quick to be at a place where there are freebies being given out. They have offered me some of their “steals” in the past and I’ll be quite honest I have been given some very lovely items..... I am never one to turn down a free item if I can make use of it. Then these two wonderful ladies offered me several bags of yarn and of course the first thing I asked was, “Are they acrylic?” Now that was not when I discovered that I was a yarn snob. That discovery came later after I had picked out all the exotic yarn with the glitzy bits and was left with reams and reams of acrylic, just plain acrylic. You know, the kind that you find in bargain bins at Walmart. Some was very nice colours, I’ll give you that, but once I got it home and laid it out, I thought what am I going to do with all of this, as I looked on in dismay. I had actually turned it down originally but when pressed I thought perhaps my mother might make use of it, so in actuality I took it for her. I started to play with the colours thinking that perhaps I might make something with it for my church fund raiser. A blanket or afghan or something that someone might appreciate. And so I set to work with large needles and two different colours of purple. It wasn’t very long before I began to realize that I wasn’t enjoying the process. The yarn felt lifeless in my hands. I am continuing to knit but all I want is to get it done. I will be passing on what I don’t use of the acrylic to the other ladies at my church.

Enough about the acrylic and more about being a yarn snob. I started spinning my fibre about ten years ago. I was “all there” to buy a fleece, wash it and card it and finally spin it. The whole process made me feel like I was truly accomplished. When you take something that has no use other than to keep an animal warm and turn it into a beautiful product, especially when it is so labour intensive there is a feeling like no other. It is called success and it is a heady feeling indeed. Addictive might be a word that could describe it. You look at what you have created and you think, “Wow! I made that...”

Wool and it’s versatility are impressive. Then when you add a little glitz to your wool by throwing in some exotic fibres, some silk, or some quiviet, some yak or a little possum, hmmmmmmm, how can a body resist.

After a few years of this very addictive behaviour I decided that it was time to take it one step further. If I was really going to start from scratch, then I needed to invest in some fibre animals. I started out easy by getting a wolf/husky dog that had spinnable fibre. I’ve been spinning her fibre for quite a few years now and am pleased with the results. Then last year, when the lady that I buy my alpaca fibre from, decided to retire, I purchased some of her alpacas. Now I am the proud owner of ten sheep and five alpacas, soon to be six. We sheared this spring and that gave me more fibre than I will ever need. Next purchase a mill to prepare all that fibre for spinning.... then I can share all that beautiful fibre with my friends.

There is a problem to this though. Now I look at everything with an eye to its spinnability. My last purchase?.... Some seeds for flax..... my husband is getting worried... he should have been a long time ago.

Nature Dyeing

Well folks, it is the time of the year when most of my spinning friends are in a frenzy to finish the last of their nature dyeing before the cold weather comes and the leaves and blooms have faded for the winter. If you are like me, you will be thinking of nature dyeing too. I like to dye in the early fall with everything from woad and ornamental apples, to beets and lichen. Once the snow comes we are limited in our nature dyeing to what we can order from other parts of the world or using what come from the grocery store like onion skins and turmeric, or if you are very diligent what you have saved and preserved from your summer jaunts through the bush. I like to get together in September for a day of dyeing with woad with my friend Anita McWilliams who has been dyeing for many years. It has become a bit of a tradition. She has a lot of experience nture dyeing and so she is a wealth of information. (She even remembers all the latin names for the plants that she uses which is beyond my linguistic capabilities!) I asked her to write a few thoughts about what she does and I've included a few pictures. This is what she had to say.....

Dyeing With Plants by Anita McWilliams
With rare exceptions, plant dyes will give earth tones and subtle variations. Most plant dyeing requires mordanting to ensure fastness of the dye. I use alum, as it is easy to get, cheap, and not toxic, so no need for rubber gloves and a mask.

Some plant material is easy to come by - onion skins, for instance. Who doesn't have handy a source of these? I find, as a person living alone, that a years worth of skins saved, will suffice, giving a golden yellow colour. I was able to achieve an interesting "saddening" effect simply by adding a quantity of rusty nails into the dyebath.

One of my favorite natural dyes, is the raspy, fern-like Marestail or Horsetail (Equisetium) which grows usually in ditches or along roadsides. It is easy to gather and doesn't take much bulk to achieve a desirable weight of material. It is a pleasure to go out on a sunny spring morning and gather them. (I speak as a country-dweller!)The best results come from early season gatherings.The light, clear greenish-yellow is suited to overdyeing, in my opinion, as well.

As to proportions and recipes, I have gone mainly by guess, just go ahead and gather and experiment,just remember to make a note of proportions so that you can repeat your successes next year.

Anita's and my recommendations for resources:

1. "Dye Plants and Dyeing", Brooklyn Botanic Garden, may no longer be in print.
2. "A Dyers Garden", by Rita Buchanan,
3. "Flowers of the Yukon", by Mickey Lammers
4. "Wild Colour" by Jenny Dean no longer in print.

Shawl

I've started working on a shawl with a pattern from a book called Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman. It is called Garter Lace Triangle Shawl. I've knit this shawl pattern before and found it to be a real treasure. The first time I knit it I had a fairly bulky weight peach woolen homespun yarn it turned out to be simply lovely. It was very soft and cozy and it made me think of soft kittens curling up. The next time I knit it I used a light grey coarse wool with stripes of woad dyed woolen yarn, that I spun myself. It too was lovely though not as soft as the peach version. It had a much more hardy look and would have been "in the olden days" considered a working shawl. So yesterday, I decided to knit the same pattern again and this time I am using an ivory coloured yarn that I spun worsted to enhance its lovely sheen. This yarn is called Karaoke and is a combination of merino, and soysilk. I spun it fairly finely at about sport weight. Once again I am pleased with the results so far.
I love shawls because they are triangles of perfection and I have knit many. I have also woven many too. I tend to pick patterns that I like and knit them over and over trying different types of yarn to see what each yarn will bring to the pattern. This pattern could easily be adjusted to turn it into a sweater or a blanket just by changing the increases or not having increases at all to suit the shaping of your chosen garment.
Drape is an important factor in considering the perfect fibre for a shawl. The yarn you use should be knit loosely but not so loosely that the stitches become holes (unless that is the effect you are trying to achieve). The sport weight yarn that I am using is being knit on 3.25 mm knitting needles. This is fine but I would have liked this shawl to be a bit drapeier. I did try a size 3.00 mm knitting needle however, that was definitely too tight. Then I tried it on a 4.00 mm knitting needle and that was too loose. So I didn't have 3.50 mm knitting needles so I chose a pair of 3.25 mm knitting needles. #.75 might have been better too but I didn't have them either. Soysilk feels a little like cotton when it is being knit with very little memory and so that also detracts from the drape of the shawl. Still this shawl is pleasing to touch and I feel it will be fine when it is finished.