Posted on Leave a comment

Welcome to the Fibre Workshop

I’ve been thinking about blogging for some time and, recently being given the luxury of a bit of free time, now seems to be the time.

Also, my significant other suggested that it might be time for me to seek a wider audience for my obsessive compulsive talking about yarn.  Yes, I had noticed the glazed expression as I excitedly rub my latest experimental efforts all squooshy and mooshy in his face.

So fibre is a big subject, what do I talk about?  What do you want to know?  I’m already feeling the pressure to come up with something good.  I suppose a good place to start is a list of the three things I’ll be talking about:

  1. Spinning – I spin. It’s a compulsion.  It’s my greatest pleasure (almost).  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but it’s always, always completely absorbing.
  2. Adventures in colour – I dye my own fibre and undertake intrepid experiments in colour and texture. Getting batty with the carder.  Sometimes it comes out awesome other times not.
  3. Knitting – I knit mostly from my own handspun yarns so experimental is the key word here. Sometimes it turns out good sometimes it goes wrong.  I think I must knit every project three or four times over before it’s finished.  I will be talking about my adventures with needles.  Recently I’ve got into top down construction and that, my friends, has been a revelation!

From the list you’ve probably noted that I am somewhat of a control freak.  I like total artistic control when it comes to the yarn I use for my projects.  This often comes from a picture in my head of what I want to end up with and the only way to do that is to start with the raw material.  I will be taking you along with me in my adventures in fibre.  I make mistakes, many and often, but that’s the wonderful nature of experimentation, there is always something to learn and sometimes it’s incredible.  I hope to pass on what I learn from those experiments in fibre.  In the meantime you might like to look at some of my projects on the projects page.

I can’t wait to get started but I’ve got a workshop to build, a batt of gorgeous purples, greys and black BFL/Alpaca/Seacell batt that I’ve just taken of the carder that just needs spun into a corespun yarn and then there’s that red alpaca lace shawl for my sisters birthday that I really, really need to crack on with…..

I will get back to you and tell you about it later.