Ist Craft Fair, whoopee!!!!

Hi, Sue here standing in for Wikkidknitter as his Internet connection has been AWOL for the last few days.
Last Sunday saw the Purple Bean Craft Fair in Nottingham, the first craft fair attended by Wikkidknitter. We turned up armed with loom , spinning wheel and plenty of fluffy things. Jewellery, woven key rings and cute felt brooches were also fighting for space on the stall.

Although there weren't too many shoppers around, a few sales were made and a lot of giggling when on between several cups of coffee. The loom and spinning wheel attracted attention as usual and encouraged people to stop and ask questions about what we were doing. I strongly suspect that this may be the first of many outings for the stall.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed before the next post xx

Playing with beads.

So, I got a little adventurous and decided that I was going to take some beads, thread and a beading needle to my local Knit and natter instead of some knitting (this is quite a regular occurrence, I usually take either some knitting, crochet, spinning or weaving, what ever takes my fancy for that day).
anyway, here's what I came up with.

Up next is a little dyeing experiment, I made a shawl for my sister last year (hand spun, hand knitted and then dyed) and she never found anything to wear it with so she gave it back and said I'd hate for it to spend its life hidden away... So me being me, I thought "I'm going to through some colour on it and see what happens" (I'd dyed it once already).

Before.

During dyeing.

And after, once dried and modeled by a lovely sculpture as part of Nottingham in Bloom (i think).

I said i'd try and add photo's of my progress in weaving and the Angora/Merino blend fibre that i dyed and here it is, i also have a small amount of the fibre spun up on another bobbin :o)

I'll Post more photo's of both as i get more done.

Next up are some really pretty silk hankies, I had a go at dying these and was just so Pleased with how they came out they were all just so bright.
I plan on dyeing more of these to see what I can come up with but i also have to do something with them so keep an eye out to see what I come up with....

Angora/Merino

I somehow managed to acquire around 500g of 50% Angora 50% Merino top in natural white and thought it would be a good idea to try and dye some (around 150g), it was all really exciting as i had no idea how the blended fibre would take the dye or how it would react in general to the whole process.

i was going for dark browns and greys, I'm not sure where i went wrong with the colour (either i didn't get it wet enough, or there wasn't enough acid in the dye mixture) but i do know that it was all that exciting i just couldn't leave it alone (always a bad idea) and the colour just kept washing out so what happens when you agitate warm, wet fibre?? it fulls or worse, felts!

So, there i was, left with a slightly felted braid of fibre that didn't turn out at all how i wanted (this happens sometimes, that's not to say i don't like the colours because i actually did) and i was left thinking to myself "what can i do with this?" i decided to tease it out and spin a little, then a bit more and then i had a bobbin full of thin singles and around 1/3 of the fibre is gone!! this is a W.I.P. so I'll keep you posted on how things go..... See you soon :o)

Fair Isle llama anyone?

Wikkidknitter turned up at a recent dyeing session with theses......well, who wouldn't buy them when there is a photo of a knitted poncho wearing llama on the packet!! Also the important information that no llamas were harmed in the making of these snacks :-)

Wikkid Woven Wrist Wraps.

Introducing Wikkid Woven Wrist Wraps (very pretty woven bracelets)
These are being made using an Inkle loom (more of that later) and a variety of beautiful hand spun and commercial yarns. I'm just learning to use the Inkle loom so the ones pictured have been made by sue, I'll post pictures of my progress along with a few other bits so Watch this space!! :o)

Just checking that this bit works as well !!