Projects

The theme for this year’s Geelong Scarf Festival was ‘Life on the Land’.

My first entry was My Grandmothers Meat Safe. 

Years ago there was a bad storm in my grandmother’s neighbourhood and my parents who were away at the time asked me to check on her.  I told them she would be fine as she was a resilient woman but went anyway.  As I expected she was just fine and told me that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the 1925 Balranald tornado.  

Apparently she could see the storm coming and gathered her young family into the house and started to wash the dishes in a bowl on the table. The storm hit and the chimney collapsed through the ceiling leaving her with a bowl of broken china, bricks and soot.  Then she said ’we never did find the meatsafe’.  Clearly it had been caught up in the storm and was never seen again, probably taking the meat for the evening meal with it.  This was before refrigeration when food was stored in a mesh sided cupboard often covered with wet cloth strips in an attempt to keep the food cool.  The mesh of the canvas weave in the scarf is for the mesh sided meat safe.

The second entry was a man’s scarf using eco dyed yarns from Charly at Ixchel in a Fibonacci inspired block twill.  The colours reminded me of burnt paddocks

The other entry was a fancy twill in fine cotton, hand dyed in blue, similar to a another scarf I'd made in thicker cotton that matured in the stash for a very long time

Although the official opening was last week and the scarf of the year was announced, there have been no further updates and I’d really like to see something of this year’s entries

We just had a long weekend and the next ‘under wraps’ project – for the Sheep Show this time – is under way.  It will be under wraps for a while, but I can say that I remembered with painful clarity the problems I had last year running out of warp.  I bought yarn on Tuesday and it was a little thicker than my original plan.  I redid the calculations, thought for a moment that it would probably be OK, remembered last year and made another trip to the yarn shop on a wet afternoon to buy some more.  I managed to make a wide warp of fine yarn, about 1000 ends, and get the draft planned.  It’s now wound on and I’m half way across with the threading, seemingly with no errors - I do hope there are enough heddles.  It’s a bit cold in the garage where the Toika loom lives but at the last market I had enough sense to buy a pair of fingerless gloves, they’re working a treat, thanks Monnie.

Colours changed to maintain anonymity but they also match the warp, even in real life.

There’s a bird bath outside my kitchen window and if I don’t keep it filled with water the birds gather on the fence outside until I run out and fill it up.  Nothing works faster on me than 2 rainbow lorikeets, one sitting on the fence and one on the rim looking pathetically into the empty bird bath. These ones are probably holding a meeting to see if they can get it filled

As I was admiring them one day

they turned into my next project – tartan tea towels in lorikeet colours.  I had most of the colours in the stash but needed the right green for their bodies.  None of the colours on my UKI or Brassard sample cards was right.  There was a colour on the Webs website that looked better, but I was worried that the yarn in the hand and the colour on the monitor might not be the same.  On my previously mentioned trip to the yarn shop there was a yarn, a combination probably of a slub and a 20/2 that looked just right.  I bought one cone but realised that I needed more so another good excuse for the second trip.  I’ve been to the ‘Tartan Designer’ site and while there should be a wrapping, yarns going over a peg on the warping mill are almost the same.

I just might have wound that warp instead of working on the Sheep Show project. I had worked out the colours by looking at the pictures and estimating 50% green, 50% other colours and more orange and blue than yellow, lime and rose.  The balance worked and when I saw my finished warp chains, I thought they might just get up and fly away. 

Back to the Sheep Show warp

Helen

Lessons from the stash

A couple of weeks ago I saw some yarn advertised by someone who was sorting out her stash and knew that I could use it.  I’d made some simple scarves using a yarn from Spotlight – Moda Vera Fiordaliso, a mix of wool, acrylic and viscose – now discontinued, and colours more like those in the picture of the scarf below

I kept one of the scarves and it’s one of my favourites so when I saw the yarn at a reasonable price, I decided to make some more of the scarves.  I had a look in the stash and found some fine black wool for the warp and the stripes.  I started to make the 10 m warp and that’s where the trouble started.  I hadn’t got 2 lengths on the warping mill but had had several breaks.  I looked more closely.  I hadn’t wound off short lengths from bobbins back on to the cone.  There was no sign of moth damage.  I was using yarn from 2 cones, one already doubled to get the weight I wanted for the warp.

I tested it for strength and even the doubled yarn broke with almost no pressure at all.  I’d read that yarn does get past its use by date, particularly black yarn because of the chemicals needed to get a good black.  The horrible truth dawned – I had about a kilogram/2 pounds of yarn, definitely past its use by date – and not even strong enough to be used as weft in something I hoped to sell.  I guess there’s a lesson there, yarn doesn’t just mature in the stash sometimes it ‘over matures’  I’m reminded of the labels on the yarn I used to get from Village Spinning and Weaving in Solvang CA, where they had re-purposed food labels which said something like ‘refrigerate after opening’

My other concern is that I think the yarn in question was left over from the coat I made as my final project in the certificate of hand weaving.  I really like it but probably only wear it about once each winter.  I’d better start wearing it a lot more.  Hopefully as it’s been wet finished, there aren’t as many chemicals in it and my favourite coat won’t collapse

All was not lost however and there was more black yarn in the stash so I made my warp and got it on the loom as soon as I finished the last scarf on the warp I’d used to make a scarf for the Geelong Scarf Festival and a couple extra.  I did mention ‘frog hair and yarn chicken’ a couple of posts ago.  Here’s what was left from the warp of one after I’d had two broken warps,

not that bad in 7 metres plus of frog hair yarn, or for that matter how old the yarn was.  My guess is that it was from the 1980s, another reason why the problems with the black yarn surprised me.  Photos of the scarf will have to wait til the festival opens in a couple of weeks.

We had another good market last month.  The new venue is settling down well.  Our stall has been in different parts of the market each time and in June we’ll probably move again, hopefully to a regular spot  in what might well be called ‘fashion corner’, just inside the main door. The other good news is that the stall holders who were somewhat isolated down in a basement area, remote from the rest of us in the main area, will be re-joining the main market from next month.

I can’t believe that it’s a month since the last market already and that I have only managed to produce 2 scarves, the one below, aptly named ‘Tiger Eye’

and another from the Fibonacci blocks series, this time with a weft of 2/20 tencel doubled to make a very classic scarf.

I've also been planning an entry for the Sheep Show and survived a major computer upgrade at work, maybe next month will be more productive

Helen