this bit is from naturally dyed fibres; gorse, madder, brazilwood, eucalyptus and natural grey merino

and this is a mix of naturally and man made dyed fibres

It’s hard not to love this technique – it enables all the colourful fibres to show their full beauty as the yarn is being wrapped almost diagonally around the core. I used commercially spun 3 ply yarn choosing colours  along the way. Overtwisting is the danger but when  simmered gently for a short time and dried naturally it straightened wonderfully. Big thank you for this tip goes to my spinning advisor Renata from B.ena.

big silk scarf in light yellow, grey, heather and teal/blue

and a fine merino wool scarf in terracotta red and almost black

both dyed with plants.

From fibre to yarn to cloth to cushion covers. Most of the yarn is my samples for Web Spins.

I know, I have said it here before, but I am still quite mesmerized by this transformations.

Now this set of cushion covers  transforms the look of our sofas. And there is one more in the company – I have just finished the machine knitted one too.

The front is made of felt panels. I first handspun yarn from various white and grey wools, silks, bamboo, viscose, hemp and  linen and then felted it into a wool base.  The back is beautiful linen from Bulgaria I highly recommend.

I could watch how the yarn twists and travells for a long time…

Weaving evening.

Weaving light.

The  technique to try and learn in April was Tornado. Instead of splitting and pre-drafting the fibre as the book suggests  I took a shortcut and used the thin roving I bought long time ago. It’s some sort of down wool. I don’t remember the name anymore; all I remember is that it felts much slower than merino yet is rather fine. It’s the white fibre on the right in the picture and is spun into a base yarn around which the rest is bundled; from the left: machine knitting yarns – lambswool and silk, at the bottom sewing threads – grey (spent) and metalic silver.

Jacey warns that it is one of the slower spinning techniques and my choice to use the metalic thread made it even slower. It was much stiffer than the rest and had the will on it’s own, catching on the lazy kate and creating big loops.

I found it very helpful that I didn’t need to draft at all  instead concentrating on keeping the threads together and yet not too much together so that they would twist around freely.

To me the main difference between Tornado and Autowrap is that with Tornado to create the ‘wild’ effect I had to somewhat ‘fed’ the yarns around the base fibre to create the loops. Had I let them to wrap on their own the finished yarn would have been much smoother. Now it resambles a boucle yarn and I love  it’s texture. By changing colours and the wrapping yarns + having a jumbo flier lots and lots of yarns with quite a difference could be spun.

Here it is in action - woven next to other yarns a I have already spun for the challenge. Soon I will show you the finished pieces.

I would love to see your Tornado yarn, if you are still doing the challenge, please leave the link to your photos in the comment box. Life has been busy on many fronts here but I am determine to continue spinning – next is the corespun!

This is what is left on the worktop when I roll up the felt in the bubblewrap – I see some  free spirits here, do you? ^_^

I was planning to felt which instantly inspired my younger one and it was her who felted eventually. It’s a maize and we are going to mount and frame it.

The older wanted to bake but didn’t know what. She asked me for inspiration. ME??? I could do without baking (and cooking). So she pulled out her recipe books; she even copies recipes from books from the library – and I tried to remember what I did when I was 12…

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Today is the last day of Easter holidays which in Scotland is 2 weeks and one day. Don’t tell your kids, they might want to move over…

I have been spinning yarn for more cushion covers, you can see two front panels finished here 

I have been aiming for a lot of twist and texture and as all spinners say it’s not easy to re-create that beginner’s yarn after our drafting improves.

I have also been spending more and more time behind the knitting machine, mostly sampling and then working on this cloth – building it from panels directly on the machine to avoid hand sewing.  I enjoy hand sewing but I thought it would be interesting to learn how to cast on the right amount of stitches on an already knitted piece.

pure linen printed with rose leaves and lily stamens, 68 x 50 cm, available

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welcome spring with me with 15 % off

on all itmes in my two etsy shops

Soft Fibre and red2white

with the coupon -   hellospring   -

entering upon checkout

The discount applies on all listed items and can be used on sale items as well. The offer is valid till March 31st.