teeswater

after reading about Helen's teeswater experiments I thought I'd show some of my own result with this lovely fibre.

I have been dyeing teeswater top for more than a year now; all of the colours are done with natural dyes. I started for the OLG workshop "hedgerow dyeing" last summer and have bit by bit added to the "heap" whenever I found something else to try out. this included barks, flowers, berries and other greenery I found in my garden and around the area (apart from the cochenille of course, which unfortunately doesn't thrive here:)). all the colours are soft and seem to go together well. when I saw the multicoloured shawl in the book "folk knits" from interweave I thought I might do something similar with the yarns, but after spinning only a smaller part from the big bag - I decided that 4 kg of teeswater yarn is definitely too much for a shawl - and even though the teeswater makes a lovely smooth and slightly lustrous yarn - it isn't the softest of wools - at least I wouldn't like to wear it close to the skin! so now I am thinking of making an afghan or some form of blanket after all (even though I warned everyone of doing so in another entry:)). I am thinking larger needles and single yarns, which would result in a more open fabric - less heavy than the 4ply cable I used on my Aran afghan - with loads of dense cabling?

I won't rush into it though - first I need to spin up another 3 kg or so into yarn:) and even though it spins up quickly - it's a lot of material and as we are coming closer to christmas again - there isn't as much time for it as I'd like!

I haven't space dyed the fibres for each hank - I just started another colour once I had finished the first, when there wasn't that much and the bobbin was still half empty. as I wanted to use it as a single from the start, there won't be any problems with separating the different colours later. there are cochenille/iron, rhamnus frangula, yew bark, solidago, comfrey, black violas, horse-tail, reed flowers and other dyes in there - and loads more to come, mostly yellows and greens, but also beiges, browns, blues and pinks to come!

I've also been knitting a bit here and there, but mostly I've been spinning and dyeing - and we started the blending workshop with the OLG, which resulted in something I found rather interesting - blending colours following a chosen photo - to make close matches with a limited range of base colours. pics to follow....