Well, what a wonderful weekend at the Unwind Fibre Retreat in Dunedin. Great to see so many Kiwi knitters, spinners and of course the other traders! Top marks to Morag from Vintage Purls in Dunedin for her organisational skills. Most of these ladies were members of the online Ravelry community. If you haven't been, go and have a look (I'm KatyPi). Ravelry's great resource for crafters!

These two young ladies spent most of the weekend with needles in hand, knitting up a storm! Some very inventive little owls were produced for the Owls and Hearts competition.

The knitter's social corner was often packed full, although at times the general exodus to the workshops left it eerily empty!

I took part in the bookbinding workshop given by Stella Lange - amazing that we all got a book made, including glueing the covers, in the three hour workshop time. All the workshops were well-attended, with participants obviously having come away with new skills and ideas.

Traders from all over the country offered yarns, patterns, knitting accessories and various fibres, from homely wool to exotic silk and llama blends. 
The very skilled and talented Sourkraut (Frances Stachl) had brought her exquisite spindles, jewellery and knitting accessories - my favourite being the wooden acorn full of stitch markers!  
Little Radiator of Dunedin had her witty tees and badges, many of which were sported at the event by the lucky new owners!
I was unable to resist the temptation to buy a set of Hiyahiya interchangeable needles from Vintage Purls, but can report that I now have two sets of them happily in use on various projects.

Although I already have a big grievance against NZ Post for making it so expensive to ship large, light items around the country (hey, a parcel of fibre may be big, but the minute you put something on top of it, it gets a lot smaller!), that they have now put an extra $2.40 onto tracked items that are delivered to RD boxes really gets up my nose - particularly as larger parcels cannot be sent untracked! 
So, unfortunately, for more than 600gr I will now have to charge the extra $2.40 to anyone on RD. I'm sorry to have to do this, but I just can't cover that cost.

You may be aware that with the closure of first the Lincoln carding establishment, then the Qualityarns mill at Milton, there are very few options for getting wool professionally processed. The only remaining large industrial mill is reluctant to process anything smaller than one tonne of wool, quite out of the question for me. 
Over the last six months I have been researching and buying wool, only to find that I couldn't get it carded. Luckily a new carder has started up in Christchurch with much smaller minimum runs. At the moment they are not able to comb their sliver, but have a gill set up so I am able to offer carded and gilled wool.
This sliver is much finer, with a range of 19-21 microns. It does have a small amount of noil and vegetable matter. The first batch of 9kg has a bit more, so I am offering this for felting only, at a cheaper price. I have spun some so I know it spins well, drafting easily, and could be hand-combed if you wished.
The carders are in the process of setting up a comb, so within the next couple of months I will also be offering carded and combed 21 micron wool, which will be my standard from now on. 
I would be interested to know how users feel about the finer wool - it has a much softer hand, and will spin up quite a lot finer than 23 micron. I will consider getting more 23 micron later in the year if there is a demand.
Meanwhile I have a broken colour range of the 23 micron merino and a small amount of dyed Corriedale, so feel free to contact me for availability. I'll get the online shop reset as soon as I'm able to.
Happy Crafting!

I'm just kicking myself that I didn't take a photo of the hideous mangled oatmeal jersey before I started this project - it was truly a sight to behold. My first thought when my daughter produced it was "What on earth can I make out of that?".

Further inspection proved that it was of good quality; had a nice feel if a bit lumpy, and was quite big, a major concern if I was going to shrink it a bit more in the dyebath.

Once I had it dyed (see previous post) I finished all the edges with overlocking (although the fabric was pretty comprehensively felted after the dyebath, I wanted to be sure) and inserted some little gussets cut from scrap into the thumb area of the mittens to give a wider hand and better fit around the thumb (I did all this 'by eye' as I'm a bit of a risk taker!). I shortened the mitts because I found that I had made them much too long in the wrist and they were a bit floppy.

Having chosen some felted thick-and-thin yarn, plus a light navy/purple wool, mohair and alpaca yarn from my 'stash of the ages', I began to play about with various ideas, starting with the mittens. The first attempt at cuffs, made with the plain yarn, was hopelessly clumsy-looking so I undid that and used the thick-and-thin. You can see the edge of the starting row of chain stitch (in the plain yarn) that I made to begin the knitting. The more bulky yarn gives a pleasantly lumpy finish, which actually looks as if it's supposed to be like that! (It was - but it needs to be convincing). Then I started working on an edging strategy for the hand end of the mitt. this was crucial as it would be a keynote for the whole set.

I'm not particularly fond of blanket stitch, as it can look very "home made" and I wanted a nice-looking, hand-crafted finish (I hope you understand what I mean here). The thick-and thin yarn is a pain to stitch on the felted fabric with, but it gives an excellent edge with a lot of interest - it forms a wavy pattern which is very pleasant. I decided to add a little height to the edge by forming a row of needle knots on top of the blanket stitch. This looks great and is quite unusual. You can see this on the thumb edge of the mitt. The finished edges of the original jersey were in simple rolled stocking stitch, which needed to be stabilised before continuing (it kept rolling while I was trying to work on it), so I have simply slipstitched them in place with a cotton thread.

 To start the hat, I sewed the (former) neckband onto the joined sleeve pieces with the overlocker. I had to trim the hat pieces a bit to get a nicer look to the shaping. Then I made a tassel by unpicking some of the thick-and-thin from a locker hooked sample I had made a few weeks ago - that was a bad idea! This was attached to the hat by stitching a few threads back and forth and then blanket stitching over the threads, forming a strong attachment which allows the bobble to flop roguishly.

To be continued...

By now you'll have heard about the Spring Challenge (I hope!) and if you've decided to have a go, which I really hope you will, you'll be wondering what to do - if you haven't already got something suitable to re-purpose.

Because I wouldn't ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself, I'll be doing an upcycling project during the Spring Challenge.

I started with an old alpaca jersey my daughter found at the Sally's. It was a hideous mangled object, oatmeal in colour and repulsively distorted and felted from being machine washed. It had a lace pattern around the bottom, no ribbing except on the neckband and apart from that was a very simple set-in-sleeve shape. 

So first up, I decided to dismantle it into the future components of a waistcoat, hat and mitts. This would make it easier to dye evenly, I hoped. 

I decided that since I had some nice thick-and-thin yarn in Nightfall, I would dye the jersey navy.

I filled up my large dyepot, added dye, detergent and white vinegar and popped in the pre-wetted pieces. Unfortunately the post wasn't big enough! I was left with several pieces undyed, the big issue here being that it might be near-impossible to match the shade between pieces. Luckily I was going for full saturation so that made it possible to get a colour match eventually by simply adding more and more dye liquid to the pot in small increments. I hate over-saturating the dyepot because it means that I then have to dispose of dyestuff - usually the wool absorbs all the dye, leaving only mildly acidic water to dispose of.

The biggest bonus of the dye treatment was that it further felted the fabric into a dense, luxurious silky  knit with a lovely surface sheen.

So that was day one - at the end I had several pieces of beautiful,densely felted navy alpaca knit fabric.

Well, what a cold, snowy few days it's been. No post in or out since Friday, and I know you people who are waiting for parcels will be chafing at the bit to get at them. Yesterday I got up early and shovelled the snow (20cm/8 inches) off the front step so that further falls from the roof wouldn't trap us in the house!
The plough finally arrived and liberated us from the house at 7:30 p.m., only to have a fresh fall of snow undo much of his work. Great heaps of snow are siting over the end of the driveway where he left them, though.

While I'm stuck here, I though I might start thinking about a new competition/challenge, so you'll be hearing about this soon! Think recycling with embellishments...

Hope you are all warm and comfortable and enjoying the slightly festive feeling!

Price changes
Because of recent rises in GST and the price of fine wool, I have had to make some adjustments to prices. The structure remains the same, with discounts for larger amounts purchased, and I have kept the postage much the same as well. I would have loved to be able to hold prices as they were, but it just wasn't possible.

Newsletter 
It's nearly time for a newsletter! Please send me pics of your recent creations if you would like them included in a 'buyer creations' section!

New website content
Read about my experiment with thick-and-thin felted yarn in the 'Hints and Tips' section. There's also a slide show of the process, and some pics of items I produced from 100gr of yarn.

Site Revamp
Notice the new look? I had my design and web expert revamp the site, not only to refresh the look, but also to improve the shopping experience. You'll find that there are now two shopping pages, arranged slightly differently, which should reduce the amount of scrolling you have to do to view the products. So there is one page for deep shades, 'Brights', and one for pastels: ' Pastels' (obviously!)

More New Pastels
You will see that I have released a further four pastels - more light shades for you to enjoy! All these are based on existing colours, but not all my mixes lend themselves to 'pastellisation', so I won't be converting the full range of brights. More shades will be released over the next few weeks.

Canterbury Area Open Day - Creative Fibres
Because of the earthquake, the open day is now going to be held in Oxford - and you can come along to meet me in person, as I will be having a stall with a range of my wools and craft on display. There will be a number of merchants and an as yet undisclosed speaker to entertain us. The day will be held at the Oxford Jaycee Rooms, Main St, on the 26th May.  I look forward to seeing you there!

Happy Crafting!