winter crafting: painting rainbows on yarn

The crisp wet days of Autumn here in the cold Blue Mountains stimulates much woolly activity around my home.. the spinning wheels are oiled and on the ready. Fortunately, due to my influence on my children, our home is full of rainbow colour yarns to keep us feeling bright & cheery on drizzly days.

sweet dappled confetti skeins, dyed by my 4year old's (yes i have x2!)

My twinnies & I hosted a little workshop in non-toxic wool dyeing in our studio recently. They turned white 20gr skeins of yarn into little rainbow colour-pots of wool! Food-colour dyeing is a funtastic school holiday activity. The joy of dyeing wool with my children is one of the most enjoyable passtimes we share together.. memories are created each moment we squeal with joy at the colour blends we spontaniously create!


Arli, now skilled at using medicine-droper applicators, literally paints a flower garden on her skeins. She also loves to pour lovely saturated rainbow sequences.

top: rainbow yarn
bottom: flower garden skein by Arli

Can you see the golden tipi in the photo above? Arli came home with it one day from school.. she even made a beeswax campfire to sit inside ;) sweeeetness(10000) i wish i was 1" small so i could toast marshmallows inside!

Dyeing wool with your children can be really quite inexpensive. Here are some tips:

• use non-toxic food-colouring (the kind you colour cake icing with) + white vinegar.
  

• keep your thrifty eye out at the op-shops for wool balls, or unravel an old woollen/nylon jumper.
• Unwind wool balls using your elbow & hand as a skein-winder.. the skeins only need to be short.
• use a cake dish or recycled plastic bags
• cook in the microwave or see my tutorial for other passive heating ideas.
  

enjoy your winter crafting!
xoMichelle

"Animals Smell When Wet" Spin Challenge

my last-minute grab for the "Animals Smell When Wet" Spin Challenge. I read about it on the night of the deadline & knew i just couldn't pass this one up! so i grabbed everything spinnable, waterproof & non-animal I could muster around the house at 8pm, spun & shot this little raffia bounty, & submitted it before wednesday rolled around! woot!
okay, for the Spin Challenge regs:

Animals Smell When Wet

The downside of wearing fuzzy knits in the winter is that they do get that wet sheep smell on a rainy day. So the challenge for this yarn is to spin a yarn that meets the following criteria:

• -to spin a yarn from non-animal derived materials;

• -to be waterproof

• -kint-crochet'able and wearable.

(see more pix at: flickr)
For my entry I wanted to spin up our old umbrella, but it turns out it had already met another fate, so I nabbed the raffia I had stashed for basket-weaving and the old bit of Retro 1960's shower curtain fabric that was lying around and pulled this together.
Contents:
vegan batt (inc. soysilk, ingeo, cotton fluff, denim, tinsel, glitz); linen ply thread; raffia; shower curtain; poly string for core thread; thick gauge metallic cord; thinner metallic thread; sequins; plastic bag with treasure beads that didn't make it in. Also pink, pearl & gold tinsel shreads & orange cotton ply thread not pictured.

I spun it up on my trusty Ashford Country Spinner, knowing the small guide hooks on the jumbo flyer just weren't gonna cut the mustard for this yarn. The poly string core was chosen for waterproof-ability, & i just began pileing all the ingredients on mosaic style. The raffia liked to slip unless it had something to grab onto, the little threads from the shower curtain were good for that, and winding the metallic threads around it helped to keep it in place. Raffia can stiffen up, so i used the batt for added softness. I think it needs more yardage for the straw hat /or parisol i had in mind, but it is way too pretty to live its life as a bath mitt & isn't water-proof enough anyway (even though the fiber batt has lots of anti-microbial fibers in there, my sense is that it may not want to be hanging around wet all day!) & - so, it is either going to become a belt, or a string-bag! I'll keep you posted!

So, here's where you come in:

Would you like to vote for your favourite Spin Challenge entry?

go to Pluckyfluff's Blog and place your vote!

VOTING: Weds the 5th- Friday sept. 7th - we will vote using the "comment" section. all yarns will get a thumbnail posted on the blog next week. (you can vote anonymously by selecting "anonymous" as your identity when commenting.)