sweetgeorgia

But wait, there’s more

There was more to my weekend than just dyeing and spinning. Of course, there was much knitting. Can you say “perfect weekend”? There was so much knitting that even the boys joined in:

On Friday evening, Michelle, Jen and I joined the keynote dinner at Lisa Lloyd’s incredible home and garden. The keynote speakers, Shirlee Lewis, Barb McCaffrey and Diana Sanderson, spoke about how they find inspiration and creativity for what they do. Diana Sanderson is a professional weaver with a studio on Granville Island.

On Saturday afternoon, we (again, we left the boys at home) visited the festival which was held at the Farmers’ Institute. Unfortunately there weren’t enough participants for a Sheep to Shawl, so they decided to do an Alpaca to Scarf instead. The alpaca fibre was donated by St. Mary’s Lake Alpacas on the island and the finished scarf was auctioned off.

Sunday morning, while watching the last few minutes of the Tour de France, my crafty friend, Jen, made lavendar sachets. These sachets are made from fresh cut lavender (from the Saturday market) and woven with hand dyed silk ribbon.

Rogue in my future

Mmm, free shipping on a pack of Jaeger Shetland Aran? Couldn’t resist. I figure, it was kind of for my birthday. I’ll be using this yarn to knit Rogue this fall…after I finish a bunch of other projects!

What else is coming up? I just received my selection of Jamieson’s Spindrift for Meg’s Fair Isle Cardigan — I’m still second-guessing my colour choices, but I’m swatching now to see what I’m going to do…

Natural Dyes and Spinning for Sock Makers

Well, I turned twenty-something for the last time in my life last Wednesday and to celebrate, I took off to Salt Spring Island for their annual fibre festival on Thursday morning. Look how I got there… float plane!

The flight is only 30 minutes and the view is breathtaking. I don’t think I ever want to travel by ferry again.

The “Natural Dyes and Spinning for Sock Makers” workshop started at 10 am on Thursday morning and was taught by Diane Bentley-Baker. She’s been spinning for over 30 years and has her certificate of handspinning excellence. Fantastic experience and you can easily see how passionate she is about natural dyes.

There was only one other student in the workshop with me (thankfully the workshop wasn’t cancelled), Cheryl, a local Salt Spring Island resident who is also a long-time spinner, weaver and dyer. In fact, she is one of the dyers for Treenway Silks! I was just so happy and lucky to spend time with such knowledgeable people…

We spent all day dyeing some raw Cormo fleece, brown roving, mohair locks and KnitPicks dye-your-own sock yarn in either tumeric (yellow), sandalwood (salmon/coral), and black walnut (brown). Friday morning, we also dyed more fleece and yarn with onion skins (apricot), Earthues’ Poppy mix (rust/orange), and indigo (blue). We overdyed some of the material with indigo to make greens.

Dyeing can get very addictive… all those pretty colours. The next thing I’d like to try is cochineal to make some pinks and purples. Off to Maiwa Supplies to get some of these dead bugs!

Cutting soon.

The sleeves are done, see…

I don’t know if you can tell but the sleeve on top is bigger than the sleeve underneath. The difference? I initially used 3mm Addi’s and the magic loop technique, but I was finding that some of the stitches were getting distorted and ugly. So on the second sleeve, I decided to use 3mm Crystal Palace bamboo DPNs (which was a lot easier!) and looky, looky, I got a different gauge. Ah well. I learn the hard way.

In any case, the only thing that remains is cutting the steeks!

The Paisley Lace Shawl

Thanks for the wonderful and sweet comments you guys left for me! You did ask to see me wearing the shawl and so here you go:

This is what I wore to the daytime session of the wedding on Saturday — the dress is from a new design studio called “Pinkish Black” and I bought it at “The Block”, a kind of indie-designer shop on the ground floor of my office building. Oh! Yes, the wedding was beautiful and I saw several old, old high school classmates that I haven’t seen in over ten years (oh god, it’s been that long). A nice mini high school reunion with a ten-course Chinese banquet dinner!