POLWARTH

Even with balanced light this swatch is still too orange. It is actually a lovely rust blend of hand-dyed polwarth that I bought at SOAR last year from Rovings. Admittedly I was severely under the weather with a major UTI but this stuff was very felted. Since I had spent so much money on this I was determined to get yarn and literally forced it into being. I ended up with tons of the stuff and decided to make a sweater using a CocoKnits pattern which was chosen because of the felt flower they used to close the garment in one shot. I have a lovely felted flower that Lorretta Oliver gave me when I chaired the weaving conference and it is a perfect match. All I have left is the shawl collar and to add a bit to the cuffs. Of course it is past the very short period of time that anyone in Southern California needs a wool sweater, so will have to wait for a cold day to debut this light-weight drapey jacket!

Tour de fleece

Tour de fleece
Originally uploaded by theresart

So far behind in posting that I can't remember where I left off. But maybe it was with the Tour de Fleece madness that caught me and would not let go. I set an original goal of 1000 yards for the 14 day period. Very doable in that amount of time. When I finally stopped at about the 12 day mark there was almost 8000 yards of string and a big dent in the fiber stash at my house. I spun every moment I could fit it in while still managing work, eating and a bit of sleeping. My speed has become very fast on the upside, but quality has diminished on the down. I am working very hard to keep some of the speed but improve the quality. I spun, Polwarth, silk/merino,Falkland, Optum and BFL

A side effect of all of this is the partial group shot is the realization that I seem to be caught in a color warp. Have to work on that.