I've been spinning a lot over the past 2 days as I've got my spinning wheel working again. I managed to figure out what was wrong with it (it was nothing to do with the wheel, I just didn't know what a tension band was ) so spinning has been my current obsession.
I've been looking into sustainability and recycling in fibre craft and that's how I discovered sari silk! In case you didn't know, sari silk fibre (which you can spin with is produced from recycled sari silk fabric leftover from manufacturing in India. I love it because it's sustainable and the colourways are all stunning! I purchased my fibre from www.worlfofwool.co.uk . They have a massive array of colours on their website; I found it very difficult to choose!
The first photo shows the finished yarn next to the fibre used (so you can compare) and the last 2 photos show the process from singles to plyed.
Please let me know of any other sustainable yarns/fibres you know of or ways to recycle old fabric/textiles. I'd be grateful to hear!
My second project/experiment with these handspun has been this new shawl design which I have been crocheting with handspun yarn from my stash (spun about 4 months ago):
These photos show the designing process so far. My aim has been to use only handspun yarn throughout this design.
I started off with some lovely variegated yarn which I spun from a batt. The colour and texture of this yarn is lovely so I decided to just stick with the tunisian simple stitch as I felt the yarn would be shown off best this way.
Then I decided to incorporate some bobbles into the design so added 2 rows of them in (as you can see in the second photo). I absolutely love bobbles and am definitely going to add more of them into future designs.
Once I ran out of the variegated yarn (I think it was about 200g), I thought it would be a nice idea to choose some semi-solid and solid coloured handspun to use for the regular crochet section. At the moment, this section is just a mixture of back post and front post trebles. I will post on this blog when more of it is complete!
As I've got a lot of time on my hands during quarantine, I hope to do a lot more spinning over the next couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading
Joe :))