Pure Inspiration: TUESDAY 12TH OCTOBER

Forgive the long delay, again, life seems to have overtaken me. My beautiful grand daughter was born on 5th October and all are well so now I can relax and enjoy being a grandmother.

Obviously a lot of my spare time has been taken up over the last months in making clothes for the new baby. I am going to make a few more things for Christmas but now in bigger sizes as my daughter has been given so many clothes there will be no need to buy anything new for a long time to come.

Consequently I have a lot of baby wool left over and began to think how I could use this up and decided to weave up some baby blankets using this. I dont normally consider using acrylic fibres when weaving, I'm not sure if anyone out there does, do let me know. However, I have warped up the loom using a four shaft, six treadle tie up which I found on the All Fiber Arts website, http://www.allfiberarts.com/ for a baby blanket. I am using Sirdar Snuggly baby 4 ply yarn in a soft blue and the weft is a double knit acrylic yarn which graduates in colour throughout the ball. The weaving is quick to grow and fast to warp up. See pictures below.

It has made me realise that I have had rather a blinkered view of weaving todate. I have always used silks, and natural fibres for my items, forgetting the vast range of man made fibres that are available to use. And what if, like my son in law, you are allergic to wool? It makes buying handmade items very difficult. Also there is the question of cost. In our current climate it is difficult to price up garments made from expensive materials. One is caught between the two ends of wanting to make a profit out of ones hard work but at the same time wanting to sell items regularly. So either the profit margin is very narrow or the time spent making the item is not taken into consideration in the final price. So to use cheaper yarns doesnt necessarily mean that the finished item will not be just as lovely as if you had used the finest and most expensive of the natural yarns available.

This week I am spinning up some hand dyed Falkland wool tops from Mandacrafts called Autumn to make a knitted hat for my cousin who is a keen fisherman and wants something to blend in with the background!

I purchased a turkish spindle recently from the Etsy site, it is handmade in beautiful woods and the two cross pieces are similar in colour to the Knitpicks wooden needles, those lovely multi coloured ones. See picture below. It is a dream to spin with and solves the problem of not being able to take my spinning wheel with me when I travel. This is small enough to tuck inside my handbag.

I am also using my Ashford Knitters loom to make some handwoven scarves and bag lengths for Christmas stock in my online shop. Keep a look out for these as they will be fairly reasonably priced and I am hoping they wont be around for too long.