On Saturday I went along to my local guild of weavers,
spinners and dyers, a treat in itself as I’ve not been able to make it along to
a meeting for a few months for one reason or another. And what a fabulous day
it was. Our guest speaker was the fabulous Jill Shepherd who kicked off her session
with a talk on the ins and outs of colour and using it in designing yarn. After
which she set us to work using the theory we had just digested to design an art
yarn. Working from a 2cm wide strip of a page taken from a picture laden
magazine, the idea behind this is your eye is not distracted by the whole
picture, I picked out three colours from the strip and chose a fourth,
complimentary colour to add some pizazz to the blend. Rummaging through the
table of fleece that Jill had piled high for us I gathered together my colours
and set to carding up some rolags and spun it in to a thick and thin art yarn.
Jill then showed us a nifty way of producing what she calls faux-cle, a fast
way of producing a wiggly yarn similar to boucle but a little easier to achieve.
I was so into what I was doing and thoroughly enjoying myself that I completely
forgot to take any photos, but here are some of my finished faux-cle (appologies for the poor photography, my camera hasn't really captured the gorgeousness of this yarn, sadly!)
And some thick and thin waiting to be semi-felted, another
technique Jill generously shared with us.
Now all I need to do is find some time to have another play
around and hone my faux-cle technique! And I will definitely be using the
colour theory as well.
