thriftcrafts

Well, that was a…

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VCSstall2…thoroughly enjoyable day!

We arrived on site (my children’s old school, as it happens) at about 9.30, fought & won a brave battle with our very-recycled gazebo and were just about ready for the onslaught when the gates opened at 11 a.m. Not that it ever got exactly crowded, but there was a pleasant trickle of lovely people, all interested in what I was doing & why, throughout the lovely sunny day. I was pleased with the sales; not a magnifcent amount, but encouraging, and certainly more than I used to drag myself out of bed for on a Sunday when I was in paid employment. It was hard work preparing for it, but most of that is work that won’t have to be done again, like making a bunting banner and a display board, or at least not all at once.

I learnt some useful lessons; a treadle is too heavy, when you have to deal with everything else too. Extreme crochet is much more portable & attracts just as much interest. I need to stick to truly relevant books, and sort out what I’m doing about workshops etc, as people were asking & I didn’t have any answers prepared. The pincushions would have looked better, smarter perhaps, with ribbon ties rather than old seams. And I need to do some woven shawls for sale! We had some enquiries for long, slender woven scarves, too, so I shall investigate the possibilities of producing some of those.

In the meantime I’ve had some other ideas for things to try out; they need to be quick & easy to make, using entirely recycled materials like old jeans, so that I can keep them inexpensive. And I do need to think about & plan for Christmas, odd though that seems with a sunburnt shoulder from too much treadling in the sun!

So all in all I’m well-pleased with my first little venture into the “craft fair” scene; it confirmed that there is interest in what I’m doing & also in the things I make. But now I need to tidy up after myself & reconnect with my offspring after a week of intense concentration and absolute focus. Not to mention finishing the next shawl!

And here’s a genuine recycled trophy!

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Proudly clutching the Balqama Trophy...
Proudly clutching the Balqama Trophy...
Happy bunny here, in front of the bag that won it for me…
But I’ve let the trophy go home with my co-winner (or at least, with her husband; she’s at a Guild summer school) because it will be safer there; I’d hate to wake up from one of my creative dazes and discover that half of it was now part of one of my home-made gadgets…

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….

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Spin your scrap yarn into something beautiful & useful!
Spin your scrap yarn into something beautiful & useful!

Well, what a totally irresistible idea. I’ve never been that interested in producing “Art Yarns” but when I saw what Grace’s husband had spun up out of scrap roving, I couldn’t help admiring it and thinking, well maybe…

I had a bag of fabric scraps to take down to the Tip yesterday; more than I could store or handle within the foreseeable future. And I’d poked some scraps of commercial yarn in there too, two colours of Zanzibar and some tangled pink & black eyelash from the gothic sweater that never was; yarn too saggy for pattern. Perhaps I could do something with those and the very lumpy batt of mixed pink sparkly mohair and Dorset Down? Not to mention some tiny scraps of lace and ribbon…

So off to my trusty computer, via several blogs, Ravelry & YouTube, I sat down at my wheel and span up my scraps! Then wrapped/plied them with some leftover cotton perlé from the knitting machine; this was a step too far in some ways as there wasn’t quite enough twist where I’d used the lace and ribbon. So I needed to wrap & tie it by hand in a couple of places, but it’s not bad for a first effort.

I can see I’ll have to set myself some rules, if I do this again – and it’s a lot of fun, so I probably will – like only using genuine scraps that would otherwise be of no practical use. Or it’ll get very expensive & I’ll end up creating scraps instead of using them up, which would defeat the object rather.

Now, what to do with 42 yards of “Art” Yarn? A finger-crochet hat, maybe?

Ideas, please! What will I do with this?
Ideas, please! What will I do with this?

Baa baa, black sheep; yes, we have some wool…

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Last week I spotted an advert on the local “Waste-Not-Want-Not” group – similar concept to Freecycle, but allows lending etc. – for 3 black fleeces, in central Wimborne. I hesitated for a moment; the last local-ish black fleece I’d had wasn’t very good quality. But free is free, and useful is useful; off & on I’m making a big peg-loom rug, so even rug-grade wool is useful, especially dark stuff. So I dashed off a quick email, and was pleasantly surprised to get a phone call back within half an hour. I picked the fleeces up last Friday, and was delighted to find that they are gorgeous; mostly midnight black, so soft you want to curl up in it, not too oily, and so clean you’d think these sheep lived indoors. The locks are about 5″ long and have a nice gentle crimp so it’s blissfully easy to spin; I just pulled some out of the bag and spun away. There was only one problem; by the time I picked them up there were no longer three, there were five…

So I fired off emails to a couple of local spinners, Jill and Grace, and went round to see my spinning neighbour Linda. Luckily they were all interested, so I’ve rehomed most of it with them, as I’d never get through all of that myself before it started to go downhill, and I have a backlog of that lovely creamy Dorset too. Some also went off with my friend Annie, who is in the process of mastering the drop spindle, so I’m left with one and a bit fleeces. And an inkle loom!

Jill’s husband made her an inkle loom a couple of months ago, but had enough wood over to make a second. I’d said I’d be very interested in giving that a home, but as they’d just managed to produce a grandchild at the same time as putting their house on the market, I wasn’t expecting it anytime soon. However, when she came to pick up her black fleece, the loom came with her! So that’s kept me occupied for a few happy hours, watching YouTube videos to work out how to warp it up & weave with it, then actually producing my first few bands. I made myself a shuttle out of some driftwood that was just about the perfect shape to start with; all I had to do was carve a notch at each end to wind the weft thread round. It’s very smooth and one edge tapers sharply, ideal for beating the weft into place.

Thank you, Jill & Mr. Jill!
Thank you, Jill & Mr. Jill!

And I’d run out of KoolAid, so I asked on an American website I’ve belonged to for many years whether anyone would be prepared to send some over to me. It’s really expensive to buy over here, and there’s only a very limited range of colours available. Bless her cotton socks, a parcel arrived from Carolyn in Virginia this week with 50 sachets in, padded out with some lovely silver Mylar and some multicoloured silk waste for spinning. You should just see what happens when you spin a little Mylar into the black wool, which has a quiet gleam all of its own. It’s so lovely I’m almost afraid to do anything with it!

Black wool spun up with silver Mylar - thank you, Carolyn!
Black wool spun up with silver Mylar - thank you, Carolyn!

Then there’s the Jones Spool treadle that I rescued on Freecycle… my heart sank when I saw it; it had been out in their garden for quite some time, there’s a LOT of rust and the veneer on the table had bleached and started to lift. But half a pot of Swarfega, quite a lot of bike spray, and half a pint of Danish Oil and it’s starting to look & sound a little like the thoroughbred it once was.

All this has made the week pass very quickly & easily, which is just as well as I’ve spent most of it suffering – and I do mean suffering – with a horrible cold. And the weather’s gone downhill, so we couldn’t spend much time in the garden. All good rainy day fun…

Everything comes to she who waits…

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I popped into the Tip this morning to see whether any sewing machines had come in over the weekend; with the economic downturn, the flood of old beauties has slowed to a trickle as people begin to realise that they may actually still be useful. Lee greeted me with, “I’ve found something for you! Look behind the Metal bin!” And there, to my great delight, was the exact size of grill needed to restore our firepit to full functionality. Not that we’ll be eating out in the garden for a few weeks, but as this season’s seeds start to go in, winter’s cool grey chill is starting to recede and there’s suddenly so much to look forward to, in the house, in the garden and out in our beautiful countryside…

Not that I’ve been idle in the dark evenings. I asked everyone to give me money for my birthday and Christmas presents, and put it towards a very secondhand Louet S20 spinning wheel, which has been helping me make a small dent in the huge pile of Freecycled fleeces in our porch. I’m rather pleased with the resulting yarn, though I’ve yet to put it to good use and actually make something with it. I’ve joined our local Spinners & Weavers Guild, as they do lots of other things I’m interested in too, like Kumihimo, rag rugs and felting. We’re experimenting with dyeing, both chemical and natural, as part of the girls’ educational adventures this term, and some of the shorter fibres are going into felt. So this is how I’ve spent some of my evenings this week:

 

Dorset Down fleece with Dorset Featherstitching...
Dorset Down fleece with Dorset Featherstitching...
They’re made from felted Dorset Down fleece, lined with leftover polar fleece, soled with suede from the Scrapstore and stitched, firstly by machine on a rescued “Light Industrial” Singer 15 from 1895 using Scrapstore upholstery thread, then Dorset Featherstitched by hand with hand-dyed thread recycled from a gone-wrong jewellery project. Didn’t cost a penny!