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Nairn, Scotland, United Kingdom
Textile Artist Gill is inspired by natural fibres, colour and texture. Natural dyes providing a wealth of colours from nature.

Friday 30 July 2010

Vintage Sock Machine

My new vintage sock machine
Spent many hours trying to set up vintage machine, not really knowing what machine I have. You tube videos on other machines not really the same as mine but they all must work in a similar way. Even though I did not seem to make much headway. I then emailed pic's to a very nice lady from Krankers, vintage sock machines and I think I could now be on the right track. I think I could get hooked on this.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Crochet neck wraps

Handspun Jacob
Crochet cords & flowers
Having a stash of yarns that I have spun and then dyed to see the effects I could get. I find myself with numerous skeins of yarn from many breeds of sheep and some unusual fibres. So I now need a stash buster, that is simple and quick. So I turn to my much loved crochet hooks. As simple is best a theme on a rectanle with a vintage button to set it off. Various weights of yarn could be used just varying stitches used. Simple.

Sunday 11 July 2010

Yet another attempt.

Let's see if this photo arrives.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Saturday 10 July 2010

Mobile Blogging

Well I have spent ALL afternoon playing with mobile blogging with my new blackberry and after deleting several test blogs I have now resulted in returning to the laptop. With practice I will get it right but I just feel like a snail. Slow and a bit dim, some of the posts are in cyber space and for some reason 84 OLD emails ended up on the phone. Heaven knows what buttons I pressed to get that!!!!
This cyber technology is not my forte I need to return to my comfort zone of fibre, spinning wheels, knitting & crochet. So now with a glass of Pimm's at my side and with much pleasure I am returning to the silk tops that I dyed with my natural dyes and spinning with an Indian supported spindle lace weight for a Russian lace weight shawl. I will try with this phone to take a photo of the spindle and silk and post it. But there is no guarantee what photo appears. watch this space.

Thursday 4 March 2010

New Seaweed Scarf Pattern Freebie!!!!

Check out this glorious scarf pattern! Everybody has a few odd skeins of yarn laying around the house - put one to good use with this floaty scarf!!!! Warm enough for winter, COOL enough for spring!

Seaweed Scarf


Chunky Yarn use size 8mm needles
Double knit use size 4mm needles

100gms yarn





Method,

For chunky yarns cast on 18 stitches

For double knit cast on 27 stitches



Row 1 : knit across row



Row 2 : knit across row



Row 3 : cast off 6 stitches { chunky } 9 stitches { double knit } knit to end.



Row 4 : cast off 6 stitches { chunky } 9 stitches { double knit } knit to end then cast on 6 or 9 stitches depending on weight of yarn.



Row 5 : knit across row



Repeat Rows 3, 4 & 5. You can always add an extra knit row to create an uneven structure. Knit until you run out of yarn, making sure to end with a knit row but leave enough to cast off.



This is a great pattern to play with by adding more stitches or knitting with pencil rovings and then felting the scarf. Beads could be threaded on to yarn and a bead added to the beginning of each cast off row.

Just make sure if adding extra stitches or length for felting make sure you have extra yarn to complete project. But do experiment with this pattern as it will give you confidence to try some freeform knitting.