Textile Tuesday

This week brought to you by my current tapestry project - this is my final assessment piece, and I had to come up with the design for it...

Can you tell what it is? (I'll give you a clue: "it's sideways Miss Pat")
The tapestry I am studying is proper woven tapestry - not needlepoint tapestry. See - I am working with string and the colour actually makes the fabric....

This is opposed to needlework tapestry - in which usually colour is stitched onto an existing 'framework' fabric of squares.The big difference is that for this you use bobbins (not needles) and, as you are creating the fabric, you need to work from the bottom up.
I am really enjoying working on this - I have mixed neutral colours for the background, and chosen solid, bright colours for the subject. I hope to create a fun piece that explodes out of the tapestry!

wool museum cont...

The second gallery at the museum is dedicated to the processing of wool... scouring, carding, combing, spinning, dying, weaving, knitting, finishing... here tuffers learnt a little bit (like why I was insulted when I was given a 15kg garbage bag of top and he called it manky sheep fleece) and was a little interested in the big industrial machines used for processing. While I liked looking at the big mechanical processes, I really prefer the more human way of doing things... like this adorable little 4-shaft loom... I want, I want, I want.
I spend quite a bit of time playing with this, infact, so long that Tuffers went all the way through the rest of the museum and had to come back and find me... and then do all the museum again with me :)

I was rather interested in this machine. Can you guess what it does? The items on the wall may help... Yes, it is a sock knitting machine. It was used by Scalliwags socks before being donated to the machine, but there is a loverly little story book full of photographs with this machine about how it was made by a husband and wife who both worked for underwear companies (he for holeproof, she sewed toes in stockings) and he built it from spare parts he brought home from work with him. In the end they built about 13 sock machines and had their own business before selling them all to Scalliwag.

We continued on to the third gallery which had "quilt-art" on display, but I can't show you any pictures of this featured exhibit because it was a strict no-photo display. There is some info on the wool museum site though :) There was also a good exhibit on Public Service animals (not to be confused with those public servant animals...) such as Quarantine beagles, customs canines, mules, horses, camels, carrier pidgeons and sled huskis that have all served the Australian goverment in some way. They even went down to the nitty-gritty of cane-toads and how they were a big mistake. This exhibit was aimed mainly at children, with lots of demos and buttons to push... at this stage I think Tuffers was over the place and wanted cars and crash-test-dummies, so he rushed through while I played around.

Here endeth your virtual tour of the National wool museum through my POV:)

The national wool museum

Even after spending all of my youth in Geelong, I had only been to the National wool museum once, to see a 'Treasures of Egypt" exhibit that had nothing to do with sheep...(I think I learnt that the Egyptian clothed themselves in linen because animals were "unclean"???) But given my ever expanding love of textiles, I dragged Tuffers along to learn a thing or two about the boom and bust wool industry (to settle his manly pride about going to a girly textiles museum, I promised Tuffers we could go to the Ford Discovery centre as well, but when we got there we discovered only two things, neither to do with cars;
1. it was a tuesday,
2. the Ford discovery centre is closed on tuesdays...)
This automated rug loom is focal point of the wool museum - the ramps to the galleries circle around it, and you can purchase carpets made on it. (Aparently the punch-card system used for the automation was then adapted to be used by those pianos that make themselves, and even that cool street organ we saw at floriade - yes, the loom came before all of that)
Fleece anyone??


Yes, that is real wool just sitting there - I should have included something in the photo for scale. In fact, there are mountains of fleece just sitting around (with various signs saying please touch but do not take) the first gallery of the museum, which is all about the farming of sheep. You learn about breeds, breeding and black sheep (aka genetics). Animal husbandry, drought shearing, woolclassing and auctions. The million dollar bale, and the thousands of bales of wool going to be destroyed when there were no buyers.

Tea break anyone?


On the way to the second gallery (wool processing, which will be the next post) There is this delightful display of knitted fancies, kindly made by the local guild :)

FO - The dog rug #2

Remember that dog blanket I was weaving for my sis's fur-kids Elvis and Toby...??

Well... Voila!
Of course, I haven't yet made it to Melbourne to see the rascal's with the blanket, but Pierre was more than happy to stand in as a model.... He posed rather well to begin with...
And then decided that he would rather play with the blanket and get a little crazy....
All tangle up in a good project.. just like I prefer to be...

what's on the needles??

For those of you wondering about the current project I'm knitting, there is a piccie of me at ssk on saturday a few rows after I casted on the jet aran sweater. I'm not too original- the second project from the same book in the same colour as the picture... if your looking for something more creative check out some of the other projects on the go at ssk - Lyndell's booties are very inspirational, if in the wrong teams colour ;)

For those who were wondering - the serial number on my singer is Y6427087. I haven't tried to get it back in working order just yet, and hence have not made any sock monkeys of my own. Tuffer's sister is keen to try to make on, so we may collaborate next tie I'm down here way (she has one of those new fandangle machines that use leckytricity)

Now, one final question - I know novelty yarn is a big no-no for knitting (esp for scarves) but what's the rules for weaving... for example, is one allowed to make fun fur cushions??? Someone suggested it too me (they would like it) and the jury is still out. Comments are more than welcome...

what a fantastic weekend!

Taking advantage of this fantastic weather yet again Pierre and I went for another walk today. Along the way we met our golden retriever friend from last week, Kodak. We managed to get this rather amusing photo of the two playing - I'll keep this one to remind myself just how small the pup really is.


Wearing 3/4 length pants required me to find some short socks and I came across this pair I had knitted at the start of the year but never worn (yes, they are made out of opal chameleon). I decided I wanted to try and make a pair of handknitted socks, but got rather bored just making a tube so turned the heel rather early. All in all they were rather comfy, so I may consider making myself some more socks (it is sometimes hard to justify when $3 gets you a pair of bonds socks)


And finally, I did sit down for a bit of weaving this arvo - this is a close up of the check pattern I am making. Sometimes it is hard to tell if you are making any progress when you are on the loom as you keep winding your finished work underneath itself so only a few inches are exposed.

Warped

I said I was warping and this is it. Dog blanket #2 in progress. You can't quite see it now, but it will eventually become tan, green and brown checks / tartan. I hope Pierre's cousin's enjoy it...


And speaking of Pierre here he is modelling dog blanket #1 - (the rattiness is due to him trying to kill said blanket). Doesn't the pup look all sweet and innocent there - you'd never think that earlier today he taught Tuffers and important lesson in why you don't feed puppies pizza after he chundered in the car...

JACKPOT!

Buggar - In addition to not uploading pictures blogger just ate my post.... so here we go again...

Trivia

Even though we had a majorly crapola night at Trivia last night, we somehow managed to come first, winning a $50 voucher for the NthSydney Club. This will pay for dinner, drinks and a cheese platter for our team next week. Too bad the BF will miss out as he will be interstate for work.

On the way home from Trivia we decided to stop by the New Orleans Cafe in Crows Nest for some dessert and coffee (I had the sticky date pudd - yummy!). We were treated to some funky (and very loud) live music - was a great place, and I feel rather silly not having gone there before seeing as we pass it two times a day on the way to and from work.

Windfall...

A good friend of mine has somehow managed to stumble across 30 odd kilos of fleece.. yes, rub your eyes - 30 odd kgs. He called me up to say he had a bag of Top - which I have translated to mean it is washed and carded and ready for use - the only hitch - I won't be able to pick it up until the next time I drive down to Geelong... In October :( However, with that much practice I should be able to (literally) get the kinks out of my spinning. I also plan to try some rug tufting (and then I plan to train Pierre not to attack and kill said rug made from merino.... yeah right I hear you say)

WIPs and in the Q...

As we have nothing on tonight I will be warping up my loom ready to start my next project - another dog rug / blanket for my sister's puppies. This will essentially be more weaving practice (the dog's won't care if the tension is out a little) but will be a tad fancier than the one I made for Pierre as I will be attempting a check / tartan pattern.

I have also fallen in love with Dale of Norway Designs - how could anyone not after seeing Julie's gorgeous ladybug sweater. I am so inspired to jump on the fair-isle wagon :) I am rather annoyed that there is no stockist in Oz, so am considering putting a big order in thought YarnBarn for a Pattern book and some machine-ready wool. Never mind that already I have another Jet sweater, a 8-ply sweater, some cushions (to be woven) and lots of fibre to be spun already sitting in my stash.

Finally - does anyone know of any patterns for Weasley Jumpers that are out there? Or even just graphs for the initials? I know, I'm lazy, but what should I do the hard work if it someone else has already done it?