Red Alpaca/silk scarves

Further to my last post but one, I have now finished the red alpaca silk scarves using the same weight and blend of yarn as the white ones but using a smaller area of lace and a three end huck instead of five end.  I like this much better; it seems to be more in proportion and has the plain weave to set off the lace.

The handle is quite different from the white, so much so that I went back to the cone of white to check that it was the same 70/30 mix of alpaca and silk. The two yarns seem to have the same amount of twist but the coloured ones have more sheen and the white (or cream really) is slightly more fluffy. I love them both. Some of these yarns are spun in New Zealand and some in Peru so it would be interesting to know if that is where the difference occurs.

I have another colour on the loom now so hope to have a couple of mulberry wraps soon.

The Year of the Pincushion

OK, I'm ready. The Creative Fibre Guild President's Challenge for this year is a pincushion. I thought about this off and on all year and knew exactly what I wanted to do. . . I haven't done it! However I have come up with not one but three pincushions that just sort of happened. Well, the first one took a bit of thinking about but then hung around for weeks waiting for me to do a bit of painting. (I am not a painter - I'm a weaver.)  Here it is. The actual pincushion is handwoven fabric I made for a cape for my granddaughter some years ago when she was at Uni. The rest is tatting on a used moisturiser pot.

For no reason, except that I wasn't too happy with the quality of my painting, I bought a pincushion, complete with pins, from the Warehouse for $4. In a jiffy I removed the embellishment, found a tatted medallion which fitted nicely on it and stitched it on while watching TV. I was quite happy with it but it felt a bit like cheating.

No sooner finished that than I saw what I thought was a brilliant idea on Pintrest. I found a silver photo frame, still in its packet, which has been 'on hold' for several years, and picked up a piece of weaving I had cut off the end of a scarf (for reasons best not talked about) and lo and behold - pincushion number three. Here it is.

Our weaving group is to have a pincushion exchange at our last meeting for the year so whoever draws my number will have to choose one out of the three. I can't believe I have done it with days to spare.