Some months ago, a Spin Challenge was presented by Jen to the spinners willing to take it on. Even our most talented spinners found it very "challenging" as the bag of mixed fibres, rovings and thrums in various colours were materials they did not normally work with or combine. Approaches included sorting by colour or tone, warm and cool or complementary and one spinner discovered singles would not ply with commercial yarn as it needed prepping first.
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| Spin Challenge sample bag of whatever! |
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| Terry spun some boucle's mixed with single yarns and spun thrums into a curly cue yarn (peaking out in the middle) |
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| Barb W. separated her bag into warm and cool colours which she spun into rose coloured shanks. Ilse found complementary colours which she spun into very thick plies, for her a challenge since she normally spins and plies very fine yarn. |
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| M2 spins by Barb L. |
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| Jen doesn't spin thick stuff normally. She sorted her bag into piles, carded it together, then split the bats & started spinning to produce one huge ball of yarn (it was BIG 😊). |
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| From her own Irises as the source of the colours, theses skeins of silk were first dyed using irises and cold water. Then two in an acid bath; one alum bath, purple iris water in a hot bath; beet water in alum bath (organic) and some natural spun wool (the small dark balls) from her two new kid goats. |
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| Some runners as a result of the Alice Irwin workshop? |
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| Ilona wove a green tabi scarf with an all silk warp. The blues piece uses a warp created from silk hankies she had from the Pendleton ANWG Conference 10 yrs ago. The weft is her own handspun singles woven in a broken twill pattern. This piece will probably be used to make a small bag. |
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| Karen wove these red tactile towels from a pattern she found in Handwoven at 18 epi as recommended by Jane Stafford |
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| Hand towel project by Marg H. |
