February

It's been a quiet month. A minor relapse of my Menieres disease has meant I've not been able to drive, which isn't really an issue when it's the holidays, but does start to become a little bit tiring when you want to get back in a normal routine. Things are looking better health wise though, so hopefully I'll be back to being independent soon. The quicker they can develop real-world safe driverless cars the better so far as I'm concerned!

So as a result there haven't been any exciting trips, or exploring  of new places, I've been busy getting lots of work done, making plans, and enjoying the signs that winter will be coming to an end.

My sewing has been of the secret variety, which means it needs to stay under wraps for a few months. I have also transformed an Ikea table cloth in to a pair of dungarees, but alas there is no photo of me wearing them.  I have managed to finish a shawl that I started during some mammoth train journeys back in November. This was a handspun skein of Yak, Alpaca and Silk, one of the very last braids that still used Royal Baby Alpaca, before I had to switch over to Baby Llama. There's still some of the Llama version of the blend in the shop, and it's lovely, but I'm very pleased that the next batch of this base will be able to go back to using the softer Royal Baby Alpaca, because it spins and knits up so beautifully. The Baby Llama is nice, but is a slightly higher micron count.

I've also managed to get 2 skeins spun as part of the Hilltop cloud New Year Stash Clean I'm hosting in the Ravelry group. The aim was to take the oldest fibre in your stash and turn it in to yarn... no excuses allowed!

These 4 braids had been staring sadly at me every time I opened up my fibre storage box, so I'm very please that they're now yarn. 

I've also been developing new ideas. I'm teaching a workshop at Oxford Guild later this year, and we'll be spending some time dyeing weaving warps. I've done bits and pieces of this before, but when I'm teaching I like to be pretty well practised at a skill so I know exactly why I'm recommending a particular method (the photo above is from a test that doesn't work!). One of my good friends is an experienced weaver and is testing the finer warp for me, and was bemoaning that this sort of hand dyed warp is really hard to get in the UK. So after she  gave the test warp a glowing review I've taken the plunge. 
There will be hand dyed gradient warps available on the stand at Wonderwool, and in the online shop shortly after that. I've started off with a 2/20NM Tussah Silk lace weight (1000m per 100g). This one will be for the weavers with multi-shaft looms as it's a bit fine to use successfully in a rigid heddle. 
There's also a 2/8NM Tussah Silk fingering weight (400m per 100g). This will work on both multi-shaft looms and rigid heddle looms. And finally a 2/7NM BFL fingering weight (350m per 100g). Again, this will work on all loom types. 
I'm going to do a consistent warp size for now, with each warp designed to produce a generous size scarf/small wrap. 

This was a test of an ombre gradient dyed on the 2/7NM Tussah Silk, woven on my rigid heddle using a 10 dent heddle, the weft is some alpaca fingering weight that I unearthed from the deep stash! 

I've also wound on a test of the BFL warp, this is dyed in repeating stripes, so there will be subtle bands of colour running across the scarf with slight feathery edges. This one is still on the loom, but it's looking very pretty.
I've never wanted to start selling yarn as well as fibre, because there are already many people who dye yarn very well, and even though both processes seem like they should be the same, the reality is that dyeing yarn and dyeing fibre are two different beasts. Warps however, behave very much like a length of combed top, so all my dyeing skills transfer really well to this. 

Dyeing for wonderwool has already started, as there's only 80 days to go, but there still should be lots of new fibre popping up in the online shop over the next month.