Showing posts with label colinette. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colinette. Show all posts
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linda
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Samantha Hayes, a Tudor re-enactor who every Summer becomes Peg the Dyer at Kentwell Hall missed all the excitement at the Launch of Rural Collusions at Thornham Walks on Easter Saturday. Sam (along with Jane and myself) dyed a lot of the textiles used in the work so it was about time she saw the fantastic creations of Jane Southgate finally displayed in their beautiful surroundings.We popped over there for a walk and straightaway spotted something fantastically fungal that is exactly the sort of thing that gets Mushroom Jane so excited and inspired...
I loved seeing the weaving again - the yarns are such beautiful colours and some are dyed with plants that grow nearby. The moss round the base of a tree is particularly beautiful to look at with so many different yarns used and all knitted in moss stitch - it looked a quite different in the woods to when Sam last saw it all being sewn together at Wednesday knitting!
The second part of Rural Collusions is at Lackford Lakes, near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk and again we spotted some inspirational fungi shortly after arriving!
Surely the inspiration for these incredible bracket fungi that we've all become so fond of at HH HQ...
Woad-dyed cotton for the 'gills' and felted Gedgrave Flock fleece which has been dyed with madder for the tops of the fungi.
Not forgetting the rather pretty puffballs in a variety of colours...
My favourites though have to be the Reeds - made in a combination of Colinette Point Five yarns and cotton dyed with reed heads (one of our favourite seasonal dyes) giving a lovely green colour despite being so very, very purple!
Hope you enjoy seeing the photographs but to get the full effect you really ought to pay a visit, I may even bump into you there as I shall be returning to see them fairly frequently throughout the year!Nic x
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linda
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With the launch of our lovely new website www.halfpennyhome.co.uk we were pleased to see that along with the people who walk through the blue doors of Halfpenny HQ creative people from further afield seemed like the same things as we do!
We had an order for some of the Stardust Garland yarn by Knit Collage which is sadly out of stock at the moment but we offered up this lovely handspun Wensleygdale with silk from our friends at the Gedgrave Flock and the customer was tempted but the skeins are rather large, this one was 190g. No problem!
We had an order for some of the Stardust Garland yarn by Knit Collage which is sadly out of stock at the moment but we offered up this lovely handspun Wensleygdale with silk from our friends at the Gedgrave Flock and the customer was tempted but the skeins are rather large, this one was 190g. No problem!
Weighed out, re-skeined and label ammended it was soon on it's way to the lucky recipient!
Meanwhile I had a present to make - Jane look away!Jane Southgate loves blues and turquoises so this was an easy choice - Point Five from Colinette is lovely to knit with and this shade doesn't hang around long. Turquoise with flashes of purple, yum! Many of our regulars reckon that they enjoy winding the balls almost as much as knitting with it....look at how the colours sing in the sunlight!
I had in mind the cozy neck wrap from Purlbee but I was a bit worried that I would run out of yarn before getting to the tip of the triangle - so I turned it upside down and instead of decreasing I increased. The Purlbee pattern has a buttonhole that the end of the triangle slots through but Jane loves buttons...
To increase you just knit into the front and back of the same stitch before moving the stitch from one needle to the other.
By increasing on only one side it was quickly taking shape!
If you are worry about running out of yarn before you can cast off then lay the yarn along the line of stitches and you need to have about two and a half times the length in yarn to be sure to have enough!
Glazed coconut button in place and ready for wrapping - hope she likes it! Nic x
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linda
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Yes, we're nearly there - just a few more days!
Halfpenny Home has seen an awful lot of handcrafted presents planned and made during this last year. A handmade gift means so much more than a shop bought present as the recipient knows how much thought and care has gone into producing it. One of our Sew and Crow ladies, Michelle has really thrown herself into her crafting and presented me with this wonderful bauble wreath - I love it!
I on the other hand could not resist the temptation to knit up some of the Colinette Point Five that we have in the shop. This speedy one skein pattern is on the very wonderful Purlbee, the blog for Purl Soho in New York. It's really easy and comfy to wear, we need as many woolly knits as possible with all this snow!
Purlbee has some brilliant projects and I'm quite a fan! Jane Southgate and I have been looking for a long sock pattern for ages and couldn't quite find one that we liked until we saw one on the Purlbee blog. We had to get it and it arrived just before knitting...
It's this shaping on the back that really got us going!
It took me no time at all to start knitting up a pair in the hand dyed Wensleydale yarn from the Gedgrave Flock.
They are on hold for now though as along with everyone else I've got loads more presents to make and it's getting closer and closer to the big day!
Everyone needs to stop for lunch though and I can't knit and eat but I do like a read and luckily for me the current issue of Oh Comely magazine has just been dropped off.
It features our very own (Dolly Beth) Beth Davis with a delicious recipe for rhubarb pie!
Right lunch over, back to work! Halfpenny Home will be closed after Wednesday 22nd December and will re-open on Saturday 8th January 2011. Hope everyone's Christmas preperations are going smoothly, Nic x
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linda
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This was the sight that greeted me this morning when I rolled up to Halfpenny Home on my bike! The big Colinette order that we've all been looking forward to...it comes in great big boxes and still tied in hanks not skeins. It's always very exciting to open up the bags and see the fantastic handyed wools straight from Wales.
Jitterbug sock yarn in Vatican Pie and Rio!
Point Five in fifteen shades - I got a little bit carried away with this order but who could blame me?
Look at all those colours! My favourites (so far) are Elephants Daydream and Lavender Lil but I've got a way to go before I've been through them all. I haven't even got out the new yarn from Colinette - Hullabaloo, it's amazing an Aran yarn that is made by spinning black fleece with the white so that when it's dyed only the white takes the colour, the finished yarn is delicious!
Only another 158 to go! Nic x
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linda
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The dye pots have been out again and this time we have a perfect excuse (not that we need one!) as we have been dyeing all sorts of textiles for Jane Southgate to use in her artwork.Sam whose alter ego is Peg the Dyer at Kentwell Hall has been leading the dyeing and working with Jane to get the correct colours. We love to dye with plants at HH and are particularly fond of the purple feather reed heads that grow around here. They are ready to use in the summer but the season is so short that we have been experimenting with drying and freezing the heads so that we can dye with them all through the winter too!
The dyebath made from the reed heads looks just like Ribena!We are extremely proud to be sponsoring Jane's latest projects at Thornham Walks and Lackford Lakes in Suffolk but we made it clear from the start that we would expect her to join in when we came to dye the yarns and fabrics...
Here she is supervising the madder dye bath, that fleece hanging on the line behind her is from the Gedgrave Flock www.gedgrave-wensleydales.blogspot.com a lovely curly fleece!Even though the reed head dye bath is the colour of Ribena the shade you get at the end is this - actually my camera struggles with this and it's much greener in real life!
As well as the fleece and yarns from the Gedgrave sheep Jane is also making good use of the Colinette 'Point 5' yarn that we sell at Halfpenny Home and this is the shade 'Turquoise'. I'm pretty sure that it's not what the Colinette designers would have expected their gorgeous hand dyed yarn to be used for...
Jane is planning to make a hundred of these...can you imagine them all swaying in the breeze? The star of the show (so far) for me has to be this bracket fungus, the bottom part has been dyed with woad and the curly lid is the fleece that we dyed with madder. Everyone who meets it wants to hug it!
Jane is using natural fibres only as the artworks will stay in situ for a year while nature does it's own recycling...
The moss which is knitted in moss stitch!
Mushrooms!
The mushrooms knitted with Colinette 'Skye' in the colourway 'Star Anise', lovely! Jane wants us all to knit a mushroom for this and has written a pattern for them, so if you would like to knit one let us know and we'll send the pattern, yarn (and if you need them, some double pointed needles!) to you.
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linda
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I spent the whole day putting it into skeins and looking at all the lovely colour combinations. Colinette yarn is hand dyed so you get a lovely variegated yarn. We've got Skye, which is an aran weight yarn in star anise, vatican pie and velvet leaf. Point five is a lumpy bumpy yarn which is popular with felters and we have it in five colourways including turquoise, raspberry, toasted macaroon, mint julep and wasabi squeeze. The names are incredible aren't they? Other treats include a shaggy cotton yarn called Fandango and a double knit washable merino which I reckon would be perfect for socks. It's going to be a lively knitting morning tomorrow!
I had to share these cake photos with you! The chocolate muffins are from Scoffin' and the cardboard cake shaped gift boxes are by mimibellatree.
We had a visit from Iris on Saturday, she came in to show us her latest Linus quilt. Linus quilts are made by volunteers for children in distress, the name comes from the Peanuts character who was never without his comfort blanket! Iris has tried out some of the fancy stitches on her new sewing machine on this one.
Not wanting to be left out of all this creative activity I thought I would show off a recent commission - a loose cover fashioned from an old linen sheet for a stately winged arm chair. I like this style of cover as it's unpiped and if made in old sheets can be washed without any fear of shrinkage.
I had to be very disciplined and get the cover finished before I unwrapped the brand new pegloom which arrived last week and I'm eager to try out! Have a good week, Nic x
