INDOOR ACTIVITIES IN JULY

Rain is still falling here at EdgeOfHeaven.  I am having some new fencing done and when posts are going into the ground there is water 500 cm down which is great as the water has gone down rather than just running off the surface.

Rainy weather encourages indoor activity so last week I dyed some wool using forest green and blue dyes. I used the same dye on both a light tan and white alpaca with some interesting results.

This is Camilo on a bad hair day, but Camilo has a very soft suri fleece.  He is the largest alpaca and stands taller than me.  He has also assumed he is superior to the other alpacas and regularly dominates food bowls.  However when Udo the llama gets frisky, Camilo initially stands his ground but will retreat when push comes to shove.  As a human, it is not advisable to stand at the rear of Camilo as he has a very powerful fast backward kick.

When I applied the dye to Camilo's fleece, I didn't stir it as I wanted to retain some of the tan colour.  It resulted in a wonderful fusion of tan, forest green and blue.  I think I will felt this as if I spin it, it may just become one murky colour.

This was a worthwhile experiment - putting the chocolate sheep wool on the left into the dye and stirring it around.  All the bleached tips grabbed the colour and the wool became a real blue/black.

And now for the really showy, but expected result - just thrust some of Picasso's white neck fleece in and the depth of colour is amazing.  Once again I didn't stir this and when you pull apart the dreadlocks (as Picasso is a suri), some white remains inside.

Another article on the fabric adventure is the latest nuno scarf.  I had spun some black alpaca wool into which I had carded some Seve's brown colour.  As I wanted to use this wool, I chose a variegated grey tissue silk and created a pattern where the wool was laid out in an S shape.  When the scarf was felted, I knitted some of the wool and added it to the ends.  This provided a weight to the ends of the scarf which is handy on a windy day when your scarf often blows away.

The month would not be complete without some spinning, so here is a skein of white alpaca which will probably be knitted into some more white alpaca dolls.  Vijay is very reluctantly modelling it.