The Elecampane is blooming. It looks like a rather oversized Dandelion, although paired with the Black Hollyhock it's growing beside, it's a pretty combo. This plant is huge. The seed catalog description suggested it would grow about 4 feet tall. This baby is as tall or taller than I am when I'm standing on the deck, so someplace in the 7 plus feet range. Amazing. I'm leaving it growing for this year. With the winters perennial flower losses - both Echinaceas, the Cardinal Lobelia, Coreopsis, all the Icelandic Poppies and more, at least this is some colour in the garden beds.
The 30 quilt blocks are pieced and pressed, ready to be cut in 4 quarters, rearranged and reassembled into thirty new blocks, which will be then sewn into a quilt. I already have border fabric, which I hope will work suitably and frame the quilt. It looked good with the uncut fabric, but sometimes the blocks seem to look differently when all put together.
My first attempt at a bouclé yarn. I cannot believe how much time this took. Of course I over estimated the amount of fibre I'd need in the first place, so the amount of the base single was more than expected. Then I had to spin more of the mohair as wrapping was supposed to take at least 1.5 times the base. Then I had to ply the two together and then ply a third time with a binder thread. I used sewing thread. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my first try. It's a balanced and nice looking skein although I think I could have done with a little less enthusiasm with the wrapping of the mohair ply. It's got an awful lot of loops! This was the result 3 days of spinning for several hours each day.
I also played around with spinning thick yarn. I got thick and uneven yarn, thick, dense and mainly even yarn, and finally I got a fairly even, fairly light, sproingy, fluffy yarn that I am happy with. Who knew spinning thick yarn was so difficult? I cannot for the life of me think what I would use this for, but it's good to know that I can indeed spin a variety of thicknesses.
The 30 quilt blocks are pieced and pressed, ready to be cut in 4 quarters, rearranged and reassembled into thirty new blocks, which will be then sewn into a quilt. I already have border fabric, which I hope will work suitably and frame the quilt. It looked good with the uncut fabric, but sometimes the blocks seem to look differently when all put together.
boucle isn't something I enjoy spinning. too much effort for me:) but it does look nice... and yes, I find spinning thick and even far more of a challenge than spinning fine! I tend to ply, but of course that takes much more time than spinning a chunky single of the same weight..
ReplyDeleteand elecampane is coming up here too, huge and in my enthusiasm I started out with 5 plants! after a year of having pretty much only giant elecampane leaves in one bed, I whittled it down to one, still huge, but at least I can fit a few other plants in as well:) the weird thing is that wasps seem to like the leaves - every year I have something like a wasp colony without nest clustered under the lower leaves.... good rainshelter maybe?
I've fallen into a one-note sally kind of yarn. My friends say they know it when they see it. I'm spinning to weave right now, but I do need to try thick one of these days. It's hard!
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