Thursday Sketch

The last several weeks, I've neglected to post my Thursday sketch paintings. That is mainly because I've not been painting. This month I've been focusing my creative time on fiber projects, putting in as much knitting time as possible to complete my Works In Progress for WIP Wrestlemania (a fun ravelry thing). I had intended to post my progress here on Thursdays in place of the paintings, but keep forgetting to take pictures.

This is my second finished project for Wrestlemania, a Monmouth cap. The pattern for this is based on a 16th century hat from the Monmouth Museum in Wales.



Next up, my first pair of socks which I finished a while back but never posted a picture of. This pattern comes from a WWII Red Cross pamphlet. I intended to make these for Elias, but they're a bit too small (and coincidentally fit me perfectly).


My daylily dyebath promised bright, warm colors....

....but resulted in greens. The moss green samples at the front looked so nice that I threw in a whole bunch of fiber. The samples to the back show the result: the fiber turned out more like pond scum (top sample) than the pretty dark green moss. Hoping that the problem was simply the proportion of dye to fiber, I continued gathering spent daylilies every day and making a "tea"; out of them. I added more of this "tea" to the dyebath and simmered it longer. The color did darken some, but also turned more brownish (the 2nd one down). The daylilies have all bloomed now, so I'll have to wait till next year for further experimentation. Now I have to decide if I want to use the fiber as is or try to overdye with blue for a stronger green.


The spindler's group theme for May was "Irony." I spun some of my blue angora's fiber with some blue merino/tencel (a wood based manmade fiber) blend. I ended up with 241 yards of laceweight yarn. I need to spin more of this up once I get a bit more angora to make enough for a shawl. The color is really more muted, a steel blue. I'm not sure how the camera gave it so much more color.


I've also made a few Lord of the Rings inspired spindles,
Leaves from Lothlorian -which I am currently spinning tussah silk on:


and a Dwarven spindle which is being used to spin some of the most lovely alpaca:



Finally, the yarn I just barely finished in time for the June theme, "Bollywood." It is angora dyed with henna and plyed with gold embroidery floss. The color is a bit more peachy in real life, I was trying to get the camera to pick up the glimmering gold, but ended up washing out the color.


I think I'm all caught up now,

-Jayne