Ruby Slippers

rainbow shawl

I finished my latest knitting project - a rainbow shawl knitted out of lopi wool dyed with natural dyes.  Every year our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild has a stash day where members bring items from their stash that they no longer want.  Over the years I accumulated a fair bit of lopi yarn which I dyed with lac, logwood, marigold, indigo and horsetail.  Such beautiful colours from Nature!

I knitted one half, then the other half and then joined them together with the kitchener stitch.  I didn't have a needle long enough to hold the entire shawl and also I was making the increases by putting the wool over the needle for the first stitch to make a loop and that wouldn't work on the half I was decreasing on.  I changed colour by sewing the new colour into the cut off end of the old colour and then strengthening the join with a felting needle.  The colour change shows along the edge a bit but not enough to notice when I'm wearing it.

 

When I'm not wearing the shawl I'm going to drape it over the back of a chesterfield.  I live on the edge of the forest and in good weather I have moths that visit me and eat any wool left out. Last year the bad creatures ate the wool around the ankles of my stuffed llama!  So now my shawl is spending several days in a plastic bag with a number of lavender sachets in hopes that when I take it out the lavender scent will hide the smell of wool that attracts moths.

little bags and felted balls

I love making little bags out of leftovers.  This little bag is knitted from wool that I painted with Gaywool dyes and then spun into a single.  It's stuffed with dyed silk hankies.

 

A member of our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild gave me bits and pieces of wool left over from carding and I spun them into a lumpy yarn.  I stuffed it with some of the Nature treasures I store in the bathtub of a spare bathroom.

After a holiday away from needle felting I may be back in the mood.  I had fun making these little balls last night.

little bag

I wanted a quick knitting project and I love making little bags.  So I knitted this little bag from curly mohair dyed with natural dyes.

ruana

My nature is such that I usually make small ‘useless’ things such as treasure holders, little bags, magic wand holders and small books.  So it was an undertaking for me to make something large and useful.  This ruana is knitted with Gaywool-dyed handspun and mohair as well as miscellaneous novelty yarns.  It was simple to knit – two large rectangles, one longer than the other.

The runana is based on a pattern by Cheryl Oberle in Handpaint Country.  After I’d knitted it I laid it out in preparation for sewing it together as was described in the pattern – the shorter rectangular piece sewn to the edge of one of the ends of the longer rectangular piece to make an L shape.  When I looked at it I realized that most of my back would be uncovered and I’d have quantities of stuff at the front.  Hmmm…  This type of surprise is common in my creative life – oh dear, I didn’t expect it would turn out that way!  It’s a good thing I never had my heart set on being an engineer…

I ended up sewing the longer and shorter rectangles together along their long edges, leaving about half unsewn so I could wrap the ends around my shoulders.  Here is the front.

My back is covered nicely and there isn’t too much stuff at the front.  I’m very happy with it.

treasure keeper and her little bag of treasures

At one of our Guild's stash days I picked up a small bag of soft brown fibre.  When I opened it last week I found it contained lovely soft dog fur.  I spun it up and had just enough to make a very small bag.  I stuffed the bag with nature treasures and made a little Treasure Keeper to guard the treasures.  There are many Treasure Keepers, the best known being dragons.  This little Treasure Keeper is much smaller and more gentle.  But just don't try to mess with her treasures...

 

I love making little beings and creatures.  Years ago I had a powerful dream where I witnessed a group of nomadic people travelling through a snowy forest on their magnificent horses.  They stopped to carry out a ceremony enacting a ritual birth.  At the end of the ceremony they stood in a line and passed a doll between their legs.  When the ceremony was completed an old woman, the elder of the tribe, carved a pattern in her leather saddle and coloured it in to record the enacting of this ritual birth.

The dream was very powerful and I wanted to do something to mark it and decided to make a dream bringing doll - the first little being I had made.  I looked among my fabrics and found one with stars to make her gown.  Amazingly, I also found some fabric with the same pattern that the woman had marked on her saddle.  I made it into a dream-bringing bag and filled it with gold stars and chamomile, hops and mugwort from my garden.

After the dream I wondered why they'd passed a doll through their legs and not a real baby.  It was only years later that I realized that this dream marked the beginning of a new joy in my life - making little beings and creatures.  For a few of the ones I've made you can check out my Flicker set of Little Beings and Creatures.
 

spring bag

 

Such a beautiful spring with fresh green leaves, primulas, marsh marigolds, early rhododendrons, heather, flowering shrubs and trees, spring bulbs and forget-me-nots.  The air is scented with the fragrance of a shrub with tiny white flowers and on sunny days there's the loud buzzing of bumble bees.  This silk that I dyed with natural materials last year seems to express this beautiful time so well.

 

I tore strips of silk, tied them together and knitted this Spring bag.  It would make a lovely Easter bag as well.

 

magic wand holder

 

Ever since I was very young I've been drawn to things magical and have felt a deep curiosity about what lies behind and beyond the physical world around me.  My imagination was rich with magical beings and creatures who lived in strange and wonderful worlds.

This magic wand in it's holder of hand-dyed, hand-spun silk and hand-painted silk lining is for small acts of magic.  It's large focusing gem makes it powerful despite its small size.

 

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at the car dealership sewing the lining to the knitted outside while I waited for my car to be serviced.  An older gentleman - someone who looked as if he'd spent his working life doing something sensible like construction or truck driving - walked in and looked at what I was doing.

"That's pretty.  What is it?"

"A holder for my magic wand."

That was a conversation stopper.  He raised his eyes from the holder to me and I could see that I was being reappraised in light of this information.  A bit later another older gentleman came in and we all had a very sensible conversation about the evils of black flies, deer flies and mosquitoes.  I think I was redeemed.

 

more little bags

I love making little bags out of bits of leftover handspun and scaps of cloth.  This is my Summer Sunshine bag, knitted with handspun wool/kid mohair blend during the dark, rainy days of our West Coast winter.

 

A tooth fairy bag bought by one of our guild members for her granddaughter.

 

Another tooth fairy bag.

 

Tooth fairy bags and an amulet bag.

 

Little Christmas bags.

 

sunshine coast medicine bags

 

 

These bags are knitted with hand dyed, handspun wool.  The blue one is a summer bag - the time when the sun is shining, the ocean is sparkling with light and the sky is brilliant blue.  This is the time that gives our region its name.  The greyish bag is for the other times of year when the sky is grey, the ocean is grey, the stones on the beach are grey. But when you look more closely you see a variety of subtle colours and the glisten of wet surfaces.  Since this is the predominant weather for our region, clearly we are a glass-half-full people in calling this the Sunshine Coast!

 

short row scarves and little bags

 

 

I always like to have a project of 'mindless' knitting on the go - something I can knit while visiting with friends, waiting for appointments or riding the ferry.  I find that short row scarves are ideal for this - easy but interesting enough so as not to be boring. My first short row scarves were knitted with hand-painted handspun wool using a pattern from issue 01 of Thr3fold. These are the most recent ones, tagged and ready for our Sunshine Coast Spinners and Weavers Guild's Christmas sale this weekend.

 

 

Recently I knitted a helix scarf with handspun.  This is another short row scarf that was featured in the Spring 2011 issue of Spin-off magazine.  The one I knitted is a more ruffled variation sent out by Spinning Daily.

 

 Some little bags that were fun to make for the Christmas table at our sale.