Colour and Spinning

Today during our spinning class I shared the toque and booties, both knit in part with wool I spun. There is a great deal of satisfaction sharing this work with people who really understand what goes into the creations. And like all fiber artists I know there was the appropriate amount of ahhing to keep me happy. As we discussed them I could name the toque pattern but because I hadn´t written about it I forgot the name of the booties pattern. Alas, I was remiss because I didn´t have the name of the most important element. But first let´s have another look at the now two completed booties.

This is close to the actual size of these booties. The handspun in the neutral on top

These crossover booties were designed by Saartje de Bruijn, who must be Dutch since the pattern is available in English and Dutch (and Spanish as well, but de Bruijn doesn´t sound Spanish to me.) The pattern is available for free on Ravelry here .

There was a question about the buttons, to which I have few answers. Years ago I was spending time on eBay and bid on lots of crafty stuff, losing most of those bids. But the buttons were purchased and I remember them being referred to as antique. Perhaps that was a fancy way to say they were used. All have a shank and most seem to be covered with leather, looking something like what would be worn on the old style shoes, like these.

I have about 50 or so of them and have had little chance to use them. These booties were the perfect excuse to pull the collection out again and have a good look.

Everyone was busy in class doing their own spinning

As for the class, we did discuss colour and were given an opportunity to page through several books. I photographed them and have an idea of locating a few in the Vancouver or Minneapolis library. It would be great fun to read about the history of colours. There are many stories about how they came about or what a colour meant.

Oh, and we spun roving and plied them with different colours to see the impact. This is what I put together. (If I haven´t said it before I will say it now, this spinning stuff is really a lot of fun. I might just becoming addicted to it.)

The blue-green is plied with green thread, the orange with orange thread and the orange is again plied with a Noro yarn for which I didn´t care much about the colourway. IMHO it is improved.

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Flagel Knitting Files

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