Wildcraft

Shop Update

wildcraft — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:37:24 +0000

Yay, the shop’s been updated with some new products this morning! I’ve added some new BFL rovings and a few new sets of stitch markers. This batch of colours is intensely bright and summery, just take a look at these:

This is a colourway named Calendulas, after the bright orange marigolds in my garden. They really are this bright in real life, and the roving matches them

The one below is a repeat of ‘Scottish Seascape’, last time it was available in Shetland, this time it’s BFL.

And here’s one of the new sets of stitch markers, made with some pretty Paua shell beads:

All the new products can be found by following this link to the Wildcraft Shop.

Have fun!

Oh and in case you’re wondering, the wool batts are coming along well. You’ve seen the fire ones. Last week I finished the water ones, made from Willow’s fleece blended with silk, and earth (made from Giles the coloured Ryeland’s wool) is coming along nicely. Giles’ fleece is turning out to have exactly the same kind of character as Giles himself – it’s bouncy and huggable, it should make a fabulous sock yarn. Cordelia’s fleece is next, she’s air (that’ll be white and grey, with a little blue). I’ll post pics of them all together as soon as they’re ready!

Fire!

wildcraft — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:11:58 +0000

I’ve been having fun dyeing and blending up some drumcarded wool batts for the Wildcraft shop this weekend. And of course I had to sample the merchandise, so I’ve done a little spinning too

The first batch was made from a blend of ‘Buffy’ the sheep’s wool, some kid mohair and a little bit of dyed silk waste. I’ve called this colourway ‘Fire’, and I think you’ll see why:

It’s a fairly smooth blend, as I wanted it to be possible to spin an even yarn from the batts. And it looks like that worked, as I was able to spin this little sample skein from one of the batts:

Eye-poppingly bright isn’t it? But I like bright colours

The batt I used to spin the yarn isn’t shown in the photos above, as I didn’t think of taking the photos until after I’d spun it up. The sample batt was a bit more blended than the others, which is why the colours have come out a quite even orange. The stripey batts will make more of a stripey yarn. I’d love to spin some more, but, tempting as it is, I mustn’t use up all Wildcraft stock myself!

Next batch will be in ‘water’ colours, from Willow’s fleece. Once I’ve got a set of each of the elements, I’ll update the shop and you can try them for yourselves.

Welcome to the Wildcraft Blog!

wildcraft — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:50:27 +0000

The big news this week is that our online shop is open at last! If you didn’t arrive here via the shop’s web site, you can find it here: www.wildcraft.co.uk. On the site you will find rovings for handspinning, handmade stitch markers for knitting, and some nifty turned wood yarn gauges for measuring your handspun yarns.

This weekend I’ve been facing down the huge pile of fleece I’ve recently liberated (i.e. shorn!) from the Wildcraft flock of sheep.

The ewes grew huge fleeces last year, so there’ll be plenty to make up into the drumcarded batts I’m planning to make for the shop. First off is Buffy’s, which I’m washing at the moment, it’s a fabulously clean fleece (they all are, hurrah for shearing outdoors!), and should be easy to card and spin.

I’m planning to produce an ‘elemental’ series of batts for this first batch. So we’ll have Fire (Buffy), Water (Willow), Air (Cordelia) and Earth (Giles) themed batts coming up soon. They’ll include elemental themed colours and a sprinkling of exotic fibres as well as the wool fleece from each sheep. I’m really looking forward to making them.

In the meantime, enjoy browsing the shop. I’ll be adding further rovings and stitch markers as they sell, and more yarn gauges just as soon as my mum’s turned another batch!