It's a vlog celebrating late summer! A little look at the British wool yarn and spinning fibre colours in my August shop update, along with some sewing plans, a walk with a friend, and some tiny harvests from the garden. I was planning on sharing a little more of the prep for the shop update, but after a small incident involving my floor loom, I got a bit carried away with show and tell!
A show and tell of sewing project plans, ethical silk and new limited edition colours of British wool yarn and spinning fibre
I spent much of the morning doing admin, but by the afternoon I was in the wool room preparing for my shop update and thought I’d show off the new limited edition, hand-dyed colours that will be available for all you crafters. It's been a long time since I did a double drop of both my Mendip yarn (4ply and DK) and spinning fibre, so I'm excited for you to see it. I've also been working on some other bits I have been putting off, like adding new heddles to my floor loom and I'll also share some plans for future craft projects, including a weaving project and some lovely new fabric.
I'm wearing my Scrumper Cardigan
The hand-knit cardigan I’m wearing in this summer vlog is my Scrumper Cardigan. It’s the cardigan version of my best-selling Scrumper Waistcoat, and I love it. This knit design features tiny cables along the button bands, with panels of cables and moss stitch that continue down the sleeves, with the moss stitch repeating on the cuff and button band (which is knit contiguously, so there’s no need to pick up stitches). The body is knit from the bottom up, and the fitted sleeves and roomier body make it perfect for layering. I like to pair it with a hand-knit vest or slipover when it’s a bit colder.
This sample was knit using John Arbon’s Appledore DK yarn in the shade Sweet Copin. It’s one of my all-time favourite yarns, so soft with a lovely depth of colour. I’ve knit with it on numerous occasions. The handmade wooden buttons I've used are the 15mm Laburnum wood ones from Tom Dyson, available on the website.
Find the Scrumper Cardigan knitting pattern on my website
Find the Scrumper Cardigan knitting pattern on Ravelry
My floor loom betrayed me...
If you watched/read in episode 72 of the podcast, you'll remember I had a couple of fiddly tasks to do before starting my next weaving project (more on that below). The first job was adding an extra 400 Texsolv heddles to my floor loom. The previous owner was a tapestry weaver, who worked fairly coarsely and narrowly, so didn’t need as many heddles. I, however, want to create a much finer handwoven fabric, which means I need loads more heddles so I can get loads more yarn on the loom.
What I thought would be a straightforward job turned out to be… not so much. The plan was to add 100 heddles to each shaft; however, I had made the bold and incorrect assumption that each shaft would have the same number of heddles. Instead, they had been distributed completely randomly across the shafts, so I’ll need to spend some time shuffling them around.
Since I didn’t have the time or the patience to address it, that's a job for future Marina… You can catch a few relaxing minutes of me threading the first batch, though, which was actually very satisfying.
Plans for my next weaving project
Whilst this will need to wait for the heddle redistribution, I do have a plan for my next weaving project. I'll be using a single ply, undyed natural grey British wool (not breed specific), I have had for years, for the warp.
For the weft, I have a greenish brown batch of the same yarn I hand-dyed with Coreopsis Grandiflora from my garden. This usually gives a really strong golden yellow (as opposed to Dyers Coreopsis, or Coreopsis Tinctoria, where you can get some really good orange colour), but I think I modified this with iron to get this brown colour. I was slightly disappointed as I didn’t have quite as much of the dyed batch as I first thought; however, I happily uncovered an additional, bigger skein, which will help me create a larger piece of handwoven fabric.
Now that I've finally sanded the pegs on my warping board to fit better, this weaving project is ready to start. I just need to make peace with and address redistributing the Texsolv heddles, and I'll be ready to start weaving.
Fabric from Organic Textile Company
I recently went with my friend Lorna from Thread and Yarn to visit the Organic Textile Company, which recently moved close to me in Somerset. I bought some heavy linen fabric from them years ago for my wedding dress, so it was great to see their new showroom that is open to the public.
They're brilliant at sourcing natural plant fibre fabrics with good supply chain transparency, which is important to me when I can't weave the fabric myself. It’s been a while since I sewed with commercial fabric, so these will be great for experimenting before I cut into precious handwoven cloth. Here's what I came home with:
A beigey-purple cotton crossweave
I found a lovely beigey/purple midweight organic cotton with purply brown dots. I’m not a dotty person, but the plain reverse side is really nice and dimensional with a beige warp and a darker brown weft. I think I can just about get a Bramble skirt (a free tutorial by Lorna over on her Thread and Yarn channel) out of the fabric I have, which will be lovely to wear before we’re in full-on autumn. It'll hopefully double up as a petticoat to go under other things when it gets properly chilly so that I don’t feel the need to wear quite so many tights…
A remnant of bamboo
It's only small, about 115cm wide, but it’s got a really beautiful drape to it. The plan is to dye it and then make a little slip dress, although I will need to be careful about cutting it out as there really isn’t much.
A purply-brown cotton crossweave
I have 3m of this pretty purply-brown midweight organic cotton, and I’m planning to make a dress. Exact plans are undecided, but it will probably have a big gathered skirt and some pockets with some kind of V-neck. It’s one I want to be wearing under all my jumpers and cardigans that have quite tight sleeves, so it’s likely to be sleeveless, too. I’ll probably Frankenstein a few different sewing patterns together and then draft some bits myself to come up with what I actually want.
If you’re interested in sewing with natural fibres that have some environmental and ethical credentials, I highly recommend Organic Textile Company. I had such a lovely trip with Lorna - we chatted for ages, went for a nice lunch and then a tiny walk, which I take you along in my vlog. Since you're here, I think you might love Lorna's beautiful, natural hand-dyed yarn too.
Natural dyeing plans with ethical silk
My black hollyhocks are almost over and I've been saving the seeds and thinking about dyeing with them. They make a lovely natural dye colour which can range from greys to greens to purple, depending on how you modify them.
And I have another natural dyeing project in mind. I’m yet to decide what plants to use, or indeed what it will be, but I treated myself to some very precious silk from William Hyett (formerly English Mulberry). He’s the only person I know of producing ethical silk in the UK, allowing the moths to hatch before harvesting the cocoons. This means the fibres are shorter, because the caterpillars need to nibble a hole through the cocoon to get out, but the silk fibre is still beautiful (and I'd argue even more so because no caterpillars are killed in the process).
I already had some processed mulberry silk cocoons, but William is going to stop selling his silk commercially, so I panicked and bought some more of the processed cocoons and some Red Eri silk cocoons (which I will need to process myself).
I tend not to buy silk as the ethics of the traditional production (killing the caterpillars to preserve the fibre length) does make me feel a bit icky, but William’s silk is a lovely thing that feels right to me. I’m excited to spin and dye some of this, perhaps with a tiny bit of madder root from the old garden, as I've never really dyed with it before and think it will be fun. I'll be leaving the warm orange of the Red Eri cocoons untouched as I love the colour - it's actually similar to the orange you get when dyeing with onion skins.
New limited edition shades of hand-dyed yarn and British wool spinning fibre
I've been doing lots of dyeing behind the scenes lately because I’ve been working on a big wholesale order, which I’m about to ship out (subscribe to my newsletter to be the first to hear about that when it’s announced). But I've also been cooking up new limited-edition colours of both my Mendip yarn and British wool spinning fibre.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a double drop, but I had so much fun dyeing these up, and I'm so excited to share them with you. There are eight limited edition colours of hand-dyed wool top for spinning and five new shades hand-dyed on my Mendip 4-Ply and DK yarn bases.
Hand-dyed British wool yarn
Inspired by the gradual transition from summer to autumn, these colours are mostly low-contrast variegated shades that work beautifully alone or paired with my regular semi-solid colours.
Mendip is a pure lambswool yarn sourced from a local eco-farm in Somerset, woollen spun at a small family-run mill in Wales, and hand-dyed by me in south-west Wiltshire. It's a bouncy, 100% British wool that's perfect for stranded colourwork projects. All of these new colours have been dyed on my cloudy base (a natural grey fleece), so they all have a slightly darker, heathered, moody tone that all feel very 'Marina'.
I think these would work beautifully in a colourwork knitting project - the Mendip DK in particular would be lovely for pairing with a regular semi-solid shade in knitting my Frostbeam Shawl I originally designed for Making Stories, Issue 4.
Shop limited edition yarn
Find the Frostbeam Shawl knitting pattern on my website
Find the Frostbeam Shawl knitting pattern on Ravelry
Hand-dyed British wool spinning fibre
As usual, I also have a batch of hand-dyed spinning fibre. You’ll see those summery yellows and pinks are still present, but a lot of moodier shades made their way into the mix, which, of course, I love. These have been hand-dyed on a variety of my natural wool tops, so if you want a closer look at what is dyed on what, I talk you through all the British wool bases and each limited-edition colour in the vlog.
Early access for future shop updates
Since all these hand-dyed spinning fibres and yarns are limited edition, I can’t be sure that there will be any left by the time you’re reading this (sorry!) However, if you’d like a guaranteed look at future drop of hand-dyed wool top, Mendip yarn and any other shop updates, my Patreon subscribers get 24-hour early access to shop updates. Plus access to exclusive content like product discounts, free patterns and being part of the loveliest community of crafters. It only costs from as little as £2 a month, and your support helps keep my podcast and creative work going. If you’re interested, you can find all the details here.
That’s all from me this time. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a more standard podcast episode. Until then, enjoy the vlog and happy making!
Stay connected with all things Marina Skua
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See you next time.
