Flower day

These are the flowers I made this afternoon.
I went this morning to bring  a flower for my husbands birthday to the cemetery and somehow got inspired to do some more flowers. It is such a wonderful old graveyard, peaceful and full of history.

Paua - my favorite in colour and shape

I love pauas, big ones, small ones, and I love the colours

paua shells (wikimedia)

Here are some of my things I have done inspired by pauas

I received for this scarf - inspired by pauas - the first entrant award at the 2007 Creative Fibre  Northland Exhibition 

I started with already dyed silk which I bought at Trademe. I span it and the I decided to weave with it. I used it as warp, for the weft I dyed more silk in turquoise and teal, and I used them both together but on separate shuttles. For some 'added interest' I dyed more silk in green shades. All the silk had to be spun after dyeing of course. 

This is a piece I made for Origins Art in the Garden Show 2009. It consists of a felted 'raster' made of Gotland wool. Then I clipped in paua shells and attached everything to an old totara post from my daugthers former lifestyle block. At a second hand shop I found a nice piece of big rope for hanging.

This is a detail of my work for the 2010 Art in the Garden Show, which is shown in the last post.  I had still some big pauas left from last year - it was a trademe bargain - and so I dyed wool from my daughters gotland sheep in paua colours. It was quite tricky to wrap the wool and felt around the pauas.

and while I tried to felt around another paua, the wool came off and suddenly I thought, that stretches very nice and would be ideal for a lacy wrap.  So instead of working on the pauas I made this 'mermaid wrap'

and another scarf

and another one of many in this colours

colour and the koru from the paua end

And finally old paintings..........

felted jewellery and more

For our library window display next week we chose as theme 'beach'. I will put in the felted paua shell hanging I made for Art in the Garden:

and I will also put in the felted jewellery I finished today. I made a necklace with earrings.

And I had something else in mind: I thought about a 'beach piece' where  I combine driftwood with shibori felt. The idea was good I think, still I have to practise more:

Layout of the wool with some needle felting to fix it a bit. 

wrapping some glas pebbles in

still dry but wrapping finished

Then I carefully started to felt it. It looked good, but I forgot to take a photo. Unfortuately I decided then to finish it in the washing machine and this was too much:

The driftwood broken 

and everything too much fulled

Not good enough for the window display but still looking nice hanging at our deck.
The broken driftwood has been replaced by a different one.

Together with this piece I put in the washing machine an old lace scarf, which I partly covered on one side with white polwarth wool. After finishing off by throwing a lot it looks really nice, its drying now:

Now I will just watch the news doing a bit crochet.

Happy New Year

So another year has started and I have finally finished a crochet top, which I started quite a while ago.
In the end I made the top, a bag, a flower, a belt and a baret to go with.

I took the photos on New Years Eve when I tried out how to display it. The baret wasn't finished then and I have embellished the belt in the meantime. The bag still needs a zip, probably a pink one and I am also thinking about to line the bag, possibly with teatowels, we will see what comes in my mind. The belt can be worn on both sides, the other side is green with a hint of pink. I will take more photos tomorrow.

Eco Print

After seeing some more beautiful eco prints on facebook, I decided to give it a go.
I had dyed earlier on some silk scarves with lichen and I used 2 of them for the prints. 2 days ago I grabbed some silver dollar gum leaves on a walk, today I picked some kangaroo paw flowers and collected flax flowers, which were dropped on the ground.
The first scarf, which I previously tryed to print with lichen which looked not so good:

the layout on the first scarf

detail of the layout, gum leaves, kangaroo paw flowers and flax flowers

rolling up

finished bundle

The second scarf, silk chiffon, resist dyed with lichen using an old cd

the scarf after the resist dyeing

I added only gum leaves

the finished bundle

both bundles in snaplock bags

resting on the window sill

I used only vinegar as mordant and now I just need to be patient ....

We will see the result in some weeks (if I can resist the urge to open the bundles...)