Colour challenge.

Yesterday was the first day of the new "term" at the Edinburgh Guild of Weavers, Dyers & spinners, and the theme was colour.

We did a little workshop on colour inspiration from images. First off, we had to chose a picture which appealed to us because of the colours. I chose this one...



Then we got to dig into the huge Guild "bits" box and find fibres to spin a yarn which reflected these colours...in tone, intensity, proportion and such. (This is where they lost me, alas, so I just concentrated on making it look like the picture.)



And with my titchy leftover skein.



I was actually quite pleased with my efforts, given that colour for me is a bit of a hit and miss affair. I brought it home and showed it proudly to my family...sum total of feedback here was that the two males of the household went "Umph" or words to that effect, and my daughter informed me that the purple was too dark in places......

Part 2 was to bring in 100g of fibre for another spinner to take away to spin over the next couple of months, preferably a good combination of colours, textures and fibes. So I made up this little heap, of dyed merino tops, silk tops, soy silk tops and Angelina fibres.



I liked the look of this combination so much that I tried running a matching pile through the drum carder......



...which just proves that if you get too enthusiastic and put your batt through the carder "just once more" you can blend it into bland streaky blue-green baby sick, with sparkles. I can barely belive Pile A turned into Batt B.

(It's actually not too bad, just not my cup of tea. I'll spin it up anyway, to see what it's like. Unless anyone would like to swap one of their own not so favourite batts for it? There's an ounce of fibre in that one, and it's all nice stuff.)

Edit: I tried again last night with the same combination of fibres plus a dose of advice from the Great Colour Guru Mr Fassett..."When it doesn't work, add at least three more colours". So I chucked in some stronger purples and a few shocking pink silk neps. Tadah!



Better......:-)