Freecycling is not just for dealing with items you may no longer want and wish to give them away for free. Freecycling can also work the other way; you can post a wanted add for the item on your wishlist and hope that someone is ready to gift it away.
I am a keen knitter and last year decided to start spinning and dying my own yarn. There were 2 reasons, I knit very fast and enjoy the process more than the end product, and secondly, it was one of those categories of spending that had to be curbed. Spinning and dying my own yarn reduced the amount I bought, and I spent more time doing something I really enjoy ( I know not everyone else has the same hobbies). The point is that I can create a sweater out of nothing by putting my time and effort into a creative process. I value the items a lot more.
Based on buying locally, I wanted to find out who produced fibre in my area. I already have a collection of fleeces from a local farmer but got interested in rare breeds. Farmers and small producers at the moment get less for a fleece than they have paid the person coming to shear it. So far I have identified producers of alpaca, shetland and jacobs fleece as above. I wanted to try a jacobs fleece as it is relatively soft and comes in 2 tones leaving room for possibilities, either using both colours individually or blended.
Posting a wanted add on freecycle produced not only 2 fleeces but I got to meet a new person in the community who runs a Forest School so that really made my day.
The free result has been, one new person met in the community, a fleece I wanted to spin for free and eventually free clothing. ( Free from monetary value, but probably very timeconsuming, priceless and unique)
5 comments:
I'm a spinner and knitter and I always wince at the prices of the yarns in my lys. I've tried recycling yarn by tinking sweaters from the thrift shop but that has not been particularly successful due to felting or steeking. Since I live in a mediterranean climate I don't need a lot of wool sweaters. What to do?
silk, silk...its so nice to cry in silk pillows.....can you grow silk worms?
hmm, never tried growing silk worms...I've spun silk and it's wonderful to spin mixed with llama. Thanks for the idea; I'll do some research on silk worms. One thing I know is you have to KILL the silk worms to get the silk--I'm a bit of a wimp about that.
What do you do about dyeing the wool? I have several bumps of roving I was gifted and had carded and I have dyed quite a bit of it with Koolaid in the microwave! Works great. I'll have to post photos of it on my blog...
I dye quite a bit with natural dyes, there is a whole host of colours to be obtained from plants that are native to you. A good book is A Dyers Manual by Jill Goodwin, old book but has really good explanations of the process and gives you colour charts of what can be obtained.
willow leaves, mordant vinegar gives a pink colour ( just to give you an example). I might try that one soon as we have quite a bit of willow around here.
Thanks, I'll look for that book. At my home in Oregon, I had a willow bush, willow tree, and a farm nursery nearby grew curly willow for florists and craft stores. I'll have to look around my new area and see what willow trees grow.
Do you know the book Tasha Tudor's Heirloom Crafts? There is a chapter on dyeing with natural dyes.
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