Oh, yes…this is a REALLY good one…When Ashley Martineau of Neauveau Fiber Art and I made the plan to do this, I knew I was in for a one of a kind experience and I was right. To start with, I had a great time picking out what to send to her. Ashley is a true master of spinning bulky yarns that are still delicate and elegant and often in a soft palette. Of course, I could not resist the overwhelming temptation to send something as un-Ashley as I could imagine. I think you will enjoy her write up and pictures and then I will show you what I received and what happened with it. This was a lot of FUN!
From Ashley:
“I love non-conventional spinning. It’s my favorite way to get out of a spinning rut. When I received Arlene’s package, I laughed and started thinking about how in the world I could incorporate this poncho into my yarn. Life with a toddler means delay after delay, and this poncho actually served a few useful purposes on it’s way to becoming a skein of yarn.
Here is what arrived in my package. A bright orange rain poncho, some lei flowers, some fiber, and a little ball of yarn
The first purpose the poncho served was keeping my husband dry on a hike up Mount Monadnock. I told him to get a picture of him wearing the poncho on the top of the mountain for me to include in this tutorial – but he forgot. He did take a picture of the view though, so here you go.
Then a couple days later, our toddler Sam left me a present in the bath. Brian bravely donned the Rain Poncho when he got home from work to rescue me from a moment of parenthood bliss.
I finally came up with an idea for my finished yarn, and employed some help to get me thru the preparation stage of spinning. With the help of a good friend, a puppy, and a little boy we got to work.
After cutting the poncho into a ball of plastic ribbon, I took the fiber and spun it in a single. Then I spun the ribbon of plastic. I plied the fiber with the plastic and played with different art yarn techniques to see what would work – just in case I ever wanted to get in the business of spinning rain ponchos. Here are the results:
Plying: works great!
Supercoiling: waste of time
Stacking: works well!
Twists: meh, not so much
I still had plenty of poncho left over when I ran out of fiber so I plied the two-ply plastic/wool yarn with another ply of poncho and I ended up with a few unique boucle-looking yards. My stacks turned into blobby rosettes and the flowers turned into butterflies.
Then, right as I finished the final yard – it began to rain. So I took the yarn outside and photographed it in the rain. This ends the adventure of Rain Poncho Yarn. Thank you Arlene for such a fun challenge!”
Pretty amazing, huh? So, while the orange poncho was being worn by Brian for various reasons, I had received Ashley’s package and was mulling over what to do with it.
What you are looking at in this picture is a pretty wide variety of components. Starting from the lower left: A small knitted piece in some type of cotton boucle yarn, a large pile of cotton threads that I believe were warp ends, teal roving, a doiley, a small ball of a naturally colored wool spun as single, yarn strands, fabric strips, a strip of lace, yellow locks and an assortment of feathers as well as some beads and some small gold leaves (not shown). In addition, there was a spool of wire. I did look at this for awhile trying to decide what direction I was going to take. Included also were some dyed silk cocoons. I decided I did not want the cocoons to hang off as add ins and I thought it was time I took a crack at de-gumming them and spinning the silk instead. So, I soaked them and then I was able to create thread out of them. Although this experiment did not yield much silk to spin with, it did give me the point of view I decided to take in approaching making the yarn: Deconstruction. After deconstructing the cocoons, I separated all the weaving ends into piles of color. Then, I unravelled the small piece of knitted fabric. I separated the sewn edges of the fabric strips. I cut the doiley into strips. I separated the feathers into piles of colors. And, then I separated out everything that was a neutral color. That’s when the yarn design came into full view in my mind. For the neutrals, I had a range from white to black. For the colors, I pretty much had a rainbow once I lined up all the items on my work table.
So, I decided to spin a three ply yarn: 1 ply would be the neutrals from light to dark, the second ply would be the colors of the rainbow and the third ply would be the wire.
Once I had my bobbins good to go, then came a marathon plying session with the wire, but I could tell that it was going to be worth it as I wound the newly created yarn onto the final bobbin. And, when I took the yarn off the wheel, this is what I had:
And, I loved it, but in the skein you could not see the color work as nicely. Also, I know that I was going to sculpt the yarn in someway at the end because of the wire ply…so, I decided to coil it into a yarn “Slinky”…
I really have to thank Ashley for this package! It really took me to some new places with my spinning that I’m sure I will return to in the future!! I really love the yarn I made.
Amazing! Both the yarns and stories!
Both yarns are totally fun and creative, but I love that Arlene first separated out totally pulled it all apart and reorganized it. I rarely do that, and I think I may look at things “on my table” differently in the future!
Ashley sent you some pretty neat stuff, Arlene. Totally love the colors. I might have been mad, if you sent me a poncho. I would have cut it into strips also, but I would have hated the feel of it as well as the smell!
Both results are gorgeous.
Thank you so much for this – I’m still too excited about spinning to be in a rut, but this is such a good reminder to me that creativity can’t remain static, but needs always to be pushed to its limits of both expertise and experimentation. Now, off to the studio!