Handspun Silk, Natural Dyes

I have a range of beautiful handspun tussah silk in the shop, hand dyed by myself with a selection of our natural dyes.  The silk is from a wild-silk farm, a family run business in Indonesia, and it has been handspun for us especially by Han from 'HanMade Yarns' in Wellington.

How Handmade is Your Handmade?

A question I had posed to me recently, and when I explained, it was followed with; why? Well, because it's a beautiful thing to do.
Hand-dyed wool and silk with plant dyes, done at the Australian Ballet Dye Labs for Winter 05.

The Madder Dye

I know theres a lot of reference to madness as part of the making. But this process is a joy, I love the natural dye from the root of the madder plant, and use it a lot. This was a collection of silk & wool felted scarfs made back in 2005.

WallFlower

I had made a pact to use up all my waste from production haste; hand dyed silks from previous collections all in natural dyes of madder, rose, pomegrante, indigo, chamomile, cochineal. So I've wound them in 50g balls and labelled each with the date dyed, and written a step by step pattern on how to knit this WallFlower. It's actually really simple; as it's a mix of a leaf, small petal, large petal, a bud, and a pom pom. You can make a few and create a broach, or a few more and make a scarf, or many like above and hang on the wall. The patterns and silk yarns are available at AprilMay in North Fitzroy, Melbourne, and are also available via email request.