This summer I did a bit of eco dying with tea and rusty pieces. I tied all my bundles with some white hand spun yarn. I like to spin for the zen like process but don’t have really have a use since the last weaving project with handspun was to make chair seats and moths ate them leaving me traumatized! They not only ate them but they left them so infested with moth eggs etc that after I totally stripped off the chair seats I have never replaced them…
But here were these pieces of yarn all died in warm browns and grays and I wanted to do something with them but what. I knit up a bit but that wasn’t the answer. Then I thought of tapestry. Again, I just have short pieces so didn’t want to set up one of my larger tapestry looms so I decided on a small frame loom which is really a picture frame I had in the attic.

Tools

Then I remembered a wonderful wooden needle that would be just right for this project, dug out a small hand beater and began. This is just the thing after I spend hours wrangeling with technology that won’t behave and new operating systems that don’t play nice with existing software and all this is discovered in front of a class of students and oh my head hurts…
The plan for this piece is simply a gradated light to dark with the spacing as it falls – but I have lots of ideas for other bits of hand spun and dyed yarns stored around here—in moth proof containers!