It is surprisingly difficult to find a “tweedy” yarn in New Zealand Aotearoa.
A few decades ago the country boasted a fine array of woollen yarns with a myriad of sizes and variation of colour. These days the market for those yarns has changed and nowadays people look for different things in their yarns: softness, vibrancy and ease of washing. The problem is that tweed requires a woollen-spun yarn with flecks of colour in it, and in a gauge that is not as fine as lace or singles yarn or as thick as double-knitting.
A few years ago friends on a farm just outside Oamaru offered a bale of cleaned sheep fleece and it was recently washed and carded to produce a box of lovely soft and bouncy clouds of wool. Some of that wool has now been dyed by a local dyer in primary colours and in mixtures of hue. They have arrived back at the studio where there have been some experiments going on with a drum carder to blend the different colours together prior to getting them spun into yarns.
It has taken a long time to get to this point but it finally looks as though the studio is on the right track to be creating its own yarns for making a West Coast tweed!
Comments
2 responses to “Experiments in making yarn”
The dyed wool is beautiful but I feel a bit nostalgic for the soft natural tweedy colours I remember.
Not averse to the vibrant modern dyes but the natural browns, oranges, greys dull greens and beiges are incredibly beautiful too. They make me think of storms, bracken, gorse and heather on the hills.
As the experiment continues and develops I hope a medley of New Zealand natural colours emerges too.
Yes, they are lovely, both the natural and the dyed. Strangely, when the vibrant colours are blended together they tone down and the end result is a yarn that has small flecks of colour in it, just like the landscape. I hope we can get a New Zealand yarn like that!