DYEING TO KNOW Sarah Shrimpton has been experimenting with natural yarn dyes and you may be surprised by her secret fruity ingredient! “Using natural ingredients is a slightly different and more lengthy process than using acid dyes. I’ve recently been working with avocado – would you believe you can get the most beautiful coral and blush pinks from the stones and skins? Making your own dye is a bit like making soup. First you’ll need to collect your dye materials – you could try onion skin for yellows and oranges, nettles and oak leaves for beige, or hollyhock flowers for pinks and reds. As a rough guide, you’ll need around 100g of dyestuff per 100g of yarn. Add your ingredients to a pan of water, simmer for around an hour to extract the colour and once it’s cooled you can use the liquid to dye your yarn. Most dyeing processes use a mordant which is a substance that combines with a dye or stain to fix it to a material. If you want to work without it, simply soak your yarn first then add it to the dye bath – you’ll achieve different colours but that’s all part of the fun!” SPIN ME ROUND Louise McDonald is the creator of Spin City – a glittery, magical handmade store where you can get the most stunning spinning equipment and wool. We caught up with her over a cup of tea and shimmery threads to find out all about her crafty process – it’s safe to say we’re very inspired! “The idea that I can combine colours in any thickness, texture, fibre or ply and create as much of it as I want blows my mind – if you want a super bulky, rainbow, glittery, gradient yarn, you can make it! Once I’ve dyed and gathered my fibre selection, I card everything together to smooth it and add luxury fibres like soya silk, tencel, firestar or glittery angelina. I choose the spinning wheel best suited to the type of yarn I want to create and attach the fibre to my bobbin. Spinning wheels are beautiful things and I love to think of the connection I share with generations of women who have used these wonderful tools before me. I start by treadling slowly in a clockwise direction to build momentum, gently moving my feet up and down on the pedals. At the same time I draft the fibre in my hands – drafting is the process of pulling fibre into a continuous thickness and length before you add twist. Holding my left hand in a firm pinch nearest to the wheel, my right hand pulls backwards to draw fibres out to a thickness that I want my final yarn to be. I then slide my left hand down the newly-drafted fibre releasing any twist built up by the wheel – I have now created an inch of yarn! I repeat this process for as long as I want my yarn to be, before winding it into a skein to knit or weave with later. This creates a single-ply yarn as it has been spun once on a spinning wheel or a drop spindle. There are so many different types of yarn; two-ply, three-ply, boucle, thread plied, core-spun, lock-spun – the list is endless, and I intend to spin them all and in every colour imaginable!” Looking for more inspiration? Give weaving a go!