Getting organised

This is the job that I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but finally got round to this weekend – organising yarns so that I can easily see what I’ve got! This is just some of my ‘stash’, the ones passed on to my by my tutor Ros over the last few years. I do have quite  lot of other yarns, but in different shapes and sizes, so not stored in quite such a tidy fashion (yet). With a trip to Wonderwool Wales planned for next weekend, I was keen to make sure that I know what yarns I might need – or perhaps more correctly – might like to have.

It’s not as simple as it might seem, as colour is only one of the things that you need to think about when you’re planning a tapestry. As well as colour, the design process also involves thinking about what type of yarn. Will it be wool? Silk? Linen? Cotton? A bit of raffia? Or perhaps a mix. The choices I make will depend on the look that I want to create – smooth, lustrous, hairy, coarse…And then I might want to add in texture through using different types of weaving – knotting, soumak, double warps…

So now you get an inkling of just how big a stash a tapestry weaver might need!!!