by Lyall Campbell.We had a challenge at our spinning group several years ago to produce something with angora fibre. I used my carders to mix this with some soft halfbred wool, and the result was soft as marshmallow, a joy to handle.
Some time later I decided to make a bed rug with the yarn. I wanted to produce a sculptured effect as in the old-fashioned cotton bed spreads. I found a photo and adapted a pattern from 'The Encyclopedia of Knitting' by Pam Dawson. The pattern is for triangles which join together to make squares with sculptured flower patterns in them. The beauty of this technique is that you just keep going, increasing the size of the rug until you get a satisfactory size, without having to carry a bulky object around. When I felt the rug was big enough, I used an edge pattern from the same book to finish it off. Over all it took about three months, and was a pleasurable experience as the wool was so luscious to handle.
At the moment I am making a brightly coloured rug for my grand daughter. I find that when using colour you have the problem of how much to dye before you start. I am going to solve this by making the central part then assessing how much more I need to dye. Bed rugs seem to be appreciated by the young more than jerseys these days.
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