Alpaca&Rose Tweed

Sumptuous tweed handwoven on my Hattersley loom from luxurious 50% alpaca, 50% rose fiber yarn

First the rose fibers have to be created. The rose plants are broken down using an emzyme and the resulting soup is passed through a spinneret to create strands that can be collected as fiber. This is the same process as used to create bamboo, rayon and many other fibers however the manufactures of this rose fiber used a closed-loop system meaning no waste and significantly less environmental impact. It also doesn't alter the structure of the rose cellulose meaning it is still a natural organic product. The resulting fibers are incredibly soft, shiny and strong! The Border Mill, who also spin my gotland wool, then combine it with pure British alpaca for utter luxury! The blended fibers are carded, twisted into rolags, spun into single ply yarn, plied into two ply yarn and skeined. The skeins are individually hand dyed meaning each one has subtle variations and colour changes! I then laid extra for them to recone the yarn so we could use it for weaving.

When the yarn arrived Martha first made the warp, we beamed it onto the loom, then tied all 696 threads to the threads of the old warp. This was pulled onto the loom and weaving could finally start! Much slower than normal Martha had to take great care with this yarn as the slippery soft threads are harder to weave than regular yarn. Finally it was finished though and I could cut it into throws, scarves and neckwarmers. These I then washed by hand to remove any residues from the loom and excess dye! I then fringed the edges and topstitched for strength, then added labels and buttons.