I’ve stuck to the pattern and colourway 2 just as described. Also Purl Together helped with some of the details in its construction.

Sunspun in Melbourne has the Jamieson and Smith Shetland wool to really enhance the whole experience.

Being fair Isle the cap is very warm with the two layers so I won’t get alot of wear out of it…unless I actually take my body to the Shetland Isles

This is a Swedish style rag woven rug. What a joy to make. It’s 90cm wide and will be around 1.2m long. I’ve been collecting old sheets and dyeing them for some time. I’ve cut them into 9cm wide strips so I can use them in the Saori Sakiori cutter as an option but I used wider 2.5cm strips for this rug weight and just tore them. But I still have the convenient width for the cutter at any time which gives me good options for other ‘travel’ projects.

Here are some of the dyed cut sheets. I didn’t want flat colours so used the ‘parfait’ method of dyeing in a low water set up. This worked pretty well but I didn’t use enough dye at first. These cotton sheets are very thirsty and need an adequate amount of dye which seems much more than when I dye yarns. I also realise that I very much prefer rich mid tone colour dyes and don’t like the wishy washy look. That is entirely personal for my own work and not a judgement on the niceness of wishy washy.

This photo sees the work underway. I’m using a temple because it is a great help on rugs – a must really. It is slow weaving as I am cutting and splicing the joins all the time. The pattern is a 4 shaft double binding technique which I have used before for place mats. It makes things a bit more spicy but is restricted to squares.

This type of ‘travel’ isn’t as tiring or full of security and airports with aggressive officials so it may be an option for many of us, especially at this time.

I’m off to Latvia again soon and perhaps Peru. Of course Japan is always on my itinerary.