More blue and warp spinning....

I harvested more Dyer's Knotweed.   I used the same method as the last only this time I didn't add the 1/2 tsp of acetic acid to each jar.   While it was a good amount of pigment, I think the slight acidification of the water, makes a bit of a difference so I will continue to do so in the future.  I might have gotten the last skein a little bit darker if I'd added a bit more Thiox and re-reduced the vat.  However, I had evening plans so used the vat as is.  These are 100 gram skeins of Patons Classic Wool.   I was able to dye 500 grams of the wool in the end.

I have more leaves to harvest.  I covered the plants and in the end we didn't have frost, although it did get pretty close temperature wise.  I can do at least one more Dyer's Knotweed vat and probably two.  The plants are amazingly hardy.  They are still putting out fresh growth.  One area is flowering profusely.   I've brought in some of the flowers to see if I can get them to actually go to seed.

I've spun more thread to use as the warp of the hood project.  It's been sized and is outside drying.   I didn't feel like hunting down dowels or sticks to hang and weight it from.   There isn't any area convenient to do that here.  The other house had a tree branch perfectly placed from which to hang a stick laden with skeins.  Here however, all the trees are big and no rack handy at the moment.  I'll deal with the curly bits as I go.  I'll go back over my numbers shortly to see where I miscalculated the warp.  However, according to how many ends I got from the last batch, I should have enough now.    I'll spin the weft as I need it - one skein of each Z twist and S twist as is needed.  If I start now, I should be able to keep up with my weaving, since I'm not even finished winding the warp yet.

Once it's dry, I can start winding warp again.   I'll do all the Z twist threads first.  Then I'll thread them into the reed front to back, as if I were doing a random stripe pattern, leaving spaces between the Z twists for the rest of the ends.  Then I'll wind the S twist warp and fill in the spaces.  This should hopefully help keep the threads in the appropriate order.   In a couple of days, I'll show you the nifty plan to keep the Z and S twist weft threads easily identifiable for weaving.