A Blue Afternoon

It was a little frustrating yesterday. I'd gone to town for a few supplies and totally forgotten the most important one, which was Rit Colour Remover so I could do an indigo dye vat. Normally I have an extra packet or two in my mordant box, just for those "gotta dye something blue" emergencies, so I wasn't too worried. I am generally in the practice of replacing the packet before I use it, so as not to ever run out. Of course, I didn't do it last time. What I had in my box was a half packet of clumpy Dye remover and an ancient little box of dye remover from a different company that I've not seen product from in years. I decided to work up a vat anyway, knowing that there was a good chance it would fail. I was desperate for blue yesterday, what can I say? My big jug of lye (sodium hydroxide) was in the garage and I didn't feel like climbing over the old stove, lawnmowers etc to get to the appropriate bin, so I used soda ash (sodium carbonate) for the starter compound. It worked a treat and somewhat less dangerous too boot!
The ancient colour remover box did nothing - no reducing what so ever and after 45 minutes of waiting around, I tossed in the clumpy Rit. The indigo dye vat started to reduce almost immediately, although after the required waiting time, it wasn't fully reduced - obviously not enough colour remover or it was too old - but I used it anyway. It worked acceptably and I was pretty happy. Seeing the green to blue change when the dyed item hits the air is always exciting to watch. It was a very small vat, so I don't imagine that much indigo was wasted in the whole scheme of things, regardless. The greens are the overdyed yellows from Dyer's Greenweed, done a couple of weeks ago. Some are embroidery threads and the rest are for a future weaving project. It is good to dye things blue!

It dawned on me while I was spinning the grey wool for the embroidery thread project, that if I did a bit more, I could use that as a base for the blue as easily as the white, which I inadvertently tossed into the yellow vat. I ended up with 4 skeins of the grey, so 2 went into the indigo vat. It was a good idea which worked exactly as I'd hoped. The blue over grey skeins are the blue threads sandwiched between the green in the photo above. Obligatory dime on grey threads for size comparison.

On Fanny is a new project - a rather pushing the boundaries type project for me. I'm making a simple tencel scarf. A long scarf, using a variation of M's and O's - Primitive Linen - from Marguerite Porter Davidson's A Handweaver's Pattern Book. Tencel is a type of rayon. It's slippery, unlike wool, cotton or linen. It was a bugger to get just tied on the front beam as the knots kept slipping. I've found it way too easy to overbeat it without trying. If I were to redo this project, I might change up the threading abit, but I'm pretty happy with the assymetrical look. I may not have used black for the weft though as it makes the scarf quite dark. Using the red or the purple would have highlighted either of those colours better. Still, it's quite pretty and an interesting project. I'm contemplating getting some undyed tencel and dyeing up a painted warp for a shawl or another scarf. Just contemplating right now though.. there are several wool weaving projects in the wings before another modern tencel one :)

The week flew by...

It has been another busy few days. I did a program on Angl0-Scandinavian textiles at the Cambridge Weaver's and Spinner's Guild. They are a warm and friendly group of people who made me feel very welcome. They meet at a wonderful historical site, Westfield Heritage Village.

The garden is nearly planted. The blast of super warm weather the past few days has slowed things down a bit. The woad beds, 2 of them this year, are planted. The leeks on the other hand still need to be transplanted and I can't plant the beans until the wood edging gets put in the last 2 raised beds. That is a pie/work issue though, since my digger works for pie and I've slacked off on the pie making. Seems I'm the only one in the family that thinks you can actually have too much pie.

Yesterday hubby finished making a new tablet weaving loom for me. It's very pretty and made of Ash, so it's strong but light enough for me to move around without any problem. It just pegs and slots together, so it comes apart for transportation. The original is about 2 metres long. This one is a tad shorter than that for practical reasons, meaning my weaving areas at home won't accommodate a 2 metre long loom!

Now to make some proper weaving cards. I was offered the loan of some rawhide ones, but I'm hesitating on that. My dog is very fond of rawhide. Most of the time he is a perfect angel and doesn't get into things he shouldn't, but once in a while.... well, he got on the counter and ate 1/2 my son's birthday cake yesterday. At least it was before it was iced so I had time to make another. So should he get it in his mind to eat the rawhide tablets, I'd rather they were my own and not borrowed ones!

I've got a ton of seam finishing to do - a new linen gown in an amazing shade of green which is exactly the colour I got from weld with iron, a new linen cap and wimple. The cap and wimple will be dyed later this month when we do some linen dyeing experiments at Earendel Farm.

I've spun up some blue rovings left from last fall's indigotin dyeing frenzy. I tried to make this fat and spun woolen as opposed to worsted as I've been doing by default. I got the woolen part, but the fat - not so much. This skein is one bobbin and measured 339 yards when plied! It's soft and yummy though, so I'm not complaining.

I'm spinning up the madder extract dyed wool. I'm combing it so I can spin a very fine, worsted yarn. It's very pretty, albeit still quite red. Yesterday I went outside with my combs to do some wool prep. Unfortunately the wind picked up and several little balls of combed rovings got caught in a breeze and have disappeared. Some squirrel is going to have a lovely lining for his or her nest!