Nearly Instantaneous Sock Colours

 On Tuesday night we had a play day at the guild.  A few of us got together for a protein fibre/acid dye painting workshop.  We could bring either wound warps or yarns.  I brought 200 grams of sock yarn, enough for 2 pair of socks.   I had fun learning to paint skeins, which is more dabbing than actually painting, but did have fun making self striping sock yarn.

It was more of an experimental evening rather than leader led program.   The first skein I tried, I really wanted a bright green for bright green and black stripes.  I got a nice green, although it wasn't nearly as bright as I'd wanted.  I realized that I wasn't quite as prepared as I should have been.  Although I did swatch, I didn't have my stripe calculations worked out and as the workshop leader used certain numbers as examples, in the rush , those numbers stuck in my head.  As soon as I realized this, combined with my not quite bright enough green, my project changed to a colour wheel, which a single tertiary colour between the primaries.  The stripes won't be quite wide enough for my liking, but they'll be fun and colourful socks none the less.

The second skein of sock yarn I did was horribly rushed as people were cleaning up around me as I was painting.  It was a tad disconcerting although I understand that others were done and wanted to go home.   I'd wanted to lighten up the fuchsia dye but the water jug disappeared when I set it down for a second.  I went with the flow and my pink and black striped socks turned into red, burgandy and black striped socks.    While I steamed the sock packets for 40 minutes, longer than the 20 that was suggested, there was still a lot of dye run off.  In the end, I did a quick rinse and recooked each skein in a hot water/vinegar bath, which did the trick of absorbing the rest of the dye.

Painting the skeins was a lot of work.  First winding the ridiculously long skein, which I did using my warping board and then laying it out on plastic wrap.  Then applying the dye, wrapping it up, steaming it, letting it cool, unwrapping the skein,  rinsing it and in my case cooking it as second time to finish the dye setting process.   After all this is done, you have to put the long skein back on the warping board and wind it into regular skeins for aging (like fine wines some sock yarns are) or straight into cakes to use immediately.  That winding took a long time as I had to unwind a few yards and then wind them up.  In the end, my sweetie helped me which saved a lot of time. Note that the colourwheel skein is still in it's absurdly long state and not yet a normal skein.

A couple of hours in the evening for a project like this, when you haven't done it before isn't quite enough time and it really felt rushed toward the end of the evening.  I've got a whole slew of ideas for future projects though, which is exciting and so totally what I don't need in the project queue.  However the nice thing about dyeing is when other projects seem to weigh or bog down due to length, dyeing is pretty much an instantaneous gratification project and we all need those once in a while.

Colours of May

I was away for the weekend and came home to amazing colours in the garden.  These beautiful Irises were hidden in the garden.  I'd meant to dig them up last year and replant them, as they were originally planted a little too deep and rarely bloomed.  Obviously some chicken scratching and dustbathing has helped a lot this year.

 These Irises are in the pond, so are obviously water loving plants.  They are very pretty.  My only wish would be that the flowers lasted a little longer and they had a longer blooming period.   I sat outside for a bit, with my tea, enjoying them yesterday.

 Dames Rocket... It's taking over half the flower beds.  Every year I tell myself that I should dig some of it up and thin it out.  Then every spring it bursts forth into flower and there is a wall of pink along the back flower bed.  It's so pretty, I just leave it for next years bounty.

 The white Lilacs haven't really bloomed this year.  There are a few scant blossoms but the early spring heat and ensuing frosts may have damaged this years flowers.  This pink Lilac flowers much later though and has more gorgeous flowers than ever.   The scent is heavy and sweet.

Another flower which needs thinning are the Poppies.  There are now scads of orange Poppies.  I'd really like some other types and colours.  There are some pink and varigated pink Oriental Poppies which would make a nice addition.   The Icelandic Poppies I planted last year don't seem to have made it through the winter, nor have several other plants.  Whether that's due to the lack of snow cover or the chickens, I don't know.

Spring Beauty

 Today I found this Bachelor's Button hiding amidst the Spurge and newly blooming Dame's Rocket.   There are lots of flower buds, that I'm sure will open over the next few weeks but this one is the first.  I love the deep, rich colour of Bachelor's Buttons and the rather avant-garde appearance of the blooms.  It's survived the onslaught of chicken dust baths, so it's definitely a hardy plant. 

 The Bleeding Hearts are blooming strongly as well.  There is a white one tucked away in the back of the garden, but it's not quite as spectacular as this large pink specimen.  Yesterday the blooms were just starting to open and today, it's bright pink and white look so nice contrasted with the green foliage.  By the pond, it makes a lovely place to have a cup of tea.

 The superwash Merino/nylon grey blend is plied, skeined and washed.  All together there is 430 yards of 2 ply sock yarn.  It took a while to spin, but it's turned out so nicely that I don't mind having taken the extra time.  I love the blended grey.  I made up 8 batts on the drum carder, with 19 grams of white and 2 grams of black.  That's approximately 9.5% black and 90.5% white. 




When loading up the truck for a dump run, I found this old door.  It's still sturdy, although it certainly needs to be cleaned up.  I've been doodling on graph paper, trying to design a cupboard to fit around the door.  In the process, I came up with 2 other cupboards which would fit in places around the house.  Now to draft something more concrete and get materials lists for one of them.

Round and Round (as in spinning)

 Indigo dyed Blue Faced Leicester with nylon.  There is only 230 yards of this.  It dawned on me that it would have been a good time to try toe up socks, but after swatching, knitting, frogging  4 times.. okay, I only swatched twice, once when I was supposed to before I started knitting and it gave me one set of info..  After three false starts, I swatched again, checked the WPI and realized that my swatch gauge and wpi were telling me different things and that my issues were that this was handspun, not commercial sock yarn, I cast on what I thought it should be and it looks like it should work.  I've a bit of extra yarn from bobbin ends, in both the same blue and a blue/white barber pole which should work for heels and toes, to extend the yarn.  Since I am knitting a sock with few stitches less than I would with commercial yarn at a slightly heavier gauge, I'm hoping I can weasle through with the yardage.

The lovely grey is more Blue Faced Leicester and Merino, both with a bit of nylon, mixed with some black merino.    I really bought the first superwash fibres on a whim.  However I've rather enjoyed spinning them as they draft nicely and are easy to re-card into batts.   I'm on the second bobbin now, so if I can actually get myself to card up the last two batts, sit down and spin, I'll be plying in no time.   The problem is that I sat down one day to play with the little support spindle .   It's certainly not fast, but it is very enjoyable.  Now of course, I'll probably have to unlearn all the mistakes I've picked up in teaching myself to use it.   Darned if I was going to let a spinning device sit unused and untried, lest it spend it's days taunting me!  I can see now that a slightly shorter spindle might be nice and even a little heavier would work as well.  However I do like the tip for spinning off of this one and it's beautifully finished, so has a lovely hand feel when using it.

A Week of Variety

The hideous kitchen experiment begins

This past week has had it's ups and downs.  Last weekend I decided that I couldn't stand the painted kitchen cabinets any longer.  The awful peachy pink leftover from the most recent decorating spree of the previous owners, circa late 1980 or so, was so old, worn and icky that I couldn't get it clean.  Scrubbing was a fruitless activity, since everything stuck and stained the old paint.   Plus, I really, really disliked that particular colour then, and 30 years later, it still hasn't grown on me.  

So, I had my sweetie start yanking doors off, removing all the hardware.  I scrubbed and sanded with a scrubbie, then sandpaper and steelwool.  A trip to the paint store and more work, with lots of drying time in between.   It's taking a while, but hopefully it the next week or so, I'll have some progress to show for all this work.  At least it won't be pink cupboards any more.  Now, if I could get rid of that hideous wallpaper and border.. two borders, one at the top and one mid-way on the wall no less.  the problem there is that we've no idea what is actually under that paper.  It may be a job we're not ready to undertake at this time.

I have a first generation fancy sewing machine, which does embroidery.  However the no longer supported software was originally written for Windows 3.1 and apparently the last version of the operating system to support it was XP.  So, when my computer got cranky last winter, I was no longer able to use that part of my machine.  Part of the problem is also because the software is on a 3.5 floppy and the sewing machine needs a serial port to hook up to. A friend very kindly gave me an obsolete to her laptop, which works for me.    I can digitize on the laptop, but had to resurrect the old desktop and play around to get it back working enough to transfer designs.  I got it happening however and I spent most of the day Wednesday stitching out favours for a friend.  I've since found out that there are USB/Serial hookups which could work with the laptop.  That would be awesome if it would actually work with the sewing machine as well!

I finished the second bobbin of the BFL/Nylon blend sock yarn and plied them together.  I ended up with 380 yards of yarn, which should be more than enough for both an interesting dye experiment and a decent pair of socks.

After dropping off the 23 loaves of bread I made yesterday for a friend's dinner - (that was a lot of work, so much so that I forgot to take a photo of the mounds of bread) ,  I popped into the Fibre Garden  on the way home.   It's not actually on the way home, unless I go out of my way, but well worth the trip.  May I just say that the store is filled with the most awesome fibery stuff and the boys  there are friendly, knowledgeable and fun. I spent way too much money but came home with tons of goodies.   The Russian support spindle was a difficult call.  It was a difficult choice between two different styles, this one and a slightly heavier one.  Hopefully I made the right call as I don't have a huge budget for spindles.    I also found a pound of raw Perendale fleece.  Although I'll need to wash it, it's got an amazing colour and lovely hand.  Look at that length!  I'm quite thrilled with it and it will be an interesting change from my usual choice of Shetland.

15 minutes at a time

As I was finishing up the most recent pair of socks, I was thinking about Leigh's comment about how quickly I knit.  I don't think I'm that fast a knitter, albeit not a slow knitter either.  However, when I have a project on the go, I try to do several things to make it easier to succeed.  First, I firmly believe that one can accomplish anything 15 minutes at a time.  Some days I can only do a row or two of knitting, throw a shot or two on the loom, or sew together a single seam or such in 5 minutes and on other days I can pick up the needles, sew for much longer or weave off half a project at a time.  The point is that I try to actually work on whatever project I have on the go, for at least a couple of minutes each day.
To make knitting easier, I like to put all my materials and equipment in one place.  I have several project bags, with pockets in them.  I put my yarn, all the needles I will need, scissors, tape measure, darning needle, pattern in the bag.  I leave the bag out for easy access.  I can grab it if I'm sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a hockey game, or taking it along with me to a meeting.  It's easy to get a couple of rows done that way.   I have project bags and baskets for hand sewing, embroidery and even spinning, to allow projects to be completed in the same method of a few minutes at a time.

 That being said, while I was thinking about finishing projects, I realized that I had stalled on the current tea towel project on the loom.  As I thought about it, I realized that I really wasn't fond of any of the towels that I was producing.  I wasn't even spending the time to throw more than a few shots at a time as there was always something else which needed doing.  When I was avoiding the project to do laundry which didn't need doing or loading the dishwasher, I realized it was time to give in.  I cut off the tea towels, knotted the threads on the back, since there is still quite a bit left and will plan something new.  It was a bit of a difficult decision as I hate cutting projects off the loom.  This is only the second project I've cut off.  I've learned something from each time I've persevered and struggled through.  However, in this case, there are so many other projects queued up, that I figured it was time to give in.

I've carded up 100 grams of Superwash Blue Faced Leicester /nylon blend to be spun into sock yarn so I can try a variety of new dyeing techniques.  Since I seem to be on a sock knitting binge right now,  it would also seem timely to be spinning sock yarn.  This stuff is soft, silky and lovely to spin.  The occasional black hair is the dog, who sleeps in the room with the carder and is shedding something awful right now.

Just a little update..

 The little quilt top is done.  It's a pretty enough pattern.  I'd thought that I'd have enough of the border fabric to use as backing, but I'm slightly short.  It will only take a metre of fabric, but I've nothing that looks totally right at the moment.  Horrors of horrors, but I don't feel like fabric shopping right now.    When I do get it backed and ready to quilt, it will be the perfect size to practice fancier machine quilting techniques.

The plum tree is blooming.   We had quite the frost last night, so no idea whether it will still be in flower this afternoon, but it is pretty for the time it lasts.   The tree is fairly wild, shadowed by Cedar and Maple trees, so doesn't get enough  light or nutrients to produce more than a few small plums, which are sour.   Still, it's a glorious sign of the beauty of spring.  I'm just happy that the pear trees haven't blossomed out yet.  The pears are edible and abundant.   I've been debating trying to make perry with them this year as we've had several large harvests of small pears.  However, the past couple of springs, I've done some pretty major pruning to the younger tree and maybe this year will be the year that we get not quite so many, but larger and easier to harvest fruits.  The old tree is very old and hollow.  I fear that pruning would stress it more than necessarily.  It will have to come down soon, but until then, the pears are a delcious, old and sweet Bartlett  type and too yummy to lose if not necessary.

Scottish Traditional Dye samples by Margaret Stalker

Two nights in a row I've been to guild meetings which were energizing and inspiring.   The first was a new guild that I joined.  I've been debating this for a while as it's a bit of a long drive to get there but they are such an exciting and active group of people, that I finally broke down and joined.  The program was mechanical sock knitting machines, which was well presented but not quite an area of my interest, but the people and the projects presented were awesome.    Last night at my home guild, we had Margaret Stalker in, speaking on Traditional Tartan dyes.  It was more than fascinating.  It makes me want to veer off into deeper dye studies , play with tweeds and tartans, spin, dye and weave.