Fruits of Our Labours

I was away for the Victoria Day weekend again this year.   I go to FOOL or Fruits of Our Labours, an SCA event dedicated to teaching arts and sciences.    It's always lots of fun.  I always drag along a spinning wheel, but hardly ever have time to actually spin.  This year I got about an hour of spinning in but really nothing to bother even showing.

On Saturday though, we did some natural dyeing.  We mordanted with alum, iron and copper.   We dyed with ferns, cochineal, dandelion and bedstraw.   The bedstraw was disappointing in that it didn't give us any colour at all.   It wasn't quite flowering yet and the dye vat water was literally colourless after almost an hour of cooking.    It was quite cool and windy, and we were outside, so it's possible the bedstraw just didn't get enough time in the pot.   The cochineal vat though, was awesome.   We got beautiful pinks and purples.  There was much dye left in the pot and I sent it home with one of the people in the class.

The results from the fern dye pot were also disappointing.   I think that is my fault for allowing only 4 hours from start to finish and with the weather being cool and breezy, we just didn't have time to do it all in the outdoor class.   My previous results with ferns were soft but bright gorgeous greens.

We had results - some good and some not so good but still, we had results and those pinks and purples are really luscious.

Orla, one of the gals in our group is mundanely, a jewellery maker.  Her work is gorgeous.   Several years now, she's run an enameling class.   A couple of years ago, I made a little cloisonne pin.  This year I did an etched pin, based on an Anglo-Saxon original.  It's the one on the left which looks awful because it had just been heated to cherry red with the blow torch, to melt the glass onto the copper and it's just cooling down in this photo.   I ran out of time to get it finished, so it went home with the instructor and I'll fetch it at a later date.

There were a couple of other classes that I wanted to take, but with teaching on Saturday and the weather streaming down rain all day Sunday, I ended up not doing all I'd hoped.  Still, it was a great weekend and we've already started planning next year's event.

Spring Things

 We have Orioles this year!   They are so pretty and colourful, with a nice little song.   Once we saw the first one, I started putting out oranges for them.  I tried apples too, but I think I just fed a raccoon with those.   

We also have a Rose Breasted Grosbeak, who apparently likes to eat oranges too.   I've never seen one of those before.  It was gone before I could grab the camera.



The robins have finally moved their nest.  They have built a nest in the light fixture beside the garage door for the past several years.  When the chicks finally fledge, they spend forever flying from nest to whatever vehicle is handy.  Back and forth they go, all day, leaving the car or truck with large white streaks.   Now they are in side yard.   I took this last week.  Today the nest is empty and the babes have fledged.   

 Last weekend I took a class on Pysanky.  I learned to do this as a child, using a somewhat different method.  Although still using the same materials and tools, this way was much easier.   While the lack of light, finishing the egg up in the evening, without a proper light source, shows on some of the missed spots, I am really pleased with how this egg turned out.  There are virtually no blobs an icky bits.  The class was really well done and the participants were a great group of people.  I had much fun.

I was away for the weekend.   I checked my garden on Friday, before I left and the Madder plants were  all back, about 2 inches high. I came home Monday afternoon and the Madder was at least 12 inches tall.  This particular plant was taller.  Absolutely unexpected and crazy growth.  The Madder patch has finally started spreading.  I will dig a bit out of it this year and then hopefully, the rest will fill in the gaps.

Bits and Bobs

On Good Friday, I was at Westfield, in the Lockhart house.   I had a bunch of jars with natural egg dyes, making pretty coloured eggs.   It takes much more time to dye an egg with nature dyes than it does with food colours.   The results were pretty, albeit more pastel than I'd have liked.  If it weren't for the ice storm and the lack of power, I could have started a few batches a day earlier and had spectacular results to show off.    Maybe if I get to do this activity next year, I can plan ahead enough for a before and after display, which would be very informative, not to mention awesome.

Because we had no power when I left home, I grabbed a roast from the freezer and some potatoes, carrots and parsnips.  I tossed them in my dutch oven and slow cooked them by the fire all day!   It was a pretty decent meal, considering I'd forgotten to bring any seasonings with me.  I've always appreciated that we can do this while we interpret.  Plus everyone was commenting on how delicious the building smelled when the walked in!   It made lots of people smile.

Blue Faced Leicester superwash yarn.  By the extra lustre, I'm going to guess that there is some nylon in this blend.  It was mill ends- super cheap mill ends, which require a bit of picking of short, cut bits and a very occasional bit of hand processing, but there is minimal loss and it spins up beautifully.   I don't know what I'm going to use it for yet.   I've spun up about 800 yards so far.  It is an easy spin and can keep it consistent when I'm chatting or otherwise preoccupied so spinning a lot of it, is fun and relaxing.

I'm working on some green right now.  I don't know if there is any nylon in this BFL superwash mill end.   I wouldn't normally be attracted to this lurid green colour, however it looks quite intriguing when side by side with that purple-reddish colour.   I think they would be very fun socks.  I am hoping that I have enough fibre to spin yarn for knee socks, but that is probably pushing it.  I only have about 120 gm of the green and a little bit more of the purple. There may be a bit more stashed away, but in making room for the kitchen reno, everything has been piling up in the fibre storage area, and it's a bit hard to get to it right now.    Since I've found not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 pair of started and not finished socks, making a pair of knee socks in the near future is a moot point anyway.   I am out of sock knitting needles until some of the above pair are finished.   As an aside, I really didn't realize that I had that many sets of knitting needles in 2.25mm.   

Another week flies by...

 I'd been looking at these socks and thinking how long it was taking to finish them.  I'd cast them on before the big blue Milk Run shawl and I was still at the same first heel as I was two weeks ago.  Then I realized that I hadn't picked them up at all in that time.  So in some down time, I started knitting them again.  Only half a foot to go!  Hurray! or perhaps that should be hurry :)  Normally I enjoy knitting socks, but I'm not having the sock karma with these ones.  Maybe it's that it should be spring outside and instead it's snowing again.

 I did get a warp wound.  It's a simple project using up a bunch of handspun and naturally dyed skeins that I've collected over the past few years.  It's two scarves.  They will be about 7 or 8 inches wide and 96 inches long, plus fringes.  I'd made one for my daughter like that and it's garnered lots of compliments but she said she'd have preferred it 1 or 2 inches wider.  The blue is indigo and the coral is madder, while the grey and black are natural coloured fibres.  I have enough similar weight skeins to do a set of 3 or 4 of the same design, in white with other colours.  Then I think it will be tea towels so I can try a friends favoured towel draft, which works up with spectacular results.  I am hopeful I can get something nearly as successful as her towels.

It's been ages since I've played with this and it has been tons of fun digging up new techniques and trying out lots of samples. These are all cotton fabrics.   I did spend a lot of time hunting down a piece of silk that I knew I had hiding away but when I finally found it, it was obvious that Kevin kitten had played with it.  There were little claw mark holes in it and a bunch of kitten hair adorning the silk.  There is enough to use for a sample though but not enough to make into a scarf.   There are more samples made up, in different patterns.    If I get industrious, I might even wind a warp and try some Ikat wrapping.    In the next day or two, I'll do up an indigo vat and drop them in.  With any luck, there will be all sorts of nice surprises from that dye pot.  I'm using a few different weights and weaves of cotton, so the outcome of all these samples are anything but certain.

New Weaving Challenges

It's been interesting weaving.  There were a couple of broken threads, not because of  my spinning technique,  but because the kitten kept a paws on interest in the project. 

I wasn't sure the project was going to survive the kitten's activities.  He was on the front of that loom, investigating more times that I could say.  He was on the back beam as well, using it as a balance beam and finding the new repair warps enticing new toys.

I will admit that after several gentle admonishments and moving him off the loom, I got the squirt bottle.  Yep, camera in one hand, because nobody would believe me if I just told them this happend and squirt bottle in the other.   What has kitten learned?  He's learned that when he sees the squirt bottle, he should move away, but he's not manage to equate the squirt bottle with any particular action.  Thus we have a chewed rug, broken warp threads, chewed weft skeins and the list goes on.  I hope this teething/growing/whatever stage, doesn't last much longer.

However, I got the weaving done and the project off the loom.  It only took me an hour to twist the fringes. 

When my sweetie saw it, his comment was "Good choice on the colour", so I'm guessing the dye job worked out with acceptable results.   I really like the varigation of the warp colours, which was happenstance from the natural colours of the fleece.  I tried to keep bunches of similar shades together to have enough yardage  to have sections of colour.  I was able to do that because I flick carded all the fibre for the warp.   If I'd carded them with the drum carder or hand cards, I could have had a homogenous colour, but where is the interest in that?
What I like best is that this is no sleezy, wide sett fabric in order to make it soft and drapey.  Nope, this is a decently stable sett, which will make a long lasting fabric and it's still soft and drapes really well.  I love it when it all comes together.

Playing with wool

Last week, at the weaver's guild Christmas potluck, Kai brought a huge packet of fortune cookies.  We all had to take a cookie, open it and read out our fortune as it pertained to weaving.  Mine said something about starting a project with a bang, which pretty much suggested to me that for weaving, I should probably put a project on the loom.  I'd been dithering over a project for ages.  Being preoccupied with spinning, it was easy to not make a decision on what to weave.  I've been considering a fairly big project like some yardage or a blanket, but being that it was a week and a half before Christmas, I decided on a scarf project.  I dug up a bunch of handspun : small, sample balls which had been kicking around for ages and added two mill ends of wool/ silk blend which have also been kicking around for ages.   I wound off a warp for 5 scarves but ended up cutting off the last bit of warp before it was wound on as some of the handspun was getting a bit tangled and frayed in the process of dressing the loom.   I figured I had enough for 4 scarves, which was one more than I needed for gifts.

The first scarf was a sample.  I wasn't sure of my sett and doing a bit of twill, it made me a little more unsure.  I unwove the twill, and did the 1st scarf in tabby.  I didn't like the results - I just don't like most of the tabby weave that I've ever done and it didn't have a nice drape, so the next 3 were done in a 2/2 twill.  Scarves are a pretty easy weave.  Sometimes having a fast and fun project to just whip off is a way to get back to being productive.  Since that poor loom has been a cat climber for the past few months, weaving off the scarves felt really good.   The blue one is with a handspun, woad dyed weft.  the two grey ones, I'm not sure about.  The weft was an unlabelled ball of wool singles, which could have been handspun or a bit unevenly spun commercial yarn.  I lightly plied it before weaving with it.   I am going to have to get better about labeling!   All 3 of these will end up being Christmas presents.

Then I started a pair of mittens.  This is commercial yarn that I dyed with walnuts.  I think it's Patons Classic wool which is soft, thick and easy to work with.  It's a 3 ply and fairly chunky so it works up quickly.  Someone can always use a warm pair of mittens.

On the wheel? - commercially processed cotton sliver.  While I can spin the cotton fairly easily now, I'm still working on consistency.  It's awfully easy to get these micro thin spots in an otherwise decent yarn.


Lesson of the week - it's way easier to start and finish a project when you actually decide what to do!

The Blues

I was in the garden, pulling out the tomato plants and putting the stakes away for the winter when I noticed my paltry little patch of Woad had finally started growing.  With the summer drought, it didn't grow much at all and I really didn't want to risk our well by watering the garden too much.   When I planted it, there was a row of regular Woad and a row of Chinese Woad, hoping to do experiments to see what the differences were between the two Woad varieties.  However, this year, there wasn't enough of either to do two decent dye vats, especially this late in the season, when sometimes the pigment isn't as strong as in the heat of the summer. 

 I grabbed a pot and combined the two types of Woad, picking almost every leaf I could find, in hopes of having enough blue to make this dye vat worth while.  I even picked the few Dyer's Knotweed leaves there were, knowing that it needs a slightly different processing to get the full value of the pigment it contains.  I was hopeful that it would add at least a little indigotin to the vat.  There were about 700 grams of Woad leaves to work with.

I use a fairly standard method for processing Woad leaves, similar to what is found in many dyeing manuals available today.  I soak the leaves in water which is very hot - I boil the kettle, turn it off and when it stops bubbling, I pour it over the leaves.  It took 2 kettles full of water to cover the leaves.  Then I let the leaves sit for about an hour.  I used to be precise about waiting 40 minutes but have found that approximately an hour is as good and much less worry.     After squeezing out all the liquid from the soaked leaves, I use baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to make the solution alkaline.  The liquid then needs to be aerated, which I used to do by pouring back and forth between two buckets.  These days though, I use my craft stick blender, which is fast and easy.   The liquid is supposed to be a sherry colour, but mine was a dark icky brown.  The aeration causes foam.  Usually I've had a white foam and when the pigment starts to develop, you see it as blue specks on the foam.  However this foam was light brown and I never did get any flecks, although finally in a weird shadow, I saw a faint blue cast to the foam.  I picked up the stick blender to stretch for a minute and noticed that it was stained a much darker blue than before.  I decided that the pigment was there but the brown froth was masking it.   Two spoons of Thiox to start reducing the vat, and poof, I knew I didn't have too much too worry about.  The only question would be how much blue was in the pot?

I soaked 50 grams of Mohair locks.   When the vat had turned yellowish, I added about 3/4 of them.   I pulled them out a few minutes later and once again, I am always thrilled by the process of the air hitting the fibre and turning the yellowish colour a lovely blue.

After dyeing the rest of the Mohair, I dyed a bit of roving, another handful of Mohair and 2 silk hankies.  I'm quite happy with the results of this dye vat.  There was lots of blue in there and I completely exhausted the blue pigment.  It was a good day to dye!

Snail like project speed.. or so it seems.

 It's been a quiet few days  which have felt amazingly unproductive.  I've spun more of the Woad or Dyer's Knotweed dyed fibre.  It's just another bobbin of blue, which is coming along slowly.  Slowly because I seem to have been spinning the blue yarn for a while.  It's nice yarn, but everytime I think I've about finished up the roving, I've found another bag of it.  This last lot was compacted a bit, more so from being crammed in  a ziplock bag than the dyeing process, I think.  It is slowing down the spinning process as I'm carding it all by hand.


The blue socks are done.  I found the  yarn on sale.  There was a bin with a bag of 3 different types of yarn, enough for 3 pairs of socks, on sale for the price of 1 skein of sock yarn.  While I was only after a skein of pink yarn or some Scheepjes Invicta as it's very nice to knit with, I couldn't avoid bringing home the pink, the Invicta and the bag of yarn on sale.    I thought this might have been one of those fake fair isle type colourways, but my sampling showed it was striped with a thick mottled stripe.  My sample was a 3/1 ribbing, so I just kept knitting.  There were a lot of knots in the second half of the skein, so I had a bunch of ends to stitch in.  Even if I'd tried to match these, it would't have happened because of the knots.  The colour is called "storm" - quite appropriate I think. 

The chooks are laying lots of eggs.  I think the mild winter was a factor in the girls only slowing down a bit for a couple of weeks.  They are right back at it though.    I realized that I've no idea what a standard egg size looks like anymore.  Since the old girls started laying last year, they produced these huge eggs and now my mind sees any egg smaller that that, as small!