Merry Christmas to Me!

I have a wonderful friend who lives in Tennessee. We've been friends for years and met online, on a miniature dollmaking forum. We have only been able to visit a couple of times, but she and her husband are absolutely lovely people. She has seen me through a huge doll making spree and supported me through dozens of other projects. When I get frustrated I can rant at her and she tells me all the sensible things I need to hear and even reminds me to get on the ball when I start slacking off.
I know she is an enabler. Go to her house and you end up doing all sorts of neat crafty things.. However, I didn't know how much of an enabler, until I received this years Christmas Pressie..
I got a box in the mail yesterday. When she said I could open it early, I pulled out this bag of amazing fleece. It is soft, smells delicate, isn't greasy or sticky and this pictures doesn't show the lovely fawn colour properly. It has to be alpaca since there are no guard hairs( llama) and absolutely no lanolin ( sheep). I pulled out the bag to check for a card and instead, what did I find but this bag underneath the first one. Can you believe it is softer than the first? It feels like the cria fleece we got to spin last spring on an Alpaca to shawl demo, only it seems softer and it is the same gorgeous fawn colour. All I want to do is pull out the combs and play with it.
However, I need to find space in the sewing room for my son who is coming home for a week over the holidays. Plus I'm spinning up hat yarn from the leftovers of the fleece we got from the Royal Agriculture Fair Sheep to Shawl competition. Donna, from Wellington Fibres, cleaned and carded it, divided it up and gave it to the team members. It is gorgeous. They do a fantastic job of processing should anyone want a reference for a high quality fibre processor in Ontario.

Donna thought it was probably Romney wool. I've been practicing a modified long draw to make lofty, fatter than I normally spin yarn. It is very soft and far more lofty than the Shetland I've been spinning the past while. It is a dream to spin and makes me want to try a greater variety of fleeces varieties. This drafts so well, has no neps or noils which can be a huge problem with Shetland. It is soft enough to wear next to the skin. It won't be white for long though. It begs to be dyed! Only one or two skeins more and I can play with the new fawn fibre.

Project Update

The two major projects that I've been working on this year are finished. The first was a natural dye colour wheel, representing Anglo-Scandinavian colours which could have been used pre-1200 A.D.. The plants were chosen based on archaeological research, traditional natural dyes and paleo-botanical evidence. It was so much fun and for some reason an awful lot more work than I had anticipated. There were some amazing surprises as well, like the wonderful colours of all parts of the Dock and Sorrel Plants, the horrendous smell of stewing Tansy and Yarrow and the rather uninspiring colours of mallow and vetch. I got some wonderful results from madder which made the whole project more than worth while.
The second project was taking two Shetland sheep fleeces, spinning them into singles and then weaving them into enough fabric to make myself a gown based on one of the Greenland finds. I spun, spun and spun some more. Then I had to figure out what to use for sizing the singles, dress the loom and weave what turned out to be 9 3/4 yards of fabric. It was such a lovely grey colour that I couldn't bear to dye it. The dress turned out awesomely thanks to pattern drafting lessons from my friend Truly. It hangs nicely, is comfortable and has a most wonderful swish to the skirt. Talk about a dress which makes you feel good about yourself.

Picture of the grey dress..

If you want to see the info about the above projects, go to Darc website. Then on the left hand side menu, click projects and then go to Textiles. Click on either Odette's Colour Wheel or Odette's Interpretation of the Greenland Gown. I'll get real pictures soon. Of course when I got to wear the gown in November, I had my camera in my basket and did I remember to take it out? Nope.. and missed some amazing photos of projects displayed at the Ealdormere Kingdom A&S event.

Sheep to Shawl

I wasn't really supposed to be spinning alot as I'd pulled a muscle and was supposed to let it rest. However, I got the medical okay if I followed certain conditions. I was part of the Guelph Handweavers and Spinners Guild team for the Sheep to Shawl competition at the Royal Winter Agricultural Fair, which competed in the Sheep to Shawl competition last weekend. It was a huge amount of fun and an equally huge amount of work.
We had a lovely hand dyed warp on the loom with very fine wool. We had to spin a fairly freshly shorn Ramboulet fleece (or so we think) to match not only the warp but each other's spinning. We had 4 hours to make a shawl that was about 24 inches wide by 72 inches long, not including fringes. It took us almost 3.5 hours to get the necessary wool spun and a few more minutes to get the shawl off the loom, checked over and on the judges table. We scored 97 of 100, garnering perfect points on the display ( it was awesome, interactive and beautiful) and losing 1 point each for timing ( we were the 2nd shawl on the table by a time of 1 minute), the spinning and the weave structure. The shawl was woven in a plain twill, with undulating stripes from grey to blue. It was soft, draped well and was so pretty. Our shawl won 1st place. We won a nice monetary prize for our guild and each received a pretty rosette to commemorate the occasion. It was so much fun!

sewing and cattiness

I've been sewing, and sewing, and sewing and sewing. By hand. I don't find spinning fine yarn tedious, no matter how long it takes to fill a bobbin. I don't find any process of the weaving tedious, although I do get a little impatient sometimes near the end of a project when I wonder why I put such a long warp on. Handsewing though, I find to be on the somewhat tedious level. It looks nice to have the handfinished seams, but this gown seems to be taking longer than any other I've done. No pictures yet because.. I'm still sewing the darned thing.

Today the cat jumped on my hubby at dinner time and stole a chicken leg right off of his plate. If the dog did that, he'd be told no and not allowed to eat the food. He ( the dog) is much too well behaved to steal off someone's plate. He just waits patiently while drooling on your knee. Did the cat get told no? No! Instead, hubby let him lick the chicken and then peeled off a little bit of meat for him. Can you say spoiled rotten cat?

Mad about Madder

I've been playing with madder again! This time I used madder roots from the garden. I cleaned them off and poured water over them. After soaking for a few minutes, I noticed that the water was quite yellow. I poured that water off and put fresh water over it. After a day or two, I noticed that my pail of soaking madder was bubbling. As long as the pail had a bit of a fermenting happening, I was fine. After about two weeks though, it looked like something solid was forming. That was my cue to heat it slowly and buzz it through the blender a bit to make the larger roots into smaller bits. I kept the dye vat temps below 75C and mainly kept it at about 65C ( 150 F or so ). I also checked the PH and popped in a few pinches of baking soda to get the dye vat a tad more alkaline when it started looking brownish/orange. That dragged it back to the red side. The pic shows the carded batts to be a tad pinker than they really are. Still I'm happy with madder red. It is a pretty colour.

So far from madder I've gotten a range of colours including rusts, oranges, salmons, corals, reds, maroons, pinks and plums. Phew! That is a mighty versatile plant root!

Not only that but I've harvested a goodly number of madder seeds this fall that are almost dry and ready to share!

Kitty Pictures

Such a cute kitty, wrapped up in wool.






No, he's not sleeping. He's terrorizing the fabric. He attacked it and held it between his front paws, while biting the wool and rapidly batting his hind paws on it. Not quite so cute, but he doesn't use his claws much when he does this. Just playing as he absolutely loves wool.. roving, fresh off the sheep and obviously, freshly woven fabric. I can't fault him there. I totally agree with him.

Now the cat is in my colour samples. I had them out to pet them and drool. It seems that he wanted to do that as well. The moment the wool was out of it's bag, the kitty was in the middle of it. I guess though, he is the right kitty for this family. I can't imagine having a kitty that hated wool.

Madder again

I believe in the dye gods. My friend Karen says they are dye goddesses. That I can believe most of the time, except when it is obvious that Loki has been up to tricks again. His antics show mainly when I start dyeing with madder. I of course decided to do up a quick madder dye vat ( is there a quick dye vat?) and was going to only do 60 grams of wool to try for that red. I've gotten 240 grams so far, using the exhaust vats and I think if I really wanted more pale pink, I could get another vat or two before it totally exhaust. The first round gave me the dark purple, which was a bright and scary fuchsia before it dried. I realized that my madder vat was on the alkaline side, so I started adding capfuls of vinegar until it tested more neutral. I know that an acidic madder bath will get you orange and I didn't want that. My second try gave me red, albeit a tad on the purple side with successive tries were pink. They are pretty colours and I was thrilled with the results.

After this weekend's rains, I was able to dig some fresh madder. One three year old plant and two year old one. The two year old plant was in a garden bed which was really well prepared. It had larger roots than the three year old plant. I rinsed them well and took off all the new shoots which were surprisingly orangy yellow. Then I soaked them for about 5 minutes and realized that the water was bright yellow. I quickly strained the roots and tossed that first soaking water. I really didn't want lots of yellow pigment. The plastic bucket that I'm using to soak them had a yellow stain where the water reached already. Of course, this is a holiday weekend here and all the stores are closed, so I'm unable to get more distilled water. I wanted to use distilled to get rid of any effect that chlorine might have, since our city water is well chlorinated. Instead I had to boil water which I've been told would remove much of the chlorine and the resulting soaking water is reddish now. Phew... I don't want another orange madder vat!