So many hobbies!

Sorry for the silence

Things have been rather busy here in SE Michigan.  Blueberries have been picked, and frozen, and turned into jam.  My birthday was this week which was a great day spent with my sister.  We ate yummy Indian food, I got a birthday cupcake and we watched The Wolverine at the theater.  I've become obsessed with tie-dyeing again which, so far, has lead to this:

and this:

I've got another shirt in the dye bath right now.  I find the process very exciting since you never know how each shirt is going to turn out until you take off the rubber bands/ties.  Such potential!

My garden is plugging along slowly.  I have tomatoes, green ones, but nothing ready to eat.  I've harvested one zuchini and a handful of beans.  The peppers are loaded but none are ready for eating yet... and we're running out of summer:

 These are the red peppers.  And these are the purple peppers:

I have no idea when the darn things are ripe because they start off purple.  At least with the red ones it's obvious when they're ripe because they turn red.  The big purple pepper has been there for weeks and is hard as a rock.  I have to assume that means it's still "green."  Can anyone give me some clarification on pepper ripeness?  'Cause I'm at a loss here.  The Sweet Chocolate Peppers are finally blooming but I doubt there will be any ripe peppers this summer.  I have no idea why they've been so slow to prosper.  It's not just my gardening skills.  I gave one to my BIL in Pennsylvania, who lives in one gardening zone warmer than here, and his didn't thrive either.  Maybe a bad batch of seeds?

Next week is the Michigan Fiber Festival.  I can't believe it's here already.  As usual, I'm not ready.  I still need to figure out lunches, prepare the fabric I'm bringing for the batik classes I'm taking and move all my camping stuff up from the basement.  The vacation will be appreciated.

Oh, and for anyone in my age bracket, I had my annual mammogram today.  If you haven't had your's yet this year, please talk to your doctor about scheduling one.  We girls need to stick together.  (Yeah, okay, that was sappy but the sentiment is sincere.)

Heels and toes

This is the result of my weekend's efforts.  This is two ounces of Merino/bamboo yarn and is destined to be the toes, heels and cuffs of a pair of socks.  As I expected, the finished yarn is much more beautiful than the dyed roving.  It never ceases to amaze me how much it changes from roving to yarn.  I have yet to find a dyed roving that wasn't more beautiful after it was spun.

I'm currently spinning the yarn for the rest of the socks.  It will be much lighter, by design, than the yarn for the heels and toes.  The socks will be gorgeous. 

Speaking of hand-knit socks, I'm still trying to perfect something to store my handknits that will be, hopefully, safe from wool moths.  I've got several pairs of handknit socks with holes in them due to moths.  I don't know how to darn socks so the only solution I've come up with is to put tufts of wool front and back of the hole and needlefelt the two sides together.  The yarn I used is superwash so I can't just needlefelt the yarn around the hole to itself.  I'll have to create a wool sandwich first.  I would appreciate any suggestions for wool handknit storage.

I'm working on an idea for adding items to my long-empty store on Etsy.  Personally, I've found 4 ounces of roving to be insufficient to spin and knit into a pair of socks.  Dyeing up roving in 6 ounce bundles seems like something that might go over well.  Dyeing the roving like I did last weekend, or was it two weekends ago...  anyway, dyeing 2 ounces heavily for the heels and toes and 4 ounces a little lighter for the rest of the socks.  I'd also considered dyeing up large lengths of yarn sufficient to knit one shawl of a decent size.  Personally, I have no use for the shawlettes or neck scarves that seem to be big right now.  Give me a shawl that's big enough to actually keep my body warm and I'm a happy girl.  So tell me, do either of those ideas have merit?  Please leave me a comment with your opinion.  Especially you lurkers who read and don't comment.  All comments are needed.  Really.

Color!

Apparently, I'm in a dyeing mood.  I haven't brought the drum carder upstairs yet but I've been playing with color combinations.  I started with this one:

And moved on to this one:

I liked the first combo so much I decided to dye up some Merino/bamboo roving to spin for socks:

The plan with the scattered drops of dye is to create a yarn similar to this one that started out as this roving, dyed several years ago:

The idea was to dye roving that would spin into a yarn with white in it and not just solid color.  Again, it was inspired by The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook.  Now I just have to find the time to do the spinning, after the other spinning projects I'm currently in the middle of.

It's winter here and, as per usual, I'm craving color, which is probably what inspired all the dyeing I've been doing.  I'm not terribly thrilled with how tonight's roving turned out but I've learned over time that the ugliest roving more often than not makes the most beautiful yarn.  I'm excited to see the finished yarn.

This weekend is mostly free of plans.  There are a few things I might do, like see a movie, but other than a very necessary haircut, Saturday is free of plans.  I'll probably have lunch or dinner with friends although that isn't certain as yet.  I might run a few errands.  I'll definitely work on the purple batts I made months ago and have been trying to spin up ever since.  I love free weekends!

Playing with dyes

Lately, I've been feeling the need to play with my drum carder.  That means dyeing up wool/roving to make batts.  So I brought out my dyes, some quart jars and 1-ounce lengths of rovng and started dyeing.  I used both Superwash Merino and Merino/bamboo roving which gave me varying depths of color.  The Superwash took dye beautifully and the Merino/bamboo took less. 

These I dyed Sunday evening.  Again, when they were dry, I found Galen sleeping in the middle like his own personal wool-lined hammock.

These I dyed tonight.  I'm pretty sure the colors are sky blue, sangria, avocado and left-over dye from the tourquoise roving I dyed Sunday.  The dye bath didn't exhaust and I didn't want to waste it.  That and I don't like pouring dye down the drain if I can avoid it.  Once I clear off my coffee table (I like to play with the drum carder in front of the TV), I'll bring the carder up and the fun can begin.

Dyeing again

Probably one of the biggest sources of dyeing and spinning inspiration for me is The Twisted Sister's Sock Workbook.  The yarns shown in the book are beautiful and, as a result, so are the socks.  I pulled the book off the shelf a couple days ago and that got me thinking about dyeing again.  I've never had much luck with the hot pour method in the past; the dye stayed on the surface of the roving and never dyed what was underneath.  I thought maybe I'd had too much roving stuffed into too small a pot.  Taking Lynne Vogel's advice, I pulled off one ounce lengths of roving instead of trying to dye a full four ounces at a time.  I think this time it worked.  I have to wait until the pots cool before I can see how the roving turned out but already I can see a difference.  The idea is to dye six ounces of roving using the hot pour method, small lengths of roving at a time, and then spin myself some gorgeous yarn.  Two ounces of roving per pot seems to be working.  I'm not real happy with that much magenta, though.  Fortunately, it'll lighten up when it dries.

Saturday my spinning guild meets and Sunday, I'm sad to say, I'll be doing my taxes instead of spinning.  (I'm the world's biggest procrastinator when it comes to doing my taxes.  I hate doing it and keep putting it off until I HAVE to do them.)  What are you going to be doing this weekend?

Finally!

I've been wimping out about dyeing with onion skins and putting it off because it's new and unknown.  I didn't want to ruin the yarn I dyed to go with the second knitting of Andrea's Shawl.  This morning, however, I decided to get off my butt and get to it.  The onion skins went into a big pot and simmered for an hour.  Once I pulled as much of the onions skins out of the pot as I could, the pre-soaked yarn went in:

The yarn simmered in the dyepot for another hour and then cooled in the pot.  In an effort to be as nontoxic as possible, I used Alum and Cream of Tarter as my mordant.  By the time I pulled the yarn out of the dyebath, it was a beautiful golden yellow.  The dyebath hadn't exhausted so now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it next.  I don't want to waste all that dye.

Sadly, it's not quite that golden in color.  It's a little duller than that.  For my first try at natural dyeing, I'm pleased with the result.  Next up will be using the cochineal.

Onion skins

According to my dyeing book, I need half the weight of the yarn in onion skins.  I have about 4 times that amount.  Apparently, it's fairly easy to collect enough skins when you raid the onion bin at the grocery store.  Now I have to find the time to do the dyeing.  That may not happen until after Christmas. This weekend is my spinning Guild's Holiday Party and I need to wrap presents, next weekend I do my holiday baking and, of course, the following weekend is Christmas.  How did the heck did it get here so fast?  

What are you plans for the weekend?  Are you making gifts for the holidays this year?

One hour wasn't enough

I need another day, not just an extra hour.  I've spent most of the weekend spinning up those awesome bats and I've only got about two and a half left.  I'd really like one more day to finish spinning and then ply.  Oh, and my guess of one pound of wool was way off.  I've got probably 9 ounces which plied, should give me enough for a shawl, plus the border that hasn't been spun and dyed yet.  I didn't take a picture because the second bobbin looks just like the picture I took of the first one.

Speaking of dyeing, I've seen some pictures of the colors Cochineal produces and I can't wait to start dyeing.  The pinks are absolutely luscious.  I'm thinking I'll try growing the big three next year:  weld for yellows, woad for blues, and madder for reds.  These three plants have been grown for centuries for the intense colors they produce.  Woad produces the same pigment produced by indigo, just not as much of it.  It takes much more woad to dye a pound of wool than it would indigo.  Woad however, unlike indigo, can be grown in cooler climates like mine (unless you have a greenhouse, which I don't).  Of course, then I have to figure out how to get the pigment out of the plants.  I've heard it's a bit complicated.  I guess I'll find out.  Should be fun.

A dyer's garden

Sometime this winter, I'm going to have my first experience using natural dyes:  Cochineal.  I've perused my new natural dyeing book and then pulled out "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan.  Naturally, it got me thinking about planting a dyer's garden, especially since I already have Bronze Fennel and Correopsis growing in my front bed.  I've already grown potatoes and tomatoes two years in a row in my front beds/pots and they need to either lay fallow or grow something else for the next two or three years.  Letting them lay fallow isn't terribly attractive, even though that's what I was leaning toward.  It seems that I put a lot of work and money into my veggies only to have a skimpy harvest.  The Bronze Fennel, on the other hand, was a huge plant this past summer. 

The fact that I already have two dye plants growing gave me the idea of planting a few more.  That is, assuming my experiments with Cochineal dyeing turn out well.  Now that I think of it, I had grown a few dye plants years ago when I was in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism).  The Weld was HUGE!  I'd like to try and grown Woad, which produces blues.  It substitutes for Indigo in cold weather areas, like Michigan.  Most dye plants, though, produce some variation of yellow or green-yellow.  I've got all winter to decide what I want to do.  If nothing else, I'll get some fun seed catalogs in the mail to help me get through the gray.  And next summer, I could have plants to dye with.  Who knows, I might even plan a dyeing party.

Have you experimented with natural dyes?  I'd be interested in hearing your stories.

A play date

Saturday, I have a play date with a girlfriend to play around with a drum carder.  To that end, I decided it was time to bring out the crock pot and dye some fiber to play with.  The dark spot on the left is some gray Romney locks, the middle section is Merino/silk roving and on the lighter spot on the right is Superwash Merino roving.  (I put way too much dye in the pot...)  Tomorrow I'll be dyeing the same fibers red in the crock pot and black on the stove.  These will get carded with some sari silk, some gorgeous soft black alpaca, some tussah silk, black and blue angelina fibers and what is either soy silk or bamboo (it's not labled so I'm guessing).  I can't wait for Saturday.  We're going to have us some fun!