First test skein using 100% dog wool. While the fibers are really soft, they are also short and flighty, so I had to spin it into a wire to make it hold. Although I tried to make the ply as soft as possible (true 3-ply for stability), they yarn still feels a bit scratchy and more like string than yarn. I was hoping for a cowl alternative to sheep, but this will probably be too much for my skin. Possibly if I spin it thicker?
I have about 2/3 left of that combing, so I may try other ways, but someone advised me that if you spin it softly it will keep shedding forever. But hey, now I’ve tried it. And no, it does NOT smell like dog when it’s washed!
I won’t bother carding the rest, I’ll just spin it from the fluff.
A lot of readers come here while searching for posts on plant dyeing and some of you probably subscribed for that only. I realize that it’s been quiet on that front during the winter months, so I just wanted to make a service announcement that there will indeed be more posts about dyeing eventually. In fact I have several half done drafts I could begin with…
Soon I’ll be ordering seeds, this year I’m going to replace the coreopsis with orange cosmos to try out. There won’t be as many different plants as last year, rather new experiments with old ones. And I hope to be making things with my older dyed yarns to show. The first yarn I used felts really well but is very scratchy, so I’m looking for ideas for non-clothing. Baskets, bags, cushion covers, knit, crochet, woven, felted, pictures or pattern suggestions are welcome!
Some acid dyeing adventures are also likely to happen. I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping around between various topics, but that’s what real life is like here at the cottage.
I’ll try to make it easily accessible via the menu up top.
Farvning i 2014
Plantefarvningsindlæg har jo været lidt sparsomme her i vinter, men jeg kan se at de gamle stadig bliver læst ganske ofte, så jeg syntes lige jeg ville udsende en servicemeddelelse i den anledning. Der kommer helt sikkert mere farveri på programmet i år, ikke kun planter, men også pulverfarve.
Jeg bestiller snart frø og regner med at erstatte skønhedsøje med orange cosmos. Der bliver ikke så mange nye eller forskellige eksperimenter, jeg gentager heller ikke dem fra sidste år, men snarere nye eksperimenter med gamle kendinge.
Der skulle ogsÃ¥ være en chance for at fÃ¥ lavet lidt færdige ting med det plantefarvede garn, som jeg kan vise frem. Det garn jeg har brugt filter rigtig godt, men er ret krads, sÃ¥ hvis I har gode ideer til ting, frem for tøj, som man kan strikke, hækle, væve, filte, fx. tasker, puder, kurve osv, sÃ¥ del meget gerne billeder eller opskrifter! 🙂
Selvom jeg har opgivet at oversætte alle mine indlæg her på bloggen, vil jeg dog fortsætte med det når det gælder plantefarvningen, som minimum, evt. også andre garnrelaterede emner. Jeg håber I vil bære over med mig at jeg sådan springer i diverse emner hen over året, men det er sådan der ser ud her i farvehytten, både virtuelt og i virkeligheden.
Der er et særligt menupunkt i toppen til emnet, så jeg håber det er rimelig nemt at finde rundt.
While getting ready to reknit the bottom half of my ginormous blue tunic (scroll down to skip the chitchat and see what’s happening with that), I was pondering the conundrum of work ethic, focus vs. procrastination, efficiency vs. slow cloth. I feel like I’m flogging a dead horse by now, but apparently I’m a slow learner in some areas.
I’m having fun with this project of investigating my own reactions and preferences, so bear with me! (or skip to the images) Just a bit of thinking out loud as an add on to Wednesday’s post.
You know how I want to do ALL the things. Or at the very least, I want to learn about all the things. Which, if you give in to it, leads to either hurry, long hours or crappy jobs. If I had not given myself a deadline I would have re-padded Mimi to try on the sweater more often, with more lifelines, and been able to trust the result (I can’t fit knitwear succesfully on myself, that much I know), I might have not ended up having to frog. If on the other hand I’d not introduced a deadline, it could have taken me 2 years to knit instead of a month, because I would have gotten sidetracked by all the things.
So it turns out, it’s not only about beating procrastination and getting the job done, the focus also has to be on the quality. Goes without saying you think, but while I obviously want to do good work, my battle so far has been centered on simply the doing, finding a structure and discipline to make it possible to do all the things. In my head all/most of my interests are linked, and I’d like to keep it that way, even though I know I’m waving a shotgun rather than shoot with bow and arrow. (which I’d love to learn btw but I’m trying to save it for another lifetime. Like weaving. Ahem.)
Time is not of great importance with sweater knitting of course, since it’s just an innocent hobby, but I think I can use any activity to improve my general workflow and mindset. While efficiency is great, I need to be mindful as well, we don’t want to get run over by the stress monster (again). I still think one of the keys is to work more serial rather than parallel, so I have to be even more careful and focused about choosing each project. A change which in itself is a serious workout for Patience. Perhaps I should be content to not only set up my physical projects in serial production, but also the work with my inner issues. I just wonder if the list will ever stop growing! 😉
(yes, Arlee, I did read what you wrote on the practice instead of the performance)
Can’t have a Fiber Friday without show and tell of course, so here’s a smallcompilation for those of you not so interested in my little dance with Resistance. There are comments about each if you click the thumbnails.
I didn’t want to reknit sleeves and raglan, so managed to decrease waist by 5 cm/2″ with smaller needles and ribbing on the back. I’m ditching the skirt shape and just changing to larger needles again for a straight knit down
carding Molly’s undercoat
dog rolags 43 g carded twice on fine drum
A new funyarn that I may explain in detail later.
I seem to have a thing (and some projects) for the purple/orange combo at the moment!
spinning up a funbatt on the jumbo set, so I can get the high speed on for dog hair after.
I had decided beforehand to make a report whether I succeeded or failed – and really, if you make the effort, can you truly call it a failure?
I did make an effort. In good spirits too, no pointed fingers. I didn’t exactly make the finish line with 3 items done, but I’ve decided to be pleased with myself nonetheless. (is that one or three words?) I could have knit every day and met more goals. Worked really hard until my fingers bled, but I’m also determined to only hurry so much that I don’t get stressed out about it, since that is (still) poison to my system. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from that completely, and perhaps it’s a good thing if I don’t. The only “danger” is, once you allow yourself some slack, more slack has a tendency to follow when it’s not a life or death situation. So yes, I could have knit more. But I did finish one big thing without getting caught in second sleeve syndrome or starting up a number of random displacement activities.
Of course in my eagerness to have at least one sweater not fitting like a sausage skin, I made this one enormous. As in, I really should reknit the whole thing…. And this is why I made my no-knit resolution! I must be some sort of closet masochist. It’s a bit odd though, I swear it was ok when I tried it on around halfway through?! A shapeshifting sweater?
Ribbit!
Worse is, the slack oozed over to my paint challenge. In fact, I more or less forgot about it. Resistance does that to you. We’ve determined that faking it doesn’t work, I do in fact have to be “in the mood”. And Resistance makes sure I’m not in the mood if I know I only have half an hour before somebody visits/turns on the tv/asks for dinner. I could say that I lucked out on opportunities for uninterrupted worktime, which is true, but there were things I could have done to prepare for “the moment” in advance, such as making sketches in the relative safety of my kitchen office, and I carry the full responsibility for ignoring that option completely. The truth is, I did not touch my canvasses AT ALL apart from clearing them from my work table to convert it into a dining table for a family visit.
Played a bit with my new waterbrush today just to have something to show. We are NOT quite friends yet, all of a sudden it gushes a huge drop, making all the colours bleed and spread. I guess here’s my chance to try working on the same image multiple times! 😉
It’s a bit like writing with ink and old fashioned pens, the way they splatter just as you’re working an elaborate curve or dotting the i.
And I know I said I’d been getting better at keeping a schedule, but the real truth is, I spent most of the time planning projects, not doing them. Oh I’ve played with photos, made yarn, knitted, read books. Gotten more ideas for things that are not paintings. (I now desperately need a rigid heddle loom 😉 ) So I need even more focus. I’m going to keep pushing until I find the right combination of work flow for me, if that’s even possible when you don’t have control over your workspace.
When I was running my bizz, I had the house to myself most days, but the last couple of years, G has discovered the joys of working from home too. I was grateful for this while I was feeling poorly, but now I’m having a hard time kicking him back out LOL. And I can hardly blame him!
My brother brought me this thinking cap the other day, when I wear it nobody is allowed to talk at me. Just have to remember to take it off when the doorbell rings…. I think it’s made for grown up heads, but if I tuck my hair in it stays put.
How about making a habit of doing housework in the evening before bedtime, when I’m too tired to think useful thoughts anyway? Tidy up especially, but even laundry and such (no dusting). Fewer things to clutter my brain during peak hours so to speak. Because I AM getting things done, it’s just the wrong things, you know? It’s usually tv time then and it’s an excellent way to avoid that. Never met anyone who felt accomplished after 2 hours in front of the box. As for entertained, no, not really, only thing I watch is The Doctor. Oh well, it’s worth a shot.
And now, for a new calendar. Are you doing anything new this year?
Really, just to kick my own butt in public, I’ve decided I want to make 2 sweaters by end of the year + a hat AND tell everyone how it’s going. Talk about setting yourself up for failure! Are we scared of failure? Hell no! Bring it on…. 😉 In fact, after I started the countdown I never did anything about it for the first 4 days, and I didn’t give a hoot. That bodes well for my stress levels I think?
I’ve started with the blue mix, wanted the green more after knitting the all blue sweater, but was unsure what to do. Now that I’ve progressed I can see how far the yarn type goes, so I think the green will be a jacket with some sort of thin yarn along too, I’ll have to see what I’ve got. In just 5 days I’m past the waist of my blue tunic and have used 2½ skeins of 6, so I think I’m good since I’m planning on short sleeves?
My hands are screaming bloody murder each night, but I haven’t been in the mood for doing something “complicated” the last few days. In keeping with the tradition of both knitting method and of contradicting myself, I’m making it up as I go along rather than use a well documented pattern.
You can see under the arm it looks a bit big on Mimi, and it is, I didn’t pad her yet to match my new dimensions and I also made sure this time that it’s wide enough for me to wear clothes underneath, as I can’t wear wool against my skin. And, well, just in case I keep growing (Heaven forbid, it’s not in my budget!). I just hate the feeling of clothes that are like sausage skins ready to pop. Or if you wear a belt on your jeans the buckle sticks out under the sweater like a huge belly button! And I believe that’s as much of a fashion statement as you’ll ever get from me.
