Category: Yarn and Fiber

No tour

PiaAcid Dyeing

I’m not doing Tour de Fleece, in fact I haven’t been spinning at all lately. I do have a few yarny things going on though. Working on little things, a bit at a time, since my good days are still spent in the garden mostly, and then I have days where I can barely keep my eyes open. Hexagons are excellent projects for such days, takes no time to knit up 3 g/ 7 m of yarn, but you still feel like you’ve made something.

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The Sunday batch

Dyed a few more micro skeins for the hexiflats and knit up the ones I showed on Sunday. Some of the solids I didn’t like because I used too much dye, so I’ll reknit combining them with other colours and scraps. Even if it’s a random, messy blanket I do want to like each piece that I put into it! I’ve figured that for starters I’ll need something like 250, but then I’ve only done the sum in my head and I really suck at that. It’s going to be roundish/hexagonish in shape or something along those lines.

I couldn’t find my dye notes, so I just played around (again), aiming for a summer flowers vs. beach ball look. Ok, I made that up after I saw the skeins… I also did a few “ok, if 4 sections look like this on a 1 meter skein when knit up, what do 4 sections on a half meter skein look like knit up?” Perhaps I’ll even document the result for later use. Some of them were supposed to be more defined, but the colours bled and blended. Oh well…

microskein01

And then I had leftover blue, so I thought I’d start a sky/cloud series for later use in various combinations. All sorts of possible scenarios there, morning skies, winter skyes, rainy skies, storm, sunset…

microskein02
There’s cobalt, ultramarine and teal in this collection, but microcamera can’t see the difference.

I also restarted knitting the lace scarf for my mum – and since I need the leftover yarn for something else I really should get it done, so I know HOW much I’ll have left. I cast on in December, then husband had vacation and could not stop talking while I was counting and I simply didn’t get back to it…. I don’t really wear this type of thing myself, but she’s much more ladylike.

lacescarf

I’ve been dyeing cotton yarn and worked a bit with madder – more about that in a later post.

maddertowel

I also do have some spinning planned, but some blending needs to be done first. This is an old project, and I know I need to make certain yarns together, I just don’t know what they’re for.

red indigo silk2 silk1 blue purple

I just borrowed Spin Art by Jacey Boggs, lovely book, pretty photos and very simple, clear instructions for making the basic art yarn techniques, in fact you feel like you’re quite able just reading it! So inspired by that as well as the Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson which I received some time ago, that may well be my next project once I get this one done. I’d love to make some projects with really textured yarn blended in I think.

And last but not least, I’m making a couple of tapestry looms a bit larger than the small sample frame I did. I seem to be coming up with too many ideas that contain blue and I don’t HAVE any blue yarn just now, not plant dyed, nor commercial (Which is odd since I love blue. And green. And, well, all the others of course). It’s a good thing tapestries take something like forever to make, because I can’t afford yarn to make that many! I keep falling in love with different colour combos and getting ideas for using them. Yes, I should paint more, much faster. Water colour sketches would be great, but that means I’ll have to buy watercolours!!! LOL It just never ends, does it.

loomsupplies

The dye bed

PiaChit Chat
Coreopsis tinctoria, indigo left, weld at the back
Coreopsis tinctoria, indigo right, weld at the back

The section of lawn that I killed off last year is all filled out, although not just with dye plants. In fact, the dye project seems to go not all that well. Plants are growing (in case of the japanese indigo, not growing, but surviving), but no flowers. The weld most likely won’t be useful until next year, but I did hope to finally harvest a lot of coreopsis. The marigold also aren’t looking very willing. I didn’t sow new Dyer’s Chamomile, there is still some in the abandonded veggie garden along with woad.

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French Marigold (tagetes patula)
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Marigold (calendula) and potatoes

I took the opportunity of clear soil to bury a few old potatoes, replant my strawberry plants and some asparagus. Lettuces and spinach, kale, and this little experiment: The wilted stub of a used supermarket celery, now look what it’s doing after I planted it! Hopefully some radishes on the way too.

celery1

lettuce

It’s still stormy and autumn like temperatures here (13 C yesterday), so I don’t spend much time outside actually. We’re putting up a temporary fence where the hedge died, so we have a corner of shade and quiet, vainly hoping we’ll actually get to use it. I think I’ve had 4 days’ use of our garden furniture this year! I believe it’s the third summer in a row that’s acting this ghastly, and I really, really dislike strong wind. We’ve also had snow 3 winters in a row now, very unusual.

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Look how the pear tree has been shaped by the wind – despite a hedge!

Well, at least I have an excuse for knitting more sweaters since they’re now all year gear! I’m going to step up my needle sizes to be able to finish sooner…

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The birdies are fed sunflower seeds in winter – sometimes they miss a few.

Bits and bobs

PiaAcid Dyeing

Not much going on here, but I did pop some of the solid hexagons I’ve knitted into a dyepot for a bit more pow. Should have diluted it a tad more, as some of them came out black! Of course being superwash, they grew to gigantic proportions when wet, so I tossed them in a bag and into the dryer. Wanna see what happens when you do that?

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I’d meant to tie-dye or paint some of them but felt too distracted. Instead I did a couple of micro skeins with mixed leftovers. There goes “subtle” for the blanket colourscheme! And I have a couple of other ideas to try out…

hex03

Otherwise I’ve managed to finish the sleeves on my two “endless” sweaters, meaning they are in fact DONE. And since it’s never ending sweater summer, I may actually get to wear them… The orange is a cotton/alpaca blend on 4 mm and the blue is Wollmeise lace-yarn on 3mm. And no, the fronts don’t meet up and aren’t supposed to.

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wollmeise02

Just mordant

PiaPlant Dyeing

For those of you experienced in plant dyeing, this is nothing new, but I thought I’d post an image of mordanted yarns to show the colours you can achieve from that alone. It’s not a complete collection, no iron mordant for instance, just what I happened to have on hand today. 😉 And an unmordanted skein on the right.

mordant

I’ll return to my semi-regular schedule probably, when I’m done ruminating over having to put my 3 y.o. cat to sleep yesterday. And I’ve just now realised I don’t really have much in the way of photos…. 🙁

Dalton 2011
Dalton 2011

Nettles 2013

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

nettle4

Having been taunted by the lovely greens on other peoples’ yarns, I decided to do this at least once, even though I’ve always thought it would just give a pale yellow.

I first used the method described by Jenny Dean, where you chop up the plant tops, pour boiling water on them, steep for a day, then boil as usual. I recommend using sturdy garden gloves while chopping, unless you need a new pair of rubber gloves anyway. (I don’t know why this came as a surprise, as I frequently draw blood when making salads. What does baffle me however is the fact that my left thumb is still the same size and shape!)

I started off with 350 g of plant to 25 g of yarn, because that’s what I’d picked. Dean’s recipe says 1:1, but MotherOwl suggested at least 8:1 which was good advice. Anyway, simmering/boiling the yarn didn’t give me much of interest. So I decided to keep it under 60° C and that made the green much more vibrant. So I ended up doing an unmordanted skein for a paler colour, one to modify with iron and one cotton, as it apparently can give dark green with iron. It did, but then rinsed out to a dark grey-brown. Could be the tannin mordant, could be that Jenny Dean doesn’t rinse her yarn, but since iron makes it brittle, I always do.

nettle1

For some reason, the alum mordanted skein doesn’t show correctly with the others, so here’s one of it on its own which I think is more true.

nettle2

Brændenælder

Jeg havde egentlig diskvalificeret nælder som farveplante, fordi jeg forestillede mig at den bare giver en fesen lysegul. Men der er nogen som fremviser grøn, så jeg måtte alligevel prøve. Jenny Dean skriver bl.a. at det med jern giver mørkegrøn på bomuld.

Først brugte jeg Deans metode hvor man hakker bladene, hælder kogende vand pÃ¥ og lader stÃ¥ til dagen efter, hvorefter man koger, farver osv. som “normalt”. Jeg anbefaler at bruge havehandsker nÃ¥r man hakker, med mindre man alligevel trænger til nye gummihandsker. Jeg ved ikke hvorfor det overraskede mig, for jeg har ofte blod i mine salater. Til gengæld er det forbløffende at min venstre tommelfinger stadig har sin oprindelige facon!

Den normale metode med kogning gav en kedelig khakigrøn, sÃ¥ jeg besluttede at forsøge med en lavere temperatur og bruge bladene med det samme – sÃ¥ et kort bad pÃ¥ 60° og sÃ¥ et par stykker i jernbad bagefter. Og det blev en hel del bedre! Bomuldsfeddet blev dog grÃ¥t efter skyl, mÃ¥ske pga bejsning med garvesyre, mÃ¥ske fordi Dean ikke vasker sit garn bagefter, men eftersom jern mørner garnet foretrækker jeg at gøre det.

Efter råd fra Uglemor brugte jeg omkring 10:1 plante:garn istedet for det gængse forhold 1:1, og det må siges at være vejen frem. Ellers er jeg ret sikker på, at garnet rent faktisk var blevet fesengult!