Category: Yarn and Fiber

Coldfinger

PiaKnitting

I just realized that we’re moving into autumn and after that comes winter.

We heat the house only with the woodstove in the living room, and while the house is warm enough, I do tend to get cold hands sitting in my “office”, typing or just mousing away with one hand.

So, for the last 2 years I’ve wanted to make some fingerless mittens, but never got around to it. I even have some really thin baby alpaca yarn to use, just to get an extra layer of skin but not have the bulk get in the way.

What I can’t decide it whether to just make the tube variety with a thumb hole or real gloves with just the fingertips off. Plain rib for a snug fit or some elaborate lace or cable pattern…

Which do y’all prefer? And why? (apart from the fact that I’m not looking forward to knitting fingers, I have an idea it may be warmer)

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Fingerløse vanter

Jeg bliver lidt kold om fingrene om vinteren nÃ¥r jeg sidder her ved PC’en, sÃ¥ jeg har længe tænkt pÃ¥ at lave fingerløse vanter i tyndt alpaca garn for at de ikke er i vejen men lige giver et ekstra lag hud. Det er bare ikke blevet til noget, men nu er vinteren jo pÃ¥ vej igen!

Så jeg vil lige høre, bortset fra, hvad der er nemmest at strikke, hvilken slags foretrækker I, med eller uden fingre, altså bare et rør med tommelfingerhul eller rigtige vantefingre uden spidser? Og hvorfor?

Vidste du, at man kan kommentere min blog uden at være wordpress medlem? Bare udfyld navn er nok. Det er så hyggeligt med dialog fremfor monolog!

Cloths part 2

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

Time to open the rest of the packages from August 14th. The first package was opened on August 21st and now awaiting further experiments…

The sheet on the right was previously washed with soda, cooked with sumak leaves and was soaking in water with iron while rolled up with celandine. The pillow case similar although no tannin before but soaking in water with oak leaves while printing.

Discoveries so far:

  1. Oak leaves = nice clear prints
  2. yellow flowers = vague yellow blotches
  3. Sage leaves = absolutely nothing. Maybe a pale shade of yellow?
  4. Celandine leaves in a heap = again, turns brown when sitting too long
  5. Put cloth in bucket of whatever = only the outside layer takes any colour at all.
  6. My mystery cloth just lost whatever I put on it previously and didn’t take anything from the leaves it had been rolled up with.

None of these cotton rags were properly mordanted, which is the next process I’ll be trying to see what the difference is. Tannin and aluminium acetate, some with sea water and aluminium. Some with iron as well, before or after. But I probably won’t get to actually dyeing them until next summer. Rhubarb leaves will be on the menu as well.

Another set is brewing – hoping for prints from lupine leaves among other things.

Funny thing though, the celandine dyed sheet is brown – but when put into water again, the water turns yellow.

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Plantefarvning på stof

Tid til at åbne de sidste pakker jeg præparerede d. 14. august. Den første omtalte jeg d. 21. august, den er nu tør og afventer yderligere eksperimenter på et eller andet tidspunkt.

Der kom ikke sÃ¥ meget ud af det, svaleurt giver stadig brun ved langtidsfarvning og kun egebladene lavede print pÃ¥ stoffet. Det ene stykke stof mistede de print det havde inden og er nu næsten “rent”! Jeg ved ikke helt hvad det er lavet af, det er en slags kanvas og virker ikke syntetisk, mÃ¥ske hør?

Mini skeins

PiaAcid Dyeing

It’s become very popular to knit or crochet blankets, amigurumi and other small or assembled items with small skeins of handspun or handpainted sock yarn as well as leftovers of commercial yarns. Especially the hexipuffs have been all the rage for quite a while! (I realize blankets as such have probably never been out of fashion, but so many cool patterns are emerging)

I normally don’t follow fashion much, but thought I’d join this madness and use it to my advantage: I’ll simply make my colour experiment swatches in the amount of mini skeins when I spin and dye, so that I actually have something useful and not just a piece of coloured string. And they make good travel knitting. I’m not making puffs, but rather like the hexagon shape, so that’s what I’m doing right now.

I’ve made a couple of niddy noddies from bits and pieces lying around the place, so that I don’t have to drag out my (also homemade) swift every time I want to wind a small skein.  Dowels, spheres from a hobby shop (leftover from spindle making), a broom handle and a thingy from an old wine rack. Voila presto! I never got round to glueing on the spheres because I wanted to make sure I had the correct circumference. And the rubber band colours help me keep track of counting anyway…

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Mini garn

Jeg er begyndt at lave mine farve/spindeprøver i mængder der passer sÃ¥dan ca. med et par hexipuffer o.lign. sÃ¥dan at jeg rent faktisk kan bruge dem til noget bagefter. Det er sikkert ogsÃ¥ udmærket til rejsestrikning forestiller jeg mig? Jeg synes det er en fin mÃ¥de at fÃ¥ afprøvet alle mulige kombinationer, sÃ¥ det har jeg tænkt mig at gøre fremover i stedet for altid at spinde 50-100 g af hver slags garn og sÃ¥ ikke rigtig fÃ¥ det brugt. Jeg gider nok ikke rigtig lave puffer, men sekskanter synes jeg egentlig er flot, næsten cirkler. 😉

Mit haspetræ har jeg strikket sammen af dele fra en gammel vinreol og et par trækugler fra Panduro… De er ikke limet pÃ¥ endnu fordi jeg ville være sikker pÃ¥ omkredsen (garnet strækker sig jo nÃ¥r man vinder det pÃ¥), deraf elastikkerne. Og sÃ¥ fandt jeg ud af, at farverne hjalp mig med at tælle omgange og ja, sÃ¥ kom jeg ikke længere!

On mould and rot

PiaPlant Dyeing

Last year I had a bucket full of beautiful, golden dye, I’m not sure which plant I’d used (thinking celandine), but it was strong and sunny and the cotton pillowcases I dunked in there soon looked very cheerful as well. Then, hungering to see just how much dye they could take, I left the bucket a few more days. When I came back, it had all turned brown and there was mould starting to grow on top, it was slimy and smelly and  not sunny at all.

Sometimes you don’t have to leave it out for weeks, just sayin.

So I’ve been thinking, would it be cheating to add a slosh of preservative like what I use for jam? And would it even work in a container that’s not sealed?

So I decided to use a leaf dyeing experiment to try out the concept at least. One with jam preservative, one with vinegar. And well, I’m going to throw in a pot of Celandine too, they need some purging anyway. I can just make it before it gets cold I think.

There are pros an cons of course – since the rot can probably give you both surprises as well as a variety of colour that you wouldn’t normally get. But if that’s not what you want…

With the birch leaves I got exactly the same colour on the yarn, but the bucket without preservative got smelly and mouldy, the other lasted fine for a week in my greenhouse. So, some yellow dyes are ruined, some keep their colour.

Celandine results will be updated later!

I also added preservative to the jars of silk soaking up Dyer’s chamomile dye. No mould or funny smell at all even after weeks. They were in tightly closed mason jars.

So far it looks like the vinegar does as well as the preservative. About a month before both buckets of cloths got a bit mouldy on top, that was after I’d looked several times and taken the cloths out, not putting the lid back on properly.

Solar silk

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

My first venture into solar dyeing, this grey, cold, miserable summer, was a couple of jars with silk and dye from Dyer’s Chamomile.

We did get one week of warm and sunny, but I didn’t actually think of moving my jars into the greenhouse until afternoon on the last day… Pretty typical of me.

After about a month I pulled it out, since nothing much seemed to be happening. (forgot to register, sorry)

I didn’t get any orange from the Tinctoria this time, but not necessarily due to temperature, but rather the fact that I was using 1/1 dyestuff to fiber this time as opposed to 3/1 last time. Bit of a shame since I wanted the orange shade as part of the silk project. So I fixed it by adding a handful of frosen coreopsis to some of the silk and a pot of hot water.

There wasn’t much difference in colour in the copper mordanted silk compared to the alum mordanted, so since I needed olive for my spinning project I dunked it in my horse shoe bucket. Voila presto!

Unfortunately I ran into another problem with the silk. I’d used two different batches, and the bit that I’d been gifted in a swap was really, really odd even as I soaked it before dyeing. Didn’t get wet properly, didn’t “float” and smelled odd. Did I pay attention? Nooooo… So what happend to that portion was, after it’s all dry and ready, the silk was completely brittle and rough to the touch. I can tear the fibres into short, short bits and it just feels unpleasant even after a wash. Not going to spin it. At first I thought it was the iron, but when half the coreopsis dyed silk ended up the same and the other half didn’t I guess it has to be the silk itself.

So I had to take some more of the yellow, that was supposed to stay yellow, and dunk that in iron to get the greenish tint, and then I gave up and acid dyed a new piece for orange. Easy to spot in the crowd I think, but probably won’t be noticed once they’re blended.

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Koldfarvet silke

Ikke helt SOLfarvet, eftersom vi ikke har haft så meget af den, i hvert fald ikke sommertemperatur, men dog farvet uden opvarmning af fibrene. De stod i glas ca. en måned, men der skete ikke rigtig den store udvikling de sidste par uger. Farvebadet er gåseurt, det ene glas med kobberbejset silke.

Jeg fik ikke orange denne gang, formentlig pga mindre plantemasse pr. fiber, ca. 1/1. Kobberglasset var en ret mørk gul, men ikke den grønlige farve jeg skulle bruge, sÃ¥ den kom lige et dyp i min hesteskospand og sÃ¥ blev det ellers oliven pÃ¥ nul komma fem. Orange fik jeg ved at lige opvarme en hÃ¥ndfuld nedfrosset skønhedsøje – coreopsis tinctoria og putte noget af det gule silke i.

Desværre viste den ene portion silke sig at være mere end underlig, så både den grønne og det meste af den orange er fuldstændig sprø og ru. Jeg kan trække fibrene over i korte, korte stykker helt uden at anstrenge mig. Silken var også anderledes allerede da jeg havde det i blød før farvningen, men jeg havde ikke regnet med det ville gå så galt.

Så jeg var nødt til at tage lidt af det gule og dyppe i jern igen, og for at have nok til mit projekt syrefarvede jeg så lige en portion orange. Jeg håber den ikke skiller sig ligeså meget ud når de bliver blandet.