Came across this on the knick knack bargain shelf at the local Netto, a discount supermarket. I almost wish I get a hole in a jacket or jeans for a chance to use it!
(I think this is what a friend of mine would refer to as “tastefully tacky”) 😉
Have a cheerful weekend everybody.
I didn’t yet get up to that promised week of just plant dyeing every day and writing up a storm about it, but I yesterday did a bit of odds and ends for future projects. First I decided to use up the bucket of woad solution that I saved back when I last dyed in fall. I had some extra yellows, so I planned to throw them all in together.
The theory is, I think, that you just need to reheat to 50° C, apply hydrosulfite and Bob’s your uncle. PH was good. Blue froth – not so much. Perhaps that black coating on the bucket lid was all the dyestuff?! After all my preparations the dyebath still looked odd, a lot like another which I never used, of Japanese Indigo which I suspected was harvested too late. So this time I tested one skein just for science and got what I expected: FAIL. But at least this task is now off my list 😉
I can’t properly acid dye beyond the solutions I’d already made, since my scales are broken, and I use such tiny amounts of powder when I mix that spoon tips are too inaccurate. So I’ve run out of most colours after today! 🙁
In fact afterwards I had a pot of leftovers with some other baths poured into as well, some kind of brown, I suspected it might even be nice (on the white spoon it looked just like red wine), but which yarn do I put in, as in, which type of project am I likely to use it for?! I don’t like to just pour it out…
I made a purple that I really ended up liking, so now I regret only making a small skein. For the intended tapestry project (yes, yes, I know I said I’d use the plant dyed yarns for that, and I will, I promise! But, you know… one idea breeds another and….) I don’t need a lot of the purple, if any, but perhaps I’d want to use it in another? Oh well. It was something with violet and a bit of black and a bit of rusty brown from the other pot, but did I also include green? (my goto breaker of purple to tone it down a bit) And if somebody now says “what do you need the scales for”, see the above mention of the huge amount of leftover dyebath. 😉 I also don’t know quite what made the gold colour, which I ALSO like, because that too was made from sloshing leftovers into my last bit of yellow.
In the end I found a use for the leftovers, which did not yield red wine but rust. I stuck the end of 100 g top in there until it had enough, next bit in, next dye leftover etc. completely at random. I mean to spin it and weave it as a tapestry, shapes determining what happens with the colours. Or something. It’s cheviot and there’s no way it’s getting near my skin other than hands.
Perhaps not one of my brightest moments. The top ended up looking pretty ghastly, but I’m going to spin it anyway. Who knows, I might get a surprise? And then what happened as I got to the end of the rope and it had taken on enough colour? I was left with ANOTHER bath, this time dark green. So whatever, I added one of the small silk skeins I use for plant dyeing.
And now for some weekend. I wanted to weave now that I’m all warped, finally, but apparently I’ve been overdoing things says the body, headaches for two weeks now. I don’t think I ask it for very much, I’ve been indulging the “no exercise wish” for a while longer, but apparently “projects” are taxing the stress muscle even if they’re fun and relaxed. I don’t feel stressed or anxious, but I know it could be the next step, even though I think I’m doing pretty well with my attitude towards “busy.” I rarely go “OMG there’s so much I have to do”. So it’s probably “I have so many things I wanna do. Just one more…” 😉
Or possibly it’s not my busy-ness at all but my thoughts about “what if someone disturbs me or asks to see me in the middle of my project, not right now please I need to do this thing first. Just go away and come back next year.” And I know I’m blowing it out of proportion. Something to work on.
So I’m not feeling happy about this break as usual, a weekend of just sitting isn’t really my idea of a good time. Probably doing nothing will stress me even more, so I’ll have to pick one, slow project to fiddle with. Back to serial thinking…
Tonight I deserve a rest though, I wheelbarrowed a week’s worth of horse manure out to the back field to try to cure my shoulder tension. And vacuumed the bedroom. Possibly I’ll just spend the weekend doing the rest of the house very slowly and getting my desk ready for a fresh start Monday.
And by now the clever reader has already suspected there will be a v. 2! Indeed!
This project has been underway for some time, years in fact. My office chair is very old (1995), it’s also very comfortable, very versatile and very expensive. I can’t get a pretty one that is anywhere near as good as this, even when it squeaks a bit. So I’m holding onto it tooth and nail, even when it started looking like this:
I tried to repair it, meaning to make a full cover to go over the top and THEN make something decorative out of yarn, which could be taken off and washed.
But then I procrastinated and could not decide on a design. Then I broke my sewing machine and then I went on a very long sick leave and didn’t care.
In the meantime it just got more beat up, so when I finally did finish the first cover (which had been sitting around for ages, all needled up) I thought we needed some extra padding, and voila, my cover is too small and slides off. I’m test sitting it right now without the foam padding, and that seems to have improved the issue. I don’t even know why I wanted padding, as I usually sit on my left foot. Which I guess is why the chair looks like it does in the first place!
 
Incidentally the fabric I used attracts cat hair really well! Duh. That’s just me and my “use what’s at hand approach“.
I started off knitting a quick to-be-felted cover from plant dyed yarn, Hollyhock to be precise + a couple of Coreopsis.
You may remember how I fiddled the pH to get all those different colours. Then you throw it in the machine, at 60° no less, with a soap that you’re not quite sure is neutral. Well, it wasn’t. Which is fine, I like green.
And it’s too small as well. I’d reckoned on that but wanted it as tightly felted as possible, so I’d threaded some cotton string around the edges, figuring I could pull it out and use the holes to pick up more stitches. I may or may not do that, since all the cats really love it. But it’s a good surface to use, sturdy and easy to clean. I see cat bed production in my future.
I have other plans brewing, but with my sewing skills it may take me a few versions to get something that actually works. In the meantime, my chair at least does not look like something from a scrap yard. Not as much so.
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.
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.
This week I spun one of my silly batts, the one from the fluff box.
As I suspected, the really short fibers I carded had a hard time holding together as yarn. I could have spun it slowly and carefully, after all cotton can be spun. But I wanted a robust looking fluffy yarn, not a high twist rope, so I decided to try and spin it with a stronger core. Not actual corespinning, where you paint the fiber onto a thread by holding the two at a 90 degree angle, I just ran the thread along in my fiber supply while drafting.
I tried to take a couple of pix of how I hold the fiber in my right hand, then I do a short forward draw with my left basically pulling at the thread and letting the roving run loosely inside my palm around the thread. When I spindle spin I draft and suspend the spindle with my right, but since the orifice on the wheel is to the left I felt it was more convenient to switch. It didn’t really take a lot of time to get used to, so now I can do both.
I’m keeping it as a single as planned, since the colours were mingled quite well enough on the carder already. And the thread simply keeps the fibers from drifting apart.
I may do another post on spinning short fibers – when I get around to that. After all I have God knows how many pounds of that Dorset sitting around…
Yes, I know that I’m spinning in my riding breeches, I just can’t be having with changing my outfit 5 times a day. I also did not sweep the floor for the photo shoot. I really think there ought to be staff for such things – or is that children?
