Tag: colour

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…

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

Point and shoot

PiaGallery

I found out that my new to me little pocket camera actually does quite good macros. I can’t see a thing on the display outdoors though, so I’ve developed a new (to me) style of taking pictures. I simply wave it around, try to point it in the general direction of something and click. Play with over- and underexposures in the sun etc. The macro lens I have for my SLR is a 90 mm and gives a completely different perspective compared to the wide angle of a tiny camera.

For starters I’ve been doing garden walks since so many things are in bloom right now, but I’ll continue to explore this method time and again just to get out of my regular groove. How about deliberate out of focus for instance? The columbines are going now, so I promise next time it will be something else…

The photos are unprocessed apart from resizing – exposure and colour are all from fiddling with camera settings. No crops. Some have been more deliberately composed, most are randomly aimed at the target.

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Carding not weaving

PiaPÃ¥ dansk

suffolk18

Been so busy picking, carding and spinning the first of three fleeces I was given last year, that I haven’t had time to paint the tapestry sketches that are floating around in my head (they just keep marching in), nor weave the small samplers for learning the process.

I’m finally done, although only with the dyed part. Still 900 g of white (from the one fleece) to deal with…. I must say, the spinning goes super fast from rolags, but picking out plant bits and hand carding was murder. Only 550 g of yarn to show for a whole month’s work, and there’s in total 2500 g left of those fleeces to process. In the meantime, I’m not doing any fun spinning, hardly any knitting, no weaving, no painting… in other words

NOT WORTH IT.

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Now I’ve been there, done it and not even a t-shirt to prove it. Yes, buying a collection of many colours of yarns to weave with (gotta have a proper palette) requires a budget, but really, in hours each of my skeins here are worth a fortune compared. If I compare a paid job for the same number of hours I could have gotten several looms as well as a ton of yarn. If I did of course I wouldn’t have the time or energy to play with my hobbies, which is why I opted for free fleece in the first place. I still have an ambition to spin yarn for tapestry, BUT I’m also working on simplifying and destressing my daily life and this is not how you do it.

Using the plant dyed yarns however are an entirely different matter, at the moment the colour schemes I seem to come up with for designs are not very consistent with this intention, but I can work with that. If nothing else, my not plant-yellowish sketches can become paintings I suppose! So, carding is put on the back burner and more instantly gratifying projects are back in business. (and OMG is carding also boring!)

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Kartehelvede

Så er månedens udfordring erklæret slut, jeg fik ikke spundet de hvide totter som håbet, kun de farvede. Og det er HELT ok.

Ideen gik ud på at endelig få onduleret den ene af de gratishamme jeg fik sidste år og gik og sjatfarvede hele sommeren. Spindingen tager ingen tid overhovedet, men pille, pille, pille små stumper strå ud og derefter karte, gab!

Og hvad har jeg efter en hel mÃ¥ned uden anden (sjovere) spinding, uden læsning, maling osv? Blot 550 g garn. Omregner jeg det til et almindeligt job, kunne jeg have købt det pÃ¥ blot et par timer… Det er vist ikke sÃ¥dan man afstresser og simplificerer sit liv, men nu er det da gjort og jeg er tilfreds med at have ordnet dette delmÃ¥l. Resten fÃ¥r pænt lov at ligge til en kedelig vinterdag hvor der ikke skal luges, sÃ¥s spinat, fotograferes forÃ¥rsskov (nÃ¥nej, mit kamera er jo ved at opgive ævred), males skabeloner til at væve efter sÃ¥, ideerne vælter ind og hober sig op mens jeg karter og karter! Der var vist ogsÃ¥ lige noget sommerstrik der skulle være færdigt.

Goldilocks

PiaAcid Dyeing

I’m working away carding and spinning the fleece I dyed in honey jars last summer, making good progress I think. For most of the yarns I’ve taken several similar chunks and blended to get even more depth in the finished yarn, but this one intrigues me so much I want to leave it alone even if it’s just a small amount.

I have no idea how I got this colour, it’s made with the “pour several leftovers into the same jar” method. I just hope I like it as yarn as well!

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And then there’s a batch that looks almost like a fox pelt, which I also rather like after it’s been fluffed:

foxy