I went to my LYS the other day to ask for the Addi Click Heartstoppers I’d ordered (not there yet) and to get a couple of black skeins of the yarn I’m using for my hexagon blanket, since I’ve now decided on a stained glass effect with the edges. (fwiw, does anyone have a clue why my edges make the hexagons skewed? I count and I count to get the increases at proper intervals, testing 1 more or less stitch when I start, they’re all the same. It’s driving me nuts with this black yarn)
Only this brand has come out with new colours. Sitting on her desk as I was waiting. So I had to take one of each (well, not quite, I left the pink one behind), just so I could keep them to look at. Really, I have no idea what to make of them. They are SW extra fine merino, so technically they are wearable, but they’re also not very elastic so I doubt they’d make a great hat. Shawl-scarf?
I wanted to test cochineal – which I’ve never used before – over yellow to see if that made orange (it doesn’t), so used a couple of small goldenrod hanks I just dyed. And since my small items scales are wonky, I used far too much cochineal, so I ended up dyeing 3 larger hanks as well as some silk. Whoa! My eyes hurt! I wonder if they’ll turn purple in indigo…. I have a somewhat 20 skein experiment lined up, but that will be later. It’s a grey day today, trust me, the colour is even more vibrant up close and personal!
Farveorgie i pink
Jeg var bare nede i garnbutikken for at spørge til de Addi Click hjertestoppere jeg har bestilt og for at hente lidt sort Arwetta til kanterne på mit hexitæppe. Og så havde hun lige så uskyldigt lagt nye farver frem på sin disk, som jeg var nødt til at tage med hjem! (pånær den i pink) Nej, nej, hun vidste ikke jeg kom, det var helt tilfældigt.
Pink har vi fået nok af denne uge, jeg havde spekuleret på, hvordan gult ville se ud overfarvet med cochenille, bliver det mon orange? (nej, det gør det ikke) Men jeg havde fået vejet for meget af, fordi min mini-vægt er lidt i udu, så jeg endte med at farve 3 fed mere + lidt silke, og det er da lige før man får ondt i øjnene! Jeg spekulerer nu på om de bliver lilla, hvis man overfarver med indigo. Jeg har et større eksperiment linet op med de små biller, men det bliver senere.
It’s nasty out there I tell you, mean and nasty! Wind directly from Siberia – I didn’t even stop to take extra pix for you to describe the misery just right, here’s my oversize hamsters coming in for breakfast.
I’m force feeding the woodstove as fast as I can and moved the wheel over to ply that braid I spun the other day. Plus some odd singles I had sitting around, purpose forgotten.
First I needed to make an extra lazy kate however, for my weaving bobbins converted for spinning, since their center diameter is too small for my regular kate. Good thing we have this gizmo, also used for making all the holes in my blending hackle.
First I thought it had frozen to death, but it sped up as I let it run a bit. Voila, one piece of wood and some nails, good enough to go. Yes, I’ll make a base for it, so I won’t have to clamp it to the table, but never mind that now. We also don’t need to mention that I’m officially too old to read a rusty drill in a dark garage without my glasses, so the holes are too big… I can find another piece of wood I’m sure. It still worked with wobbly nails and no clamps, at least for transferring the singles onto a proper bobbin on the wheel.
Bottom of the board with indents for nail heads and all
The one on the right was lovely as fiber and then I did a really poor job of spinning it. Don’t like it much as plied yarn either, but I guess sometimes that’s the way of it.
All done and washed. The Rambouillet is incredibly elastic and squishy, I don’t know if the former is a good thing in yarn, but I love the feel of stretching and bouncing it. I’ll spin the other braid in the same way.
And well, it was also a good day to dye, as I had enough to try a bit of snow dyeing. More on that later!
Guess who doesn’t care about the weather…
.
Tvindevejr
Ja, jeg behøver jo ikke fortælle jer danskere hvordan vejret har været de sidste par dage, så jeg har bare tvangsfodret brændeovnen og ellers flyttet rokken tilpas tæt på, så jeg kunne få tvundet det jeg spandt forleden.
Jeg vidste jeg havde nogen 3 mm tykke søm, der lige passede i de små, billige spoler, men havde overvurderet min egen evne til at gætte diameteren på boret; så det blev lidt vakkelvorent, da jeg lige hurtigt ville lave en spoleholder. Men jeg fik da flyttet garnet over!
Singlen til højre er jeg meget skuffet over i forhold til fibrene, og jeg er ikke blevet gladere efter tvinding, men sådan kan det jo gå. Jeg kan vel bruge det til et eller andet en dag, måske bare bamsefyld.
Rambouillet garnet er helt utroligt elastisk, jeg ved egentlig ikke om det er en god ting, men jeg kan godt lide følelsen, så jeg regner med at spinde den anden fletning på samme måde.
Originally this post was drafted to show and talk about “designing” yarn. (see how I had to put that into quotation marks, so as not to come off too presumptuous 😉 ) And then as usual I got sidetracked from the yarn ideas I had so they still live in my head.
The first yarn that I “designed” shortly after I started spinning, 4 shades of merino blended on my homemade hackle
The funyarns are figments of my imagination, not so much planned for or even suitable for knitting, but spun just because. Because the colour concept appealed to me, to resemble something I’d seen (such as the half done rowan tree yarn), or just to experiment. I won’t call them art yarns, because I’m just not that good. It’s not that I don’t enjoy spinning yarn for a purpose, but it’s a different joy. Funyarns are really more like painting.
So anyway, I’ve spun almost a pound of wool in the last couple of days for absolutely no purpose at all, it’s colourful and random, so I thought I’d kick off this category now and keep adding once in a while.
It started out with a challenge on Ravelry, theme “Safari” (which incidentally was my own suggestion). I had a couple of batts that I bought a long time ago before I knew the difference between a real woolen prep and “just” combed top blended on a drumcarder, still running perpendicular. One is not better than the other, just different spinning, different purpose. I thought one set of batts looked quite like a piece of rainforest, so off I went spinning a fat single.
I have all sorts of things going through my head while I see the fiber run by my hands, goes something like this: “I wonder if I should have included some pink tufts for orchids in a jungle, no, all that yellow is enough. So would this resemble the amazonas rainforest or this turquoise, where do they have those mineral lakes in old sinkholes, Indonesia? Hmmmm, this is turning out a bit muddy and earthy, a bit Mexican inspired colouring with the strong greens and yellows? Do they have jungles too? I should make some South American themed colourways. And Chinese inspired drawings (oh, don’t be silly, not in this lifetime. I thought you wanted to be the new Otto Frello?). And definitely look up something on Celtic symbols as well as old Scandinavian. And do a palette of the garment colours used in various times in Europe for some project. But something oriental would be cool too.” Yes, that IS pretty much what the inside of my head looks like more often than not.
Turned out much more blended than I wanted, I liked the batts better than the yarn, but such is the way of those things. In any case I decided to spin ALL the batts to practise getting that thickness. Whoosh! All gone, one empty box. And the red and purple with gold thread took me on a trip to India, so around the world in a few hours isn’t half bad, is it? I must be getting better at it too, since each yarn ended up shorter than the previous colour. I don’t normally thwack my yarns, because I don’t want the halo, but these got a severe beating because I wanted them to felt a bit and bloom as much as possible.
Bollywood collection 😉
Which leads me to my second mission: fiber stash bashing. When I first started out I bought all sorts of random stuff to try out, then I had a bad spell and didn’t spin for something like 8 months and now I just want something completely different. I still love to OGLE all the pretties that are offered for sale on Etsy, but I do love to make my projects from scratch, i.e. dyeing my own fiber. I also need more space for my paint supplies now, so I’m going to try to spin all that random fiber and in the future keep just a stock of undyed fiber in a few varieties that I like.
This was originally named Sea & Sand when I dyed it – but it actually could go in the savanna category all spun up, yeah? Smallest braid spun this week also.
In an ideal world and a bigger house I’d have all the yarns and all the fibers (and all the paints, inks, papers, cameras, horses, greenhouses and…). But then I do like my sleep, so I think the current plan is probably the wisest. 😀 .
Spindehalløj
Jeg kunne godt tænke mig at tømme lidt ud i mit fiberlager, så jeg kun har ufarvede fibre i mine yndlingssorter liggende. Dels mangler jeg plads til andre hobbyting, dels fordi mit fokus har ændret sig lidt siden jeg begyndte at spinde.
Og da jeg har rigeligt med strikkeprojekter pÃ¥ venteliste, vil jeg bruge den næste tid pÃ¥ at spinde garn som ikke har noget formÃ¥l, men bare er skægt, har en flot farve eller fordi jeg har en tosset “design”ide.
SÃ¥ jeg startede med en fletning jeg selv havde farvet, i superwash BFL. Bagefter kom turen til Ravelrygruppens februarudfordring “Safari”, og da jeg var godt i gang med at øve tyk single tog jeg lige de resterende batts i den kasse fra samme leverandør, købt den gang jeg ikke kendte forskel pÃ¥ rigtigt karteflor og kæmmede fibre kørt en gang pÃ¥ kartemaskine for at blande farverne let. Det gik let og gesvindt, og hvert garn blev lidt kortere end det forrige, sÃ¥ lidt bedre til at spinde tykt blev jeg da, selvom det ikke er super-bulky.
Normalt tæver jeg ikke mit garn, for jeg kan bedst lide det glat, men singlerne her har fået rigtig mange bank, så de kunne filte lidt og puffe så meget op som muligt.
So I promised this would be knit-week and then I haven’t had any more show and tell here. Such is life. I did knit, but not as much as I hoped. To prove that I have indeed been doing something, I’ll share my tada! list with you:
Got the plant dyed yarns out and started on the first planned project – using the oldest ones since the new ones really should sit until next year so I can see how much they fade in storage.
Finished priming one of my homemade sketchbooks, working away on the others, one 2/3 done, one just started.
Started doodling in the sketchbook.
Did some painting 2 days in a row even.
Read some books, some nonfiction as well as “The Sunne in Splendour” by Sharon Perman
Walked the dog in the forest quite a lot, as per request. AND tested the pocket camera I was given.
Started spinning some fiber I dyed last summer, just recreational spinning, no project in mind. Another one lined up for a challenge.
Made a few stencils out of laser transparencies which I was given a whole package of (100). The circular cutter came in handy among other things!
Baked swedish buns “rÃ¥gsiktskakor”. Yum.
Woven almost half of the ends on my sweater dress and wore it.
Decluttered my desk.
Found a foam block and the fiber that I wanted for some needlefelting.
Aktiviteter
Jeg havde jo lovet at holde strikkeuge, men det er ikke meget jeg har fået rapporteret her. Jeg har strikket en smule, men ikke så meget som planlagt. Så nu vil jeg i stedet kede jer med ugens tada! liste, ikke at jeg holder op i weekenderne, men jeg trænger til at lige huske hvad jeg egentlig har nået.
Rodet lidt i mit plantefarvede garn, taget et par nøgler frem til mit første planlagte projekt og strikket nogen prøver.
Færdig med at grunde den ene af mine hjemmekogte notesbøger, 2 mere på vej.
Skriblet en smule i bogen.
Malet en smule, endda 2 dage i træk.
Læst et par fagbøger færdig og et par romaner, “The Sunne in Splendour” af Sharon Perman og “Taxo Luma” af Lars Muhl (meh).
Taget på hundeture i skoven og testede det brugte lommekamera jeg har fået.
Begyndt at spinde noget BFL jeg farvede i sommer, ikke med noget særligt formål, bare afslapning. Og fundet mere uld frem til en udfordring på Ravelry.
Kreeret skabeloner af overhead folie som jeg fik forærende, cirkelkniven kom lige til god anvendelse igen.
Bagt svenske “rÃ¥gsiktskakor”.
Syet nogen af enderne pÃ¥ min sweater, damn det er kedeligt….
Ryddet op på mit skrivebord.
Fandt en skumblok og de fibre jeg vil bruge til mit første nålefilteprojekt.
Well, after ranting about to-do lists, I guess I should be cautious about setting things in stone, but of course I’ve had some thoughts about what I wanted to do this year.
I’m fed up with just sampling, although I haven’t tried all there is to try. So I’d really like to dye larger quantities to actually use for (knitted) projects, I have tonnes of dried dyestuff and more likely to happen with my garden plans implemented (time to order seeds!). This means I have to spin A LOT of generic yarn or find a nicer yarn base to order in bulk, that I can whip out for a sweater dye project or whatever, whenever. Which requires some $£â¬! so I’m holding my horses, but also feeling I need to do something or I’ll be stuck not dyeing at all. I want NICE stuff, not just whatever random skeins I can find in a supermarket. My current yarn base for plant dyeing is fine, but I wouldn’t wear it, you know?
So apart from my plant to-try list, producing and collecting dye material, my goal is to figure out WHAT I want to use my plant dyeing for. Knitting, felted items, fiber “paintings” or just sell the surplus? Leave it on a shelf in the “Collected skills” box?
During the meanwhile, I have a hollyhock test project on the stove for y’all, coming real soon.
Jeg har spekuleret lidt over, hvad jeg egentlig vil med min plantefarvning, det har været sjovt, men det bliver ogsÃ¥ lidt kedeligt at bare producere testgarn og eksperimentere. PÃ¥ den anden side har jeg ikke nogen reelle projekter sÃ¥dan lige planlagt, som jeg kan sætte i gang. Enten skal jeg finde nogen gode strikkegarner og købe et kæmpe lager jeg lige kan trække en sweaterfuld ud af ved lyst og behov til farvning, jeg kan spinde og spinde og spinde hvidt og bygge et lager, jeg kan sælge det jeg producerer. Eller skal jeg gÃ¥ i gang med at filte og billedvæve, hvor jeg kan bruge de smÃ¥ testfed til noget reelt? Jeg kunne ogsÃ¥ bare lægge det pÃ¥ hylden og føje det til listen over “Ting jeg kan”.
Så mit største mål i år er ikke kun at få sået lidt flere farveplanter (noget skal der jo alligevel gro i haven), men også finde ud af, hvad jeg egentlig kan bruge det til. Der er jo kun et begrænset antal timer i døgnet til kreative projekter, som jeg til gengæld har nok af!
