Cherry Bomb Baby

2011-03-08T21:03:00.000-08:00

Continuing the Parade of Finished Objects

This is turning out to be the year of honoring friends with knitted gifts. Yes, and I did say friends and not just their children! So, kids-this may be the year I make you happy with legos because I'm saving the weird and crafty goodness for your moms this time around.

This one I had planned a year ago and it just didn't get done-or even begun. The story begins with the amazing store, Paxton Gate. Who sells this amazing ($124) item that one of my best friends fell in love with on a visit. Now (spending the amount of time on the computer that I do looking at weird things) I happened to know that the item was created from this pattern, that is all of $4. I knew what I must do-I bought the pattern right away and then sat on it-and did nothing. After incubating my plan for a full year I knit this very poorly and gave it to her full of love!

Yes, its a bit of a poor job. (I realize my Chinese side really comes out in these posts where I first dis everything I do and then show it to you anyways.) I didn't enjoy beginning at the bottom with 6 stitches in the round on size 3 dpns. It wasn't pretty and I started over a lot and still totally screwed it up but declared it good enough! It is a rat butt after all and the yarn is very hair like so won't it all just look round and fuzzy once I stuff it? Good Enough is totally my knitting mantra.

It was my first attempt at needle felting, which was fun and this was an easy thing to begin with-felting little blobs. Can do! I did end up removing the first organs that seemed too 2-dimensional (see above) and beefed them up a bit (see below). Its not anatomically accurate but I tried to allude to certain organs, a heart? For sure. A lung? Maybe that weird purple thing could be it, who knows? Our rat might have been a victim of vivisection before its posthumous dissection and so could be missing some crucial stuff. I guess my shoddy representation of rat anatomy is what I get for walking out of our 10th grade biology class. I'll just never know what it all that gunk really looks like.

I enjoyed looking at all the Lab Rat projects over on ravelry. A lot of folks seem to have loose interpretations of rodent anatomy and the results are all pretty cool. Although I could stand to practice some of these knitting techniques again I did enjoy the end product quite a bit-Happy Birthday Court!

2011-03-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

Lets talk F.O.s

This was a recent F.O. for my mother-in-law's birthday. Her birthday is conveniently located 2 months after Christmas and so this year I didn't feel the need to crunch in a pair of holiday socks when I can make birthday socks that are still season appropriate.

These were economically done with Patons Kroy sock yarn. I generally avoid superwash yarns but something came over me in the store when I decided to make 4 pairs of socks this winter. I had just pushed my way through a very large monochromatic pair of socks on size 0 needles when I saw this cheap and exciting 3 ply with so many colors and still with a self striping scheme. I bought 6 balls and made 3 more pairs of socks. The self striping pattern turns out to be rather wishy washy, a subtle color change which I got tired of. My favorite part of the sock was where I ran out of yarn on the first ball and had to join in the new one. Now there is the color change I was looking for.

I followed my usual go to sock pattern: Cat Bordhi's "Simple Sock in Three Sizes" from Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles. I always knit my socks on two circulars. I knit these on my size 3 addi turbos. They are a little big on my foot but hopefully fit the recipient who wears about a size larger shoe than I do.

There are no pattern modifications except to the toe. I always do a rounded toe with evenly spaced decreases down to the end rather than decrease along the two edges of the sock and then grafting the last 8 stitches. I never do that part very prettily and why would you kitchener stitch when you don't need to?

Here they are wrapped back up in the yarn wrapper, washing instructions included. I did think folks might like a washable sock, not that I mind hand washing hand knit socks. Doesn't it look like I might have bought them at REI?

I am starting to feel overwhelmed by all the projects out there that I want to make (darn you ravelry!) and so I might try to focus on what I've actually been able to complete this year. There is only so much time but I am actually able to get a good amount of simple knitting done. I feel like I should step back and look at what I have been able to do and not just the pile of U.F.O.s awaiting me. So be on the lookout for more posts where I pat myself on the back and show you the things I've recently finished!

2011-01-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

The Day that must not be named

We've just started crafting our ideas for a certain day that my 4 year old refuses to say. Or write. So A Happy ______ Day it will be.

I think we'll be doing two sets of ______ Day cards this year. I'm trying to keep it to materials we have on hand. We'll see if I can stick to that.

2011-01-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

I'm back

I hate apologies from bloggers who abandon their blogs. And I do love everybody else and their grandmama's blogs and so, for the sake of friends who love to be bored by my knitting. I am back. This goes in the 2011 FO pile, although it ought to have been done for a beloved friend in 2010. Its the reversible cable scarf pattern available for free on Ravelry. The super simple cable pattern was great travel knitting, so very easy! I knit it with Malabrigo worsted in the pearl colorway.

And knit it.

Until, better late than never, it was finished!

2010-06-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

For my tiny birthday my mom made me this fox

We recently celebrated J's 4th (or "tiny") birthday. This was his present on the morning of the big day.

I don't really know what he meant, "his tiny birthday," but it was very cute. And to celebrate the tiny-ness of it all I did make him this fox. I wanted to do something from Knitted Animals, a different pattern than I've been working on lately (not to mention faster), but he wanted something like previous stuffies I've made. So, I just improvised a few modifications to a Debi Birkin pattern. I think I added length to the face of the cat pattern and then just added increases to the cats tail and then sharp decreases at the end of it. It didn't really look foxish at all until the nose and ears went on.

This time I went with non embroidered eyes, yes, plastic! I tend to enjoy the simplicity of these handmade items. My hand knit toys and my home sewn cloth diapers, I want them to be "pure" and perfect. I like to think that if I were to bury them in the yard there wouldn't be bits of plastic left hundreds and thousands of years later. I like them to impact the earth in a very minimal way. But I am breaking my own rules this time for a damn cute little nose I got from 6060. Curse you etsy! I totally stocked up adorable plastic bits at that store.

Lately, when he is feeling extra affectionate, J has been wearing these almost too small woolies I made last summer. (Another color blending experiment.) He sings to me: "Look what I'm wearing Mom..." And he has been dragging his fox and other hand made gifts around with him for the last week. So, this time around, the extra effort that went into hand making something felt very worthwhile.

Happy Birthday little imp.

2010-05-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

A Smaller Project

Helping me prolong the denial that my dream yarn is not going to work for my dream sweater are these, knit tulips:

Doesn't everyone a few of these? Especially 1st grade teachers, don't you think especially first grade teachers need more knit flowers? I sure hope so because that is what our wonderful 1st grade teacher is going to be getting this June. I was gifted a small bouquet of these tulips for a birthday present last year and I almost peed on myself I was so excited. But now I am second guessing myself-I am already the type of person to get excited about this kind of thing. Not to mention that I also easily pee on myself a little, but I totally blame my kids for that. Do you think everyone gets excited about knit flora? Or is it potentially a granny-ish thing to be into? Our teacher is young and modern and cute as all get out, but I'm not so sure about crafty. I think of knitting non garment items as fun and whimsical, but its entirely possible that these would be just dust collectors for many people. Perish the thought. Because I love this project. It is easy. And fast. And uses up scraps!

I knit these with worsted weight yarn because its what I had the most colors of. The bouquet I was gifted (knit by my friend Emanuela) was done with sock weight yarns and those were a little more elegant looking with their smaller sized stitches. Still, the first one I knit with worsted weight yarn got the Good Enough! stamp from me and I forged ahead. The top (darker) pink flower was the first and was knit on size 7 needles and it was a little too big. I realized that I should be knitting this a little tighter so I moved down to 5s. That was better but notice I'm not ripping that first one because I am nice and lazy like that. Like I said, it is Very Good Enough!

Whether or not you have to be crafty or a granny to appreciate these I hope she will feel genuinely appreciated when I attach the kid to them.

2010-05-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

Swatching

Most of my projects are so small scale that not much swatching is necessary. But here I am on the verge of a larger project, if I can just pick the yarn.

I want it to be this yarn, because it has been in my stash for years now and it was a yard sale find and it is heavenly. My only problem is that its not the worsted weight yarn that the pattern calls for. Now I am sitting on the fence on whether or not to knit it double stranded (but will it turn out too chunky?) or work out the math to make this yarn work. The other issue is its obvious whiteness, and just when I said good bye to the dye pots too.

While I think about this I'm letting myself be distracted by some smaller projects. As usual.

2010-05-06T21:14:00.000-07:00

Catching my breath

I have just about worked Berkeley's Earth Day festivities out of my system. It was fun and exhausting and exhilirating to see other people's work-some of it Earth Day related, some of it, less so. I think our booth was very sweet and I had a good time. And enough reggae to last me a good, long while thank you. For now, I am saying a temporary good bye to my dye pots, at least for a few weeks. I am a little tired of the constant mess in the dye kitchen, and simultaneously in the food kitchen. One constantly untidy kitchen is enough for me at the moment.

Now I feel I have a little time on my hands to think about other crafty projects. I'm pondering a february lady sweater for myself, a handspun EZ afghan and finally finishing up some (shamefully late) WIPs. Of course, pondering and doing are totally different things. I'm still deep in the land of pondering.

2010-04-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

Earth Day 2010

Some of you know I have been working with my friend, Emanuela-maker-of perfect-things, on a larger project in April. We will be at Berkeley's Earth Day festival on April 24th from 11am-5pm, with a table of handmade goods. Here is a preview of what we've been working on:

Our theme is natural fibers with an emphasis on soft play things, or slow grown toys for imaginative play. I like that my kids get to witness the process of making play things, I like that they can ask for something, lochness monster say, and that we can find a pattern or make up a pattern and make it ourselves. Each of these toys took at least a week to make (for myself anyways-Manu is a faster knitter than I) and often a little more. This knitting time was found in the evenings, in the car, at the park, in the library and basically carried around town everywhere I went just to get a row or two in. Considering I had virtually no designated "work" time or uninterrupted daylight hours to make these, I feel pretty good about what we got accomplished in a couple of months. Of course, it wasn't even half of our goals or ideas but there it is. The softies are stuffed with humanely raised sheep's wool or alpaca and knit with wool yarns.

For this fair, a lot of the knit toy patterns are Debi Birkin patterns, which she sells to home knitters and graciously allows folks to sell on a very small scale. By no means will we be "going into production" on these, and after this you will likely see them here as birthday gifts and school charity auction items after this-that is if my fingers can stand anymore. I do love these patterns and the sweet individual faces the animals all come out with.

Emanuela has an amazing sense of color, check out these striped dolly legs that she came up with. She also worked on some play food sewn with both traditional wool felt and ecofelt, which is a recycled fabric.

There are a few waldorf styled sheep as well, ironically stuffed with alpaca. In back of the animals is a lot of work's worth of naturally dyed fiber and handspun yarn. That's right, all that dyeing was for a purpose! If I'm good I'm going to try to dye a few more playsilks as well.

Notice my lone waldorf doll is hiding in the mix, I think I might put her up for sale if she is done in time.

I hope that if you are local you might stop by and say hi, I will be there playing with toys and spinning on my wheel. If you have kids there will be a large climbing wall and sidewalk chalk art area along with great food and other kid friendly activities. This is my first craft show or festival ever so it would be lovely to see some friendly and familiar faces!

2010-03-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

A few results

A few bumps of fiber out of the pot, starting with some overdyeing with indigo:

A single dip of indigo by itself:

A llama/merino blend that had a dusty color that wasn't crazy about pre-dyeing, but its much improved now.

Here, I got some help with the indigo pot from my good friend Emanuela, she carefully dipped for me while I snapped away trying to capture the color change. When you dye with indigo its important to not introduce oxygen (or air bubbles in this case) into the prepared vat, the indigo will react with the oxygen when the fiber or fabric is removed from the vat and the air hits it and then fiber changes from a yellowish/green color to blue. Maybe you can see the yellow/green color change near the pot-its tough to photograph because the fiber has to be pressed to the side of the pot while its being pulled out or else it will drip heavily into the vat and there will be too much oxygen in your pot which will inhibit proper dyeing.

Here is our pot towards the end of our dyeing for that day. Stinking like rotten eggs with a yellowish green color on the top-this is when it started leaning too much towards yellow and the pot went off and was not giving us much color at this point. A good time to take a break.

2010-03-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

The usual suspects

I've been dyeing a lot lately with the usual, the logwoods (purple and grey), quebracho red, madder and fustic. I tried myrobalan for the first time with less than spectacular results-it is supposed to make a nice teal color when overdyed with indigo.

I've done a lot of fiber, a little handspun. From left to right there these were dyed with: fustic, madder, myrobalan and I think more myrobalan. Myrobalan is a fruit pod from a tree that grows primarily in the foothills of the Himalayas, or so says my natural dye extract handbook. A better dyer than I could coax a clearer color perhaps. To be fair the skein of handspun was a tan merino with a fawn/white llama blend and it was dusty colored to begin with. It came out looking just plain dirty in the end-and I am pretty much enchanted with anything that is stained with grass or has a grape juice spill on it-Ooh! Naturally dyed! But this color was just bleah.

When colors begin to feel expected and bleah, I know its time for some excitement-enter indigo! I have mentioned before my absolute LOVE of indigo, the magical process of watching the colors change as you dip and remove the fiber from the vat (indigotin reacts with oxygen and it is the oxygen hitting the fiber than changes it from, an exciting but temporary, yellow/green to blue as its lifted out of the dye pot. The process requires two hands, making it tough for a single person to both dye and photograph at the same time. The smell of indigo is so funky, its that rotten egg/sulfur kind of smell that makes your kids cry and not eat dinner. But it brings out my inner bruja and I love how difficult and mysterious the process can be-sometimes I have NO idea what is going on in that pot or how to fix an off pot of indigo. Tonight I accidentally boiled my pot (you are NOT supposed to do this as it introduces oxygen into the vat) but what do you know, not 15 minutes later the surface of the pot looked perfect and it improved the results I was getting.

The past few days I have been sticking anything that was yellow or had any kind of red in it into this pot. Myrobalan-in you go! I don't think it will be teal, but it can't look worse! I dipped a medium brown roving that I'm hoping will be kind of black-ish. There is a bunch drying on the line now in the dark and I'll have to get a peek at in the morning. The wool below is several white, merino cross fleeces along with some odds and ends (a little white blue faced leister) that I had blended into an enormous loose roving. This is the result of a single dip.

To the left of the blue roving is more of the dusty merino/llama blend dyed first with fustic and dipped a single time in indigo. To the left of the green roving are the two skeins of handspun, both the dirty myrobalan and the madder orange. There will be close ups and more indigo to come. I have threatened once already and am tempted to now go and dip my cat. I think it would vastly improve her color.

2010-03-09T21:50:00.000-08:00

Crafting Something Cuter

Not only should I be ashamed of posting pictures of the shockingly ugly socks I am making, but maybe something bad should even happen to me for leaving the ugly pictures up for so long. So now, lets pretend I never said that last thing and just move on.

I woke up early Sunday morning and could not go back to sleep and so my day began in a peaceful way for a change. I am usually clinging to that last bit of weekend sleep and warm blanket goodness until the last moment, likely around 6:45am. Oh, sleeping in. Someone tell me I will know it again someday. But, waking early always has its perks, I got in a little work on my new project. I did a better job on knitting the cap this time, not that one can see the cap under the hair but I didn't like the misshapen caps I knit in the past. Of course, one is supposed to crochet these things but learning to crochet with mohair yarn is easier said than done. One day I will learn the proper way but for now I've pushed that day back a bit since I realized I can cast on about 35-40 stitches on size 8 needles and then just knit a cap of mohair yarn, decreasing as I go along until it is the proper shape.

Yes, we are having neck issues again but I dragged this head around with me today and sewed in some more hair and fussed with the neck/head shaping and I think I've got it a little closer to where I'd like it. Sadly, there is a doll making class this weekend that could likely solve my problems but I don't think I'll be able to make it. When I realized I couldn't go I got frustrated and started this new doll, I've fallen a little bit in love with the (many) imperfections of her features, as usual. J said she looked "blobby," which, is possibly a compliment, don't you think?

2010-02-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

Crafting Gone Ugly

I should be ashamed to post something so godawful ugly but I am savoring the experience of making this, the first, in the pair of the world's ugliest socks. I will obviously never ever wear these outside of the house, I am using up all the tiniest balls of sock weight samples of handspun yarns I've made at classes and while just sampling. I can remember just when I made a lot of these little balls of yarn, turned into stripes. I remember the various classes I took, the spindles they were spun on, the name's of many of the sheep. There is wool, hemp, bamboo, even cotton blended in parts of these yarns, there is a yarn that is the product of an indigo pot gone very wrong but I am forging ahead! Of course, I could have saved these samples and eventually made something visually appealing out of them but I opted not to. Why?

The biggest reason is that Bay Area winters and the minimally insulated/heated houses here make for Freezing Cold feet. The second reason is that my current scrappy socks are wearing out. Also, I am really, really trying to de-stash my fiber/yarn/fabric supply this year and I like to save the gourmet yarn for gifts and such. And, hey, they are house socks that are going to wear out in a couple of seasons and it feels so thrifty and economical to use oddballs this way.

Knitting all these tiny samples really lets me feel the difference in each yarn and gives me a good feel for how my hand spun sock yarns ought to feel and what they ought to be made out of. That brownish grey spot under the dark blue is my favorite section. It is from of a sheep named Laura, who has possibly the most pleasureable fleece to card and spin the wide world.

2010-02-05T21:06:00.000-08:00

When the Cat is away...

I will make a big mess on the dining room table. Mr. Partner has been working a whole bunch lately, leaving me plenty of opportunity to create huge piles of creative clutter all over. I didn't make this cute doll and baby doll set, I got it over at Craft Hope which is still open with awesome handmade goods for sale and charity. As of now there are still two waldorf dolls available, I'm restraining myself at this point. I initially visited absolutely determined to buy something there and felt rather lucky to check out with these. They even inspired me to make my own sweater dolls, rather than the whole involved doll body and wig/rug stitched hair, etc. of the other dolls I've made. But, its not going so well, I think partly due to my recycled sweater collection's lame colors. You've got to love the pink and black stripes on that dolls tights. I've got to find louder sweaters. (And that is my 2010 Slingshot Organizer behind my sweater doll, is it fixing anyone else's life this year besides mine? I'm finding it difficult for the planner to fix my life because I tend to ignore it. I need more of an android assistant who will just do it all for me. )

Always in style, felt strawberries and tiny wool dog kibble for J's new favorite dog stuffy.

And you've seen this yarn before (somewhere in that month of October). It was spun over such a long period of time and is so irregular I could never gift it to anyone or sell it. The garter stitch on the bias "pattern" is keeping me sane right now, for when I need to just be able to pick something up for a row at a time. I always need one project like that laying around, I really should put it on the kitchen counter to stop all my stress snacking, or possibly in front of that container of mint chocolate chip ice cream that I keep dipping into.

Also taking over the afternoon table is the beginning our Valentine's Day crafting. I've been in love with Martha's lollipop flowers and I feel like I need to get it out of my system. And now that M is in public school where V-Day is pretty much like a red and pink version of Halloween, I felt it was safe to give lollipops, although I detest them, and prefer to give (and get) chocolate myself. Just this once OK other parents?? They are bad tasting lollipops that the kids won't even really want to put in their mouthes, only look at them so cutely smooshed between all those millions of paper heart punch outs.

Of course, for preschool we're coming up with other ideas. I've not gotten the melted rainbow crayon heart idea out of my head yet but since I am at a school with someone who has already given that Valentine better that I could do it, (she used a drill!) I'm just going to wait until we are at different schools. And then I can pretend that whole thing was my great idea. Instead of coming up with a cute gifty type of Valentine I am just enjoying afternoons of gluey fingertips with my little one. I'm finding that we are only making a couple of each kind of valentine and many of J's ideas of a Valentine are quite abstract. I don't want to interfere with his 3 year old process too much but according to him some kids will be getting rectangular sheets of paper with watercolor paints or inky thumbprints on them. And I know you are excited about the possibility of getting something like that in the mail, probably about 3 months after the holiday has passed.

2010-01-24T21:36:00.000-08:00

An ongoing WIP

The table tops have looked something like this lately:

An ever changing array of unassembled, knit animal parts. Heads and bottoms all creepily snuggling. I am working on a stockpile for a larger project and the alpaca stuffing is flying.

2010-01-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

For my Mom

Here is the hat I made for my mom this year. The yarn was in the process of becoming tomten sleeves but it was a failed venture (I had run out of my main yarn I used for the body and was trying to finish the sleeves/hood with this) until I finally ripped it this year. The single skein of malabrigo in this very indigo-esk colorway was perfect for my blue loving, hat wearing mom. The pattern is the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret available for free on Ravelry. The recommended yarn is worsted weight malabrigo, which was exactly what I had so it was one of those rare moments when we were immediately in business! This took only a couple of nights to knit up with those big size 10 and 11 needles and was a lovely break from all that lochness knitting. You can't see much of the hat here but I really like the shape-and isn't my mom pretty?

Again, loving the slouchiness of this hat and check out my mom with this Maybelline Lashblast pose!

The cable pattern is incredibly simple and a great first cable project.

The color is a lot truer in this last picture and let me just say that this is the best shot I could pull off while holding the camera out at arm's length. Most of them were of various pieces of cabinetry in back of me or included only a corner of hat. It was a giggly sort of photo shoot.

2010-01-08T21:27:00.001-08:00

Back-with a new camera lens!

So, it wasn't the battery afterall that had died on my camera at Ardenwood. The lens was broken and Mr. Partner quickly replaced it in time for Christmas morning. December had us entirely consumed with advent (this has become a major event at our house-the entire month!) and although I had resolved to document it all, as well as all the handmaking, the idea of picture-less blog posts weren't too exciting so I let a lot go.

I ended up taking some belated pictures for posterity. I know its totally anti-climactic at this point, like a really late Christmas present you never expected or even asked for, but, humor me, and witness some of the things I made for the kids this year. I had to scale it way back and ended up making 2 of everything to keep things "fair," if I couldn't make 2 of them it is on hold until next holiday.

First, the lochness monsters. They are hansigurumi patterns straight out of her book. If you enjoy these patterns on etsy I highly recommend the book (although this is my first pattern from it). I also recommend joining the hansigurumi ravelry group for errata, because maybe you are like me and have zero interest in figuring out mistakes in patterns such as these. Honestly, I wouldn't even know how. Thank goodness for you ravelry.

I did have a heck of a time with the necks and shaping, the necks still want to twist around a bit and I had to add a wool wrapped pipe cleaner to both to get it to maintain a stable, neck-like shape.

The best part of these were the tummies! I love that splash of color on the bottom (and hello glare!). I'll spare you the pictures of them tucked into the branches of the tree with twinkling lights because I missed the holiday and even post-holiday boat.

Second, the "black and red cape with or without a hood and I don't even care what kind of black and red is on it" cape, as requested from Santa by Super M. Santa had to come up with a blue one also, because that is the color of the 3 year old moment. Oh, and can I just say that I actually made 4 of these! 2 (unlined) cloaks were sent to cousins in Oregon! I'm not sure if my boys think I made these or Santa did, at one point the fabric was discovered by J and he told me (scowling) that Santa was already working on this project so I don't have to do it. Don't they look overjoyed? It makes all those late nights worth it. At least its not a pink bunny suit kiddos-go back to playing with your toys now.

Third, felt pencil rolls! I made 2 but this is the one that has my one layer of I felted-and-dyed-it- naturally felt. I made this little sample felt at a class long ago, I used naturally dyed romney top (that was yellow) and layed it out with some white merino and then felted it, after that it went in for a single dip in the indigo pot. Its a splotchy sort of greenish but I like it. The hand made felt makes for an incredibly well cushioned roll-these pencils won't be breaking any time soon. I wasn't exactly sure why I was making these, perhaps to pad the count of handmade presents? Because they were easy? Or because I happened to have 2 sets of brand new Faber Castell pencils stashed away and a perfectly sized scrap of hand made felt? In the end, that is why I ended up doing this but, I never really "got" why these would be better than a metal pencil case. They seemed kind of bulky and just kind of a weird idea. I wondered why I was sewing a fabric version of something that already had a better metal one? Just because I could? I could knit myself a coffee mug or bicycle but would it be a good idea? As it turned out, this was the easiest and maybe the most loved thing I made them this last Christmas. They really enjoy the orders of the colors and the individual slots for each pencil, and if one is missing-they know it. Its strange how this easy project turned out to be so loved and used. So, thanks Amanda Soule, I never should have doubted you and all your great ideas.

The only thing I made here are the little boys. It is a warm and fuzzy felling that my 6 year old little tough boy still wears his black and red star dress in his happiest moments. I love that.

2009-12-06T22:03:00.000-08:00

Christmas at Ardenwood

Every chance I get, I jump to go to Ardenwood Historic Farm. I love it, the grounds, the house, the docents and the full days we spend there. My camera's battery died near the end of the visit and so I didn't get pictures of the blacksmith, holiday puppet show, yule log hunt or the new pheasant I discovered. Truely, there was something for everyone there. And anything that can get my 2 very young boys enthusiastically crafting is tops in my book:

There was herb sachet making, mistletoe and cranberry/popcorn garland stringing among many other activities but this is what mine like to do most of all:

There is lots of time for kid stuff at the water pump.

There is mom stuff. (I am grateful to not have to do some things by hand.)

There is fantasy in the trees just above you. Seriously. Right above you. I almost walked into this guy.

Below you isn't so bad either. (Romney I think-squeal!)

And Suffolks. Those ears are seriously cute.

Here is the version that came home with us:

2009-12-03T22:27:00.000-08:00

An ongoing Love Affair

Dirty sheep and I have a thing. Or maybe its just me that has a thing for them, its totally unfair how unreciprocated this relationship is. I've enjoyed most of the raw fleece I've worked with on some level but long wools make me lose my mind a little and I tend to end up with 10lb amounts at a time. This has happened to me quite a few times with romney fleeces, its a common breed in the states as well as New Zeland and Australia and I suppose its common for a reason because romney wool is just this fabulous stuff! There is a lot of variance within the breed and I have a fair amount of bouncy, fairly fine Romney wool. I also just got around to washing this 4 oz sample of a typical but beautiful romney fleece, long, lustorous locks. It was my gift from the wonderful natchwoolie for trading an insane amount of dollars for an equally insane amount of wool. This was a totally fair trade and I feel like I made out like a bandit but I'm, um, running out of space and money for this sort of thing. But since I haven't bought new clothes for myself since 2 babies ago I tend to overlook this type of indulgence. The staple length on this wool has to be at least 6 inches. Here it is dirty, greasy and golden with lanolin:

My wool washing method is the typical, arranging of locks in the same direction in a lingere bag. I give a soak in 140 degree canning pot of water and a big squirt of dish soap, and then as many rinses as it takes to run clean.
I washed the 4oz of white romney along with some coated black coopworth. Coopworth is a new breed for me to work with and I got 4 oz from a wool and dairy farmer via Homestead. This wool has a tighter, less distinct crimp. Its wonderfully free of vegetable matter and pretty coarse, who knows what this will be, I'll have to pet it a while first.

And here are my lovlies all clean and shiny and begging to be spun straight from the lock. I think the white romney is begging to be a sock, it would wear so well. The crimp is pretty open so I'm not sure the fabric will have great memory but it seems like it would wear so well. And be so shiny! We'll see what we can do about it post Christmas, shall we?

2009-12-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

A Christmas Update

Slow progress is being made on Lochness Monster #1. She's got 3 out of 4 fins as of last night. I guess I forgot to knit a few wraps while knitting her back and for some reason her neck wants to bend backwards on itself (and I'm not quite sure what I did to create this effect), but in the spirit of 11th hour Christmas crafting-oh well!

And remember those 10 months I had to knit this? Here it is, left on exactly the same stitch as it was when I posted. Oh man. My only defense is that I can't find one of the needles and that I've moved my crafting space a couple of times and we moved our household itself once this year. I'd still like to finish this, ideally for advent(!) but there are more urgent holiday knits at this point. I think M will be ok to wait another year for his stocking.

2009-11-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

Kitty No Name

Finally, I finished a stuffy for J! He has threatened to confiscate most of the stuffies I've been making for his own. He claimed this one before I had put features on it and for a day, it went by Kitty No Face. I asked nicely if I might put a face on it, he said no. Then he said yes. Then there was some bargaining about the number of eyes it needed to have. First, "one here here here and here," and then very firmly, "Only One." In the end a regular face prevailed and was welcomed by him afterall-whew!

Now Mr. Partner thinks that I got a little bit carried away when indenting the eyes on Kitty No Name, and he may have a point. You can't even see the right eye in the above picture, I may have to re-do them. But she's got a decent profile and I love the fact that she is already pilly! Bad kitty isn't seeing much of the world and lives in a rumpled comforter most all the time but Kitty No Name is out and about being happily strangled and dragged by her neck just about everywhere. One last confession about this one is that she has 2 left legs but no one has noticed yet so I don't think I'll have to re-knit that at least (and now you see why we have waist up shots only).

Insane as it is, Christmas crafting time is here and I'm behind already. I'm setting relaxingly low sights this year-I've got 5 stuffies to make and for two of them I am branching out beyond the world of Debi Birkin and into Hansigurumi. Wish me luck.

2009-10-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Bad Kitty

Bad Kitty, as I've been calling her, is done. She is even done way before our November birthday deadline. Super M's favorite stuffy is his kitty (an Easter gift from a neighbor long ago), her name is Gravestone. Really. I ought to consider changing Super M's title to Gothy M since he is a 5 year old G.I.T. (That's Goth In Training to those of who you never went to camp.) He requested this book from his Scholastic Book club catalog at school. Since its his birthday month and I just happened to have this little kitty in the works and because, its so very him, we ordered it. I have no idea what type of book this is, we go through a LOT of children's picture books in this house so I am excited to find something entirely new to me. I am also quite pleased that this is done with time to spare and can only hope I will be forgiven for not making his kitty "all black and with red eyes" as he requested.

And yes, another fall bunny has been gifted for our October birthday girl. I named her Pumpkin Bunny as I knit because it is fall and I am super creative and original like that.

And in progress, for Little J, Grey Kitty. Or possibly, Gravestone 2 (like I said, I am SUPER original). This is only the second of the 2 animals I've made for my own kids. Little J is wishing we could keep some of these animals for our own house and I think its about time he had one myself.

2009-10-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

Learning to knit

At our semi-regular Friday craft circle we've slowly been learning new things. My friend Kay learned to knit and I am learning how to teach someone else how to knit. Kay is now working on a skinny scarf for one of her daughters with some of my left over malabrigo yarn. Addi turbos are probably not the easiest needles to learn on but Kay is a champ and is slipping and sliding those stitches off like a pro, as you can see. I figure if you start with a variegated rainbow malabrigo for yarn you will be pretty well hooked on knitting for life. This is a my strategy as a fiber enabler-shh!

Last week I was working hard on a "skeleton" type mask for Super M's halloween costume. And then he changed his mind. Now he wants to be a gorilla. I am wanting to tell him that I started knitting his gorilla costume so he can, again, change his mind. We go through this every year and it is certainly a deliberate move on his part to avoid my handmade costume ideas. Up until this point he has had only (silly-ish) mama made costumes. (And one awesome hand me down space suit costume when he was 2. It was an all orange jump suit with a couple of patches and it was so tight it was 3/4 up his butt the whole night. The best part was that half the people who saw him thought he was a "tiny inmate.") I'm finishing this mask one way or another and he will be shown here modeling it in all its ridiculous glory. I am having to sell this to him as a "skeleton" mask but really, its a bit more like a knitted psycho mask. In the end, it may be more fitting for myself.

2009-10-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

Harvest Fair

Here are my boys disappearing into the popcorn field at Ardenwood historic farm. I've been looking forward to this little fair since summer. The corn harvesting is definitely the highlight for all of us.

J was more enamored of shucking the individual ears of corn than gathering and picking. It was tough to get pictures of Super M who would appear only sporadically from the field with more ears of corn for me. I think I caught the back of his shirt before he was completely out of sight.

The Indian corn was so beautiful. We loved opening the different colored husks, not knowing what the ears would look like on the inside.

Another favorite spot were the bales of hay, piled sky high. Or so it seems when you are 3 years old.

And, as always, I jump at any chance to visit the great wheel at Ardenwood.

2009-10-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

Cleaning House

Here is a 4 oz bump of roving that it took me nearly 4 years to spin. It was one of those random pick it up/put it down/lose it under the passenger seat for 6 months type of projects. I started it long ago on a drop spindle and carried it around very sporadically since then. I think I lost various balls of it once it was wound off the spindle and finally, finally I recently gathered them all and finished plying on my ebony Jenkins Turkish spindle.

Its a pollwarth roving that I picked up at Deep Color, it had LONG color repeats with subtle color changes. The fleece itself has some natural (brownish) coloring in some places, I think its a blend of brown and white fleeces all blended together.

Since it was spun here and there and everywhere over the course of a long period of time, it is a whole mess of different amounts of twist and thick and thin. Now that I can see it in terms of doll hair (squeal!) there is a whole new world of beauty in these irregularities.

Speaking of dolls, here is some really smelly alpaca seconds and thirds that I got CHEAP for stuffing. I was thinking I'd card it with second quality wools I've got laying around. But its incredibly tedious, sometimes I wonder how can I be this cheap! The time alone to do this kind of boring carding is worth the extra couple dollars a pound to just buy the stuffing already in carded batt form. This fleece made the whole back half of my house smell terribly while in the pot.

Stinky or not, there is something about raw fleece that you've got to love. If only there were some sort of smell-o-blog program so we could share the irresistable putrid goodness together.

2009-10-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Nature Table and Witch's Circle Part Deux

Yesterday I had quite possibly the best morning ever. Seven of my best, craftiest, sweetest mama friends came over to drink tea, eat pastry and make stuff. The night before, Mr. Partner (remember how he totally hates how I call him this? And so I totally must call him this.) wished me luck with my "Witch's Circle". Thanks honey, it was definitely The Best Witch's Circle Ever. Marina has more kindly dubbed it an Inspiration Circle and blogged a far more beautiful Part Un than I ever could.

Some learned to cast on and knit for the first time ever! Some were old friends and some met for the first time. It was a group of women, who I feel share very similar values and, I think, everyone hit it off really well for this reason. It was so meaningful to craft with other moms who do most of their creating late at night by themselves. Those quiet nights of blog perusing and random creating are crucial part of my daily rhythm and sanity. Its usually through other blogs that I feel connected to other moms like myself. This daytime, real life gathering made me absolutely giddy. We got to touch and see each other's work, and oh my, there was some serious talent in the room. Arriving very fashionably late was one crafster (who is known as Mama Sandra around these parts) and she casually strolled in with this:

Yeah, no big deal, right? Here you go. Its only a handmade lotus flower! And, of course, it has to live here on the handmade nature table/fairy house:

Quite possibly forever. I don't know how seasonal that idea is but my flower is not going anywhere. Its an evergreen lotus as far as I'm concerned. Some of the wool was naturally dyed locks I gave Sandra for needle felting. There was some delicate cormo and merino that I handwashed LONG ago and rinsed a little to rigorously and so it felted a little. She felted it a lot and turned it into this gasp worthy gift. Thank you mama Sandra and thank you ladies for coming and sharing all that you did. Please tell me you'll come again soon. Meanwhile I guess I'll drink tea, eat pastry and make stuff.

2009-10-02T20:43:00.000-07:00

Gifts and The Name

At this stage this doll was nameless. I couldn't even make up pretend names because I knew it was not my job to name this one. So, I fussed with her an awful lot, enjoying certain parts of the doll, and of course, lamenting the parts I felt I screwed up on. But still, I think she had a funky but sweet personality that was right for the girl I was making her for. I spent a fair amount of time wondering about her name while I was sewing the features and hair.

I felt like I made a lot of mistakes on this doll, maybe more than the first one. But still, her hair and her eyes make me pretty happy.

An old fat quarter came in handy to make up a little nightgown. I dragged my heels on sewing doll clothes for a long time-and I have no idea why. I guess it was one of those mental crafting blocks. I felt totally unqualified to sew them. The nightgown was a good ice breaker for doll clothes and I, very simply constructed and easily done. And it didn't matter much if it didn't fit quite perfectly-you can see its quite roomy. In some languages, this italicized "roomy" means "too big". In my world of sewing it means "better than naked." This dolly now has a home and a name: Samantha. Which, as it turns out, was my doll's name as well. Although I had a prenamed American Girl doll, still I look for these little coincidences and like to think of them as stars and planets alligning all for me. I'm sure all two of you agree with me on this.

This is our "fairy home" and sometimes nature table. It was gifted to us by the mom of the 7 year old girl I gave Samantha to. This was a party favor for her previous year's birthday party-yes, a PARTY FAVOR. You read that right, although favor isn't the right word. So, how lucky am I? I've decorated this with various playthings and nature items along with my kids over the last year. Currently, we've done it up Autumn (and Halloween) style. There is a lot of important stuff in there for me right now.

But I think this one is the most important to M, who is obsessed with all things dark and ghoulish, a Ghost Gourd:

We are in agreement that it is a cool gourd and absolutely ghost like. And the felt flower? Yes, it is awesome beyond words and no, I didn't make it. That really deserves its own post and will be blogged about it in Nature Table (and Witch's Circle) Part Deux.

2009-09-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

Doll Parts

For our upcoming September birthday girl we've got not a bunny getting made up!

Her unstuffed body:I suppose its impossible to achieve absolutely symmetrical features. I re-sewed the eyes only three times before giving up.

And I've "harvested" two dahlia blooms from my front yard. And I think that is it for this year. The 3 other plants stayed in sprout state all summer.

2009-09-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

August Birthdays

We had a lot of little girl birthdays this past month. Our gifts looked like this on the outside:

and this on the inside.

I couldn't stop myself. It was a bit of Easter in August.

2009-08-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

Lest you think I don't know how

I will show that, yes, I do know how to knit. This blog has made me realize that my life is heavy on spinning and fiber prep and really, pretty light on knitting. We went on a brief trip out of town and instead of getting carried away with my spindles I actually accomplished some knitting. Everywhere I went I carried this little weirdly shaped piece of grey fabric along and actually got a chance to knit! It seems like forever since I've knit anything with purpose. I had some false starts on a feather and fan stitch scarf, a lace ribbon scarf and yes, even a clapotis. (Which, by the way, I made some decent progress on until I decided that the yarn and pattern weren't good mates.) So, it felt great to finally be excited about making something and having knitting success!

He hasn't got features yet, just the eyes left to do. And a bit of a club foot, but we won't discuss that, will we? Its a Debi Birkin pattern that I got on etsy. Everything is knit flat with simple increases and decreases and then seaming. I wish that some of it were knit in the round with different techniques that would require less seaming but really, I have no complaints about this pattern or any of hers so far. They are simple and cute and that is that. I knit this with Paton's merino yarn that I got from Joanne's with my 40% off coupons! It is of course, stuffed with more wool. This Paton's merino is a departure for me. I got into spinning so that I could have more control over the yarn I use and where it comes from. I'm guessing, based on price and availability, that this yarn is grown in New Zealand or Australia, and carded, dyed and spun in China and then sold here. Not exactly a slow fiber. This is to say nothing about the treatment of the animals themselves. I am going to bite the bullet and have a lot of my stashed fleeces spun into yarn for me so I can keep working on these patterns with my own humane grown millspun yarns. But until then, I'm compromising and using the Paton's.

And now, a dyeing interruption: I finally rinsed the yarn and rovings that were overdyed with the last madder bath I did. I am much pleased with the results. Oh, the drama of reds! I love a good semi solid dye job, with the interest of variegated yarn and more wearability-in my mind.

And back to knitting. I'm happy about this one. Another Debi Birkin pattern. Be prepared to see a set of these appear during the holiday season. Unless I get sick of them, but its not too likely at this point. I knit this while traveling in Minneapolis and finished it back in Berkeley. I didn't have any white yarn at the points where i was supposed to make the socks and cuff on the dress, I also omitted the sailor bib that is a part of the pattern-although I made it. I accidentally sewed the head on before the bib and then (perhaps conveniently) decided I liked it better without!

Since when could big feet be so elegant?

Apparently, my theme is bunnies. I knit this little guy from and beautiful book: Knitted Animals. It didn't turn out like the picture I was working from but its SOFT (alpaca) and just the right size for a now 3 year old (!) hand to smoosh. It was love at first sight. I think the moment that little J opened his bunny present was when I got inspired to keep going with the knitted animals. Thanks for helping me get my knitting mojo back and Happy Birthday.

2009-06-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

Mari, Steeler and Straw

Aah, natural dyeing. The fine line you sometimes walk between subtle beauty and well, straw. It doesn't have to be this way, in fact it often isn't. And once I knit this yarn, poofy and straw colored, I am sure I will love it. But when you have piles and piles of this colored yarn and fiber, well. You sometimes feel buried under a haystack. And that is why, lovely though it is, it is going back into the dye pot with some madder. A WHOLE LOT of madder.

The fiber itself came from mostly Mari's and a little bit of Steeler's fleece. They are both merino crosses from Homestead. There has been a lot of variation in the merino crosses I've spun, this one is highly crimpy, and medium soft. There was a lot of poof in that sample skein I spun when I first got it, a fine, but disorganized crimp, kind of like some of the ramboulliet from the same farm. I've since spun little bits of it into sock weight yarns and knit bits of it into tiny socks and actually like the fabric I got with it. I dyed the locks a long time ago with pomegranate and fustic mostly I think. Somehow some madder must have worked its way into the mix, there are some strips of red in there. And some of the locks were undyed, I did have the idea of overdyeing some of this in the indigo pot so we'll see if that has an exciting end.

Wouldn't you feel like the miller's daughter too?

I tried a little barber pole yarn for fun with this same fiber. I thought about dipping this in indigo to see the white and yellow colors take the indigo differently but I think I like it just fine the way it is.

And once in a while, I like walking on the wildside with some synthetic dyes. I got this a summer ago at The Fiber Studio. Its natural colored and handdyed BFL. Its my mindless comfort spinning now. I am spinning it with the vague idea of knitting a hat for a little girl I know.

2009-05-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

More Lately Yarn and Hope

I picked up some pollwarth locks at Deep Color's open house. There was just a tiny bag left and that was good for me. I can get carried away with the hand dyed pollwarth locks. This bag was reds and blues, I plied but in the end I wish I would have left this as the elegant single it began as. I flick carded the locks and spun them over the fold. I also picked up some undyed grey pollwarth locks there, they are irresistable.

There is enough for a small project for a colorful person. About 3 oz, maybe it is enough for a small colorful person at best.

And here's to hope. I thought our neighborhood racoons dug up all my bulbs and tore them to pieces but lo and behold, my first dahlias ever. I have four plants, maybe I will be able to dye a single skein of yarn with the blooms at the end of summer.

2009-05-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

Verb and lately spun

The most exciting thing I've done lately is finally visit Kritine's brick and mortar store. It was so much inspiration packed into so small a place. I brought my camera and of course left the memory card at home. I am signed up for 5 classes there now so hopefully there will be some new ideas coming my way. I realize how stagnant my spinning has become since Deep Color closed as a spinning studio. Sometimes I feel like I should just follow Claudia's direction and throw myself into art and felting because being around her is inspiration in itself, but I am still obsessed with spinning wool into yarn. And that is what I will do with this bluefaced leister that had to come home with me from Verb:

Its dyed in the Magic Bean colorway. Kristine knows how to name her colorways better than anyone, seriously go check out her store and tell me those aren't the best names ever. Not to mention the colors, the next time I am there I am taking some pictures of those walls. The colors she has achieved with earth hues dye extracts is stunning. I've never gotten a green like this and I'm obsessed with these bundles just for the color. I bought them with absolutely no purpose in mind. Which is TERRIBLE! And right at shearing time also.

Other than that there has been the usual comfort spinning. Here is a bump of Ashland Bay's Baltic colorway spun up into a 2 ply worsted weight yarn.

And a funkier bit of yarn from long ago. I found 2 lonely skeins of about 2oz each, both in slightly different shades of naturally dyed yellow (fustic and pomegranate I think) and both slightly thick and thin, loosely spun. Here they are plied, I am thinking of giving them a single dip into some indigo. My indigo pot has been lonely too long.

2009-04-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

Sheep Shearing

We went this last Sunday to Ardenwood farm for their annual sheep shearing. I've been planning this for a long time and took my camera with. I got zero sheep or sheep shearing shots-totally ridiculous I know. But I did get a couple of pictures of these:

Sheep shearer shoes! I asked the shearer if he was wearing some kind of felt shoe and he said, yes he was and that they were specifically for shearing. I'm not so sure he understood what I asked, possibly they are leather. Certainly, they have a specific purpose or history. So far, I've not discovered it, all I've found is this. If I can get a hold of my cousin-in-law in New Zealand who LIVES on a sheep farm then maybe I can get to the bottom of these.

From off of the shearer's truck: many bags full.

And a docent slowly spinning on a great wheel. I really wanted to try the great wheel until I could hear it painfully creaking and wobbling around. Maybe I'll wait for a larger wool festival. I don't think they were offering the viewers a turn at the wheels anyways but my fingers did itch just to see the great wheel. I've never tried it.

There are no pictures of the sheep themselves since there was a huge crowd around the barn before the shearing began and my kids were in no mood to sit there and stare at a bunch of nervous romneys and suffolks. We did go back and peek in the barn once the shearing was in progress and I saw one shorn sheep with a few cuts on her breathing in shallow, quick breaths. I don't know much of anything about sheep shearing or animal husbandry but I know a scared animal when I see one. I hope it was of a particularly nervous disposition and the other sheep didn't have any cuts and seemed fine walking around. Still, the crowd was enough to make me anxious as well.

I brought a pair of handcards and my turkish spindle in my bag on this outing. Don't ask me why, clearly it was insanity and these things did nothing but take up precious room in my bag but I felt safer knowing that they were there. Just in case.

2009-04-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

Shearing

This is shamefully, not a fleece from this spring's shearing. It is from last year's! So, it is definitely time to get it washed-to make room for some more dirty fleeces. Seriously, I love the smell of raw fleece, my kids and their playmates can be somewhat less understanding. Sadly, I'm undecided if I will be washing more raw fleece this year or not. We in the bay area are facing a serious drought this year. All of the washing water can (painstakingly) be used in the garden (it involves a lot of hauling on my part) and so the water wouldn't be wasted but its still something I debate about. I may have to take a look at the fleeces all together and see if there is anything really worthy of me processing by hand. I'm loving what I've been getting back from Morro Fleece Works so much that I may send most of it there this year. This is the last of Piper's dirty(romney) fleece:

And then clean. Shiny, shiny, shiny!

Of course, I should be finishing this post with a picture of Piper's yarn, but I haven't gotten there yet. This is more of Rita's merino blended with alpaca in a simple, soft 2 ply. I've made a couple of hats with this yarn now and I seriously can't get enough of spinning it. This is my total make out yarn now.

2009-03-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

A Small Accomplishment

Here is my small, but warm accomplishment of last week. Even if it is only warm in a pretend way, pretend holds a high place in our household. This is Waldorf Mama's free sweater pattern (downloadable from her blog). I knit it in an economical, dark grey Paton's Merino that was in the stash. These mismatched buttons were also in my stash. I think I got them when I used to be addicted to buying old ladie's sewing boxes on ebay. The only modification I made to the sweater was to take off 8 rows of garter stitch at the bottom of the sweater, I wanted it to hit at the waist. The rest of Molly is still pretty clothes-free but I'm chipping away at this project slowly. Molly is pictured in front of the house she wishes she fit in.

Here is who really fits in it:

Our wooden Baby J and "Madeline."

2009-03-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

A Special Yarn

This is the first yarn I ever bought. Well, there are two: the blue is Peace Fleece and the green is Little Turtle Knits farm yarn. Both are two ply, both are a little scratchy in my opinion. I bought them with the hopes of making Super M a soaker for his cloth diapers. I was searching for a way to avoid the synthetic fabrics used in cloth diapering (for the waterproof covers) and wanted to use wool as a replacement. I couldn't find any yarns marketed as "humane" and I remember emailing Peace Fleece asking what they knew about the treatment of the animals used to make their yarns. I got a long and friendly email back from Peter, the co-founder. There wasn't much he could tell me about the animals on the farms, but that they tried to buy from small farms in struggling economies or war torn countries. He visits the farms and farmers himself in Russia and the middle east. The idea behind the company was so mindful that although it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, I figured it was as close as I was going to come, for then. I cast on in a beginning knitting class at a now-closed yarn store and knit my first soaker. It was too scratchy of course, for baby wear and I ripped it long ago. I finally figured out what to do with the yarn. The yarn that started my interested in knitting and then spinning and then dyeing and felting and textiles in general.

As it is not next to skin soft I had to think for a bit, if four years is "a bit". I wanted it to be something ultimately for Super M as it began as his yarn. So, for next December (and hopefully many Decembers after) he will have his own stocking.

That is, if I finish it in time. I'm knitting it with irregular stripes in a simple stockinette with heel flap, etc. It will be as big as the yarn lets it (hence the irregular striping-I'm going to let myself get down to the end with this one). I've only got, what? 10 months left to finish?

2009-02-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

Shibori Felt

The last class I took at Deep Color Studio (and this was not terribly recent) involved indigo dyeing and shibori as well as wet felting and nuno felting. Here is a Merino/tencel blend that was felted into a short scarf. We then sew through the scarf and pulled the threads tight which gathered the fabric up. This is shibori, a resist dyeing technique. We used a variety of weights for strings and sewed at irregular intervals so as to create a tree bark like pattern. This was the goal anyways. Then we dipped the scarves into an indigo pot that we made during the class. I dipped it once only and it came out like this:

I can't remember how long I waited to remove the threads and open it up. Maybe a day? Or two? What willpower! Here I am at the start:

And then? I see trees! Its kind of tree-like, a little moreso once it was ironed. It is very short and also very soft. I think it would cool with an old pin but I've yet to find one. I liked this shibori technique and that it is not typically used on felt. I haven't used this technique since but I love the idea of resist dyeing.

2009-01-25T21:08:00.000-08:00

A Future Mermaid?

With any luck Molly (did I mention she now has a name? She goes by Molly or Magic Molly lately) has had her last haircut. She went through another "shearing" and I pulled out almost all the shetland wool from her wig-she had been declared "pokey." So, I filled it back in with some of that darker brown alpaca that I mentioned earlier (two ply-not a single, ended up working out better). I am hoping no further transformations will be needed at this point, although the latest indigo yarn would make for some enchanting mermaid hair!

2009-01-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

More spinning and tiny bit of knitting

Some indigo dyed romney top that was dipped once:

As a spun single:

Its now been plied and needs the twist to be set and dried. For a belated Christmas gift I gave my mom a handspun hat. Could it be simpler? I don't think so but its so cute. I think hats are the true destiny of this roving. Its so lovely, more of Rita's white merino blended with silver alpaca. I made both a knit and felt scarf from this and tried spinning it finer on a spindle but it was a little prickly on the neck as a scarf and as a finer yarn the coarser fiber of the alpaca stood out more. So, I've gone with a softly spun, slightly thick and thin single. I knit it on size 8 needles but it definitely could have knit it more loosely.

I loved this hat so much I wanted one for myself so here I am trying it out as a beenie. I've got it almost finished at this point but I'm not sure about the shaping of the beenie on my head...I might have to go back to the start with this one.

2009-01-08T20:34:00.000-08:00

Thanks Courtney

For reminding me that I have a blog. I'm still bubbling with craftiness but less so with blogginess apparently. Here is a recent dyeing endeavor, it started out most ordinary with quebracho red (top), logwood purple (middle) and some madder.

Resulting in this colorful poofy pile of merino goodness:

And then resulted in my favorite dyeing thus far:

I took the excess madder and que red bath and overdyed some indigo romney top, expecting some form of greys with blue and a little red tones but the results were much more pink and rosy purple in spots than I expected.

These are 3 2 oz tops braided together, one did come out much more grey than the other two. I'm deciding between a 2 or 3 ply yarn for this one. Madder and Indigo, my new favorite combo. I think the quebracho red pushed it in a much more purple direction which I adore. But the spinning will have to wait until its washed and until this next project is closer to finished.

"Scary Baby" or "Baby Head" as she was once known, is now tenatively called Molly. She was almost a boy, in order to reflect the gender of my real kids. But the hair, well, it was just too crazy and Baby J didn't care for it at all. If I do a boy doll I think I might just crochet a worsted weight wool cap/wig and sew that on but without sewing in additional "sticking out" hair.

So, meet the daughter I never had: Molly. I let there be some assymetry, don't look too closely at her eyes if asymmetry bothers you. It is my first doll afterall and I was getting hung up on various parts of the process being perfect. In the end, I think I just need to let go and push through. Here she is with hair laid ontop only. Baby J requested "rainbow hair" and "long, long, long, like that-like a sister."

Here are the three yarns used so far to make her hair. On the right is Becan's shetland wool (again from Homestead wool and gift farm) that I spun long ago, in the middle is the brown mohair that she came with from Joy's Waldorf dolls and on the left is the Misti Alpaca sock yarn that I knit a pair of last minute Christmas socks from for my grandmother in Taiwan. I'd like to work in one other darker, richer brown yarn that is not yet spun up. I want a single of dark brown Alpaca that is from a pinto Alpaca I've got stashed away. So soft. In the very front is the boy hair carnage that I'm saving for later possibly boy doll.

I've got no clue if I'm doing this doll hair thing properly. Well, I'm certain I'm not. I got completely stuck on the crocheted cap and gave in to knitting one finally. Now I've stitched the top on with the part and I'm filling in the rest by rug stitching it on, some sort of bastardized rug stitch I'm sure. But I think its going to hold up alright, I don't forsee my boys desperate to style her hair anyways. I do love her little nose.

Stitching on the part, I could fall in love with doll making just for the hair!

2008-10-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

Who knows what this is?

This is what has been distracting me from life and other crafts. It is, or will be, waldorf doll for Baby J, I got a kit from Joy's Waldorf Dolls, but the real inspiration for wanting to make a waldorf doll is from Christine's dolls. I love the styling of her dolls, the hair! the shapes of the eyes and the careful spacing, their personalitites appealed to me in a way other dolls have not. Not to mention the clothes and hand knit sweaters, doll clothes often turn me off but I love the Bamboletta doll's simple clothing and Christine's philosophy on having the doll's clothing reflect the child's. I also love the handspun and woven clothes of these dolls.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves, I'm not to the clothes yet. Here is the head with pins for where the eyes and mouth will be. And who could resist making the cute nose? It looks better with the fabric over the outside. And I've started on the embroidery for the eyes and mouth, my satin stitch apparently leaves something to be desired. I've had to take out one eye already and need to re-do the other one at this point.

So far, we've been calling it "Baby Head" and it has been pronounced "scary" by Baby J, so I think we're off to a good start.

2008-08-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

Commitment

I sent out into the world the sparkly yarn. I could not commit. I wanted to make something I would wear with those colors, something kind of muted with a little color pop here and there. But in the end the Angelina did me in. It was fun to spin but a little Reno for a harf.

So, here I am again, searching for a new commitment. I've thinking for a while of doing something with a singles yarn that has a slower color change with thick stripes or blocks of color. This is my current experiment, I like it so far:

Parts of it got a little too thin, its been a while since I've spun a thicker single and I'm doing it on a little schaact spindle. Maybe I should switch to my heavier weight ashford. I have to go slow for it to come out as squishy as I like. I knit this energized, spinning a little and knitting a little, I didn't measure WPI or anything but will have to when I start spinning for the actual harf. So far I'm just enjoying my enormous gague swatch!

And Piper

Can you resist its shiny, lustorous goodness? I couldn't! I couldn't resist all 5lbs of it. Even though I am destashing (in theory) and it is unwashed. I've been trying to wash less myself since I've just got plenty to do with dyeing and spinning it all. I drum carded and spun a teeny sample-a simple 2 ply. This could be beautiful overdyed, its just amazing. I'm thinking of sending it out to be combed into top. I might be able to get what I want with my drum carder but we'll just see. The sample itself is a bit underspun.

2008-07-24T19:59:00.000-07:00

Bits and Whole

My harf yarn is done. Whether or not it will become a harf remains to be seen. The skeins relate somewhat but still I have reservations. Some blue spots of roving looked like this:

Just a little bit of blue and even just predrafting makes the colors really diffuse and as it spins it marls and gets muddier. Yay! Muddy!

Other spots looked like this:

And not much can be done unless I really picked apart the roving and re blended bits of it, etc. I did take out the longest stretches of BRIGHT color and saved them for other rainy fiber days. When the section of color is so much longer than the staple length there is not much you can do to tone it down, its just going to be blue blue blue and not earthy at all like the rest of the roving. See:

So, there are some bright spots and lots of earthy spots. One distinctly pumpkiny skein and two dominant in greens and some fun eye popping bits scattered throughout. I found myself only wanting to partially control the colors in this random roving. I didn't want to pick out all the bright spots or do lots of blending. I just wanted to pretty much randomly spin it and have a fairly homogenous yarn with a few exciting, weird color moments. I should have really spun a three ply to tone the colors down a little more and then had a nice round bouncy yarn.

I'm going to knit a gague swatch and see the fabric knitted up before I make any final decisions.

2008-07-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Would be Harf

Here is the yarn so far, but I'm starting to have my doubts. Its beautiful, fun to spin-but is it harf-able? The photo makes this yarn appear fairly matte but its got a lot of shimmer spun in. It may be another gift yarn. I love the spinning of it but I'm trying not to hang onto piles and piles of yarn without some near or distant purpose in mind.

On the next sparkly bobbin:
I've got 15oz of this and the first skein gave me 118 yds of worsted/heavy worsted weight yarn. The pattern calls for 3 skeins of 120 yds worsted weight, I've got enough and planned to take out the brightest spots of roving with the long stretches of blue and pink, got most of it pulled out on the left. I'm committed to spinning 3 skeins at least and then I'll save any leftover roving for blending, etc.

2008-06-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

Distractions

This came in the mail for me a little while ago. It was part of the huge order I previously mentioned. It is one of the favorite fleeces I have from Homestead, its romney and oh so silky. This is the fleece that sold me on romneys. I had tried some previously and yes, they were pleasantly different to all the fine wools I had been working with. Primarily, because they were some of my first bought raw fleeces, the locks were more interesting than all that merino and BFL top I had been getting. In general, I still prefered my fine wools. But this fleece, THIS fleece rocked my world. I got a tiny sample of the wool from Sandy and died. I couldn't even spin the tiny sample immediately because then it would be all gone. I pathetically saved half of it to rub on my face. The colors move around a lot, golden tips, white, tan, grey, silver and stripes of darker brown. I found that the locks were most happy flick carded and spun not too fine, a loosely spun 2 ply worsted weight yarn was soft and shimmering. I have a lot of this, the full fleece from this year and a bit from last year. YUM! I'm still just sampling. I felted a swatch and died it in the indigo pot, its lovely. But, I think I'm destined to spin most of this fleece. Its a fine fate if you ask me. This fleece is for the future, its one of those things that you have to ponder for a while before you can jump in.

This, on the other hand, is immediate gratification:

This is dyed by Sandy, not natural dyed, um could you tell? To be honest, I just wanted the fleece! I missed out on this fleece, its shetland/merino cross and although that sounds interesting and irresistable to all the shetland lovers out there, I wasn't sure it would be fine enough for what I wanted. Sandy sent me a sample and it was a keeper but, by then, most of the fleece was sold-I did manage to snag a bit of undyed and this wild 15oz of "Irish Hoopla" roving. I started in on it today (I've been spinning lots of WHITE and its time for something else.)

It was terribly exciting to spin someone else's colors. It had me thinking a lot about color and what the heck to do with this beautiful and kooky colored roving. My easy way out would be my quick and dirty "Art Yarn!" Thick and thin and thread plied, instant eye candy! But, it wouldn't be used and that seemed too easy. I want to use this one. So, my challenge is to make it into something I would actually wear. The problem is I wear black. Or grey. Or jeans. (OK, my one color weakness is kelley green!) But I don't wear bright blue or pink, still, I think its do-able.

When you get into the roving there are lots of long stretches of earthy greens, browns, pumpkiny oranges and squashy yellows. Earth is good and I can rock that easily but what about the screaming magenta and cotton candy pinks?! There are also chunks of BRIGHT blue, which you can see in the front. I broke up the roving and I've decided to make into a harf. Its got to be a 2 (or I suppose could have been a 3) ply worsted weight yarn. I don't want this to stripe because of the loud colors, I want to take them down a bit. The longer sections of earth tones should dominate this yarn with accents of the kookier colors spread throughout. Most of the brightest colors are in tiny spots so the color breaks up and spreads out and its a marled single and will become more muted when plied. So I hope. The other easy way out of this one would have been to simply tear out the earthy colors and spin those up, that could easily worked out as a beautiful, subtly striping single. But, this way is a better color challenge. And I like the colors, love the roving, I just want to not end up in the trap of LOVING color and not being able to wear it.

I think its going to be fun and ROCK! Since its randomly dyed I've got to try to space out the colors so there isn't an orange end and a pink/blue end. The only thing that worries me about the wearability of this yarn is all the firestar in it. Its dang sparkly and I don't know how sparkly of a person I am. I love the luster of long wools but firestar takes it to a whole other Las Vegas level. Its going to be an interesting knit.

I'm going to have to get out the camera for this spin. My next chance for daytime, picture-taking, spinning in peace time will likely be Monday.

2008-06-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

Minneapolis!

We went for 10 days to my sweet hometown. I needed 10 days before hand to breathe into a paper bag as I got ready for a red eye plane trip with a 1 year old and 4 year old. Then 10 days on the other side of that to lie in the child's pose on my yoga mat to recover from the plane ride back. And lets say that is why you have not heard from me. Thank goodness they had a some wooly goodness for me in the midwest!

I scored this at the Fiber Studio in Minneapolis. This place is heaven, especially if you are into art yarns or felting. There is a heavy felting vibe there. Like my new turkish spindle?! Yum! I've been craving a turkish spindle for a LONG time now and I've been holding out for a special hand turned wood spindle for a while. It wasn't exactly from the wool festival I'd been planning to buy it from, (I was hoping to make it to BSG this year) but it was a cool souvenir and I got to support a new little fiber business. I've spun and plied happily on it now and I'm getting the feel for this low whorl thing slowly.

Now, see what happens when I try to take pictures? I get a lot of help. Here is an itty bitty batt that I spun up quickly into a 2 ply, heavy worsted weight yarn. Enough for a little baby hat I think. This was a hand blended, drum carded batt of merino, also from The Fiber Studio.

Some irresistable wool that I got to pick over, its 3/4 romney and 1/4 merino. Its got about a 4-5 inch staple length on average and a crisp handle. I can't believe that I am such a romney slut now. I never would have thought it of myself. And doesn't my thumb look kind of like a grown up lady's thumb here? There is a nail that isn't half chewed off-that is so great! See how the wool calms me?

I thought about blogging a lot this last month. In fact, I did lots of thinking about it. I also did lots of spinning, a bit of knitting and took a few pictures. I'm really going to have to make a contract with my blog about not starting so many new projects. I hoped having a blog would help with that. I'm trying to hold myself down to finishing one project at a time now before beginning something new. This means, finishing one sewing, knitting, spinning or felting project before moving onto another unfinished project in the same category.

2008-04-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

FOs and My Favorite Thing

This is a rather tight squeeze and I think it might be making its way to a smaller baby soon. The striping is weird and the seaming leaves something to be desired. But he can wear it and I made it and I have less little balls of Blue Sky Cotton rolling around in my stash so, kind of a success right? Not an entirely satisfying one I'll admit. I'm not super happy with the weird white panels at the top but I really was trying to get rid of that white. The baby is still cute though.

Maybe once a week I get to do my all time favorite thing which is: sit in the yard with my wheel and a bag of wool and spin straight from the lock. This is romney I got from Homestead. Its nice, its not my absolute favorite wool ever. I have that order being built now-there are some amazing romney fleeces coming my way. I never thought I'd be a romney lover but they've made one out of me. A lot of their romney fleeces are towards the finer end and full of luster. I'm a total sucker for luster lately. I've got some merino and a lot of romney, most of it from one sheep that I have a total crush on now. So, here is what I do with my super special daytime spinning time, I don't have a flick carder so I just use my handcards and charge the lock on there:

Pull it gently through and the waste gets left behind. I put that into a bag for later felting usually.

Then I spin it, sometimes over the fold, but today with an attenuated long draw, straight forward from the lock. Its almost like combed fiber but without all the prep. I feel like spinning this way puts me in touch with the individual fleece and how it wants to be spun. The different parts of the fleece are very distinct and neck fleece is a totally different yarn than another area. The fleece in my bag has a lot of variation in color and texture, each lock is different. Some of these staples were shorter and it was easier to not fold them over my finger.

See, invisible spinning. I guess its tough to see the yarn being made and looks like some invisible force is pulling the fiber out of my fingers, but really there is yarn there.

This isn't today's spinning but it is Homestead romney again, a lamb's fleece from last year. Its small, a sampler skein and its a pity its so difficult to take pictures of darker colored yarns (for me it is anyways) because this is lovely. It is soft! I'm very sensitive to the itch factor and I'd think I'd wear this anywhere but on my neck. I actually cast on for another toddler vest, take two. In the mornings its still chilly enough for a light long shirt and vest. I may just find something else to use at the neck ribbing on the collar.

And I've decided I'm giving myself over completely to ribbed scarves. No more shame. I need absolute mindless knitting, something that can (and has been) ripped out twice in one day and not frustrate me. I need fascinating color or texture and I need fast results. Plus, I wear them, I love the vertical lines, the chunky, squishy texture that the combo of big yarn and 2x2 ribbing make. And I finished some things so I'm just going to own this painfully simple obsession.

Finally, I finished these and gave them away to my mother-in-law. They are some of the first yarns I spun and my first attempt at natural dyeing. I held onto this for a long time. When I began trying to knit with it long ago everything started turning purple, my hands, my needles and my couch! Madder has a purple dyestuff in it and I don't know the exact process to extracting it, I don't think many people do. Apparently, you can just come rub things on my yarn though. So, I knit and fulled these simple boots. During the fulling, which took FOREVER they reddened a bit. Then, the shape of one of them was funny (Mr. Partner thought they would be good in case one foot developed gout.) and I ended up having to cut and seam and then full the seam. During this hand fulling the water turned purple again and dang it, this time I threw in some alum mordanted wool.

Its turning a gentle shade of pink. I didn't heat it or anything, just letting it soak a bit. No purple but I'm still intrigued in this pink.

2008-04-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

Slow Progress

Baby J was worried that he would soon outgrow his current colorful vest (knitted long ago in a rainbow colorway of Malabrigo). He begged me to please make another one. And quickly! So, as any knitting mother would, I obliged. But with a catch, because I have a vague goal of de-stashing, I have to use only the little bits. These are lovely leftovers of Blue Sky cotton, the colors look so rich in the knitted fabric and it is just cotton butter. These are colors I would NEVER EVER put together (particularly the bright white and weird off gold/yellow) and not in these proportions either, but I'm forcing myself to not buy more red yarn so I can have even more left over red yarn. It will just not be allowed for this project. It is a pretty mindless knit but in my distraction, I've managed to make several mistakes along the way. There has been some frogging and fudging but nothing I can't live with at this point.

I'm finding myself falling more and more in love with vests. Vests are fantastic toddler wear, it doesn't impede movement of their arms, it doesn't get unbuttoned or fall into a state of being only half on like cardis. It is a not bulky way of keeping their middles warm. I almost said "core." Core is such a trendy word now, no? I will not say it. Until the work out world stops trying to sell me sit-up videos with it. Or unless it is in reference to a fruit. I think a lot of Asian cultures have a major thing for vests. My mother is Chinese and is obsessed with the idea of Super M wearing a vest in the morning. She thinks northern Cali is really chilly and keeps harping on this vest thing. So, maybe she will finally be satisfied. (That was a joke for all of you with Chinese mothers out there.) Super M will have nothing much to do with the whole vest thing. Especially if it is a knitted vest. He did say with a touch of jealousy that he wanted the vest to be for him. When I asked him if he would wear a vest he told me that he would-"only if no one will see me." He can melt hearts that one. And this from the kid who is happy to wear his underwear on the outside of his pants. I've been long toying with the idea of knitting him a black cotton sweater with some Jolly Roger intarsia, but talk about trendy. Maybe I'll be able to lure him into some knit wear yet.

Here is some yarn hanging out in my backyard. This is a great blend, possibly my favorite, of Rita of Homestead fame and some silver alpaca. It is very softly spun, thick and thin and thread plied, the thread is very cool, I might be able to get a better picture of it when I knit this up. I think I'm going to knit it up in donation to the Walden fair, they have a great annual fair and always have a raffle with hand crafted goods.

My dye pots have slowed down for some spinning and thinking time. Long ago Cherry Bomb Baby was a small but growing business, that is until Baby J jumped on board. Then I spent a year floundering, spinning on the drop spindle here and there, just to keep my sanity. I've changed the direction of my crafting energies largely into fiber for spinning and natural dyeing although I still sew here and there. I've been rather bad at keeping track of all of my projects on this blog as I intended. I spin this and that with no mention of it, I've got more projects going at once than I've got fingers and toes together, which generally means slow progress on all of them and a fair amount of disorganization.

Hopefully, within the next couple of months I can focus energy on growing Cherry Bomb again, I put a lot of dye passion into this skein that I made primarily so I could take a picture of it. I want this skein to be on the home page of the site, I'm so tired of reading that natural dyes don't yeild bright colors or are not lightfast or require toxic heavy metals to mordant. Its pure misinformation being passed around by folks who don't natural dye and it scares other folks away from natural dyes. Natural dyes are certainly less accessible than many synthetic dyes, you can't just pour color on wet fiber and hope for the best. There are many variables that come into play like the ph of your water, the vessel you dye in, the temperature, the fiber itself, the dyestuff itself, where it was grown, the conditions of the soils there, and you could simply go on and on. There is the additional step of mordanting that is usually necessary and that is more water and more work. But to pass off natural dyes as being less professional dye or a less "green" dye, well, its just wrong. Natural dyes are finickier and more work but they yield deep complicated colors that are a part of ancient human history. To me that is the coolest part, I love to spin or dye and think of the women before me doing the exact same work, I feel like I am joining them and picking up where they left off. When I learned to spin it was as if my hands learned what they were meant to do, this was the work they were supposed to be doing all along. I feel similarly about natural dyeing.

This skein has a lot going on, it is blue faced leister, romney (a finer romney, from my cousin's farm) and merino tops dyed with cochineal, madder, osage, coreopsis, sunflower, marigold, indigo, fustic, logwood grey, logwood purple and wattle. There are definitely some color combos I wouldn't have put together in this one either, but that is what 2 ply yarns are for sometimes, random color changes that push you to see colors in new ways, I can't wait to knit a swatch up. Someday. I'm not starting anything new yet, but my couch would really love a colorful blanket. It has been asking for a long time now.

2008-03-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

Rita!

Here is the pure Rita roving that Sandy from Homestead parted with for me! The center was dyed with logwood grey exhaust, it is barely dyed at all. I thought of overdying it again but I think I'll be blending these up and the white/barely grey will lend a little brightness. Then from the top is cutch, pomegranate, que red, more cutch, madder, wattle and more pomegranate.
Easter egg colors, I was going through all the used dye baths I had a while ago when I did these, just trying to wring out the last of the color and get all the shades possible.

Inspired by Pluckyfluff's beenie mania, I got inspired with some recently washed suri alpaca (right) handdyed (yeah, yeah, synthetic) silk bits, pom dyed merino (from above) and went to town.

I made three little batts, roughly like this. One with distinctly more merino and the other two with a base of alpaca. I've been doing lots of alpaca blends lately with Sandy's rescue roving, they contain wool from her sheep and alpaca from an alpaca rescue farm. When thinking about the twist to crimp ratio it gets a little sticky in my mind for merino and alpaca to be blended this way. Merino is very crimpy and according to some theories, that means it is best spun with higher twist to match the crimp. Alpaca, has no crimp and is best spun with low twist (I naturally excel at this!), enough to hold the single together and no more. Well, what about when they are mixed 50/50? My blend is primarily alpaca, so its pretty clear about how it wants to be spun. I carded minimally so I could have a kooky (but hopefully wearable) textured yarn. It wants to be a hat.

I carded and started spinning these one afternoon while waiting for Baby J to wake up. I had to pick the quietest and most easily put down activity I could find. I'm spinning these up, when the fancy strikes, on my ashford drop spindle. Its the heavy one, I've heard it called the boat anchor. It was my first spindle and for the longest time I never knew differently-I had only one and I was determined to only need one. Now I'm shopping for a new one, not actively, but passively in my mind. I'm determined to come across one at a wool festival someday, something medium smallish and beautiful and hand crafted.

2008-03-23T21:46:00.000-07:00

Here are bundles of border leister/alpaca rescue roving. Quebracho red, fustic, madder in two concentrations. They were pretty together-the fustic really comes out looking greenish from afar-here its in the bottom right pretending to be yellow. So, it looks alright so far, yes?

Well, wait till you start spinning. Its felt super compressed and difficult to draft, really it was almost yucky to spin. I didn't get very far before I gave up,

And moved on! To the drumcardermobile! Now this is a different story, its lofty and airy again. At first, I worried that I partially felted this fiber but it really just needed to be pulled apart a little. Wow-I loved carding this. It was so easy and such a thick, bouncy batt to pull off. I carded these through only once (it was already a well carded roving) and I didn't want to blend the colors too much. I know this will be a muted yarn color wise, first it has brown to begin with as a natural color in it and i'm spinning it fairly thin so I can ply it as a 2 ply. So, muted yes. If I carded twice through I think it would have turned brown before my eyes.

Sometimes yarn itself feels like an FO to me. But an FO that still is utter possibility. Batts are starting to be that way now too. This was a simple one but I'm starting to enjoy the mixing of texture/colors more and more. Some folks have little bowls and hooks for their art yarns, but lately I'm often ready to take it back further and just pet the batt.

These dyed samples were from a class at the University of California's Botanical Garden. They have a fiber and dye exhibit going on now if you are in the bay area. And if you are reading this you must be, ok, or Minneapolis. The fabric is all peace silk and the blue is cabbage (red or purple I don't quite remember.), yellow is turmeric, the washed out looking one is hennah but with some resist squares so a lot of it was white, and the pink/orange is madder. IRL it looks orange, I took this outside but the color did not photograph true. The yarns are wool and the purple is alkanet and the orange is madder and yellow turmeric again. I can't remember what that red one was. It was a very basic intro class and used mostly vegetables and spices, etc. but I saw some Deep Color folks there! Yay!

Finally, some random knitting I began. This is going to be the Vested Interests vest (scroll down) by Little Turtle Knits. Its Blue Sky cotton and just a lot of left over balls from other baby projects past. All apart of the grand de-stashing project I pay lip service to once in a while. Seriously, I've got to stop starting new projects and just finish something. In all fairness, I have finished somethings and I'm in progress on others. I've got to put down the wheel and spindle and pick up the needles.

2008-03-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

Here and there

Realizing that I have yet to finish washing all the colored Romney I bought from Homestead, I embarked once more. I'm almost done with Carl now, the last of the sheep I've got to bathe. His locks are varied, some are dark brown (these parts have some more neps) and others are filled with greys. Card a little, spin a little is the recipe for happiness with these. Looking at the silvery locks spun up I think they could be pretty overdyed. I've been wanting to overdye some light brown and grey yarn. I think can finish the rest in one more batch. Then I have only a little more unwashed suri alpaca to tackle.

Decidedly NOT natural dyed is this green yarn. I spun this from some hand dyed top I traded for with Jacey of Insubordiknit last summer. I started spinning it without a plan, for the love of green, and it sat for a while neglected. I picked it up again just wanting to finish it off and spun the rest fairly differnetly than I had begun it, resulting in some highly twisted parts and some loftier low twist sections. It was total Project Runway spinning, a combination effort of spinning while watching seasons 3 and 4-damn you Heidi! That is my excuse. But, I think its going to be totally pretty knit up! The lofty little poofs always look pretty in stockinette. I'm thinking of making my own Johnny Depp tribute hat. (You've got to scroll near to the bottom-but its a totally fun read all the way down.) I don't know if I could rock this green of a hat, maybe if I got the aviator glasses to go with it. Fierce? Or insane? Maybe somewhere in between.

Redeeming itself from the last photo is the light purple from the first logwood purple. Here it is washed, and feeling fluffier.
Fustic in back and pomegranate in front.

Wattle in back and madder in front.
Logwood purple and logwood greys. This is 3 separate tops braided together. The logwood grey has a very purple tinge. I LOVE these. And I'm not one of those purple people.
More rescue roving, this is the border leister/suri alpaca, I think the top is pomegranate (I know! Its awful-I lost track, but it might come to me.) And the bottom is madder, the light doesn't do these justice, they look much more similar than they are.
Finally, more quebracho red, the 3rd bath and I think we got what we could from it. This is corriedale/suri alpaca. I'm going to pair this with the same fiber dyed with wattle.

2008-02-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

Embers in a haystack

This is the first skein of Fletcher's rescue roving I dyed, it was dyed with quebracho red, pomegranate, wattle, logwood purple (I think I browned that out by placing it by yellows and they bled together-WHAT was I thinking?!) and fustic. The yellowest parts were fustic and the little bits of quebracho you can turning up as reddish pinks, or pinkish reds, whatever you please. There's a bit more red and yellow than this picture reveals. The wattle is the tan, straw color. I am undecided if I should ply this against itself or leave it as a single. Its pretty as a single. Although I know most natural dyers have a goal of clear, bright colors, I am still in love with subtly and the typical and easy-to-achieve colors tinged with tans and greys. Well, I also highly value clear, brilliant color with natural dyes-that always feels like triumph, but I still appreciate accidents. Like I said, plain jane toned down colors are what I would be most likely to actually wear. And they are never flat, even a "dull" color has depth and complexity.

I know I said I was going to dye the brown/white and grey/white rescue rovings and then dye some white to match but once I got in there I just started randomly fiddling around. This is only some of the brown/white roving with quebracho red and pomegranate. I'm really into the pomegranate.

I like how its greenish. I was expecting more yellow and it is yellow when you get in there to look at the fibers that were white, but when you step back and look at the whole it looks olive. Love it.

These are both grey alpaca blended with white corriedale. On the left is wattle, on the right is logwood purple with a little quebracho red. I was so excited about the idea of red and this new red that I just started pouring it everywhere. It was a pain to mix though, the extract totally gummed up into these impossibly sticky clumps when mixed with hot water. Maybe it will do better to mix it with cooler water next time.

Two more small bundles of New Zealand romney. In the back is wattle and in the foreground is fustic. I've got to try some indigo overdyeing with fustic. I'm running out of white fiber now!

A bigger 4 ounce bundle of merino dyed with quebracho red. It looks like bubble gum to me. Its really unexpected. I have never used que red before and I don't know what I was expecting-but not this. I was thinking something more orange I suppose, the dye manual (Found it! It was on the bookshelf of all stupid places.) said "coral." I used the leftover dyebath to dye up some of the grey/white rescue roving today.
This is a sad little picture of my logwood purple dyed New Zealand romney. I've got a little left of this in the pot cooling right now and then I think I will have dyed the full 2 kilos that my lovely cousin-in-law gifted me! (And that her lovely sister carried half way across the earth for me.) This picture doesn't describe the fiber very well. I may have to try again. I am always in a rush with this picture taking game, it has to be sunny out-but not muddy, baby J has to be asleep, super M has to be occupied, the cat has to be out of the way, Jupiter must be in retrograde, etc. So, one picture had a fluffy, happy looking bundle all positioned to show off its personality-but it came out fuzzier than the previous picture. And here we have a sad, twisted, skinny looking bit of hair but its semi clear and well, semi purple. So there you have it.

These have all been air curing for about a week or more now. Its time to wash them out-yes, they have not been washed. If the color crocs and I lose a lot I'll post pictures of the changes. I'm hoping for little change since many are dyed with light dyebaths to begin with. In the pot now I've got logwood purple in a higher concentration dyebath, logwood grey, more pomegranate, que red in light concentration, wattle in higher concentration and I think I'm forgetting something. But its been a hell of a day so that is not surprising. I did label everything faithfully this time. I wanted more COLOR this time around. The first time with these dyes I was more restrained, I don't like wasting dye and I wanted to see what I could come up with with just minimal dye but the next go round I'd like to see what these plants can do! I've got two more pounds of fiber ready to mordant and if the stars and planets align I might be back shortly with another pot full of wool for you.

2008-02-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

My Retinas Are Dying!

My Aunts in Taiwan wear incredible clothes: highly textured, like something out of an infant's touch and feel book, trim, feathers and rhinestones. Sequins are beloved. And color, My God. My partner (I think he will be known as Mr. Partner since he's always thought it weird that I've called him that) so, Mr. Partner and I decided that this desire for insane clothing is something that often happens with the onset of age. My coolest cousin wore only black until her 30s and then she started showing up in BRIGHT green sweaters and red framed sunglasses. I thought this change in her was odd and then I looked at her mother and it seemed apparent that it was just a part of the natural process of aging. And my cousin is Cool in her red glasses don't get me wrong, she is freaking gorgeous and her snot is way hipper than my best fantasy of myself.

In any case, Mr. Partner decided that as you grow older your retinas die and you need brighter and brighter colors in order to see. Or maybe to feel whole. I don't know. For me, I need them to feel whole. Still, when we see very colorful folks walking around we often feel the need to shriek, "MY RETINAS ARE DYING!" Mine died long ago, when I learned to knit:

Poor Baby J's retinas. His must be on total overload, maybe that is why he is such a hurricane. I'm overstimulating him with my desire for bright colors. The hat was my first attempt at navajo plying and it was spun from pollwarth roving dyed in the "parrot" colorway, from Deep Color. I don't know where Claudia got it from and I don't know who dyed it, it is definitely done with synthetic dyes. And the sweater is malabrigo, a cardigan knitted all in garter stitch and in a one piece.

And I have to post this picture. This was taken at the Discovery Museum in Saucilito. My four year old picked out his own outfit. He has been so butch all these years. Just recently we've had a break in that ice. This is his "dancer" dress up. I have to tell you that I love it! I've waited for him to be excited about something that isn't stereotypically masculine for so long now. He is a typical boy obsessed with superheros, swords and racecars, but now he also proudly wears a princess pageant dress and will beat the hell out of you if you try to tell him that your dress is prettier than his. I'll take what I can get. I just enjoyed the fact that my two kids were probably the most oddly dressed in the entire museum that day.

And does this look green to you? Because sometimes it looks green to me and sometimes it looks like some other weird color, never before seen. The off green. It was the garden dyed yellow romney and dipped once in indigo. It is a very different green than the osage overdyed with indigo. I'll have to put them both together for a better look.

And Indigo. I feel closer to whole.

2008-02-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

Proof

Looking back over this blog I feel the need to post some knitting content. What happens to all these dyed fibers and spun yarns? Does anything happen to them? In fact, I've noticed that we see very little evidence that anything ever happens to them. But, ah, things do happen. Things like, half finished socks! (Ok, and ribbed scarves. But I'm trying not to talk about that.)
Since these are half done and have no mate, this is actually only a quarter finished. The roving is blue faced leister and it is an entirely natural dyed rainbow. It was from a natural dye class and we were to make these socks with it. I have still not finished this months later. I adore rainbows but don't wear them. For the most part my baby is forced to wear my color cravings and walks around in a perpetual state of handmade chromatic clowndom. I'm sure he is grateful that the designated project for this roving was socks.

Two things about these socks: 1. The wool was over mordanted (with alum and cream of tartar), the colors are a joy to knit with but the wool is a bit sticky, it doesn't draft as easily as it would have and the fiber has a stiffer feel. I notice it most in the spinning of it, when I try the sock on less so. Our instructor said this would change when it has been washed but I've also heard that overmordanting will permanently effect your fibers. I've not gotten far enough, obviously, to see what will happen but am curious.

And 2. Our project was to spin the yarn on a drop spindle as a single (the thickness of spagetti) and put extra twist into the yarn. Then, knit it within 24 hours of spinning it, an energized single. Knitting your freshly spun single in this way will cause the stitches to slant heavily while knitting in stockinette. We were to experiment, and so there is weird color work in spots (carding white and black with the colors, spinning marled yarns and such). Some I had to frog because it was just beyond what was acceptable for a respectable rainbow sock. I spun some sections using S twist (clockwise) and some Z twist (counter clockwise) and so there is some textured striping going on back and forth based on which way the yarn was spun. I'm not sure that I like this. In fact, I don't. I would probably have finished these socks by now if they would have been spun the same direction all the way around. Then the stitches look almost like they are forming this neat slanted spiral down around the sock. So, frog it? But then I'd have to re-spin half of the yarn the other direction and re-spin the rest of the yarn to get more twist into it before I could knit it energized.

And finally, when holiday knitting goes wrong:

The above socks were knit for my mother-in-law for Christmas. What went wrong you ask? I stayed up until 3 in the morning working on them. You may notice some weirdness in the gusset decreases and that is why. They are also ankle socks because I started them too close to Christmas and in my mind they feel half finished because of this. I do love the feel of the finished fabric, the yarn is Crystal Palace's Panda Cotton (a cotton/bamboo blend). That said, knitting them was torture and I am not happy with the end result. My pointy Addi Turbo size 0's kept snagging on the tiny threads plied together, my fingers felt pinpricked by the time I was done and I was hating the color pooling before I finished the first sock. Oh, and I don't like ankle socks. At least not these, they just feel skimpy. But not in a good short skirt kind of way. More like a my-ankles-look-pregnant-again kind of way. I guess pressured middle of the night knitting isn't my thing. To top it off, they don't quite fit. Which is why they are back on my feet for this picture.

Next up, FOs that I enjoy and won't complain about!

2008-02-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

Process and Well Loved Things

I just took these out of the pot. After the first batch of garden dyed wool the pot still seemed rich with color so I put some more Romney top in. I also used the rest of my flowers. I usually don't dye this way in a big pot, I was taught to dye with the clever method of steaming canning jars. But this time, I stuck the plant matter into an old panty hose (thanks mom!) and let it steep like tea bags.

Our upstairs continued to smell delicious and not "stinty." Here is the method I was taught: Dyeing in canning jars. Its wonderful for dyeing LOTS of colors in one dye bath. With various finicky dyes needing different temperatures and simmer times this doesn't work. However, we used mostly Earth Hues natural dye extracts and for the most part, you can mix the extracts and dye a lot of little bundles of fiber at once and get a rainbow from just one pot. The other really cool part about this method is that if you neglect your pot and your temp gets too hot your wool is pretty well protected from felting. This is Claudia of Deep Color's method. Now is she super smart or what?

This is what is going to be mordanted and dyed next. Thanks Sandy! Its from Homestead again and its more rescue roving, the grey is half corriedale, half suri alpaca and the brown is half border leister, half suri. The brown is much darker than I expected and its dreamy! It wants to be dyed with something earthy obviously, madder or something deep and yellow or maybe green. I think the grey roving I might dye with logwood purple. And then some white roving to match and then ply them against eachother. Dyeing different fibers in the same dyebath is so magical, the slight variance in the end result is always exciting.

Oh, the white is more of Fletcher's rescue roving (merino cross/suri alpaca). Its a little over 4 oz and all I could cram on my bobbin. I'm working slowly on a second bobbin now. I may have a little pause on dyeing for a while. I have hit a bump in the road and misplaced my Earth Hues Natural Dye Manual. Its a catastrophe-I couldn't get anything done all day. I spent every spare moment distracted and kept looking in the exact same places expecting it to appear. I may have to resort to my 3 year stash of onion skins. Yes, I am serious. I will take a picture of this. The loss of my manual is ill timed since I just got a bunch of new dyes from Kristine at A Verb for Keeping Warm. I picked it up from her house since she is local and I got a sneak peek at what she will have a Stitches-Oh God. Its beyond loverly. But I doubt I can go. I am usually the only one home on the weekend and I don't think I fancy a drive to Santa Clara with both boys.

On to well loved things. I just had to replace the heel of one of these handdyed (not by me), handspun and handknit socks. I gave them to my housemate last Christmas and this year she needed a new heel a year later. I did the same heel repair for my mother-in-law's socks but didn't get a picture of them. I bought pollwarth locks from Deep Color that had been handdyed with synthetic dyes there, I carded rolags and spun them on a drop spindle then knit these densely. These are the kind of winter socks you want in your northern California home that has no heat. The colors are a little funny in places as I used some scraps up from class samples-the dark blue on the left sock, ahem. The heel on the right has been replaced with romney wool, spun on the drop spindle and andean plied.

These have received lots of wear and love as I had hoped. Here they are looking fuzzy:

2008-01-31T20:18:00.000-08:00

Dyeing Success Smells Sweet

Really it does. Because this merino top smells vaguely of honey.

As does this roving. This is more of the Fletcher/Suri Alpaca blend I got from Homestead. And its SO beautiful even my partner thought it was neat. And that is rare because he is not a fiber afficionado. He is more of a motorcycle and broken retro dishwasher kind of guy.

The flower dyebath pales next to the osage extract. Its something I'd pick out for myself to wear and the osage is something I'd pick out if I were knitting for my kids. One of the my favorite things about natural dyeing is that the palette is managed for the dyer, just about everything comes out tasteful and wearable. Its so hard to go wrong!

Now for the green:

I like it. The effect of overdyeing with indigo is so complicated. It looks handpainted and there is a lot of variance in this 2 oz top, mossy to darker blue green at the bottoms (where the indigo drips from while hanging) and the overall effect is a "bottle green" as the earth hues dye manual suggests it will be. It also suggests dyeing with indigo, then mordanting and finally dyeing with osage. I imagine a more solid and even color could be achieved with this method. I might have to give it a try, although Claudia at Deep Color always taught us the method I used. And she always has her reasons as I'm learning.

I was careful this time with my dipping. Like I said, I had just added more stock and I kept the dip shorter and didn't over dip this time. Last time I got a little over zealous with the dipping and in my hope of locking the color in I squashed my beautiful yellow.

I left some of this original osage roving undipped to see the two together. Quite honestly I'm not sure if I find much harmony in this. Of course, I'm trying to see past it to the spun and then possibly knit phase. I could dip the other yellow part and I might after I look and think a while longer.

Tomorrow I am going to Walden Center School, in Berkeley to teach spinning to some of the kids there. They are 8 and 9 years old I think. They have been doing amazing weavings and have washed and carded some of their own wools already. They also made CD drop spindles and are ready to spin now I hear. We'll see what happens! I'm sure they will be great, I'm not so sure about me. There is such a huge leap from knowing how to do something to being able to teach it to people. This is something I'd love to get into though. I would LOVE to do this with my own kids someday, taking them to a farm or wool festival and having them wash small amounts of wool and then kool aid or natural dye it and do the whole process! So far Super M enjoys treadling my wheel as fast as he can-to the point where he seems ready to spin cotton. And Baby J likes disassembling the wheel when I'm not looking, rocking locks on his little baby sized rocking chair or hitting his big brother on the head with a drop spindle. You have to start somewhere.

2008-01-26T20:29:00.000-08:00

Overdyeing Again and Again

I went for green again and dyed this Romney top (from my cousin-in-law's New Zealand farm) with a high concentration of Earth hues osage extract. The yellow came out great and brilliant as before. I'm so sad that you can't currently get osage from them, I have one 2 oz bottle left now.

After some fussing and some frustration, leading to two days of neglect and my indigo pot was ready. It was such a thrill because I hadn't touched the pot in a while and it went off and turned very blue. No amount of thioria dioxide was going to help it out, I added a bit but to no avail. I guessed the ph was off and added some lye. I fretted a while and eventually left the pot in disgust. Apparently, when it comes to indigo, this is like yelling at the TV or kicking the car and getting it to work. Walk away for days and the surface turns a lovely yellow/green that means you are ready to dye! If you scrape the top with a spoon you would see more of the greenish color.

Osage + Indigo = Bottle Green. At least, that is what my earth hues natural dye extract manual says. What do you think? I think came out lovely this time! I dipped it fairly quickly (there was a lot of stock in there this time due to my prolonged tinkering with the pot) and I think I managed to come out with a lovely green. This 2 oz bit of top I dipped fully and another one I dipped only sections, so there is the original osage color and green overdyed. These are taking forever to dry since its been raining on and off here for weeks now.

Super M is always complaining about the indigo these days, "I want you to take the indido out of here Mom." "I can STILL smell the indido!" I try telling him that it just smells blue and he both confused and offended by this and tells me, "No it DOESN'T! It smells STINTY!" Which is how he says stinky. Yesterday he told me it smelled like cookies, I think it was these:

Mexican sun plants, coreopsis and sunflower. I dead headed these this past summer and froze them. I still have a few more baggies but this is most of it. I was decidedly unscientific about it and just weighted equal amounts dyestuff to fiber by the feel of it. I saved the remaining dye bath (to which I added the left over osage dye baths-that was a LOT of osage!) Cooking these made the sweetest smell of chamomile like tea. I yummy, apetizing aroma for a change! The remaining rovings are drying outside and it was too wet to lay out the locks I dyed with them. Its supposed to rain again tomorrow so I don't know when those will see the sun. The colors are more muted and don't scream quite as loudly as the osage. The yellows are more of what you would expect from a natural dye stuff, soft and quiet and utterly wearable. They smell vaguely sweet and tea like as well.

2008-01-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

Let me Count the Ways

Continuing my ode to Homestead Wool and Gift Farm, here is some more fiber from them: Rambouillet from sheep named, Flash. It has a tight but disorganized crimp, typical Rambouillet from what I read. This is my first go with this type of fleece. The locks were dyed by Sandy in colors she called Shifting Sands. Mostly pale greens and tans with some hints of orange or yellow in places. Its so sproingy. I started spinning a 2 ply worsted weight yarn with it using a long draw with handcarded rolags. I gave these bits to my mom and she started her usual garter stitch scarf. Its coming out So Beautiful! I am amazed how great it looks knitted up, I'll have to try to get a picture of it if I can get it away from her. She needed more so I started picking through more locks and running them through the drum carder. This is what I came up with when trying to separate the browns and greens distinctly.

I pulled out some batts that my 4 year old, to be known as Super M, helped me run through the carder. These we just put in what he wanted so its a mix of the colors. I've spun this yarn on a wheel and lately, here and there on my Schaact hi-lo spindle. Its a really nicely balanced spindle and a joy to spin with, I've only spun it as a top whorl so far.

Starting clockwise at the top right, more fibers I've got from Sandy: white 50% Fletcher (a merino cross) 50%suri alpaca, black suri alpaca, 50% Rita (merino) 50%black alpaca, white balls of pure Rita, auburn suri alpaca, Flash locks. Look at the contrast of texture and color, and all natural undyed! Oh, to have a full day to sit in this pile and play.

Another look at the playsilks Courtney and I dyed with indigo and food dyes:

I did another dip on most of these, one I left the lighter blue. I hope her daughter liked them!

2008-01-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

Start to Finish

Well, almost. Here is Fletcher, who I mentioned yesterday. Actually, this is half Fletcher and half suri alpaca from a rescue flock. I spun it pretty low twist with a long draw, mildly thick and thin.

I spun it around a core thread of blue and white cotton. Very pretty and subtle and wearable.

Keeping the cotton thread tense and letting the white yarn wrap itself around. Most important to keep an old fly swatter in the back ground (kid's toy-never killed a fly) and a dorky Hello Kitty slipper nearby.

The yarn! I had to restrain myself on color combos as I was thinking of gifting this to someone for the holidays but I didn't finish it in time. The blue background is a precious antique baby quilt that is a family heirloom (as far as I'm concerned) on my partner's dad's side. Its baby blue on one side and pink on the other, hand quilted and has a soft, brushed texture.

Perhaps I should call this blog, Ribbed Scarf Central, since that is all I seem to be able to knit. To be fair, I've knit some other things and haven't posted about them. Yet. But textured yarns just seem to want to be simple accessories in plain stitch patterns. So there. This is going to end up in Germany I think, as a gift to my favorite mama of three. Having three kids-I can't imagine. This is a very young, beautiful and kind mama and I just want to wrap her up in a soft wooly blanket and snuggle her in with a cup of hot tea. But I can't so, I hope she'll take a weird scarf instead.

2007-12-29T21:14:00.000-08:00

Madder Yarn and More Fleeces

This little skein went to my awesome sister-in-law's mom. She is always making beautiful things for my niece, either crochet or sewn. I thought she might be able to make a small project, a hat or something with this. It began with white Merino and Cormo fleece from Merry Meadows farm in Willits, CA, washed and handcarded by me then natural dyed with madder.

I think the plying angle is too tight on this yarn, it was spun so very long ago (this last summer) that I can't remember what my excuse would be, treadling on too much caffiene? Spinning while enraged? Oh well, I'm sure it was a good one.

Onto new possibilities! Pinto huacaya alpaca! I haven't spun it in forever but alpaca was my favorite fiber for a long time. This is my first go round at preparing the fleece, I got a bunch of it from Sandy at Homestead Wool and Gift Farm. My favorite all time farm for the farmer's sweetness and philosophy. Oh, and the wool! Its all amazing! And did I tell you I won a raffle there this past summer? I never will raffles and yet, even you, who think you will never win raffles and can manage to do such things at her farm. I have a fantasy that someday she'd let me visit and that I would finally learn to take all the beautiful pictures that I see in my head and my kids and I would meet her sheep and I would have a wall in my home of framed/matted pictures of her sheep and my kids and all the things I love. Ah, how I'd love to meet her sheep, particularly Rita and Fletcher. I should write a separate post about my infatuation with Rita.

Didn't I say onto the possibilities? Below is the washed pinto alpaca, it is so soft and I'm not sure what to do with it exactly. Its one of those things that I love so much that I just must hoard for a while. I wanted to blend these fibers with something else but I don't know if I can bring myself to dilute that color. I can't get over the dark brown, so rich, like a well polished wood.

And black! Rare black! Sandy shared this with me and I feel a little guilty that I am again robbing her personal shelves. But she is generous one and did give it of her own free will. The locks are long, over 5 inches it looks to be. I should measure, I don't know if this will give me any trouble going through the drum carder. I had the idea that I'd make myself some merino/alpaca batts with natural colors. Only one way to (carefully) find out.

And more colors! A fawn and a darker chestnut colored alpaca. The black and brown tones are Suri alpaca. I've washed the pinto and the black. I've got to get into the other colors now. Its been so rainy that there's been no place to dry anything so I've take a break from fleece washing.

The other thing I need to finish washing is my colored romney. I have ten pounds of this. Its so beautiful but sometimes I don't know what I am thinking. I think I was thinking a felt rug, but I've gone back on this idea to a woven rug. Now, if only I knew how to weave on that loom I have upstairs.

This is from a sheep named Carl and is freshly washed and drying on my very professional drying rack. Is there anything more satisfying than freshly washed wool that is still just a bit damp?

2007-12-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

Indigo Playsilks

A friend let slip that she was natural dyeing playsilks for her daughter for Christmas. She was using only food dyes for the most part, coffee, spinach, raspberry zinger tea, turmeric, etc. So, of course, I offered some indigo from my pot! We rushed it a lot since it was my baby's naptime, and she had an hour and a half before she had to get her kids. I did one dip on each of these silks, one was dyed with turmeric, another with coffee (it started out as a nice tan color) and the others were white.

I will try one more short dip on one of the plain white silks and see how it looks but we are going for nice light or bright blues. The blues are mottled throughout the fabric and the effect looks like a blue/white sky. The coffee overdyed silk looks almost turquoise and we liked that one among the best.

Will I ever get a true green from overdyeing?

What is up with this stained, muddy looking color?! I feel like I took her beautiful sunshine yellow and wiped muddy floors with it. Sorry Courtney! We'll see how much rinses out and what the final result is.

2007-12-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

A little spinning and knitting has been done

Ta-da! This is the yarn that was handcarded from pollwarth locks. And that covering it, is a fine shadow. I spun fairly long bits of solid color and navajo plied it for a self striping kind of effect. I don't quite know what to do with this one, I really like it but it may become a holiday gift. Maybe even to someone who doesn't knit. Because that is how I roll sometimes.

The left over pink and yellow bits of pollwarth ended up in this yarn. Its mostly white merino top from my trade with Jacey of Insubordiknit. I plied it against a core thread, which was the white (cotton I think) with pink, yellow and green colored poofs. The pink and yellow pollwarth parts were coiled when I got to them in the plying. I think this would be a great scarf knit with a dropped stitch pattern, super long and skinny and knit on big needles!

I also used random bits of scrap fuzz (a lot of random hand dyed silk bits) and pushed them up into halos which you can kind of see here. Those little bumps are actually halos, or little "O's" that we practiced at camp pluckyfluff. I alternated coils and halos along the way.

Hey look! A FO! This scarf came out a bit short for my taste, I like to be able to wrap it around my neck and have two generous pieces dangling on either side. This scarf gives me one wrap around the neck and one pice hanging on the front and one on the back. I think I make all my felted scarves too long because I just can't don't like skimpy scarves. It is soft and I do like it and it will go to someone for christmas because, well, that is just how its going to go down. If I had unlimited time I'd probably re-knit it with 4 fewer stitches cast on. Sigh...

The pluckyfluff yarn is all knit up into a little garter stitch square. Um, rectangle I mean. I want to line it with some fabric and put wooden handles on it. This is so my thing. A funky ass purse for the 4 essentials: cell phone, wallet (which my toddler calls "wally") or wally, keys and sunglasses. I lost my third pair of sunglasses for the year and I don't think I deserve anymore as I obviously don't appreciate them. But I can't live without a good pair of big old, round sunglasses. I like to look like a bug when I wear sunglasses. And making this weird yarn into a purse can help me acheive that. Doesn't it make perfect sense?

Folded in half and looking almost purse like:

The hunt for the right handles is on!

2007-11-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

A Million Years

Wow, I sure fell off course with the whole blogging thing, but not to worry because I haven't fallen off the whole fiber thing. Not even close. There have been so many projects in progress I think I overwhelmed myself with it all. Pretty much I only care about pictures of fiber on other people's blogs so I won't go into the projects in the works unless there are some pictures to go along with it. I got these dyed pollwarth locks from Deep Color as a part of Claudia's farewell sale. When I had my second baby I bought a couple baggies of rainbow dyed pollwarth locks and I would dip my hand in and just spin them straight from the lock on my drop spindle as I walked to get coffee with my baby wrapped on my chest. Those little baggies kept me sane, being able to pull out a little burst of color and spin it lock by lock was like being able to pick up one little moment of sanity at such a chaotic time. So, I couldn't resist and I got this last bag as a last little goodbye to one of my favorite things from Deep Color.

This picture is actually old, I carded all the locks individually in an attempt to keep the colors clear. The result is a lot more of a pastel affect than the individual locks as the remaining undyed white parts blend in. I spun this already and navajo plied it, again, with the intent of keeping the colors separate and strong. I have to get a picture up of the yarn. The pinks and yellows dominated so much that I reserved some pinks and am doing something COOL with them in another in-progress yarn. More about that soon!

Last Saturday I attended a mini camp Pluckyfluff with Ms. Fluff herself. It was all day in San Francisco and color me a wild woman because I escaped my two kids and went out of the house and did something All By Myself. And this is the result. We made crazy batts (wools, silk noil, shredded money, tinsel, sparkel, felted bits, yarny bits, cottons and other things we found on the floor. Just kidding. Kind of) I could have been crazier with the carding, it was just so contrary to everything I've been taught about carding and drum carding. She just stuffed it ALL in there and cranked that sucker hard! And only one time! And she really stuffed it in, like a huge pile wedged in edge to edge. But it was fun to not try to bend the textures to my will, I tried to let go and just let the fibers take their own shape as the spun up.

This is the finished yarn. There's just a wee bit really, who knows what I'll do with it. Who cares? I'll need some more time to pet it before I think about knitting it up.

My single, which you can barely discern and the cool thread I plied it with. Its a black cotton with little colorful poofs, I have a similar white one with the poofs as well. I was so excited to find this thread, I got it as a gift along with tons of other cools threads/yarns. The ex-art teacher at The Walden Center School gave me her old jack loom as well as all the trimmings.

2007-08-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

A Trade

I did a recent trade with Jacey of Insubordiknit and lookit what I got! She is too generous! I traded a beloved but not-getting-used mei tai carrier for these goodies:

First this, randomly dyed Merino with purples and a little black and green.

Which is becoming this. Yes, yes, how thrilling a 2x2 ribbed scarf. Well, I never claimed to be a knitter of brilliant things! In fact just the opposite. Anyways, this top told me that it wanted to be spun thick and thin and didn't want me to plan anything. Just knit! So I did. Anyways, last year's Christmas knitting went down to the wire so I'm starting early with projects that equal instant gratification for me.

I don't know what to do with this one yet. It feels so special and green. Green makes me happy. I feel like this one needs a definite plan. I have a vague idea that it would be nice to make something for Baby J with it. Maybe a sweater. I'm done with making pants for toddlers with Merino wool. At least not my toddlers, it ends up a pilly, muddy mess. I hope a sweater might see a little less wear and tear than pants would. Anyways, the greeny-ness fills me up and I like just rubbing this on my cheek for now.

There was also this awesome batt which I pulled out into some sliver. It has a natural grey base and some lavendar and bright blue accents.

And its becoming this. Actually, this has been finished and washed and dried at this point. I'll try for another shot of the finished skein tomorrow. I spun it as a single since I wanted to leave some of the bright pops of color from the blue, it came out as a nice marled yarn, between dk and worsted weight.

Two of my favorite things about spinning are:

1. You can make exactly what you need for a specific project

2. You can make whatever the hell you want with no project in mind whatsoever. Yarn for the sake of yarn!

This batt made me want to do number 2. I just couldn't wait. I think I've been bogged down with lots of raw fleece for a while now and just having some prepared fibers that have been hand dyed by someone else was so inspiring. Thanks Jacey! And she also threw in lots of white Merino! My favorite! I think I'm going to get a mordant on those soon and then do a little dyeing. I'm torn between doing more extracts or using some of the frozen flower heads or onion skins I've got saved up.

2007-07-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

Natural Dye Class Results

I took a natural dye class at Deep Color Studio, my favorite place on earth, and these were my results from the April class. Above is the indigo and overdyed indigo we did. We handpainted one roving, (top left) and I didn't particularly like how mine came out, so I overdyed it. I overdyed my yellow that was dyed with fustic. I don't think I used enough to make a really bright yellow so who knows how this supposed green will come out when I finally wash these rovings. Since the indigo pot is going now I decided these needed a few more dips. I love the color they are now and to keep them this way I think they will need two to three more dips. I am totally guessing, I know you are supposed to dye 2-3 shades darker than you want the final color to be. My first piece of felt is also in the top corner of this picture, it was a white corriedale square and now it is a blue corriedale square. Wow, right?

Our instructor, Claudia, also let us dye some of our own handspun in the class so I stuck these in: more 2 ply Merino and a thick and thin single. These will need several dips, I think they only got two fast ones at the end of the class. Indigo has a smell that is somewhere between a rotten egg and burning rubber. Something like you might imagine The Bog of Eternal Stench to smell like. In fact, I think indigo dyeing arose of bogs in some places; something about things being dropped in the bog and coming out green and then turning blue when they hit the air. In any case, to me it smells rare and blue. Its all terribly Eye of Newt, there is the big pot over the fire, (no bubbling allowed though!) the finicky & fermenting ingredients, the magic of color change from yellow/green to deep blue and, of course, enter me-the bedraggled hag with rubber gloves.

Cochineal, Cochineal, madder and cochineal/fustic/madder mixed. Now that is an imaginative title for this shot. The mix is the pink. Although at the time I was convinced that the pink was somehow the madder and the orange the mix. I was absolutely certain that there had been some amazing weirdness that happened to produce this result. Of course, it was my own incredible ability to mislabel. So, this was the other portion of our class. We did some dyeing with natural dye extracts (the indigo was also an extract) and we ground the cochineal bugs in a coffee grinder (I didn't do this but I did get two bright red bundles of fiber out of it) and got this fabulous red with it. Claudia recommended that we not overdye these, they would have been a beautiful purple I think but she said that this red was a special treat for natural dyers since this level of brilliance is so costly that we would probably not dye like this again on our own. I am not super into the whole idea of grinding bugs up but I am into red. I've tried for red with madder but haven't had luck with consistent results, haha, welcome to natural dyeing I suppose. I am going to try a purely cold dyed madder with the fiber left to mordant for a long time and then a long, long soak in a high concentration of madder. I hope this will get me something more red! I know it will be a yellow/red and not a blue/red but I can live with that. Cochineal, I suppose its not much different than silk. I wish they could just find the already dead bugs and grind those! Wouldn't that be nice?! Like road kill cochineal, you know? At this point in time I not totally comfortable with buying farmed bugs to mash up but I am happy to hang onto this bright red goodness for now.

2007-07-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Indigo and overdyeing

Here is a first dip of a small handwashed, carded and spun skein of Merino and some Merino roving. I'm not sure how many dips I've got planned for this wool, I'll probably do a range between four and ten to see what the variations are.

The osage and indigo are supposed to come out "bottle green" and the osage made a nice, strong yellow so I'm hoping for a clear green on these. I'm not sure if I'll do the same amount of dips for all three pieces of roving or try for a little variance. I think I might spin it as a single and ply it with a single of indigo dyed merino. I'm not sure yet. Its not as fine as the Merino I have so I'm still deciding what to do with it.

Here are all the handspun skeins lined up. And my the shadow of my pinky. Who knew my pinky did that when I took pictures. Its kind of regal don't you think? Again, the overdyed skein is at the top the the middle two skeins have had three dips and the bottom skein one.

I'm also spinning away those madder locks. I'm hand carding them a little at a time and then spinning them up on the Schaact. Some of the tips are a little felted but this is from the intensive washing I had to give them to get the notorious Merino grease out. Actually, I think I was rushed along during the washing process by my kids. (I've since learned to time things carefully, I can only do fibery things when they are both asleep. So, never-haha!) The felting is easily dealt with as I just save the locks for some later felting project. I am into the madder right now since I am reading The Root of Wild Madder. Its great, its the first real book I've read in a long time and I'm enjoying it. I like seeing all the shades from the same dyestuff and thinking about how its going to look plied and then knitted. I like the harmony that you arrive at so easily with natural dyes. And I like that garish is a near impossibility. I think that should be a seductive incentive for any beginning dyer.

2007-07-13T06:15:00.001-07:00

Here is an older skein of handspun that will hopefully be reaching the end of its skeined life soon. It is carded brown merino, brown baby alpaca top and hand dyed silk noil. (Yes, I know. I don't consider silk noil to be "humane" but I happened to have some so I spun it. Sssshhh.) I spun and plied it with random coils thrown in for giggles. I plan on making myself a hat with this. Possibly with earflaps! Sorry about the crumby picture quality, I'm working on it. Hopefully I'll figure our camera out better as I go along with an inventory of my stash.

2007-07-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Osage, Madder and Merino

Recently, I started working on some handwashed Cormo and Merino fleeces from a local farm and dyed them with osage and madder. I also dyed up some Rambouillet roving that was a part of my fiber raffle winnings from Homestead Wool and Gift Farm in Wisconsin-thanks Sandy! The Rambouillet is dyed with osage orange and is drying on the deck on this overcast morning. I'm hoping it will dry a bright yellow as I have plans to overdye some, if not all, of this with indigo. I had a bit of an emergency with the dye pot as I think I overheated it a good deal. This was due to forgetfulness during the dinner/bath/bed rush. I was going to try to force myself to leave the fibers to soak in the dye bath for a longer period but I couldn't stand the wait, were they ok? Were they felted and destroyed? So far, it seems that there was little or no damage done. Hoorah! Now if the sun can manage to dry them up I can get to some carding and spinning tonight.

I like how this clump of madder dyed merino came out looking like fire with the very red tips. I also like how the grass is in focus and the wool is totally out of focus. This displays my mad photography skills. The tips really did come out redder than this picture-thanks again skillz!

The two bunches on the right are madder and the roving and other bunches are different concentrations of osage.