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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

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.

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.

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?

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.