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Month: September 2020

What goes into hand dyed yarn?

What goes into hand dyed yarn?

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A few days ago, Ruth had the courtesy of sending me an email reminder about my upcoming blog post (this one). I mentioned I was sparse on ideas, so she suggested I talk about my dyeing process.

This ended up being serendipitous, as yesterday I received a custom order request for a new colourway I launched as part of my new collection. Voilá, I’ve got a blog post!

Now, this isn’t meant as a How To on yarn dyeing, so I shan’t go into too much detail (although, if you’re interested, I’d be happy to write a more in-depth post in the future – let me know in the comments). I will, however, mention a few basic things you definitely need to dye yarn/fibre safely if, like me, you’re using acid dyes:

  • The hardware you use shall be for dyeing only. So don’t use that fancy pot if you’re even thinking of making Sunday roast in it ever again.
  • Always, always wear a respirator mask when handling dyes, especially when in powder form. Dye particles travel far – I’m all for fluorescent green wool but not in one’s lungs.
  • Gloves are a must. You don’t want bright pink fingers for a week (ask me how I know), and you also want to avoid absorbing pigment through your skin.
  • No food or drink near the dyeing station, and you’ll need to clean everything before and after if dyeing in the kitchen.

Ok, so let’s get to the good stuff.

This is the yarn I need to reproduce. It’s called Mossy Moggy (moggies being what we call non-breed specific cats in the UK, do you call them the same in the US?). I needed 3 skeins.

If you want to be able to reproduce colourways in the future, you need good note taking habits. I have a dedicated folder where I keep all my cauldron inventions. If you think you’ll remember how you created something months later, trust me, you won’t.

This is my dye sheet. I leave the space on the upper left corner blank so I can attach a photo of the finished item to jog my memory.

Now on to the dyeing itself. Since I mentioned how important it is to wear a mask, allow me to show you myself in my best Breaking Bad impersonation.

You’ve no idea how hard it was to procure this mask and filters. I needed a new one during the pandemic and everything was sold out. For the life of me, I never thought particulates masks would sell out, but I guess some people want to be extra careful.

There’s plenty of ways to hand dye fibre, and endless techniques. Each will yield different results, and it’s a lot of fun to play around. In this particular case, I’m doing low immersion dyeing: this means I’ll be using just enough water to cover the fibre, on a stovetop.

I’m using a Gastronorm pan, which might look familiar to you if you’ve ever been to a buffet in a restaurant. These are super handy, large enough for up to 6 skeins, sturdy, and fit my electric stove perfectly (over two hobs). There’s several standardised sizes to choose from, this being the largest one.

Mossy Moggy is created by dyeing part of the yarn first, without pre-soaking it first. As it sinks, the first colour gets absorbed gradually and allows for differences in depth. Then I add another colour to the top that has remained undyed, and after it’s all exhausted (meaning all the dye has been taken in by the fibre), it’s time to add sprinkles.

Sprinkling yarn is a favourite activity of mine. Wearing gloves (and donning my respirator), I scatter some dye powder over the yarn here and there. Less is more. The water here is fairly acidic (I use citric acid, you can also use vinegar to get the dye molecules to bind with the fibre) so the sprinkles stay relatively put. I love seeing those little dots of colour.

As I write this, the yarn is cooling down in the pan. I always let the water get cool before I remove the fibre, it allows for more vibrant colours. If I manage to remember to come back to this post before it’s scheduled to publish, I’ll add a photo of the drying skeins.

One interesting thing to remember if you’ve never dyed: colours always look one to two shades deeper whilst wet. If you’re trying to reproduce a certain colour and think it’s spot on in the pot, it’s probably too light.

Once these beauties are done they’ll be heading over to California. I’ll be very excited to see them reach their destination and even more if my client tags me on social media once she starts knitting with them!

Let me know if you have any questions, and if you’d like a more in-depth post on dyeing in the future (and what you’d like to read about the subject). Have a great week.

 

 

Flax Study Group 2020 –Seed removal Part 1 (from the stocks)

Flax Study Group 2020 –Seed removal Part 1 (from the stocks)

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This is the part I missed last year, so was particularly interested in photographing and participating this year.

When we last left off we had had a very hot dry summer, the flax had matured more quickly than anticipated and we harvested early. We considered a second planting but there were a number of health issues in the group this summer so we decided against it. The flax was picked, bundled and stacked along the fence. Once dry, it would be moved inside to await the decapitation. We decided on a date Aug 29th when most of us could attend.

Well, that was the plan, between harvest and getting dry enough to put in the barn there was a distinct change in the weather. All the rain we would have liked earlier arrived now that we had harvested. Thus, the flax took longer to dry than expected and it looks to have started to do a bit of field retting.

1-2 the dried flax

3 3 Aug 29th, 2020 everything is wet but it’s not raining at the moment.

The day arrived for our torture of the Flax and it was overcast and looked like rain. We gathered in the coverall barn while the cows nibbled the stocks of the picked cornfield.

4 4 the cows were only mildly interested at this point

While I waited for the flax to be moved from one barn to the coverall, I admired the corn protection devices. There were a number of beech balls with eyes bobbing away and a cool black kite that went up and down in the breeze. It was fascinating, I think I need one for my garden if it works on chipmunks I might get a few strawberries!!

 

5-6 garden guards

Gord used his pickup to transport the harvest. Even with the stocks being shorter this year, there is a lot of flax! I had nice white new tarps in the car and we spread them out to place the flax on as we slowly worked our way through the pile.

7 7 flax arrival

There was a bucket of seed heads that had fallen off in the other barn which were also collected and brought to the coverall.

88 floor sweepings from storage

We had a number of experiments with seed extraction devices this year.  Last year the pillowcase and rolling pin method was most effective. This year we had that, a fish thwapper and a blank for a baseball bat to crush the seed pods releasing the seeds. We had a funnel to try a different form of winnowing and  Cole had brought a nasty implement with blades. He also re-tried the double rack used also like a hackle that had been suggested but had not been effective last year. This year the rakes were secured together with elastic and Velcro.

The funnel was interesting, it was used to swirl the crushed seed pods and chaff. We expected the seed to fall to the bottom and the chaff to migrate towards the top. While we could see a bit of this happening, we suspected that the seed this year is not as heavy or large as last year’s, so it is not as effective as we had hoped. This may work out very well next year so we will try it again.

9-12 the funnel separator

1313 this years seed are small and light (not just in colour)

The next implement was the fish thwapper.  Its basically like a rolling pin without the handles for hitting fish with. The unsuspecting flax was stuffed headfirst into the pillowcase (a small amount worked better than a large amount). When the flax was well incased in the pillowcase we brought out our weapons of choice, with either the thwapper, bat blank or rolling pins we rolled or beat the now blinded and unsuspecting flax till it was decapitated.

 14-19 rolling and hitting method

All this violence left us with the decapitated stocks, crushed seed heads and a few very tiny light cloured seeds. Most of us were using this method. You can check out Gord’s roller, which is a blank to make a baseball bat!

 20 21 more rolling

2222 Gord was flax-covid-coordinated with his mask matching his pillowcase!

The tarp at the back of the picture has the flax that has not been decapitated yet. The near tarp with the pile closest to the front of the picture is the fibre we had worked on.

2323 making progress

We are still under halfway there but already had a large number of flax stocks, chaff and hopefully some tiny seeds in amongst the chaff.

24 24 Chaff and seed collection

As I said earlier Cole brought a homemade implement to torture the flax with, it had blades set at an angle and he was drawing the flax through. It was working to separate the seed heads but it was taking some of the stock ends with it. It was also vary sharp and a bit scary (even for me).

25-28 blade implement

Next, he tried the two mettle tine racks Velcroed and elasticed together. This had not been effective last year but I had not been there with my handy elastic and Velcro tie downs!

29 29 This method seemed to be less harmful to both the flax and Cole.

30-32 the two rake method

Seedhead removal was very quick compared to the pillowcase method. There was still some stalk damage but not as much as the blades.  if you had to do a full field of flax this would be appealing.

Partway through the morning, I noticed the clean-up crew that Cathy Louise had on call.  One was working the aria under the wheelbarrow and another pair were covering the area where Gord had backed up to unload his pick-up.

 

 33-36 Barn cleaners

We continued working while keeping an eye on the clean-up crew in case they got over-enthusiastic and went for the flax.

37-38 chaff and seed

You can see bits of seeds in with the chaff. There will be a lot of work for the winnowing basket but with the seed so light and small, it too may disappear in the breeze

39 39 We have about 1/3 -ish left to decapitate.

40 40 The finished pile is growing too!

41-44 rolling thwapping and raking continued

4545 We can see a bit of seed

4646 artsy shot

Through the day, we had herd intermittent rain on the roof but this was getting to be waves of heavy downpours. Looking out the cow end of the coverall we could see the rain pelting down.

4747 More Rain!!!

4848 We finally reached the end of the pile!!

All that was left to do was crush the seed heads Cole had been separating. For that, we used the shovel to add the seed head to the pillowcases. Now back to rolling and thumping

4950 49-50

Just as we started the rolling  Henry returned from his quest. I think we should leave that for next week! you will have to wait to see what a brilliant idea he had!

The Wool is Here!

The Wool is Here!

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I needed to order some wool and Jan need some wool, in the hopes of being able to teach again. And… Well….who doesn’t need more wool.  I order a large amount when I order. I was aiming for 20 kg. The shipping gets cheaper if you order more. I picked out what I wanted and Jan picked out what she wanted. We took several days to do this. And then having reached 20kg I realized I had not added in the 5 kg of Corriedale I wanted. Well, that means I need to get 40kg as I am in the next shipping bracket. Add some wool I had only been thinking about and some more dyed fibre and then ask a few others I know with week will power, that might want several kgs of wool, not little retail amounts, I made it up to 40kg.  Hit the order button and hear my bank account shriek. LOL, my spell checker wants to change shriek to shrink. Now we wait. a few days later it was in Indianapolis Indiana in the USA, then Montreal Quebec, then Ottawa Ontario.  whoops, then Indianapolis again.   That does seem right… It’s not, here it is on my doorstep. Yay, wait a min there is only one box.

Her it is Jan took these on Saturday when she dropped by to pick you her goodie order. She was busy doing flax and wouldn’t make it to the market. You can see it is not a square box.

I kept checking but the FedEx site just kept saying it was in transit in Indianapolis. Then the site tried to tell me I had no packages so I called them and after a bit convinced the automated system that I was stupid and needed to speak to a human. He had a hard time finding it but said it was waiting for customs clearance. Hmm, I wonder if they will open it or x-ray it. It was there for several days. And then, at last, it arrived

Well, that’s odd that isn’t a white World of Wool box. I bet they opened it and couldn’t get it back in the box. LOL on them. I have had this happen before but it came with the top open and lots of customs tape over the top to keep everything from falling out. It was quite funny.

The first to open was the white box.

 

I dug down in the white box and it seems to be the batts and prefelt.

 

 

I dug down into the second box about halfway. I put it all back in. I don’t have room to let it expand right now. I have to keep my table clear for baking tomorrow. My table does double duty. It has to be cleaned to do felt and then cleaned to do tarts. I have a rolling stone but I need the room for the tart trays.

As you can see it is not packed to the top so I do think it was repacked into a larger box at customs.

I am pretty sure the white you can see inside is the Corriedale. and partway down I found the packing slip and the nice thankyou postcard you always get in these orders. They are usually on the top.

It all went back in the FedEx box but not into the WOW box

The FedEx still shows the parcel as pending with no delivery estimate. I think their site is broken but if they want to deliver more wool I will be happy to take it.

Monday is a holiday and we will don our masks and meet on Jan’s lawn to sort out all the wool parcels. She is in about the middle of where we all live.  I am sure Jan will take lots of pictures of the happy wool gathering.

 

 

 

Autumn Nuno Hand Stitch Update

Autumn Nuno Hand Stitch Update

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The last time I updated you on my autumn nuno landscape it looked like this. I have been slowly continuing to add more color into the middle background area with seed stitch. I added a lot of red orange as well as green and even some dark purple.

Here you can see more of the red orange additions and the purple that I used for a shadow color. I decided to use the dark purple instead of brown or black. Black is definitely too stark and I think the cool color in the middle of the red orange gives it more “pop”.

Here is the area where I added more green. You can see on the left that I haven’t finished filling in the green.

And here is the piece as it is at this point. I still need to add some more shadow shapes in the red orange swath and perhaps a bit more definition of the aspen trunks in the distance. Can you see the area that will become the foreground aspen trees? It is finally looking more landscape to me. So I will keep on with my slow stitching and update you on my progress next month.

Third Quarter Challenge – Felt Hat

Third Quarter Challenge – Felt Hat

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hat view 1

I found this delightful free pattern for a reversible wool hat, and with the kind permission of the author, Daniela Gutierrez-Diaz,  here is a LINK to her pattern and a photo of her hat.

original hat

First job was to print the pattern and stick it together to try it for size.  I discovered that I needed to reduce the size by 12% – easily done on the print settings.

pattern

Then I could work out the size of felt fabric I needed to make.  I used 4 layers of mid-green merino wool to make a rectangle then topped it with a pattern of diagonal stripes of open-weave fabric, yarns and nepps.  The dry layout was 100 x 60cms (40″ x 24″).

felt fabric

I got the idea for the pattern by looking down at my skirt!

pattern inspiration

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had to make a few adaptations to the pattern because the felt fabric was thicker than the fabric used in Daniela’s pattern.

Instead of folding the fabric over itself into a tube then flattening it with zig-zag, I cut the straps in half widthways, backed them with thin cotton fabric then zig-zagged around the edges.

straps

The hat was designed to be made from two layers of fabric then ‘bagged out’ but the felt wasn’t suitable for that, so I applied an adhesive web to a piece of thin green cotton fabric then ironed it onto the felt fabric to form the lining.

I cut away the excess cotton fabric…

lining

…then neatened the bottom edge with zig-zag stitch.

The crown of the hat is formed by joining together the points.  I butted the edges of the felt together and sewed them shut with zig-zag stitch.

stitiching top together

first top seam

The first one was easy but it became progressively harder as more felt bunched up under the machine.

stitching top together 1

But here it is finished…

hat view 2

…and the view of the top.

hat view 3

With all the lovely weather we’re having this year, it’s hard to imagine it being cold enough to wear this hat!