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Burning the fuzz off a basket and then dying it.

Burning the fuzz off a basket and then dying it.

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I thought I would try burning fuss of some felt, a bergschaf wool basket to be precise. My son gave me his cool little cigar lighter he picked up. It worked for about 5 seconds then was out of fuel. no problem we will just get some butane and fill it. Well, you would think that was easy but no.

So I will try a candle. We really only have beeswax candles so I got a tealight and tried it. It worked  (it looks more scorched than it is)  but I spilled wax on the basket and that’s not good. Good thing I decided to try the inside of the handle where it won’t show so I will not have to look up how to get beeswax out of wool. I seem to remember something about ironing with paper from my grade 7 batiking class. We will not mention just how long ago that class was.

Next was to see if Walmart has a little torch in the kitchen section for doing the tops of Creme Brulee. No, they do not. How about some butane? No, you have to order that on the online platform. No flammable gas in the store but they will ship you pressurized gas in the mail. No time for that, buy a BBQ lighter. They have that. I had to return that seems it won’t light. Next, let’s try Canadian Tire. Yes,  according to the website they have butane and even have a little torch on sale cheap ($9.99 marked down from $39.99). No, they are sold out even if the app says there are 2 left. And where is the butane? Nowhere to be found. Another fail. I am starting to think the universe is telling me not to do this. But there are BBQ lighters at the cashout. Let’s try again, I grabbed one and off I went.

This BBQ lighter works, now I can give this a try.

I worked well. A little hard to keep it lit because of all the safety features on lighters these days but I managed. I was wishing to the flamethrower lighters of my teen years. Just not the same waving a phone light. Not to mention you cant singe hairs of wool with them.

It wasn’t easy trying to get a picture of the singed hairs. If the pot had been white maybe it would have been easier but many tries later I got this good one. Keeping the torch moving is the key to not singing it. and the hairs shrivel quite fast.

The problem is it looks like it’s nice and hair free and then you brush off the burned bits and it just raised more hairs. I tried to be gentle but still. after a second pass, it was better but still, there were hairs. It’s too bad it didn’t work as I wanted because even though is it a bit stinky it was fun to do.

Oh well moving onto the next step, dying the basket. This time I picked magenta and purple.

First into the dye pot upside down to do the lighter colour on the top. it cooked loner than usual as when I went to take it out I realized I hadn’t added any vinegar. Oh well, no harm done.

Then the other way up to do the darker purple. You can see the wax I didn’t get off, on the top. A very effective resist.

I was very happy when I rinsed the basket, there was no bleeding at all.

I rolled up the handle to dry in the right shape this time. So there is a happy face instead of an alien this time.

This is a nice close up that shows the colour changes nicely. When it is dry I will shave it.

 

Here is t is off the ball. I will add some stitching but that’s a job for Sunday.

 

By now, with basket 3, I am sure you are sick of hearing about may baskets. I promise not to do another basket post next week when it is my turn to post again.

 

 

 

 

 

Basket Mark 2 Finished.

Basket Mark 2 Finished.

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This week I finished the basket. All it really needed was to have the handle finished and that would have been fast and easy. But a white basket is not only boring it does not fit with me. I can’t keep anything white clean for long.

So faze to of the basket: dying.

I have a turkey fryer/corn cooker for dying outside. After clearing a spot on the porch for the dye pot and my son cleaning all the bugs and spiders and webs out of the hose and burner I got some water heating. Usually, when you are going to dye wool you wet it first. it gets you a more even take-up of the dye. I didn’t want that in particular so I popped it in dry.

you can see I only put it in partway. Ther is about half the bottom of the basket sticking out. This is limy green. after it had cooked for about 45 min just under a boil the water was clear and I removed it and added a dye from ProChem called Mallard. It’s a blue-green and put the basket into the pot the other way up. I forgot to take a picture of that, sorry.

Once the dye was exhausted I rinsed it and blew the beach ball up in it again, another alien.  I am really pleased with the way the colours came out.

Since I had the dye pot hot I dyed some wool too.

My original idea was to use a piece of a tree branch in the handle.

It was ok when I was holding it but as soon as I put it down this happened.

It dropped right to the bottom. So much for the cream buns you just bought. It is much too heavy. Looking back at the pictures I had seen with wood in the handles, they were all small and the wood was mostly driftwood, which is much lighter. Those baskets seemed to be more decorative than useful.  I went back to just rolling all the excess wool up into the handle. It makes a nice sized comfortable to hold handle.  You can see the colour mixing better now its dry.

when I let go of the handle It still falls to the side but not nearly as much, so the cream buns are safe.

You may have noticed that one side of the basket stretched out more than the other. I think it was from the ball being blown up in it. I should have rewet it and fulled it some more but I didn’t want to. I was thinking of how to fix it or make it a feature rather than a flaw.

I pinched it a couple of different ways and that would have worked but I didn’t really like it. the heck with it, it’s just for me.

The basket part feels a little light even though there is 200grams of fibre in it.  It was a bigger resist but I reasoned to myself that there is more wool in 200 grams of Corriedale then there is in the same weight of Fin. I didn’t put any yarn in it, mostly because I forgot. I wanted to prevent the basket lip form stretching out any more. I tend to overfill my baskets and bags. Off to search my handspun for some appropriate yarn. I found a yarn that is predominantly the same colour as the Mallard on the bottom of the pot and did some decorative and structurally helpful stitching. I am pleased with the results.  Sorry about the pictures. I was trying to keep my arm out of the way and get far enough back to get the whole basket.

I think there will be more baskets in my future.