The Princess and the Pea, Right Here

     If you ever get the urge to stuff a pillow with 8 pounds of organic buckwheat hulls, don't.  Well, you might, but I found the result too firm.  Plus it's noisy when you move it.  If anyone has any suggestions for using the buckwheat hulls for something else, please let me know.
     I am going to try again with 4.5 pounds of organic natural shredded latex rubber, stuffing a pillow protector and a pillow slip that I threw into one of the indigo vats I ran this week.  I did a colour remover vat and a Spectralite vat following Jenny Dean's directions for the hydrosulfite indigo vat.  The Spectralite vat gave less colour.
     Will be demonstrating språng today at a local fibre festival.
     The handspinning demonstration, at a local museum last week, went well.  I used my spindle and gave away a lot of 8 inch-ish pieces of handspun wool yarn, mostly to children.

     Update: the latex pillow worked out very well.  It only took about 2.5 pounds of shredded latex.

Jacquard SolarFast Dye Fail

Jacquard SolarFast Dye on a tote bag

     I think I can fix the problems with this tote bag I dyed with Jacquard SolarFast dye.  The dye bled and it is too dark.  The image looks like it is positioned too low when the bag is full, even though the image is centred.  There is blue discolouration: it should be solid black but instead the dye is breaking apart in spots.  It was a warm day and there was some condensation under the glass and negative.  According to the manufacturer's FAQs (helpfully sent to me by the supplier Dharma Trading Co.), the discolouration is probably due to too much dye.
     It's pretty cool even with its faults.
     The sheep in the picture are local Gulf Coast Native sheep, and the picture is from an original photo I took.
     The bag is stuffed with some inexpensive drop spindles I made, and some wool, for a handspinning demonstration I'm going to today.

Building a Fort

     Metalwork still has me in its grip, and I attempted nålbinding again.  I tried the nice simple Oslo stitch, sitting with a friend and Viking re-enactor who knows how to do it.  Then I took it home and the pixies must have got hold of the piece when I wasn't watching, as it's not looking like it should.  Un-looping a few stitches hasn't helped me figure out how to start again.
     My other yarn projects are no more complicated than a hemp seed stitch dish cloth.  I quite like how that's coming out.  Much better drape than the garter stitch ones I did a few years ago.  Less stretchy.  Also, I like being able to leave the project sitting out beside my chair overnight without worrying that moths will break in and steal.*
     I guess I did make something since I last blogged, a språng bag to give as a gift.  I broke my synthetic dye diet for that.  The colour was the polar opposite of my taste, too.  Anyway, it was a cute little bag.  Operative word being little, it came out half the size I was expecting two skeins to give.  I did one of my favourite patterns, the one from Skrydstrup, Denmark.  I like patterns I don't have to think much about when I'm doing them.  With the hemp knitted dish cloth, actually, I tried linen stitch and just couldn't hack it.  Strange because there's not much to the directions but that's how it is.

språng bag in Skrydstrup pattern

     The two wool sweaters are still unfinished and the Quince & Co. Sparrow swatches for the linen sweater have been abandoned, but only because I have switched yarns.  I got a couple of one pound cones from Catnip Yarns.  Isn't that a great shop name?  The owner specializes in undyed yarn, which is cool.
     With that and the two cones of hemp yarn from Hemp Basics, and all the one kilogram containers of dyes and additives from Maiwa (for my shop, dye kits are back in stock), I'm thinking of building a fort with it all.
     But yeah, the metalwork.  The planning.  The watching of old Craftsy classes plus a few new ones.  The ambition to try new techniques.  The signing up for local classes.  The careful choosing of materials.  Oh, the materials.  It's like buying wool.  I knew I had it bad when my Internet browser started to automatically fill in the URL with Rio Grande when I typed www.  I finally got together my sterling silver scraps from lost wax casting and sent them in to Rio Grande to get money out of them to buy silver sheet and wire.  Sort of like tossing the stash.
     I wish someone had told the Craftsy instructors how to pronounce Rio Grande properly.  Rhymes with Monday.  Everybody gets it wrong except Mark Nelson, which is no surprise since he works for the company.


*wee Bible joke: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew 6:19-21 KJV
The pixies were a joke, too.