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.

Natural Dye Shopping List

     I thought I'd give you a shopping list of dyes for Maiwa, my supplier.  It gives a well-rounded assortment.

• Gallnut Extract 100g (3.6 oz.)
• Fructose - 250g (8.82 oz.)
• Calcium Carbonate 250g (8.82 oz)
• Potassium Alum Sulfate 100g (3.6 oz.)
• Weld 100g (3.6 oz.)
• Walnut Husks Ground 100g (3.6 oz.)
• Madder 100g (3.6 oz.)
• Calcium Hydroxide (Calx) 60g (2.1 oz)
• Indigo Natural 30g (1.1 oz.)

     If you are wondering how to dye with natural dyes, Maiwa has informational guides about natural dyes at https://maiwa.com/pages/instructions including The Maiwa Guide to Natural Dyes: What They Are and How to Use Them, Indigo and Woad: Natural and Synthetic, and The Organic Vat.  The last one is also about indigo and includes the fructose vat, which is what the shopping list is meant to give.
     In other news, I have made headway in my effort to have more linen in my life.  I bought a pair of linen socks from Rawganique.  They look like sports socks but they are linen instead of cotton, and they are undyed which goes well with my synthetic dye diet.  Wearing the socks feels as good as wading in the ocean barefoot.  Really.  And I very much like wading in the ocean.
     I haven't totally given up on the plan to knit a linen sweater.  We shall see.  Maybe a linen språng pullover like the wool one I did.  That would be amazing.

Hairy-seeded Cotton

     I separated some cotton from seeds for someone at our guild.  This cotton was grown here in Virginia.  The cotton variety is Nankeen, an old variety whose fibre was used to make breeches in the late 1700s.  (I owe knowledge of that fact to Colonial Williamsburg.)  The colour is undyed, naturally yellow-brown.  The seeds, the pile on the left in the photo, are hairy and it took some effort to pull the fibre off the seeds.  I've never separated smooth-seeded cotton, but I hear it is easier.

The Urge to Show and Tell

     A couple of women were sifting through the bowl of my yarn-themed pin back buttons at a market a while back, laughing and pointing out the sayings to each other.  "That's so X!" they said about the "freshly handknit, please admire" button, referring to someone in their knitting group they found overly enthusiastic about show and tell.
     "Is she a new knitter?" I asked.  When I first learned to spin and knit, I would bring my finished items to the attention of the more experienced handspinners I knew.  It was a way to say, I heard what you said to do, I applied it as best I could, and it's very exciting.
     When I show and tell now, I'm more saying, this is possible, this is a result I'm after for these reasons, this is a benefit I'm trying to get through yarn, you can do this too.  Here is a display I did at a local farmers' market recently:

display for handspinning, knitting, weaving

     It wasn't a patch on the other handspinner's display, though.  She had a piece of brown un-dyed cotton cloth she grew, spun, and wove.  She also had flax on a spindle.  Sometime I have to get a photo of her in her homegrown, handspun, handwoven green cotton vest.

homegrown un-dyed cotton handspun and handwoven into cloth

     I am still working out the dynamics of traffic flow and weather for public demonstrations of fibre arts.  I really should have put up a tarp wall on the sunny side.  We were at the rear of the tent avoiding the sun and it was awkward to greet passersby from back there.  Shade might have helped us bear the humidity; hot weather makes it hard to spin wool.  The tables should have been in a line off to the side rather than an L at the front of the booth.  Sound is also an issue.  We were set up across from a dozen ukuleles with amplifiers.  So, fun but challenging.

Map of Yarnia

This is a letter I wrote to someone recently, about what I'd want people to know about yarn and the fibre arts.  

There are many benefits to having a hand in the production of textiles, whether it's knitting, weaving, handspinning, dyeing, processing fiber, or raising fiber.  You can know your clothes were produced with fair labour.  You can boost small-scale independent producers and family companies.  You can increase biodiversity and conserve endangered breeds and species of plants and animals that give fiber and dyes.  You can reduce pollution such as carbon from shipping or dye runoff in rivers from factories.  You can get more excellent technical qualities such as glossiness or reduced pilling, and more variety of colours and textures, and a better fit than you get in ready-made.  You understand more of the world's cultural heritage.  You can tinker and experiment.  You can take a project from plan to finished object, and have it just the way you want it.  You can stimulate or soothe your mind and body through the rhythmical motions of using the wheel or loom or needles.  You can repair a landscape by harvesting invasive species for dye.

But most people don't have the skills, don't even have the vocabulary to describe what they know from seeing textiles all their lives, and don't know where to start and who to ask.

Therefore, I recommend two routes.

The first route is for people who want the benefits but don't want to do the work.  You can find and buy from shepherds and knitters and weavers who sell finished goods to the public and who make things to order.  (But don't ask a hobby knitter to make you anything!)  You can find such folks in business by asking at yarn stores, art galleries, shepherds associations, and living history museums, or you can search online on places like Etsy and Local Harvest.  Ask for features like naturally green cotton and wool from black sheep.  Ask for real wool, linen, and cotton.  Moreover, you can give so others can do the work.  Give gifts of equipment, materials, and lessons to children in your extended families and local school classrooms.  You can donate to places dedicated to preservation and education such as The Livestock Conservancy, or any local arts education center that offers weaving, or therapeutic arts programs in prisons and hospitals.  You can do microloans or contribute to fundraising campaigns for local wool mills to buy new equipment.  You can pay for young people to learn how to shear sheep or keep sheep or build a spinning wheel.  Your vacation can be spent touring studios and farms in Peru or the Shetland Islands or New Zealand or your own region.  You can go talk to elderly people to see what they remember about their mothers' knitting.  You can let a dyer come pick your marigolds or gather your black walnut hulls.  There are guilds, which are groups or non-profit organizations that promote weaving, handspinning, or knitting, and you can volunteer your time to help these guilds apply for grants to educate the public.  Or you can provide public space for exhibits and demonstrations of a guild's work.  You can also challenge ready-to-wear companies to produce factory-made goods with integrity rather than stuff that rips off and poorly imitates the qualities of beautiful, labour-intensive, traditional handmade goods.  For example, recently a printed fabric has been widely sold that imitates the look of ikat and is sold as being ikat.  This is a deceptive practice.  Ikat is a type of hand-dyed and handwoven cloth.

The second route is to learn the skills and make stuff with yarn yourself.  You can, you really can.  There are how-to books and videos and blogs and the highly useful website Ravelry, there are suppliers out there, there are teachers and workshops and festivals, and there are many local guilds for handspinners, weavers, and knitters where you can go, get mentored, and see what's possible.  Look hard and you will find them.  Getting the skills will take time, money, effort, and grit.  Getting the tools and supplies will take up room and impact your family or housemates.  It will be as much effort as learning to drive or read.  It is worth it.

I should say, after they ask me how to spin basic yarn, almost all fibre arts newbies have the same two questions: where to buy fibre to spin and how to pick a spinning wheel.  The answer is, it depends on your goals and tastes.

I hardly ever advise knitter newbies or weaver newbies.  Interestingly, compared to finding materials and choosing tools for handspinning, with knitting it is much easier and usually cheaper and with weaving it is harder and usually more expensive, for a number of reasons.

When I knit or spin in public in front of non-fiber artists, after they ask me what I'm doing, their question is almost always, do I keep sheep.  Most handspinners I know don't.  I should start asking why they want to know.

So, that was the letter.

It's funny how newbies want to know where to find fibre and how to pick a spinning wheel.  They always ask the questions in that order.  They rarely ask me the reverse, how to pick fibre and find a spinning wheel.  I think that once they find fibre for sale, they find spinning wheels, and they are more confident about picking a fibre on their own.  There is more information published to follow about picking fibre.  Fibre is cheaper and simpler than spinning wheels are, so it feels like less of a risk.  Actually, a bad fibre choice can cost you a lot in lost time, wasted materials, and regret.  A spinning wheel can be reasonably easy to resell.

One additional way people can be a patron of the fibre arts is to rent meeting space to a guild at an affordable rate.  You'd be surprised how much this is needed.  Even better, rent space and provide secure and accessible storage space for the guild library and equipment.  For a meeting space in a commercial or religious building, expect nothing of the guild beyond the rental fee; that is, no expectation members will buy or buy in.  Let the guild secure their dates in advance, and do not mess with the schedule once set.

From my position of observing the fibre arts for years, it has been fun to draw conclusions in terms of sets and subsets.
For example, some knitters spin yarn.
Some knitters aspire to spin yarn and see that as the next logical step.
Some knitters see handspinning as the path to doom and getting overwhelmed.
Almost all handspinners knit; a few of them don't really like to knit but will do it, more for the product than the process.
Some handspinners weave.
Some weavers spin yarn but they weave far more with commercial yarn than they do handspun.
Handspinners buy a surprising amount of commercial yarn.
Handspinners usually know how to process fibre, that is, wash a fleece and comb or card it; however, most of the time they start with commercially-prepared fibre.
A lot of handspinners have tried dyeing yarn or fibre; a small number dye often but also work with commercially-dyed or un-dyed materials.
Some weavers dye their yarn after they wind the warp and before they dress the loom.
Most handspinners use a spinning wheel, many of them can use a spindle but see the wheel as primary, some use both, and a few use spindles only.
Handspinners who use spindles have usually tried most of the different types and have a clear preference for one of them.
A small number of handspinners own (or are owned) by great wheels.  A great wheels is about six feet long.  These handspinners find that getting a great wheel is sort of like catching an alligator.
Owning two or more Saxony or castle spinning wheels is common, and it's often because the wheels function differently.
It would be highly unusual for a handspinner in a Western country to spin yarn only on a charka or electronically-powered spinning machine; these usually go along with a collection of wheels.
Knitters often get leftover supplies dumped on them, handspinners do somewhat, and experienced handspinners often give samples of fibre to newbies for experimentation.
Weavers from time to time buy yarn and looms secondhand from elderly weavers who call it quits.
The average age of a weaver is older than a handspinner, comparatively few people start weaving, and succession planning is getting to be a concern.
The typical longtime weaver has a large, heavy floor loom and one of every other type of loom too.  When I say large, I mean the size of a small car.
The trend has been to smaller floor looms that can fold up even though it sacrifices some functionality.
Most weavers prefer using a floor loom over all other types and like 4 to 8 harness, though a few, the complex weavers, want far more harnesses.
A small but hardy band of fibre artists are fibre artists because they are doing experimental archaeology or historical re-enactment.
Some fibre artists raise fibre animals; some of them dream about doing that.  Many shepherds are not fibre artists.
The re-enactors want to raise fibre animals because they could have historically-accurate breeds and that would be cool.
Some fibre artists are gardeners or gleaners of materials for dyeing and spinning.
I was going to write that it is more common to see small finished objects at show and tell than large objects because the greater amount of necessary grit makes larger items more rare, but actually the numbers might be more even than that.
Small finished objects get admiration, large objects get admiration and respect.
Some fibre artists teach.
Some fibre artists go away to workshops, retreats, and festivals, even in other countries, and some (probably more of them) stay home.
Most fibre artists are curious, add to their knowledge and skills, and have goals for what they'd like to try.  Breadth of knowledge is admired.
Knitters in the past often made things according to standard rules of thumb and a cultural bank of combinations and arrangements of line and colour.  Now they are adapting and modifying patterns, trying patterns from many sources, grafting aspects of one pattern onto another, and trying to figure out handknit styles that no one does anymore.
Some knitters design and publish patterns, and work with other knitters to test the patterns.
Some knitters sell their knitted items and will take on commission work.  The first tend to be one-size-fits-all accessories, and the second tend to be customized.
Some weavers sell their items.  These tend to be either one extreme or the other, either art pieces or cotton towels.
Some handspinners sell their knitted or woven items but rarely sell handspun yarn or items made with handspun yarn.  If they do, the items tend to be things that only a handspinner could do, incorporating slubby yarn, tailspun yarn, or colour-blending.
Hand-dyers are much more likely to sell their items than knitters, handspinners, and weavers.  Usually a hand-dyer will either do fibre and yarn or they will do finished goods like cloth bags and pillow slips.  The techniques are different and the markets are different.
There are those that prefer natural dyes, those that prefer synthetic dyes, and those that prefer to go to a workshop where someone else sets up the pots and they take whichever is on offer.
Some guilds can mount a sale of members' works but in other guilds, members sell on their own or not at all.
Many fibre artists will give finished items as gifts to family for special occasions.  This is in contrast to generations ago where, I hear, getting a finished knitted item was rather expected and on the level with getting a packed lunch box.
A knitter of the past would have knitted for direct descendants.  Today, knitters feel the urge to knit for extended family, because their nieces, nephews, cousins, and whatnot might lead lives blighted by feckless parents who do not supply them with handknits.
Knitters label people as knit-worthy or not; that is, worthy of getting a knitted gift.  The key qualities to maintaining knit-worthy status are saying thank you, using the item, and washing it by hand; I'm not sure which is most important.  Some gift-giving knitters go to a lot of trouble to study a person's tastes and will knit with an easy-care yarn they dislike.

Of all the lofty benefits I listed in the first paragraph, most fibre artists go after about half of those benefits.  Mostly we mess with yarn because it's cool and makes us happy.  We like doing it and we like the result.  I'm not sure there is a number one reason why people do it.  A lot of them gush about the colours and softness of the materials.

For the people who look but never enter Yarnia and the fibre arts, the feeling I get from them is that they don't trust it would work out for them if they got into it.  This is probably why I like to make maps, as it were, and do public demos.

Silver Earrings for Weavers

So this week there is Earth Day and Fashion Revolution day, both good, and I am contemplating them for a moment then letting it go by in a blur because I have my head down making fibre-arts themed jewellery.  I cast some silver earrings in the shape of tiny boat shuttles.

silver earrings for weavers

I recently found the podcast Conscious Chatter by Kestrel Jenkins and the article "Finding Local" by Niki Taylor in Seamwork magazine's April, 2016 issue.

I did order the linen knitting yarn, two sample balls of it.  It is the same gauge as the Bockens linen weaving yarn I have; the Bockens is much more tightly spun and plied.  I selected the natural white and natural grey, in my desire to avoid synthetic dye, and the shades appeal to me.

Oh, for a Linen Sweater

I have set aside the first grey mitten because there is something wrong with the gauge.  I need to fix it and just haven't.  Actually, I haven't made anything at all for three weeks, fibre or metal.  I have been resting and procrastinating on non-maker tasks.

I like to browse the online listings of a local auction house.  I like secondhand things and also material culture: it interests me to see what people had.  There is an estate sale up right now that includes something like ten storage tubs full of unfinished quilts.  Let this be a lesson to us all!

I've also been browsing Ravelry's project search function for finished sweaters, finished sweaters in linen, finished sweaters in undyed yarn, lace-weight finished sweaters, and handspun finished sweaters.  Many of the handspun sweaters were stockinette with thin stripes in multiple colours that were blurred and indistinct as they changed from one colour to another.  I would guess their owners spun the yarn from those 4 ounce bags of of roving dyed in multiple colours that have been so popular the last while.  There was a dainty Waterlily sweater, which is a solid colour in mostly stockinette stitch with some knitted lace at the yoke, knitted with the most beautiful linen yarn.  I went so far as to look up where to buy the yarn.  And then I thought of all the supplies I have already.  I may lack linen knitting yarn (and a nice linen sweater to wear) but there's a fair bit of linen weaving yarn, wool yarn, hemp yarn, wool roving, and raw fleece waiting for their turn.  I also have a 1990s thrift store linen sweater that might yield some knitting yarn some sweet day in the future.

Speaking of linen, and keeping in mind that I aim to get as much linen in my life as possible, I treated myself to a purchase of linen placemats from my favourite furniture and housewares store.  I don't know why I waited so long.

I went to the Fiber Farmers' Market in Northern Virginia.  The best moments for me were when I talked to someone who was thinking about buying her first spinning wheel and to someone else who had an antique spinning wheel that needs restoration.  

Just Keeping My Hand In

I am just keeping my hand in, as it were, by knitting a new mitten in grey store-bought wool for a family member.  Nothing big, nothing complicated or ambitious.  But hopefully useful.  I like usefulness.  The mittens are meant to coordinate with the hat with Fibonacci stripes I did.

One pair of my Susie's Reading mitts is complete and the others are sitting in a project bag with a little bit of work still to go.

I made a pair of dangle earrings stamped with the words "knit" and "purl." 

knit purl earrings

 

Kitchener and Kitchener and Kitchener Again

When last I posted, there were two pairs of identical handknit fingerless mittens whose tops needed to be folded over and Kitchenered.  There are three pairs of mittens now and I've just started to Kitchener.

I have read another book on getting things done that advises a person to eliminate, automate, and delegate tasks as much as possible.  Apparently the rule is to do tasks that can only be done by you, and nothing else.  Sounds like a rather expensive and sterile way to live.  

The white Romney wool has been machine-spun into yarn for me and is awaiting pickup the next time I go to B.C.  I hear the mill's financial situation has improved.

I made some earrings out of Egyptian coins, and I am waiting on more of the same coins to arrive from Poland.  I have coins coming from Italy and a small packet of jewellery components coming from Singapore as well.  It is a rather cool feeling to source from exotic places.  It entails a lot of waiting, though.

earrings made from Egyptian coins showing a handspinner

Still Life with Mitten

Here's a photo of my fourth mitten in progress.  (Below is a copper and sterling barrette I made for myself in a workshop.)  Three other mittens, in the same yarn and pattern, are in a project bag.  They need their tops Kitchenered for a seamless look.  The blue waste yarn is going to come out of the cuff, it was there so I could pick up stitches and make the cuff hem seamless.  These little tricks are what make handknits so satisfactory.

I read over the plan I made this summer and realized I should say something about progress.  I have the knitting machine and have done nothing with it.  The mitten above is made of the same yarn I mentioned in that post.  I took the sewing class and learned some, but not enough, which explains why I've signed up for another one.  I still need to get more structure and routine into my time spent on fibre arts, and more time spent making things for me, really.  I have not gotten into clamp resists or block printing.  I bought paint for block printing and a blank linoblock to carve, on the theory that I can use labour and save money that way.  I still think a custom-made block would be nice.  I got distracted by the thought of using mordants and chemical resists in dyeing.  Nothing has come of that beyond acquiring supplies.  I did spend time in thrift stores there for a spurt and I bought a small selection of interesting clothes that could be upcycled.  Nothing made its way into my wardrobe.  My locally-sourced Romney wool roving is at the spinning mill; this campaign on Go Fund Me has me worried about the mill's future.

Started Another Pair of Susie's Reading Mitts

I started knitting a mitten with Solitude Wool Coopworth sport yarn I bought at either the Fiber Farmers' Market or Shenadoah Valley Fiber Festival.  It is good to have something to work on while watching TV or meeting up with friends.

The pattern is Susie's Reading Mitts, adjusted for yarn gauge.  Love the lustrousness of the yarn.

Bobbing for Walnuts

black walnut dye bath

A black walnut dye bath smells to me like ginger beer.

I made a batch and tinted a thrift store print dress to turn the white background into a light shade of brown that is more harmonious with the red and brown in the print.  I dyed some cotton jersey fabric with walnut and then with a rather exhausted indigo vat, and got a dull blotchy brown.  I dyed a couple of silk scarves and got a rich, warm shade of brown with lighter shades where I bound the scarves with yarn.  One scarf has a small blotch.  I am getting a lot of blotches with indigo from the sediment and from the fabric popping above the surface.

I don't know what I am doing with walnut, really, since brown suits me very ill.  But other people like brown and the walnuts were gleaned.  Love gleaning.  I picked up some more black walnuts this week and dropped them in places around town right at the edge of trees and meadow where they will get light and space to grow.

I am reading India Flint's book Eco Colour again, and this time I am thinking of doing some of the techniques.

silk dyed with black walnut

Spinning Wheel Post Earrings

 

Am rather pleased with my self for turning wee sterling silver charms of spinning wheels into post earrings.  Didn't melt them to bits when soldering, hurray.  

Mordants, Discharges, and Resists

I am learning more about dyes and ways to use them with mordants, discharges, and resists which fix, remove, or resist colour.

I also went to a fibre festival and paid attention to what people were doing and saying.  It was interesting to see what was popular.

My roadside-gleaned walnuts are in the bag and waiting for me to get around to them.  So is a second vintage silk scarf in a pale print that would be improved with an over-dye of indigo.  Did I tell you about the first one?  I have two.

Looming Deadlines

No particular fibre arts progress or insight to report, other than deadlines are useful even if you procrastinate and only partially finish or make tiny steps in the direction of finishing.

Waiting for Walnut Harvest

I went to visit one of the area walnut trees.  The walnuts have not yet fallen.  I want to dye some things brown with the hulls.  Patience.

Old and New

I tested out fine gauge copper for knitting, to make jewellery.  I got an okay result.  The process was a so-so experience.  I will try again with fewer stitches and smaller needles.

Have washed the bulky-gauge grey wool vest that I got at the thrift store.  I am quite sure the vest is handknit, one of the cables is crossed backward.

I found a fisherman's sweater from Ireland at a thrift store and bought that to pass along to someone.  There were a number of other things in the shop that looked interesting but nothing I had to have.  I had my eye on white linen blouses and a white slubby cotton cardigan that would look good garment dyed or resist dyed with indigo.

Since I feel my indigo vat management skills could be improved to get stronger colour, I poked around on the Internet and found some blog posts by Catherine Ellis and India Flint about managing an indigo vat using fructose.  So that's good.

I got my sewing machine serviced, and a generous friend came over to walk me through cutting, piecing, and finishing edges.  I am using linen fabric, of course.  My knowledge and experience of sewing is still rudimentary but I possess more than I did a week ago and that pleases me.

I was thinking, if most cotton raised in the U.S. is now genetically-modified, then perhaps people will start to think of vintage cotton clothing as extra-valuable because the material was raised from non-GMO seed.  Perhaps.

Toxic Clothes, Benign Clothes

Newsweek's article, "The Environmental Crisis in Your Closet" by Adam Matthews, August 15, 2015 is worth reading.

I went to a number of thrift stores this week.  Found some things, mostly things that would need upcycling, not so much that can go right in my wardrobe.

The Plan and the Parameters

I may have mentioned, I was talking to a friend about handmade projects, completion, diligence, and accomplishment along with the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be.  She mentioned structure and scheduling, like the way your mother made you brush your teeth at a certain time every day.  I should build some in to my day, regarding fibre arts.

Regarding my wardrobe and phasing in handmade garments, I have thought about what I want to do.  

I consider myself fortunate that I do not have to market myself for an arts grant or crowdfunding, or position a personal brand of any sort.  I don't have to come up with a catch phrase or elevator pitch.  

I was reading a free publication about local food and local food producers and processors, and really wished someone would do the same with clothing.  A couple of people recently have said that we've had the national and international conversation about local, ethically-sourced, biodiverse, and nourishing food but we haven't had that conversation about textiles.

Onward to the plan.

I am going to continue to avoid merino wool and synthetic dye, to avoid synthetic fibres, to prefer organic cotton over conventional, to prefer linen over cotton, to keep silk to a minimum if any, to prefer breed-specific wool with as much longwool as I can get, to buy some secondhand textiles, to seek out natural colour (i.e. from wool from black sheep), and to prefer materials that have travelled the least distance with exceptions for hemp and indigo.  This suits my taste and also addresses a number of issues that I'm interested in such as increasing biodiversity, reducing pollution and erosion, fostering local economies and local capacity for processing or production, treating animals kindly, and reducing contact with materials that may harm the body like resins in superwash or petroleum-derived substances.

Assuming all is well with the mill, I will have five pounds of local white Romney wool spun for me into yarn.  I was thinking two pounds of two ply for weaving and three pounds of three ply worsted weight for knitting, but maybe I should get all two ply.  

I have signed up for a basic sewing class.  

In a couple of months, I plan to try using a friend's knitting machine.  

I have some weld that I ought to use.  It is a lovely, lovely lemon yellow dye.  I redid the madder but got a rusty orange-red that displeased me.  The store-bought cashmere sweater is dyed a deep indigo, not evenly but good enough for me.

I bought yarn for two sweaters, undyed local Coopworth that never left the East Coast for processing.  Some is 3 ply sport weight and some is 2 ply lace weight.  This commits me to knitting lace, which is a bit worrisome given how aggravated I felt about knitting lace the first and only time I did it.  

I learned about Quince & Co. yarn, which is entirely domestically sourced.  Their bare 3 ply sport weight yarn interests me.

True to my record of loving fibre arts tools, I now want to custom order a clamp resist for dyeing and a block printing block.  We shall see if I can afford them.

I love books too.  I ordered some secondhand books about sewing, making clothes with handwoven yardage, and using knitting machines.  I borrowed some as well.  There is a fresh heap of books by the chesterfield.

I did some people watching at church, looking at their clothes, especially the detailing.  I need to do some window shopping, the new season's clothing should be out.  My sense of what's in style could use some sharpening.  

I need to spend more time more regularly in thrift stores and consignment stores, and look at the racks for items to wear.  I've been drawn to linen things that I would not wear but I keep in a box because I like them.  My wardrobe is on the meagre side, by design and also because I am hard to please, hard to fit, and not fond of dressier styles.  

For fun, I bought a piece of secondhand clothing to make over.  It was very cheap.  It will take some time to alter, but it will be fun to do.  I won't want to wear the results, we will see what happens to it.

I repaired the metal catch on my shorts with pliers and am feeling smug.

I was with a small group of people I don't know that well and they started talking about clothes shopping, specifically buying lots of clothes from cheaper retailers.  I didn't challenge them on the implications to workers or the environment, I got a bad reaction once when talking up the Buy Nothing Day campaign with a stranger.  Then one of them started talking about the thrill of finding clothes in thrift stores.  I fostered the conversation along those lines and found some of the others were thrift store enthusiasts.  So that was fun.

As I said, I don't have to worry about putting a label on this course of action.  I was talking with someone and she said that once I have made handdyed, handwoven, or handknit clothes and wear them then the goal is that people would see and ask, and I would urge them to make their own.  And I just felt that, no, this is not about activism.  Or, I'm not about activism.  Now, possibly I am kidding myself about this.  I love to enable, I will give folks way more information than they need all about how to do this.  I'll give them tools and supplies.  I wore my "will knit for love" button to the store and the clerk asked me to teach her to knit.  I said yes.  You know my personal photo on this blog is my fist holding aloft a spindle as if to say freedom through handspinning.  Still, I'm am doing this to clothe myself well just like I buy organic vegetables, dry organic rice, and rosemary garlic lamb sausage so I can eat well.  I hope that makes sense.  The difference is that few see my supper.  And I don't eat organic or local or home-cooked food all the time.

One last thing, I have listened to the first episode of the podcast Woolful and quite like it.

The Proper Response

I watched the documentary, The True Cost, about the cost of mass-produced clothing including the cost to labourers, the environment, and farmers who produce raw goods.  It made me want a handmade wardrobe even more.  I don't want my money perpetuating that.

I recommend the movie, which is on Netflix streaming in the U.S. right now, or available to buy on iTunes and Amazon.  I know some people won't like the content politically because it talks about unions, worker's rights, pollution, and government regulation.

I wish the documentary had touched on the issue of synthetic dyes, as well as non-commercial alternatives to the conventional system.  And given more commercial alternatives.

I don't think I learned anything new, except that one expert who was interviewed said she believes that the socially responsible sourcing guidelines of major clothing companies are worthless.  As in, the companies don't stick to what they say they do.  That shook me up.

Mostly the value I got out of the movie was the human face it put on the issues, on the balance of power.  It is really hard to see people tear up or express anger over what has happened to them.

I have been reading the blogs of a couple of fibre artists, Katrina Rodabaugh and Victoria Pemberton, who have found artistic expression by putting limits on their work, such as no new clothes or no synthetic dye.  It has made me think about the criteria I want and what I want to do.  I'm still thinking.

Some friends and I were talking about slow clothes, handmade clothes, and locally-sourced and locally-made clothes.  Things like the deaths at Rana plaza, how a move to slow clothes would change how people look, the difficulty of getting everything local in an outfit even down to the shoes, and how weight fluctuations would be accommodated in a wardrobe that takes a lot of effort and time to make.

Madder Powder, Ruined

I ruined 3 ounces of madder powder by letting the water get above 140 degrees F, and am cross with myself.  Another pot of water is heating.  This one will come to temperature and stay there for a bit until I am satisfied, then I'll put in the dye.

I did my first Periscope broadcast, looking at my madder dye bath and then some fibres dyed with various natural dyes.  Didn't retain any viewers or get any live chat, oh, well.  It is up for the next little while and then it is deleted.

Was successful at drilling a hole in the pewter whorl I cast, so that was good.  Have to figure out what to string it on, for a pendant.  Probably it would be better for me to fit it with a shaft and make a spindle.

Picked up a piece of horn at auction and made it into a diz (a tool used in wool combing).  Loved working with the material, loved that it was up-cycled.  Somehow I managed to make the diz with the beautiful golden ratio, about 2 x 3 inches, even though I didn't measure.  I need to learn how to polish horn to a glossy finish, so a trip is in order, to see the tinkers at Colonial Williamsburg.

Finally finished knitting the baby hat with sock yarn.  Still love that pattern.  Still have more sock yarn to use up.  Another hat went right on the needles.

There's someone in Australia, I heard about it though Fibershed's Facebook feed, someone who is doing an entire outfit entirely of local materials, local processing, local production.  It's called one year, one outfit.  I think it's great.  She's asking other people to do the same.  The yarn I have that's local to where I live, I don't know if it left the area for processing so I don't know if it qualifies.

Elusive

My goal of a handmade wardrobe continues to elude me.  I would ideally like it to be made by me but in the meantime I could make do with pieces from other people.  After scouting around on Etsy I have concluded that most of the naturally-dyed clothing is too muddy and blotchy looking for me, and the handwoven clothing is too busy and geometric looking.  Few of the handknits appealed either.

I thought some things were interesting or well executed, and put them on my list of favourite items.  But some of the appeal might have been the photography.  A lot of them would need modification before I would wear them, such as a different colour, a thinner yarn, natural fibres, or some shaping.

Also, in Etsy clothing, apparently the key to sales is to chop old lace tablecloths up into abbreviated tops with string for straps, dye them with mushrooms, and allude to faeries and woodsprites in the ad copy.  How anyone does that with a straight face, I don't know.

What else.  I gathered from the Internet images of a number of old Roman spindle whorls in glass, lead, and clay.  I successfully cast a pewter whorl in sand on my own without help, and now have to cut away the sprue, file the edges, and bore a hole for the shaft.  If I can do that, especially the hole part which worries me, then I'm in business. 

More dyeing with indigo today.  I am going to put a perfectly good, unworn cashmere sweater in the vat.  Hope the colour comes out evenly.  Wish me well.

Holland Covers

There is this thing in historical novels where the author describes a room with the upholstered furniture covered with white fabric cloth to protect it.  The name for it was holland covers.  It was something you did as a maintenance chore for when you were away from the house, travelling.  I've always thought it sounded rather nice, all that white and an uncluttered feeling.  Not livable, but interesting and out of the scope of my ordinary life.

I was recently given a vintage damask linen tablecloth with yellow stains and holes to see if I could revive it.  The woman said, "lemon juice and sunlight."  I used citric acid powder in the wash, followed by time to dry in the sun out on some grass.  Had to wash the cloth twice, and then the stains were gone.  Then I gave the cloth two dips in the indigo vat, a vat which was successful by the way.

I threw the mottled blue thing over some boxes of packing supplies and buckets of wool in the wool room to envelope them and get them out of sight, sort of like holland covers.  It's mottled because the cloth was too large for the dye to penetrate everywhere.

Over top is a thrift store linen dress, bright blue flowers on a white background.  Someday it may become an apron.

I still have most of an indigo vat outside, dormant, and am thinking what I could do with it.  When I finish knitting the baby hat, I will pop that in the vat.  I keep forgetting to pretreat some wool with alum mordant overnight for a madder dye pot.

See and Be Seen

I've been spending my time acquiring supplies and skills, which is to say my to-do list has gotten longer.  I've been doing this largely to the exclusion of working on projects and as a result I am a little cross with myself, ready to instate resolutions and revolutions.  Maybe I'll track every day I make stuff for at least an hour.  Or maybe I will slough off again, lying on the couch reading the messy stack of how-to books I have out from the library.

I heard a quote from Ted Wright about the difference between hipsters and yuppies: "Are you doing it because you want to be doing it, or are you doing it because you want to be seen doing it?"  Certainly I do fiber arts because I want to do them, and so do all the fiber artists I know.  And yet, we love our show and tell.  In person, at exhibitions, online, in print.  Blow by blow, or in a big reveal.

Speaking of being seen, last month I went to a World Wide Knit in Public Day event.  It was fun.

I went to a local meeting for the Society for Creative Anachronism, to see inkle weaving and tablet weaving, and while I was there I got to see a centuries-old lead whorl and got to hear about probable methods of making shafts to go with such whorls.  I should have taken a photo of the whorl but I was intent on taking measurements, and forgot.  The whorl was about 1 inch in diameter and shaped like a donut with a hole about 3/8 inch in diameter.  The height was a little over 3/8 of an inch.

And this is why we are seen doing fiber arts, for the free flow of information to better our understanding, our skills, and our stash.  And for delight.  Because it's fun to make someone happy by showing them your yarn.  We don't see knitting and weaving much in ordinary daily life as the traditions got interrupted, and so we compensate.  Each conversation is like finding another puzzle piece to construct an idea of what is possible, what was done and what can be done.

Today I plan to manage my first indigo vat.  I've invited a friend to come over and dye some yarn, and I must say that this is helping me get to it and not put it off.

Shreds

I managed to shred one of my handknit hemp dish cloths, scrubbing lime scale off a stock pot.  The dish cloths are good at scrubbing but poor at wiping counters, having little absorbency.

I managed to properly calculate the number of rows and put them into the revised felted cloche-style hat so that it had the desired final dimensions after two trips through the washing machine.  The hat is in the mail.  The only photo I took shows the hat modelled by a friend, who didn't sign up to have her face on my blog, so you will have to go without photographic evidence.  I didn't show it off at a guild meeting either.  I was impatient to get the hat in the mail and to the intended recipient to find out if it fits.  Fit is important as I plan to make another for her and garment dye it.  I saved the reject hats to chop up and test dye on.

Some of my friends tell me they like making new things all the time with plenty of variety.  I like production work.  Making the same thing again, or with a small variation.

The språng loom, alas, remains bare.  And the wool room messy.

And I may be about to cast on another Norwegian Sweet baby cap, just because I like production work, I have extra sock yarn, and I want something to do before and after supper in an unfamiliar restaurant with a group of strangers.  The one wrinkle is, it has been so long, I have forgotten all the modifications I used.

Losing My Amateur Status

I like to write and I like to make up jokes and clever sayings to make people smile.  Recently I have had a lot of fun writing witty sayings about fibre arts and putting them on pin-back buttons.  I am very fortunate that a friend lent me her button maker.

Here are some examples.  "Give fleece a chance" is not original.  

buttons for knitters

Looking forward to festivals and SIPs

My thoughts are turning to Spring wool festivals and spin in public days.

A farmers' market expressed interest in having members of our guild come out and demonstrate handspinning but we don't have a volunteer coordinator to take it on.  It's a good location: I can think of two guild members who found the guild because we were at that market doing a demo.

This month at another location, the guild is doing a demonstration, fiber prep through weaving, and I am participating.  I am trying to decide what wool to spin.  The yarn I make at a demo comes out irregular with thicker spots, so the yarn has to be destined for a suitable project.  There is a wool festival coming up where I'd like to display some yarn that looks like a beginner did it, and I was thinking some indigo blue would be eye-catching.  There's all that BFL I dyed with natural dyes in the fall.  Some of it is indigo.  I must quit being such a miser and use it.

As for current projects, the sweater is on hold, I haven't started the språng pullover yet, and I am knitting another hat to felt.  In other words, I'm doing the easy stuff.

Fulling Woes

I knitted a hat and ran it through the washing machine a couple of times to full it.  I think the shape is too short in the crown and too flared in the brim for a cloche shape.  My head is too large to fit women's hats so I need someone to try it on and tell me.

When you full knitted fabric, you can't undo and redo your work.  But the resulting fabric looks terrific.  Also, the knitting is very easy.  It is done with large needles in the round with knit stitches only, no purling, and the shape is simple.

You Made That?

There you are, photographic proof that I have finished the watch cap with Fibonacci stripes.  I would like to rip out the crown and make the hat shorter so the brim doesn't need to be turned up, but it stands as it is right now.  I have other things to make.

It has been six years since I learned to knit and spin yarn.  I showed this cap to someone, an ordinary guy.  He said, "You made that?" and I remembered what it was like to lack the skills to select yarn and turn it into something wearable, to live where a handmade hat is remarkable.  I mostly discuss knitting with knitters, and forget how impressive a finished object can be.

Fibonacci Stripes on a Hat Brim

I'm knitting a watch cap with Fibonacci stripes on the brim.  I'm using up some leftover yarn to do it, plus I bought a ball of grey.  Not crazy about the synthetic dye but am living with it.

Felted Bowl

Took some leftover Paton's Classic wool yarn, knitted it, and fulled it to make a bowl.

For my upcoming språng project, I bought some gorgeous Border Leicester yarn from Solitude Wool dyed with real indigo.  I wetted the skeins and hung them to dry with weight on them so that when I warp the loom the yarn won't give much and the tension will be consistent.

Waiting and Planning

If all goes well, this spring I should be at a public event where I could show people examples of språng.  It follows that I have to make the språng examples, språng being a rare sort of textile.  So I am in the planning stage and hope to get to the creating stage soon.

The first question is what yarn to use.

I don't have enough time to spin the yarn, except for språng patterns where a little yarn goes a long way, such as all-over holes.  The Wensleydale roving I have might be good there.

I want to spend a sensible amount of money on the yarn so I have to balance practicality with my desire for quality and the attributes I like (local or domestic, cruelty-free, undyed or naturally dyed, lustrous).

I will do well to go against my natural orientation to monochromatic yarn suitable for textiles with interesting structures, and instead consider yarn with colour and språng with colourwork because the majority of fibre artists respond to colourwork more than structure.

The second question is what sort of items will I make and with what patterns and dimensions.  I would like a number of things that look good hung on coat hangers.  Artwear, if you will.  I'll have to work this out myself, as I don't know of any suitable patterns.  Even if I just get one piece done, I will be pleased.

It's a puzzle to figure out and hopefully execute reasonably well.  I like planning, and I like doing språng.  I expect I will like the products very much, as språng is so pretty.  This is good, as the products could wind up being part of my wardrobe.

I've been in the planning stage for this project for a few weeks now.  Just in the last few days, I've become more optimistic about the whole thing's chance of success.  There are other things I need to make this spring for the same event and I just recently found a better method to get them done, which means I can be more productive and have more time to give to språng.

Språng Waistcoat in Skrydstrup Pattern

språng waistcoat

I finished my språng pullover.  You can see it is more of a waistcoat than a sweater.  It is in the Skrydstrup pattern from Collingwood's The Techniques of Sprang, so four rows of S twist alternate with four rows of Z twist.  The pattern of twists cause the fabric to curl a little but not distort to one side the way all Z twist would.  The curl is visible in the edges of the armholes.  

I am more pleased with it off the loom than I was when it was on the loom.  

The drape of it makes the armholes look curved but they were done straight.  

The construction is a lot like what we used to wear in kindergarten to keep our clothes clean while fingerpainting, a plastic garbage bag with holes cut for the neck and arms.  Except you don't cut språng just anywhere.  I didn't cut this piece at all.  

The hole for the neck is a slit formed by treating the threads on either side as a separate section.  You work to the middle of the row, move the threads as if you'd come to the end of the row, move the next threads as if you were starting a row, and go from there.  I picked the easiest row in the pattern to start this on, row 7.

The armholes are formed by seaming the sides partway.  They look rather deep but they are correct because when you put on the vest, the fabric stretches horizontally and shrinks vertically.

Eight Feet to Propinquity

I steeled my heart to take the incomplete, lackluster språng pullover off the loom to discard it, and then I couldn't do it.  I like things to be useful and this project still has something to give.

So I ignored the loom as it sat out of the way next to the window of the wool room.

The last few inches of warp are the most difficult to complete, not mentally but physically, as there is little room to maneuver and interlink the threads.  This is why so many traditional objects in språng are not worked right up to the middle.

However, it turned out that it wasn't the interlinking that was holding me up, but the position of the loom in the room.  Once I moved the loom eight feet over to my desk within reach, I felt a lot more like finishing the project.

Of course, feeling like doing something is not actually doing something.  You'll know I've finished the project when you see one or two new språng how-to YouTube videos from me featuring a white pullover vest in the Skrydstrup pattern.

Speaking of making things convenient, stuck to the top of my loom is the pattern copied from Collingwood and on it a bobby pin marks the row where I left off last time.  I don't have to figure it out from the strands' positions in the last row.  Learned this from my weaving lessons.

I'm trying to think of a språng pattern where I would have a hard time figuring out where I left off, and can't.  Not even the Coptic turban pattern, you just have to count how many holes down from the apex of the diamond.  I have some trouble following that pattern.  It's easier now that I've improved the chart I made.

The next large piece in språng I make, I'd like it to be in the Coptic turban pattern.  I'd like to make a more polished piece than I've done so far, an eye-catching stole that would get people interested in doing språng.  Unless, that is, the next large piece I do is for my dad on the loom he made for a permanent installation piece.  Coptic turban would have too smooth a texture and too understated a look.  That loom needs something with texture, like Gothic arches.

Now, I have no use for a stole myself, so it would not in the least fulfill my goal of handspun wearables for me in natural colours.  You can tell I still lean toward making things that allow me and others to learn about techniques and tools.  I expect this to continue.

Started Knitting a Sleeve

By Christmas Eve, I had knitted the body of the Cullercoats sweater and started knitting a sleeve.  It's progress.

I don't know if I have firm fibre arts resolutions for 2015.

Assuming Cullercoats is not an absolute horror to finish, I'd like to knit another sweater, this time in plain stockinette.  Maybe a pullover in commercial linen yarn.  Or one in wool.

I need to wash the Gotland fleece.

We'll see how the rest of it goes.

Rose Bead Stitch Markers

Here's another look at the rose bead stitch markers I have made.

Funny things, beads made of rose petals.  They're rather nice.

Good-bye, Hampshire Wool

I gave away the Hampshire wool.  I'd washed some, combed some, dyed some, and spun a little but I never made any more progress than that.  I feel good about this move.

I also owned up to how much I dislike the yarn in my current språng project compared to the handspun in a couple of early språng pieces I did.  I could complete the project, show it off, and then shelve the finished object.  Or I could undo the piece and reuse the yarn.  Or I could skip any further effort entirely and scrap the project.  Decisions.

Let's say skip.  I have other projects to work on, and the piece did teach me some things so it wasn't a total waste.

A Brush with Cotton Towels

The other day instead of my handwoven linen Ms and Os bath towel, I had to use a cotton bath towel.  What a dismal experience.  I never want to go back to using a cotton towel.

The linen one was well worth the work and money.

This is one of the reasons to appreciate fibre arts, because the end product can be superior to mass produced common things in materials, structure, fit, or colour.

Now, to produce more fibre arts items and get more value.

Store-bought Hemp Yarn

I got some hemp knitting yarn from Hemp Traders delivered and straight away I wound a ball and knitted the start of a dish cloth.

I like knitting that particular dish cloth pattern because it's easy.  There's very little casting on and a lot of knitting with the occasional yarn over, or decreases after the halfway mark.  I can even knit it while watching subtitled videos.  The only thing I dislike about handknit dish cloths is the cotton yarn, so much so that I give all of mine away and never keep any.  This hemp yarn is a great improvement in my mind.  It has a crisp feel and a sheen, even in bumpy garter stitch.  I keep looking at it and feeling the cloth.  The yarn is skinny: I am using size 2 needles.

I'm glad I took a chance and ordered the yarn sight unseen.  I can knit dish cloths mindlessly and I can replace my ratty woven cotton ones.  I suppose it's the chatelaine in me, fussing about the state of the linen cupboard.  I've been putting off replacing the sad things because I didn't know where to get my usual brand, my old source failed me.  Now I can have hemp cloths and lots of them.  They should perform well, hemp is durable and doesn't moulder when damp.

I ordered a large quantity of white Romney roving from Qualicum Bay Fibre Works, wool that will be picked up and stored for me by a kindly family member until my next visit.  I have masses of unspun wool already.  This purchase is less about need that it is about my desire to support a mill that deals in local fibre on Vancouver Island.  I think it's important that an area keep the means of production.  The mill needs more sales to stay in business.

I have asked the mill to put my name in the queue for their spinning services.  At the proper time the roving will go back and be spun into yarn much like the stuff I'm knitting my Cullercoats sweater out of.  Ideally I would spin the wool myself but again, I have lots of other roving to keep my spindles busy.  Moreover, yarn from this mill gives a lot of what I look for in fibre.  It's not like buying mass-produced yarn from a craft store or yarn shop.  It's traceable to a region, undyed, and breed-specific, and it supports local producers and processors.

The hemp yarn is mass-produced and imported.  I am okay with that because it is good quality and I doubt it's possible to get anything comparable that's small batch and traceable.  The laws on cultivation in North America are restrictive.  I don't know about machinery to process and spin hemp, whether there are small-scale setups that bridge the gap between hand-processing and a factory line.

The Cullercoats sweater is coming along.  After getting stalled for a while near the top of the back, this past week I cast on the left front and knitted quite a lot of it.  Good thing I've made progress or I'd feel guilty about starting the hemp dish cloth.

I have a språng project on the loom that's about two or three hours from completion.  I hope I gauged the width correctly.  It's hard to tell.

Weld Dye and Over Dyeing

I went to a natural dye day and got to dip some wool in the weld pot.  We dipped yarn and wool into large pots heated over a fire.  I discovered that I really like the colour weld dye gives, a clear lemon yellow.  I plan to use it again sometime.

Besides weld, I dyed with indigo, woad which I like better than indigo, walnuts mordanted with iron for black-brown, madder overdyed with indigo for purple, weld overdyed with woad for green, and brazil wood.  The base wool was Blue Face Leicester, a pound divided into two ounce portions.

I would have liked to have dyed the Romney wool I brought back from Vancouver Island a while ago instead of the imported BFL but I didn't get the Romney ready in time.  I pulled it out and washed it all but a considerable amount of grease remained in the locks, and the grease would have resisted the dye.  I need to pick and tease the wool thoroughly to loosen the locks so the hot water and detergent will penetrate when I wash it again.

I want to dye with woad over weld again sometime for Lincoln green since I didn't get that consistent or strong a result.  It looks like mottled lemon and lime.  Someone else got a beautiful clear green.  I think she got such excellent results because she dipped earlier when the dyes were stronger, more concentrated and also because she dyed skeins.  My wool was scrunched up in a cotton bag and the woad did not contact all of the fibre.

Not only did I go to a natural dye day, I went to a synthetic dye day before that.  I got a good result by filling up two cups of dye with the same colour tinged with a little black, then dividing a cup into two cups and topping them off with different colours, then using the resulting three related colours to paint a skein.

You may remember that I am off synthetic dye.  I had not intended to dye anything but rather knit more of my sweater, but a friend persuaded me to dye a spare cotton skein she had.  It went home with her.

I was asked recently why I avoid synthetic dye in my fibre arts.  I explained how I was influenced by the Fibershed project.  Later while I was at home finding links to the founder Rebecca Burgess' interviews to pass along, I watched one of the videos on YouTube about the 150 mile wardrobe.  It was a good refresher.  I still find the clothing and the philosophy meaningful and inspirational.

More Acquisition

Another week, another fibre festival.  I bought a fleece.  This is unusual for me.  I have limits and my rule is to buy wool that is at least washed if not processed.  Not to mention I've run out of places to stow fibre in the wool room.  However, the colour and texture was so very much my taste that I found myself standing in front of the fleece warding off other shoppers with my presence as I made up my mind.  The fact that it is a local product is a bonus.

Gotland fleece

I know that once it is spun into yarn, it will lose the contrast of silver against grey and thereby lose its beauty.  I know that I should have been satisfied with a photograph and left the fleece where it was.  But right now I don't care.  It is mine and my wool room is graced by it.

I helped people learn to use a spindle to spin yarn, and sent four people home with drop spindles and wool.  A couple of them, I let them struggle for a while.  They were trying to draft fibre after they'd allowed the twist to run up into the wool and lock everything up.  I was sitting beside them, spinning a little yarn or knotting handspun bracelets for kids, available but not intruding.  Finally I said, may I, and reestablished them at the place where the fibre drafted freely, winding the felted stuff onto the shaft out of the way.

I liked the setup of the demo area this year.  I was seated on my own between a table and a tent pole, with one empty chair beside me.  It was like a little nook.

Acquisitions

I haven't done much this past week, fibre-wise, except buy things.

Had the unexpected opportunity to buy the språng loom I borrowed before, so I took it.  May not be my taste in looks but it works and I don't have to take my chances trying to get a woodworker to understand what I want.  Plus I can fit it in the car and carry it with one hand, it was a good price, and språng looms are rare on the ground.

I got in the mail the most expensive textile I've ever bought, vintage Japanese hemp cloth dyed with indigo.  It cost about as much as a pair of pants, and is not large enough for making anything.  It is just for keeping and admiring.  The feel of it is crisp and intriguing.

Today there's a good prospect I'll be on the spot to help people try drop spindles.  I'm looking forward to it.

Foreign Parcel

I bought a copy of Fenny Nijman's Egyptisch Vlechten from the Netherlands.  It's a bit of a splurge, buying a book in Dutch, which I can't read, but it has pictures of finished objects and historical pieces in språng.

I tried making a pullover in språng.  The finished chest size came out at 76 inches unexpectedly, nothing like the small gauge swatch I made because it's harder to beat down a row on a wide warp and the rows are looser.  The piece looks better thrown across the back of a chair than it does on me.  At least I tried out false circular warp.

I made some stitch markers using fragrant beads I made from rose petals.  Here they are on my sweater.

rose petal beads

"Finish Him!"

My sweater is still very much an unfinished object and all urgency has gone from that project now that there is no deadline for it.  I have just done the armhole decreases on the back and that's all I have.

I am still using a kanban board to track the flow of work on my projects.  Each task is written on a card which I move left to right from the "ready column" to "in progress" to "done" by turns.  I'll get annoyed when a card is stationary too long, and do something about it.  The saying in kanban is, stop starting, start finishing.

I finished more Norwegian Sweet baby caps.  I assembled drop spindles that I painted with woad.  I posted YouTube videos that show someone processing dogbane and kudzu fibre, and someone spinning dogbane into yarn.  I pinned pictures of språng.  I dyed commercial yarn with tumeric and walnut.

Am glad I went to the kudzu fiber workshop.  Am probably cured of wanting to use kudzu.  Wasn't the smell of the composted vines, it was how little fibre came out of all that material.

I had another whack at the Tegle stocking språng pattern and still could not suss out the last few rows of the pattern repeat.  Oh, it's pretty though.

Once More, With Feeling

I finally got gauge on my sweater after a couple of false starts and a regrettable lapse into procrastination.  I have completed seven inches of the back and that's all, not counting all the knitting I did with too small and too large needles.

I am on the right track now for a handknit sweater in the correct size.  Sadly, I won't finish in time to enter it in the festival competition.  I'd like to aim to be done in time to wear the sweater at the festival but given my rate of progress I fear all I would have is the makings of a thick knitted waistcoat, if that.

Woad Oil Paint

Added woad powder to enamel paint and got a good colour.  The original glossiness turned flat from the powder.  My brushwork is sloppy.  It doesn't matter as it's a piece I'm assembling into a spindle to give away.  Next time I tint paint I will add less powder so the paint stays runny.  I did this in a hurry outside at dusk.

Hampshire Wool gets Dyed Indigo

Someone put on a dye day and I took the event as a spur to finishing up some fibre preparation.

I washed the remaining two pounds of Hampshire wool that had sat greasy in the stash for three years.

I dyed a pound and a half in the indigo vat, then took two ounces of that and over-dyed with walnut.  Here are thrice-dipped bags of fibre hanging to dry and oxidize:

The bags in the foreground are cotton and the other bags are polyester mesh.  Inside is the wool.  The zippers on the mesh bags were convenient for checking the shade of blue on the wool.

Also convenient was having someone else manage the indigo vat but someday I am going to have to learn to do it for myself.  Out of a feeling that I should do some re-skilling, I made my first ever madder dye bath on my own and dyed some more Hampshire.  It came out a red-orange colour.

indigo overdyed with walnut