summer fruit

Still stroking my love affair with dyeing superwash merino :) I'll have all 10 for sale in my shop tomorrow at noon pacstandard ($15/4 oz each). As always, if you see an individual one on my flickr stream before then you want me to reserve, just let me know.

Til then! If you can't wait, I've listed 2 separate batches of merino fleece that I scoured AND dyed in lock formation... perfect for starting your fiber prep adventures with :)

handcombing wool two and natural dyeing 1(01)

day 2 of tour de fleece 2009
362 grams combed total
294 grams sliver (68 grams waste not pictured)

I had to start putting the sliver in cleaner's supply bags since my foam boxes couldn't hold any more after this picture :) (meghan, these are the boxes i was telling you about from a while back!)

Not a bad showing, especially since Sunday was my last installment of the 3 week "Natural Dyeing 101" class I've been attending at Verb for Keeping Warm's Workshop in Berkeley. In the two previous weeks, Kristine had taken us thru mordanting...



...dyeing and dyestuffs...



...and yesterday was washing all of the beautiful BFL we had created.



I knew how intense the setup and work involved in natural dyeing was, but didn't body-know it. It really did take us three weeks to get from white wool to color, which is just crazytalk to me when I think about dyeing with acid dyes and being said and done in a matter of days (drying time occupying most of that).

I'm glad to have taken the class-- Kristine is an excellent teacher who fielded our questions like no book ever could. I know she'll offer the class again in the fall (after the cakewalks of vending at sock summit and soar :))... and it'll be a prereq to further classes such as cochineal, natural dyegardens, and indigo (lovely indigo discussion on anne's blog here today) that I'm already looking forward to.

For me, I was mainly interested in natural dyeing as it would apply to dyeing fleece... it really has gotten out of control here again fleecewise and for some reason, dyeing fleece would make it somehow more acceptable to have a wall of fleece come avalanching down in my closet as a regular occurance. Anyhow, I was able to take away enough information about natural dyeing to actively start daydreaming about how some of these colors would look over fleeces washed in lock formation, naturally colored and no...



Back to combing :)

crochet chain roving braiding

the first time i bought chained roving i was !!! ... so much easier to pull open and start spinning than when its braided. i'm surrounded by a bunch of superwash rovings and barknknit asked how i was chaining them up-- a few pics of the steps (and a minipreview of the new dyeing idea i had to try out)...

take one end of the roving, lay the long end over the top of the short.



reach thru the loop, grab a length of the long end...



...pull thru...



...making another loop.



keep pulling the roving thru and making loops til you run out...



...insert end into last loop...



...pull taut and you're done!



yay!

this and nine other superwash merino rovings will be listed in my etsy shop tomorrow (may day!) at 9am (pacstandard). i'll have previews up in my flickr stream later-later today and can hold/reserve colors-- just send me a note.

[8pm: all photos uploaded]



happy spinning and dyeing!

colorcoloreverywhere

In between the drop spindling (fail) and colorwork knitting of this weekend, I dyed and dyed.






(click each for big with details)

It is a shock how much I can get done with my son asleep in his new big boy bedding (courtesy of his auntie who spoils him) dreaming of Fairyland (hi insaknitty!) :) There's also a lot more than usual since I always pinch a braid or four for myself, but with Lambtown this weekend and me visiting (read: falling off the wagon at) A Verb for Keeping Warm, Tactile Fiber Arts, Fiber Fiend, Cormo Sheep and Wool (more info on everything in the Lambtown Ravelry forum)-- I only held onto one this time ;)

All superwash merino, all approx 128g/4.5oz. Most twice dyed, a few kettle dyed. I'll have them listed in my etsy shop tomorrow at 1p pacstandard; if you see a braid you'd like let me know and I'll reserve it for you ($14/each + s/h; US + North America shipping = $3/$1 each add'l, everywhere else = $6/$3 each add'l... USPS rates have really shot up since the last time :( )

All fiber up in my shop, zero.etsy.com now :)

I'm still also running my free shipping sale thru tomorrow on stitch markers-- including international! (I sent a package to Iceland today! d00d.)

Til then!

i love craigslist. (or, introducing my strauch petite)

I love Craigslist.

A few years back, my son grew leaps and bounds seemingly overnight and in that same timeframe grew out of pushing around solid food snacks on the swing and into needing a proper highchair... fast enough for us not to be ready or able to buy him a new one. Craigslist put me together with a dad whose daughter had outgrown hers, and later helped me find a mom who needed a highchair as much as I did some time after. I have found a home for his entire infant wardrobe, all of those giant plastic trappings of toddlerdom that become obsolete so fast, 30 rolls of unexposed film after my lomo action's lightleakage slipped heartbreakingly beyond the pale, the unfortunate elliptical machine I couldn't stand to look at gathering dust any more, a handlebar to a motorcycle the ex-who-stomped-on-my-heart left in my closet... all of these and embarrassingly more have found their way out of my life and into someone else's thanks to Craigslist-- all for the price of just picking them up. I found the love of my life there. Most recently I found both my Ashford Joy and Schacht Matchless spinning wheels on CL... and you really can't top best-of when you're looking for a distilled pickmeup in the middle of the day or night.

A week or so back I was goodnaturedly whining on twitter that I would need to break down and buy a drumcarder since I've become enamored of buying raw fleeces (insane!)... and Rachel replied she was sure one would fall into my lap like my other spinning equipment had. (ha! i'm lucky but not rf lucky) Later on I was searching for reviews on the Strauch Petite-- and ran across a craigslist ad a few states over, selling one. In perfect condition, and with the burnishing brush... and a screaming deal to boot.

Oy.

So after some emails and a phonecall confirming I was not in fact a long-lost Nigerian uncle...



and then...



I had bided my time in waiting for its arrival by dyeing up 2 lbs of 70/30 superwash merino-seacell fiber in a bunch of colors for some Color in Spinning color exercises when it arrived, and I've been carding like a madwoman since.



There's more than this, but this was all I could fit into the frame when standing over my dining table :) These are just the solid colors I dyed, lots of prepwork for playing with blending and making up stripy-layered-pulled batts.

I only carded each twice, leaving a little heathered look from unevenly dyed fiber as well as the seacell fiber (which for me and my acid dyes, don't change from white)...





Strangely, the carded fiber looks so much less shiny than it does in roving-- I haven't stopped long enough to test-spin the carded fiber yet, but I wonder if the resulting yarn will look less shiny. I wonder if it's because the carding broke up clumps of the seacell fiber and interspersed them-- being close together they'd look more shiny than when blended in as individual fibers. A good thing for me, not being a big shiny fan in yarn...



Back down the rabbit hole!

easter wool

I had such a fun time dyeing eggs with my son this weekend that I couldn't help but break out the acid dyes when we were done. (secret: it was partly to override the smell of boiled eggs! i can't stand the smell of boiled eggs...) I picked superwash merino to dye this time since I love how brightly and fast the colors strike, but went for overall darker values even though Spring has arrived :)





All available at my etsy shop. zero.etsy.com.

Back with more fiber stuff in a few...


PSA #1. Check your local drugstores for easter egg dyes at 50% off! Nontoxic and safe to use with kids and your standard cookware. Next week my stores go to 75% off... I'm not going nuts like last time. (ha!)

more on my previous easter egg dyeing of yarn here... and a search of this blog and "easter" has some socks knit from easter egg dyed yarn as well. the dye jobs on all have held up well over their lifetimes :)

PSA #2. Bay Area? Article Pract's "yarn tasting" for next month just opened for enrollment-- featuring some yarns from the new book Closely Knit as well as the author (and a free pattern from the book, and discounts, AND good times. :))

fiber to yarn...

I was a little excited this time to document the different steps and changes these fibers took to get to a finished yarn...



...so lots of pics :) Apologies in advance!



I started with about a little over 2 oz each of 2 different fiber blends, dyed at the same time by me (when dyeing for my shop)-- a 70/30 superwash merino/seacell blend and an 80/10/10 sw merino/cashmere/nylon blend. The cashmere blend took the dye much more like a straight superwash merino does-- striking fast and brilliantly where the effect of the seacell blend was more muted, more even across the fibers. Perhaps it was cancelled out with the seacell not taking the dye when spinning...


sw merino/seacell blend

The seacell blend is quite fun to spin-- I enjoy the *cel fiber blends, the slip and the shine are really interesting and feel good in the hand. At this point I enjoy the way it looks but don't really like the idea of knitting with a 2-ply of this blend... it looks to have too much drape for my desire to knit this into socks, and I just am not really drawn to yarns with shine. This seems to have less shine than other tencel blends I've spun-- but those were 50/50 and this is 70/30, so... :)


sw merino/cashmere/nylon (left) and sw merino/seacell singles

Surprisingly, the singles don't look that much different. I thought they would be vastly different looking, but apart from the mild sheen of the seacell blend they are a bit hard to tell apart at a glance. The seacell blend still looks slightly more muted and even in color compared to the cashmere blend, but spun at this fineness it is less of an issue than it would be if I spun this into thicker weight singles.

The bright cherry red of the original fiber can be seen to have drafted to pink in both the seacell and cashmere blends; I usually don't like this, but in this yarn I like the effect with the grey (that had drafted from black).


sw merino/cashmere/nylon (left), plied singles (middle), and sw merino/seacell singles (right)

Plying them together was noneventful; my seacell singles may have been slightly finer, but it really didn't make a difference in the finished yarn overall.


75 superwash merino, 15 seacell, 5 cashmere, 5 nylon
2-ply yarn, spun from zero.etsy.com roving-- "mercutio"
approx 440 yd, 110 gm-- fingering weight

I'm really happy with how these turned out. There is still a lot of bounce in the yarn, and while there is shine (these finished pics were taken outdoors under sunlight), the effect of plying helps it not look as jarring as I usually find it. It's really interesting how well the plies look together, despite being different fibers-- I thought it would have been more dissonant looking, but I don't think so. Dissonant's not bad, but this is better.



The seacell ply does stand out when under direct light like this, but it's not as pronounced under natural ambient light. I can't wait to see what this yarn looks like knit up... I think I want to use a pattern-- pomatomus? :)




Have a good one, welcome back :)