One thing that I wanted to be sure I did this weekend was to take time for a walk on the beach. My life gets very busy, and it’s easy to let my thoughts be filled with nothing but what I have to do. I stopped and stood for a long time, looking at the waves and letting my feet sink into the sand. It took a while for my brain to stop buzzing and become more calm.
Oddly, one thing I kept thinking was that I’d like to dye a yarn to match the color of the sand around my feet. And I realized that I really, really like dyeing. I’d like to explore it more. I’d like to try more techniques and experiment with self-striping and develop new methods for achieving the results I want. I’d like to do all the mental work involved in figuring out ways to get consistent results from batch to batch, and to produce in larger quantities.
In short, I want to sell. I actually like selling on the internet. The trick now is acquiring the expertise, and finding the time, money, and space to make it happen. I don’t know if this is something that I can do within even a year. My life is busy as it is, and there’s not a whole lot that I can or want to let fall away.
It may be a while, but I’m glad that I had the time to be still enough to learn this.
Here’s a skein from the dye day at Jetsy’s. I experimented with winding the yarn in a different way. Five twists around the blue side, then looping around the black side twice. This should make a long strip of blue before the black comes into play. I combined different shades with one base blue for the longer section for some gradiations within the loops.
I thought unwinding the skein might be a challenge. Normally you’d put a skein wound this way back over whatever you wound it around in the first place, but I didn’t have access to that. So I used a pottery cup and a copy of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator to keep it from getting tangled with unwinding. It worked well.
Here’s the yarn wound into a skein. 220 yards of worsted weight – I don’t recall what the base yarn was. I’m not sure exactly what to knit with it, but I did enjoy dyeing it and I learned a lot. My warping board is still one of those “one of these days” thing, so this was a nice basic experiment. And at this point, having a good learning experience is still the goal.
I got a lot of mileage out of the leftover leaf-green dye from Sunday’s session. Here we see a small amount of leftover white Dale Baby Ull crammed into a pint Mason jar filled with dye. A day or so later, the dye was absorbed and the liquid was mostly clear. The picture doesn’t capture the correct color – it’s more of a grass green.
In other news, more banana chocolate chip muffins than two people could possibly eat.
Emily: “Maybe next time you can make strawberry muffins. That would be good.”
Everybody’s a critic.
I’m up to mid-March on hat orders. Next up: London, Alberta, and New York.
Hey, Sunday dyers!
This is mystery Romney that was leftover after the session. We all thought it belonged to Illiane because she had to cut out early and nobody else remembered dyeing it.
Well, Illiane says it ain’t hers. Anybody else recognize it?
It’s hard to wait to post pics, but necessary. Case in point: after we were all done, I took the dregs from the remaining mixed-up dye and poured it onto a couple of slivers of wool.
To the left, when wet, they looked questionable. Dried, they lightened up substantially. Interesting!
And so I wait for the overdyed stuff to dry before posting. Although it kills me.
A lot went on this weekend. Saturday morning, I hit a few yard sales on my way to the post office. I needed a few supplies for dyeing fiber on Sunday, and yard sales are gold mines for that sort of thing. I found a $1 enamel pot and a $2 extra wide crock pot marked “as-is.” Score! I plugged the crock pot in before I bought it, and it worked just fine. Here it is in action.
There was one other item I picked up, which I just couldn’t resist. These little ceramic saucers from a house a few blocks away. I probably wouldn’t have bought them if they weren’t marked “Made in Occupied Japan.” They were two dollars for the set of three, and one not pictured had a chip. But they are pretty, and they make me think about that time in America’s history. I chatted for a moment with the older couple holding the sale. I said I’d take them, and the wife said, “you’re breaking his heart!” It was a joke, but you could also tell that it really wasn’t. I promised to give them a good home. You just know there’s a story there, but I didn’t think to ask what it was until I was gone.
I spent most of Saturday running around being sure I had things – I’d rather not use our food steamer basket for the acid-dyed yarn, thank you – but that was fine. Since Em and my husband off having a blast at the Storytelling Festival of Carolina, I felt free to do whatever the heck I wanted without worrying about them. Sometimes that’s a good thing.
I did stay up late on Saturday, but still got up on Sunday morning for an abbreviated walk/run. Not quite up to usual standards – I’d classify this as “white zinfandel.” My knees are getting me some today, but I don’t know if it’s from the running or from standing up all day. We’ll see how they are tomorrow.
The hat I’d been working on has been ripped out and reborn as “My So-Called Scarf.” It’s a better use of the yarn, but I’m still not entirely sure it’s the best. Still thinking about it.
I have to wait for my fiber to dry before I can post pics and talk about the dyeing event. I’ll say this, though – it was fun!
This half of a bobbin of the blue wool that I dyed. The half on the left was spun at Simucon. The half on the right was spun at home. As you can see, I’m still not ready to spin evenly with a lot of distractions. At Simucon, I chose conversation over consistency, and it was the right choice.
This is the sock I was working on at Simucon. The picture was taken on the banks of the mighty Susquehanna. Knitting needles are permitted on planes, but if the screener chooses, he or she can deny them. I decided to put the sock on bamboo DPNs, which seemed less threatening than two long metal circular needles. I also put in a lifeline and brought a self-addressed envelope and book of stamps, in case I had to mail it back to myself. You can see that the lifeline is halfway down the foot. I got as far as turning the heel on the trip. Good progress! I also listened to Harry Potter on audio, finishing it just after returning home.
Table Rock, with Mother.
We were hoping for some nice cool weather. It was not to be. Instead it was 90 degrees. On the river, however, there was shade and a fresh breeze. We stopped as we walked through town to take in the air and be in the moment. Very calming. Here’s a view of Towanda from Table Rock taken in 1899. We would be about where that bridge crossed into town. There are more phone lines now, but the town is not really much larger, to my eye.
Next time, hopefully a post with actual events.
A couple of nights ago I dyed some wool, with an eye toward having it for my trip. I’m pleased with the results.
This is the first one I did. It came out paler than I expected, but I still like the way it looks. I was going to for something with a lot of white, so it’s not jarring. I don’t have a scale, but the guys at the post office are always amazed that I can estimate the weight of my Jayne hat boxes to the tenth of an ounce, so I’m going to estimate this at right around four ounces. In the closeup, you can see some felting and fuzzing around the edges. I believe this is because I mashed it down in the water when I was soaking it, and because I pushed the dye around too much during cold-painting. I set the dye with the “Saran-wrapped fiber sausage in a steamer on the stovetop” method.
The next morning, I decided to use up the remainder of the dye I had already laced with vinegar. I added more dye to beef up the saturation and also more black to mute the colors a bit. As you can no doubt tell, I’m a big fan of blue. I wanted a variety of complementary tones within the same family, and again, I wanted some white showing. I think (hope) this’ll make an interesteing variegation in the final spun product.
The blue wool isn’t as fuzzed and felted, since I learned from the previous day’s experience and handled it more gently. There’s still room for improvement in my handling procedures. Also, my daughter took the braids and put them over her head, Princess Leia-style, while she pranced around the house which didn’t do them any favors.
I’m really pleased with how these turned out for my first outing into dyeing unspun wool. I’ve got more white wool, so I’ve got more room to experiment. This was very satisfying, and I definitely want to do it again.
I’m always open to criticism or comment – I like learning and feedback!
