I never thought...

That I would like pink and yellow yarn. But I dyed it. I spun it. And I like it!

I feel like I should be posting

And really I probably should. I have been doing things. All sorts of things. I just haven't felt much like writing about them. A lot of them should have been photographed, but that really didn't happen either.
In sort of the right order.......
I have been to Liam's year end review. He was in Cadets this year and he really enjoyed it.

We planted the garden. Mostly the same stuff as always with the addition of brussel sprouts. Or brussel stench as Mira calls them. There is a lot of weeding to be done, but that is also nothing new.

I attended the Craft College graduation cerimonies. Where Rachel, Celine, Katie, and Jessica all marched up in their caps and gowns and were presented with  their Diplomas. Congradulations all! I am so proud of you!

I did a stint as an artist in residence. It was in a different location than last year and I didn't like it nearly as much. Thankfully the renovations that caused the move are going to be complete and we will be back in the regular spot next year.

I heard Nicole's choir sing at the retirement party for her school principal. They all performed really well and we were able to duck out before the speeches began. Sorry for the blurry photo but with other peoples kids I think blurry is better.

I taught a silk scarf dyeing workshop for my weaving group. We all had a great time but I didn't take any pictures. (slaps own hand)

UPDATE: I had forgotten that I had dyed a scarf myself at the workshop! I found it in it's hiding place and rinsed it out and here it is! Still wet. It was a quick pattern (simple knots) with different greens on each segment. I am rather pleased at how it turned out.

Before I finished work for the summer, I took advantage of the nice warping mill at the school and made up about 6 warps. With some of the dye left over from the workshop, I dyed some of them and some will wait until later. The dyes that we used are fibre reactive dyes that only last a very short time once they are mixed up.

And I also dyed some some soya silk sliver. It looks and feels like silk so we will see how it spins up.

 One of the reasons that I have been neglegent about posting is that I have been suffering from sinus problems for more than a year. I have some good days and some bad days. On the bad days, I feel like my brain is full of fluff and I have sinus pressure. On the good days, I feel almost normal. I have tried two different courses of antibiotics, and various types of nose sprays as well as allergy medications and x-rays to see if there were any strange growths in there. Nope. I am now waiting to see an EMT.  Here's hoping that I get the call soon.


I am weaving a series of 4 silk noil scarves right now. I am finding it hard to find the time to do much weaving because there is always so many other things that are clammoring to be done first. I am not selling anything anywhere this summer so my first big show is Labour Day weekend, and then nothing until November and December, so I guess that the weaving isn't really yelling all that loudly at this point.

matching colours

Sarah helped me with the Christmas Choice Craft Sale because my co-organizer was home with a preemie baby and was not available. However, I am very glad to report that Connor is doing fine these days.
When I found out that my co-organizer (coincidentally also named Sarah) would not be able to be there, I called in.....my other friend Sarah. Why do I feel like I'm in the remake of the Bob Newhart show?
In any case, Sarah was more than happy to keep me company, and refill the cookies and keep an eye on the mulled cider and do a thousand other things that needed doing while I was in at the sale and trying to flog my wares.
As payment I offered Sarah anything she wanted, such was my gratitude. Money, fast cars, drugs (well. Maybe Tylenol and Sucrets would be as far as that offer would go)
In any case, she just asked that I dye a skein of yarn to match a skein of silk that she bought off of me last year. No worries! I said....until I realized that the skein that I had dyed before was silk and was dyed with acid dyes and the skein that she wanted dyed to match was a silk bamboo blend and needed to be dyed with fibre reactive dyes because acid dyes will not dye bamboo.
Lesson time.... in my world, there are two basic types of dye. Acid dyes dye protein fiber, which is basically anything that comes off of an animal. Or out of in the case of silk.
Fiber reactive dyes are dyes that will work on cellulose fibers or anything that is plant based. Or, again, silk.
SO my task was to match a colour created with acid dyes with fiber reactive dyes. This is like comparing apples to oranges. There are two different types of dyes with two different types of base colours. Next to impossible. For most people. Thankfully, I had a secret weapon on my side. Her name.....is Harriet. She has been the studio head of the Surface Design department for many years and this woman knows colour. As in KNOWS COLOUR. She was in one day before Christmas and I begged he for a moment of her time. I think she was ironing some burnout velvet at the time and so had a moment to spare.
The conversation went something like this.
Me: Hi Harriet, can I use your brain for a moment?
Harriet: Sure.
Me: I need to match this colour (points to one colour in the multi coloured skein) It was dyed with acid dyes, but the skein that I have to dye has bamboo in it so needs to be dyed with FR dyes.
Harriet:Hmmm. Try 70% Navy, 20% Teal, and 10% Black.
Me: Thank you thank you thank you (accompanied with much bowing and scraping)

And here are the results. Top skein is the silk dyed with acid dyes and the colour that I was trying to match is blue in the center. Bottom skein is the silk bamboo skein that I dyed and rinsed until the cows came home.

I know that monitors present colours differently and all, but I am pretty impressed with Harriet's assessment of the colour and her knowledge of the fibre reactive dyes that we use at the school. I hope that one day, I will have half as much knowledge of colour and how to reproduce it.

Hmmmm......

So I guess that it has been a while. I have been super busy weaving, dyeing, and getting ready for shows. Not to mention the other things that fill up one's day when one has work and a family. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have been producing have not been among my favorite things. Don't get me wrong, they are fine, but they are not spectacular. No pictures of anything. But the list goes something like, 8 shawls, 5 (soon to be 6) scarves, and 20 odd skeins of yarn (dyed, not spun). My spinning wheel has been sitting rather silent lately except for one wonderful weekend.

The spinning retreat.
Halloween weekend, Fredericton hosted the 9th annual spinning retreat. It was in a hotel that is located in the heart of downtown Fredericton and not to far from the craft college. About 60 people attended from the Maritime Provinces and some people even came up from Maine.

There were about 8 informal mini workshops that were included in your registration fee, and three larger workshops that had a bit of a cost attached to them. I taught a dyeing one where the students all dyed 100g of merino roving. A good time was had by all. Did I get pictures? Nope.
But I did get some pictures of one of the mini ones. This is the crew who did needle felting.
I brought Victoria with me and I worked her hard that weekend. Every spare second that I wasn't eating (and eating well, I might add) I was spinning up some dreamy 50/50 silk/merino roving that I bought from the Yarn Source. I also picked up some mohair locks from the Black Lamb. As well as some bamboo/merino/alpaca from Legacy Lane. All together there were many more vendors (about 13 or 14) but with a limited budget and a lack of desire to deal with raw fleece, I limited my spending.

Check out the carpet in the ball room that we were in! You should seen all of the fluff and stuff that was left behind when we packed up our wheels and went.
It was great to spend a weekend with like minded people. Where talk of fibre content and ratios and favorite wheels were the norm and not the exception. There were people who had been spinning for years and others who had never spun before but wanted to learn. Some had very modern wheels, others that were showing their years, and one woman had a huge antique one that she had refurbished. Next year's retreat is in PEI. If anyone out there is interested, let me know and I'll let you know the detail when I know the details.

Edit: So after talking about what I bought, I forgot to show you! Silly me!

To the left, the white stuff is 80 merino, 10 cashmere, 10 nylon. At the low low price of $10 per pound! So I got 2 pounds. Wouldn't you? Next, a mix of (I believe) merino and bamboo. Then merino, bamboo, alpaca. The small green bag is merino and silk, and the small orange bag is merino locks. Yummy! And it is all displayed on one of the eight shawls that I wove in the past few weeks. This one is destined to go into the Crafts Council show "Snow".

There. That's better!

cleaning up

my desktop. Here are some yarns spun this summer. If you have seen them before, please forgive my forgetfulness. It happens sometimes.



And some dyed roving.

Now that I have shared, I can get them off my desk. Just a few more things to clean.
Like the garden. We are suppose to get a hard frost tonight. Grrr. Guess what I am off to do?

Heaven on Earth Explained

You have heard me call Skiff Lake "Heaven on Earth" several times now.

Here is the reason.....
Bill's cousin made this plate in a ceramics class and gave it to Bill's mother. She showed it to me one day when we were all there and "Heaven on Earth" was suddenly very frequently heard. It became the cheers when beer o'clock rolled around, or when we were sitting on the front porch just watching the ducks swim by begging for scraps. Waking up in the morning and having coffee on the front porch, or at night while having a sip of something a little stronger around the fire.

Ahhh.

Heaven on Earth.


I did some dyeing before I left for the cottage. I knew that my new wheel was coming with me and I didn't want to run out of things to spin. One of the bundles was purples, blues, browns and greens.
This skein was the other one that was completed at the lake and was given its soaking in 100% genuine Skiff Lake water.
It, too, had the hanging with the can treatment on the front porch and here it is, at home, on the current warp on my loom. The purples and blues are the heaven and the greens and browns are the earth. So...."Heaven on Earth"!

Iris Garden

I decided to try something a little different when I did my dye session a few weeks ago and put together colours that I normally wouldn't.

Here is the result of my experiment.
The singles.....
And the yarn. The colours are a bit washed out.
This is a little bit better. I am actually going to keep this one and find something to make out of it.

Iris Garden
138 yds
4 oz
my own hand dyed fleece
100% merino

Hot summer days (and nights)

A few weeks ago, I had a dye session where I dyed about 2 pounds of fleece. I love days like that! Over the past few weeks, I have been spinning a lot of that fleece into yarn. Victoria has been given quite a workout! I love spinning on her, but I still prefer plying on the S10. The bobbins are bigger for one, and the bobbin lead drive feels better to me when plying.

This is "hot summer days". I think that maybe it was a wish and a prayer this summer that we would have some hot summer days. So far, the only really hot day that I remember was the one that I was pulling pots out of a 900 degree kiln. That wasn't quite what I had in mind.
I usually just ply the yarn on itself, but this time I thought that I might try something a little different. I had spun some black merino a while back and it was just sitting on its bobbin still. The original intention was to ply it into a black 2 ply for use in my hand spun scarves.
Instead it ended up with the hot summer days.
So I guess that it can be called "Hot Summer Days and Nights"

100% merino
Orange- my own dyed
Black -Commercially dyed
170 yards
6.3 oz

Blended handspun

While digging through my stash, I came across some superwash roving that I had picked up on sale. I soon found out why the price was so great. It wasn't roving so much as bits of roving and clumps of fleece. Something needed to be done to make it spinable.
After dyeing it in reds and oranges, I blended it with some silk that I had also thrown in the pot.
This is a DK weight yarn that is so soft and dreamy!
338 yards
Hand blended merino and silk
Hand dyed

I don't think I showed you these...

Silk noil boucle scarves that were dyed and woven using three different wefts and treadlings. It is amazing how much different a small change can make!

Bathroom Hazard

Bill never has to worry about encountering pantyhose in the bathroom, but he often has to deal with either warps or woven scarves. He never complains about the hazards that he finds in the bathroom whether they be warps, scarves, or skeins.
These four scarves are out of the same merino that I talked about a few days ago. They are three strands of the really fine merino that were warped as one. These will be about 8 inches wide and in pinks, oranges, and red. A little more girly than the blue ones will be.
They are in the cue (or at least will be when they dry).
The cue seems to be getting longer and longer. I really want to have a lot of stock for the Christmas season. But there is something else that is new this year. More on that later!

On the loom

I have a series of mixed warp scarves that are slated for the dye pot. These scarves are a mixture of cellulose and protein fibers so that when I put them in an acid dye vat, the silks and wools will dye while the cotton and rayon will remain white or cream. I tried this with one of the mixed warp scarves that I wove last year and was quite pleased with the results. These scarves are one of the instances that I will warp front to back. In these the fibers are silk, silk noil, cotton, mercerised cotton, rayon, silk noil boucle, wool boucle, and a mystery shiny nubby yarn that doesn't dye in the acid dyes.
I have four woven, four on the loom, and four more in the queue. I am trying to get as many warps wound on the lovely large warping mill at the school before classes end. I also would like to get some dyed before I have to switch to my still functional but much more primitive dyeing "kitchen" in the back yard that consists of a 4'x8' plywood table and a hot plate powered with an extension cord.

In the Queue

I was fortunate enough to get a bunch of really fine merino wool (2/24 and 2/32) for a song. But the thought of weaving something so fine for production leaves me in a cold sweat. Even paying myself a modest $10 per hour, the cost would soon be out of the range of what most people around here are willing to pay if I wove it at its correct sett.
So last summer, I made up and dyed a warp as an experiment. I took three strands of different colours and used it as one warp element. I changed a colour every now and then to get a gradation across the warp. At least that was the plan. Then I quickly slapped some dye on it and steamed it and...... yuck. The colours that I had chosen did not really work very well with the original colours of the yarn. Except for one scarf on one end that was browns.
So I did what I always do when something hideous comes out of the dye pot... I threw it back in. This time it was into a blue vat. The brown end scarf hung over the edge well out of the dye. Unfortunately, this resulted in a slightly felted warp and when I tried to put it on during the Christmas production rush, I decided that I did not have the time nor the patience to deal with such a felted mess at that time. Lease sticks in, I rolled it up and chucked it back into a basket to be dusted off when things were a little calmer. Things were calmer in February, so I set to wind it on my loom front to back.
Most of the warps that I put on are done back to front but I had the opportunity to learn the front to back method about 8 or 9 years ago. Knowledge is rarely a bad thing so I tried the method and decided that for the most part, I liked back to front better. But I did see some applications for the front to back method.
The first is when I am combining two or more warps. From time to time, I will dye two wraps separately and then combine them in stripes.
The second is when I have made a mixed warp by holding a number of different types of yarns as one unit when warping and then separate them when threading. Winding the bunches on the back as one unit and then threading them leaves me with no end of tension issues. Especially as I use many different types of yarn with different amounts of stretch and different amounts of resiliency.
The third is when I have a sticky warp that is mildly felted. It seems to be much easier to strum and stroke the yarns through the reed than to get them to behave going through the lease sticks.
Here are two of the four scarves that came off of that warp. the colours are washed out a bit. So what else is new?

The blue warp that was the first picture is destined for the same treatment. It is narrower than the 12 inch wide scarves that came out of the last batch because apparently men like narrower scarves. And women buy men scarves. Market research is a wonderful thing.

spinning the forest floor

When I was dyeing fleece last year, I had a few bags that I wanted to spin myself. Thankfully, I kept pretty good records of what I did and so I was able to reproduce it.

Here is "Forest Floor" in fleece.

The singles.
The yarn.
Colour: Forest Floor
Content: 100% merino
Weight: 6.8 oz
Yardage: 234 yards
Source: My own hand dyed fleece.

Sigh

Monday

Day: Snow at times heavy becoming mixed with ice pellets in the afternoon. Snow and ice pellet amount 25 cm. Local blowing snow in the afternoon. Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting to 50. High minus 5.
Night: Ice pellets changing to periods of freezing rain in the evening then to a few flurries overnight. Local blowing snow in the evening. Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming northwest 30 gusting to 50 overnight. Temperature rising to zero in the evening then falling.

On a brighter note...Did I show you these?

Silk noil scarves

Portal

I had fun at the opening and the turn out was great. I would like to add some weights to the bottom of my door though and change the positioning a bit. But I am rather pleased in the end.

When we last spoke

of the things I do, I was doing some heat setting experimentation. On the whole I was not really all that keen on the heat setting. Part of the problem was that the elastics/rubber bands that I was using were in fact the ouchless ones that I found out were plastic. They didn't withstand the heat of the heat setting machine. As a result, about halfway through the heat setting phase, the elastics would give way and the fabric would relax making my forms less than crisp.
My first reaction to my samples was "oh. look. wrinkled fabric"
Then I wrapped some around a pole in a traditional shibori technique and found something that I was able to get a little more excited about. I also did the nail fabric which I also found to be quite exciting. I was looking in a magazine for something totally unrelated and found an article on heat setting where they use a steamer. I tried it with my wrapped pollen fabric and it worked wonderfully! I am working on my pollen still but I need to tweak it a bit. I am not 100% pleased with my results so far. More on that later.

While I was sitting around waiting for my fabric to melt and harden, I did a bit of dyeing of scarves. There are never enough hours in the day to do all of the things that I want to get done, so I managed to multi task a couple of days.



I was also asked to work a couple of extra nights last week because the night time blanket weaving class that is happening now is coming to a close (two weeks left) and a lot of the students will not be finished on time. It was thought that while other classes were happening in the evening and the security guard was there that the blanket weaving students could come and work on getting their blankets on the looms. They are also able to come during the day while classes are happening (and I am there to help) but some people work during the day and were given the night time option. Some took advantage of my being there and progressed quite nicely. Others are still behind. We will see how it all turns out.

Last Wednesday I was also asked if I was putting a piece in the New Brunswick Crafts Council show. The show's theme is "Traces of Architecture": Inspiration from New Brunswick Architecture. When I said that I hadn't thought to, I was encouraged by the curator to submit something. So I started to think and came up with a couple of ideas. The one that I chose is a direct interpretation of the theme. I decided to make a life-size doorway based on the doors is my house. I started with silk dupioni which I cut into doorway shape and sewed the edges. I knew that I would be dyeing it so I wanted to use a type of thread that would dye like the silk. Polyester thread was out, and so was cotton because cotton takes fiber reactive dyes slightly differently than silk. I decided that some of the weft thread would work well.
Ha! After faithfully pulling about 30 yards of weft thread out, putting it on sewing bobbins and trying to sew with it, I came to the conclusion (after about 10 breaks in the thread) that the weft thread wasn't spun enough.
What to do? 10 pm on a Friday night, I knew that in order to have the piece ready for Monday I had to sew it that night, no stores are open (and if they were would they even carry silk thread?)
And then I remembered some fine spun silk yarn that a friend gave me thinking that I could ply with it. I thought that I would dig it out and try it. And it WORKED! Just like thread. I was so pleased, and it was a joy to work with after the cursing that I did using the other silk. I cursed some more when I decided to pick out all of the stitches of the first attempt. But I am happy with the result.

Here are the pieces ready to dye.


In order to dye them, I first stretched them on stretcher frames and painted them with fiber reactive dyes. I had to let them sit for 24 hours and then wash and dry them. Then sew them together. I don't have a picture of the finished piece yet because I haven't seen it all assembled. The opening is this Friday 5-7 at the Charlotte Street Art Center if anyone is interested.

I hope to get a good photo of it hanging for all of you that can't be there in person.

So that is partially why I haven't been posting much. Who has time?

Hump Day

Skeins that have been dyed by me within that last couple of weeks. Some I like, some, not so much. But that is the way that is goes sometimes. And one thing that I have learned from selling my wares, is that different people have different tastes.

While I was at the lake this summer, we actually spent most of the time there just as me, Bill, and the kids. Uncle Sandy spent about 50% of the time with us, but the rest of the time it was just us. For the first time.

One of the things that happened was that I felt that it was OK to do a little bit of exploring in the recipe drawer. I has seen some old cookbooks when I was exploring in a gentle sort of way, but I am not sure how Grandma would feel about me laughing and snapping photos of some of the recipes in these cook books.

As you can see, the Coronation Cook Book was indeed tried and tested as well as well used. Check out the date. This book was Bill's Paternal Grandmothers.

And this was his mothers when she was a young woman
As you can see, another well used cook book. I am always suspicious when I see a cookbook that is pristine. Either the cook had one of those cook book shields, or the book was never used! Not so in this case.

I had quite a a good time looking at the various recipes. Some of which I snapped am image of for future reference, some of which I thought were funny or odd.

The chili recipe falls into the odd category. What I find odd about it is that it says it serves 12! And there is no chili powder. In a chili! Nor any other seasonings. I don't know about you, but when I make chili, there are all kinds of veggies in there along with the traditional beans and meat. And Chili Powder galore!
I also got a chuckle at the last line in the dressing recipe above the chili recipe.

Tomorrow.... Whats on the loom!

dyeing to spin

When I dyed some yarn the other day, I also picked up some alpaca roving as well as a bag of mohair roving. They are now all dry and ready to spin. As soon as I clean off some bobbins.
But first, I have to get my next silk warp on the loom and woven off. There are only 3.5 weeks left before my first big show and I am feeling like I need to have more stock.
And I meant to show you what the silk scarves looked like before they are washed out and pressed. Sort of ugly, eh?