Of Hydrangeas and Cake

This was influenced by this.



I handpainted the yarn using one of the methods I learned from Scout's dyeing workshop last month. The hydrangea is in my neighbor's front yard and has flowers ranging from pale greenish white to deep periwinkle. The base yarn is 75% merino superwash 25% nylon and I bought it from Woodland Woolworks at Black Sheep Gathering.

I got the baking bug this weekend. It was a good thing I was going to Kristine's studio and could share this with others. Otherwise, I might have eaten the whole thing myself. This is a raspberry buttermilk cake. I used this recipe from 101 Cookbooks, changing it to suit the ingredients I had on hand. I really like this recipe and will make it again--it's easy and transportable and can be altered to reflect what fruits are in season.

Dye workshop with Scout

This past weekend I attended a dye workshop with Scout at Knit One One. It was a lot of fun.

The space at Knit One One is great. Light and airy; perfect for seeing what you are doing.

Winding yarn onto a warping board to make self-striping yarn.

This is what a skein off the warping board looks like when it is dyed.

Dyed skeins hung out to dry.

The skein I dyed after winding on the warping board.

The blue face leceister roving I handpainted.

Scout is a wonderful teacher and freely shared her experiences so that we could learn from the mistakes she has made. The one thing that no teacher can teach is color sense and Scout has great color sense. It's just one of those things that you have. It really helps if you are willing to experiment with color and accept that there will be mistakes.

So thank you Scout for a wonderful weekend!

Overdyed and repurposed

The weather here has been rainy and gloomy. To cheer myself up, I unraveled (I do a lot of that here, but usually it's not a knit item that is unraveling) a beanie I knit out of some orange handspun merino/tencel. For about a year I had a beanie, which I never wore, and a pair of matching socks, which I do wear. After unraveling, I had about 3 oz. of yarn, enough to knit a beret which I would undoubtly wear. Only I didn't want orange; I wanted red. So I hauled out the dyepot and my trusty dyes and mixed up a red that was pleasing to me. The orange yarn went for a little R&R in the red dye bath. It is now the red yarn cake in the picture.

I cast on and started knitting my red beret as soon as the yarn had dried. Only thing is I didn't like it as a red beret--a project that went straight to the frog pond.

Felting Sunday

I've had this need to finish something other than socks this week. So I decided a little felting was in order. I had to set up a felting area where a bit of water spilled on the floor wouldn't matter. I have the perfect space in my dining area. I covered the floor, which is wood laminate, with a plastic drop cloth. An inexpensive solution that can just be rolled and thrown away when I am finished. I set up my handy dandy multi-purpose folding table. Cut a length of ridged shelf covering a bit longer than the table. Heated a stock pot of water. Found the bucket of homemade soap gel I use for felting; donned my denim apron and set to work.

I started with this--about 4 oz. of roving. One hank was merino and the other was merino/tencel. The colorways were similar and had been stewing in my fiber stash for a long time. I know that both of these came from Deep Color and had been dyed by Jen.

I proceeded to lay out lengths of roving shingle style for the first layer. This took all of about 15 minutes. Each bit of fiber is about a staple length. Next I laid out a second layer of shingles running cross-wise to the first layer. For the third layer, I laid out fiber more or less going in the same direction of the first layer. More or less, meaning I was much more random in placing the fiber so that there would be some "movement" in the finished felt.

The first stage of felting looks like this. I wetted the fiber sandwich I just created, lay a net bag over it, drizzled a bit of soap gel over it, and patted it. I kept on patting until I couldn't see any air pockets. I moved my net bag over to the next section and patted. Once I was sure that the fiber was wet all the way through, I started moving my hand in a circular motion to start the agitation process. I kept the net bag over the felt while doing this. I turned the piece over after I was pretty sure it was holding together. If you look closely at the photo, you can see the ridge marks from the plastic I used underneath. I continued rubbing the felt, making sure to work the edges so that they weren't all feathery. I kept doing this until I thought it looked done and could stand up to a bit of rough treatment like being rolled up and rolled around with pressure. I did this until the felt was "hard" enough. I rinsed it out under running hot water until all of the soap was out. Then give it the cold water shock treatment. I wrung it out, twisting hard.

About an hour and a half later, I had this. I'll be able to wear it tomorrow if it is dry. I then cleared up my work table and started another scarf. The second scarf was made out of a merino/tencel roving hand painted by Jen at Deep Color--again, fiber from the stash. Pictures to come.

Since last week, I finished the Flame Wave Socks. These are for my daughter's friend Emily. I thought I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish the toes so I used a multi-colored I bought especially for these.

After seeing Kristine's Pomatomus socks, I dyed this Henry's Attic Kona superwash sock yarn with alkanet and madder. While waiting for this to dry, I started Cookie A's Thelonious socks using the Fleece Artist Basic Merino Sock I bought at Knitty City in New York.

Oh, oh I spun some the Lorna's Laces superwash roving in Red Rover. No wonder I feel I can't get anything finished. I don't have the attention span to focus on just one thing.

Indigo dyeing

Yesterday I mixed up my indigo stock using indigo powder from Earthues. It turned the appropriate sickly yellow, which reminds me of clean motor oil. Needless to say, I was pleased. I had an irrational fear that I would not get this right without my spinning and natural dyeing teacher there to hold my hand. To riff Sally Field, it worked; it really, really worked. So just be sure it really worked, I let it sit overnight. I didn't want to be cursed and find out that it had re-oxygenated and turned blue. The dye fairy was on my side. It stayed motor oil yellow.

Last night, I set the fiber to soak. 2 oz. each of undyed merino tencel blend, BFL, and merino. I had previously dyed the merino with onion skins. While pleased with the color, it's not one that looks especially good next to my skin. The BFL was originally dyed with lac then over dyed with madder. I was feeling so-so about the color and thought a dip in indigo might help me get over it.

Today after my morning walk to Peet's on Piedmont, I set up my makeshift indigo dyeing kitchen, which happens to be my balcony. Last week I bought an inexpensive hotplate just for this purpose--I don't want an indigo kitchen after all! I'm using an old stock pot that I've had forever as a dedicated indigo pot. My black solar dyeing tub is set up to hold the fiber once I remove it from the dye pot. I knew it was a great investment when I bought it. I've got a tub of clean water next to the solar dyeing tub so I can rinse my gloved hands and not turn the handle of the sliding screen blue if I needed to go inside.

Each of these photos shows the result after one dip in the indigo pot. I ended up dipping the undyed merino tencel about five times. I dipped the yellow four or five times and the red around seven times. I didn't keep good track of the numbers of dips; I just went for color I like. Right now, the fiber is resting in a plastic bag. I'll probably let age a week before I rinse it. You may ask why I rest it, and it is a good question. The only answer I can give is that this is what Claudia told me to do when I learned indigo dyeing from her. So I follow her lead.

The end of summer

My firm was gracious enough to close early the Friday before Labor Day weekend. I used the few extra hours to go to Target and buy another storage bin for my growing fiber stash. Of course, I didn't reorganize the stash right away. I have a character flaw that will not allow me to make use of things like storage bins right away; I must contemplate storage for awhile, secure in the knowledge that the bins are waiting for me.

Saturday I was busy. I finished my Monkey Socks. I really like the way they turned out. I would knit this pattern again if there weren't so many other sock patterns I want to knit. I really just used the pattern for the lace pattern and followed my standard sock recipe. So the Monkeys helped make a small dent in the yarn stash. Yeah!

I spun up about 4 oz. of the wine colored merino sliver, which means I have a little less than a pound left to spin. I'm really enjoying spinning this. I just have to figure out what sweater pattern I want to make when I'm done.

I painted some merino tencel sliver to solar dye. At the right is my solar dyeing set up. A black plastic tub from Ace Hardware, a piece of plexiglass and c-clamps. I left this out until late Monday afternoon.

Sunday was a mellow day. I drove down the coast with a friend. We stopped for a few hours at a beach about a mile below Pigeon Point Lighthouse. It was windy but the sun felt really good. Plus, it was fabulously clear. On the way home, we stopped at Duarte's Tavern for pie and coffee. I love the pie there; the crust is the best.

On Monday, I got out the dye pot to overdye some sock yarn I was no longer happy with. The orange was originally a hot pour of burnt orange leaving sizable spots of white. So I overdyed it with aztec gold and got this almost solid orange. The brown was my very first experiment of dyeing with KoolAid--originally, I dyed it with orange KoolAid. It was a bit too candied colored for my tastes. So I overdyed with brown. Now it is a lovely brown with hints of reddish brown. I'm really happy with how these turned out.

I also started knitting a Chevron Scarf using some Twisted Sisters handpainted Daktari I bought at the Knit Cafe two summers ago. I've been waiting for the right project to come along for this yarn, which is slubbed cotton. I love how it is working up. I don't have a photo yet; I'll post one soon.

This is how the solar dyed handpaint turned out. I'm calling this Spring. The colors are so much softer than if I had steam set the dye. The green broke a little bit, but I'm fine with it. This is going to become sock yarn. But first, I am going to finish spinning the wine-colored merino.

More catching up

I've been knitting but have nothing to show for it. I used scrapes of Cascade 220 to knit a buttonhole-type bag for felting. It looks like a blob of black, purple, and red right now. I have to felt it. I'm in no hurry to do so because I think this will become a Christmas gift. I'm working up a pair of Broadripple socks in some Fixation that I've had in my stash for a few years. This should be a really fast knit--socks on US 3's. It is going slowly though. I don't know if it is because it is summer, and we are actually having summer weather in the Bay Area. Or, if I've just lost my interest in knitting this particular pair of socks.

I haven't lost interest in spinning or dyeing though.

The single is spun from a batt by Three Bags Full in Dragon's Fire I bought from Carolina Homespun last summer. I'm almost finished spinning the second bobbin. It is American Romeldale, tencel, and silk noil. I let this marinate in the fiber stash for a year because I changed my mind about liking it once I got it home. Now that I've spun most of it up, I really like it. It is a lovely color and I like the texture that the silk noils add. Once this is plyed, I'll figure out what to make with it.

I dyed this a few weeks ago. It's 4 oz. of merino/tencel. I was inspired by the Tidepool roving in the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook. This is destined for sock yarn. I plan on spinning this next.