Checking in . . .

It seems like every time I post on this blog, I have to begin with an apology for having been absent for so long.  But, stuff happens and I guess keeping up with a blog ends up way, way down on the to-do list.  Absence, however, does not mean that I have been unproductive. I have traveled a bit this summer, having taken a wonderful week long workshop at Shakerag in Sewanee, Tennessee, with the most amazing Yoshiko Wada, shibori artist from Berkeley. My friend, Margie, traveled with me to Shakerag and we learned boro cloth, stitching, and how to do indigo the right way.  Prior to our workshop, we spent some time roaming around, ending up in Asheville, NC, for a couple of days. After a week at Shakerag, everyone ends up with sensory overload and with ideas swimming around in your head and upon arriving home, both Margie and I promptly got our personal indigo pots going.  

This is a piece of fabric that I over dyed in the Shakerag indigo pot.  I had earlier eco printed the fabric using eucalyptus leaves and marigolds and coreopsis from my backyard. I used a clamp resist so that the indigo didn't reach the clamped areas.

Once I got home and started my own indigo dyepot, I experimented with a clamp resist on some silk.

One of my projects at Shakerag involved using fabrics I brought from home that I had tea dyed and eco printed.  The vest that I started stitching on at Shakerag is still a work in progress but it seems to have morphed into a duster.

The Spring and Summer have been a time for further exploration of felting, something that I love to do -- creating fabric from raw fibers using my hands.  I have only scratched the surface of all the ideas I want to try, but I have had some real successes.

I have been working on a vest using newly felted pieces and adding some eco printed felt I made last summer. After piecing the vest, I began adding embellishments and handstitching, both on the front and back.  

And I have been working on felted scarves and shawls, hand knits and handspun yarn for my booth at Artistic License, which is right around the corner on Friday and Saturday, October 24th and 25th.  I plan on having a very colorful display.

And yesterday, after mulling it over for too many months to count, I pulled out one of my many piles of granny squares and forced myself to sit down and sew a bunch of them together.  I am sure that many of my friends who get that granny square obsession with their handspun yarn can completely relate to the enormously daunting task of stitching squares together. And I can report, Yay!!! I have a beautifully finished baby blanket today.  

No promises -- because I am way too distracted with fibery things -- but I am going to try to pull together all the pictures from our Shakerag workshop with Yoshiko Wada so that you can see just what a fabulous time is had at Shakerag.  Margie and I had already signed up for next year before this year's workshop was over. 

Playing with fibers

As I've said many times before, one of the things I love to do is handspin.  Here are a couple of skeins I recently spun.

This yarn was spun using one of Inglenook Fibers' batts called "Dandelion Wine" that I then plied with a Rainbow Farms batt of pygora, polwarth wool and silk. These are some of my favorite greens.  This weighs 6.4 oz. and has 444 yards of loveliness.

Again, I used an Inglenook Fibers batt called "Nor'Easter" and plied it with a Blueface Leicester/silk roving from Woolgatherings.  I think this skein is destined to be knit into socks.  It weighs 5.0 oz.and has 340 yards.

Every week, I continue to play around with making felt.  I just love this and need to make a bigger piece.  This is only about 11" x 14".  

And, finally, I stopped by the LYS called Yarn Del Sol in Mission Viejo and found two lovely ceramic buttons that screamed take me home.  And I did.

Too long gone . . .

Oh, my, where has the time gone?  I was thinking it had been a few months since I last blogged and then when I actually looked, I realized it had been seven months.  In my blogging absence, I have been doing much spinning and knitting (and a bit of weaving) -- just exploring and experimenting with some other fiber things I have been wanting to try but couldn't find the time.  Then there were daily walks. Hanging out with fiber friends. Having a son and his wife move to Seattle was cause for a couple of trips, especially around the Madrona Fiber Festival.  And a new kitten companion -- well, that has taken up some time. 

A couple of weeks ago, I spent some very relaxing time with my friend, Terry, who lives in the Santa Cruz mountains -- a bit remote, but so tranquil a setting in the woods. [www.ifeltlikeitbyterry.etsy.com]

I stayed in a cute little cottage right behind her home.  Terry is a felt artist so we did some felting in her lovely studio down from her house under the redwoods.  She had a fire going in the little stove.  We were all cozy and warm messing around with our fibers.  We also spent time just chatting, knitting and spinning on our wheels.  I can't think of a better get away.

And yesterday, a surprise box arrived from Terry with a nice stash of acorns and madrone bark peels for natural dyeing, all from around her house.   What a treat to open the box and the fragrance of her studio came wafting out -- brought me back to my wonderful stay in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Since my Santa Cruz trip, I have been inspired to get my felting mojo back.  Last week has been spent sampling some felting ideas.  I have been wanting to take some of my piles of granny squares and use them in a felted piece.

On my trip to Santa Cruz, we made a little day trip to San Francisco to a wondrous fabric store, Britex -- four floors of fabric, buttons, trims, ribbons. I was looking for silk fabric to use for nuno felting and I bought some embroidered white silk. Again, another sampling experiment.  I made the button with Terry in her studio. 

This sample is nuno felt using a seer sucker silk gauze I bought in Santa Fe last Fall.  It worked beautifully for nuno. 

Been wanting to do some felting with a couple of fleeces I bought at the Taos Wool festival -- CVM from Windy Hill Farm, Casper, WY.  I also included some polwarth, kid mohair and thick and thin merino yarn.  

And one of the most fun things to enter my life is a Duncan motorized drum carder. What can I say, after I used my friend Maggie's in February at a fiber retreat with my spinning friends in San Diego, I had to have one and immediately put in my order.  I absolutely love it and have been having a blast making batts (and spinning them).  

Had to spin up some of the batts I made just to make sure I was doing a good job of it.

I hope that getting over the hump of not blogging for so long will get me back in to posting things here.  Let's see what happens.

Spinning Inspiration

In June, Miryha and I attended Black Sheep Gathering and while in Eugene, OR, we spent an afternoon/evening hanging out with our friend, Karen Kahle, of Primitive Spirit.  Her wonderful blog can be viewed here:   http://www.primitivespirit.wordpress.com

I was so taken with Karen's studio -- it is my dream studio.  

Surrounded by Karen's beautiful works of art and the shabby chic ambience of her studio was such a warm and inviting environment in which to sit and knit and crochet, sipping tea. If you read Karen's blog, you will see that she is an amazing rug hooking artist. 

The warm colors of Karen's studio and the colors of wool she has dyed offered me much inspiration.  I couldn't get those colors out of my mind so a couple of weeks ago, I set about painting some roving so that I, too, could spin some yarn like the ones Karen had spun and was using in her knitting. Here's what I came up with:  Fallen Leaves II and Sunset at Manzanita.

Spun on my Majacraft Rose wheel.  712 yards of two-ply fingering weight yarn, weighing 8 oz.  I can hardly wait to get this yarn on the needles.

Thanks, Karen, for your friendship and for your beautiful work that inspires.

Natural Dyeing Thursday

Continuing our Summer project, my friend Margie and I got together again to do some natural dyeing this past Thursday.  This, of course, is always experimentation, and we never quite know how things will turn out.  Margie's fibers on the left were all mordanted in alum and none of mine on the right were mordanted.  You can see a difference, as hers were much brighter and more pink.  These are some of our things hanging out to dry.

We tried Brazilwood again.  The week before, we discovered that we had mistakenly used a natural dye extract and our dyebath was over the top too strong, resulting in very dark colors, almost black -- not what we expected.  This week, we used Brazilwood sawdust and achieved plums and pinks.  

We also did a marigold dyebath that was half dried flower tops that I purchased and half from marigold flower tops I had collected from my garden and dried.  We got some nice golds, both light and dark.

Below are my Brazilwood skeins.  They are mostly superwash merino wool and were unmordanted. I think the fact that my skeins were superwash wool and Margie's were handspun wool made a difference. They were all put in an ammonia afterbath.  From top to bottom shows the strength of the dyebath as it became exhausted.  The bottom skein is an alpaca/silk laceweight yarn that turned out to be a very light silvery lilac.

These are my marigold skeins.  Mostly super wash merino wool and unmordanted.  The top two skeins were left in the dyebath for a long time so were a dark gold.  The top skein was put in an ammonia afterbath and the second skein in a copper afterbath.  The third skein was put in the dyebath for a lesser amount of time and then in the ammonia afterbath.  The fourth skein is alpaca/silk laceweight yarn and was put in last and then in the ammonia afterbath.  

Haven't quite figured out what to do next -- maybe madder root, Hopi black sunflower seeds or another type of eucalyptus.  Whatever we do, we can agree on one thing:  we're having fun.  

Spin, Spin

Since returning from Tennessee and Oregon, I have been doing a lot of spinning. Spinning got me recentered and relaxed after two weeks+ of traveling.  These skeins are some of my July spinning.  This first one is a two-ply fingering weight.  I used a 50/50 merino/bombyx silk roving (from Red Fish Dyeworks at Convergence in Long Beach) plied with a 75/25 blueface leicester wool/tussah silk roving from Woolgatherings. This skein has 864 yards and weighs 8.3 oz.

For this next skein, I spun a batt from Inglenook Fibers that Macrina called "The Doctor". It's a two-ply fingering weight (my favorite to knit with).  I plied the Inglenook batt with one of my Capistrano Fiber Arts handpainted rovings called "Sapphire Skies", 75% blueface leicester/25% tussah silk.  This skein has 556 yards and weighs 7.0 oz.

For this skein, I used another of the Inglenook Fibers batts called "Briar Rose" and plied it with another Woolgatherings roving of 75% blueface leicester/25% tussah silk. This skein is a two-ply fingering weight and has 452 yards and weighs 5.8 oz.  

Besides loving to spin, I have a purpose in spinning all these large skeins.  My intent  is to  put together some pattern kits with my handspun yarn.  So, back to spinning.

Natural Dyeing Fun

After returning from my travels to Tennessee and Oregon, I immersed myself in knitting and spinning for a spell and took a breather from blogging and now I'm going to try to get back into it.  

While in Tennessee, my friend Margie and I took a natural dye workshop with Rebecca Burgess, author of "Harvesting Color" -- will hopefully blog about that later.  But, during our workshop, we resolved to inventory all of the natural dye stuffs we have accumulated over the years and then meet once a week during the summer and dye what we have.  Here are some of our "experiments" -- I say this, because it seems we sometimes do not achieve the colors that all of our natural dye books tell us we will get.

Week one:  We had two dye pots, one was snakeweed and the other tansy.  Both of these dried plant materials were obtained in New Mexico through the Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center.  [We have also been experimenting with some printing on silk fabric -- this one went into the onion skin bath.]

Starting from the right, snakeweed on Targhee wool, two skeins of tansy on Targhee wool, and a skein of handspun alpaca/merino/silk previously dyed in indigo and overdyed in snakeweed.

Week two:   Again we had two dye pots.  One was dried yellow onion skins that I collected over several months and the other was alkanet.

Week three:   We had a dye pot of red iron bark eucalyptus collected from trees on the slope behind my yard.  We also had a dye pot of black-eyed susans, but that proved to be kind of a bust so we have nothing to show for that.  Might not have had enough flowers for that bath.

Here, from right to left:  two skeins of wool from the eucalyptus pot.  Then the very bright skeins from the yellow onion skins pot -- on silk and then two wool skeins.  And lastly, the brownish skein was from the alkanet pot.  [The fabrics are silk and then cotton on the left -- went into the eucalyptus pot.]

Last week:   We had a dye pot of brazilwood, which we concluded was way, way, way too strong because some of our skeins came out black and aubergine. We then diluted the dyebath quite a bit, but it still ended up way too strong. (We're figuring it out along the way.)  The rust brown skein was my handspun alpaca/merino/silk that had been previously dyed in indigo and overdyed in the brazilwood.  

The logwood dyebath was not as strong and we got some nice colors.

We also did more block prints and seem to be getting better at it.  These background fabrics are dupioni silk.  We finally discovered that what we thought was brazilwood and logwood sawdust turned out to be natural dye extracts, which apparently are 8 to 10 times stronger than the natural sawdust.  As I said, these are experiments and we are learning along the way. We're making a nice dent in all the "stuff" we have, though.

Checking In

Well, my bags are packed and I sent all my bedding and other things to furnish our room at Shakerag and make it comfortable.  The box arrived on Tuesday in Sewanee, TN, at the St. Andrews-Sewanee School.  Tomorrow morning, Margie and I will take off from John Wayne Airport and fly off to Atlanta.  Fingers are crossed that tropical storm Andrea will be long gone and we'll have good weather for our drive to Chattanooga where we will spend the night at a B&B at the Bluff Arts District.  We'll head up to Sewanee mid-day on Sunday for our natural dye workshop with Rebecca Burgess, author of Harvesting Color. 

I have been working hard to finish my third Sierra Aspens Capelet, taking scrupulous notes along the way so that I can finally write up the pattern.  Here's the finished project:

The handspun yarns I used, all two-ply fingering weight.

 And the rovings I used to spin the yarns.

Second from the top is "Cinco de Mayo", which is the colorway that runs through the capelet.  I plied that colorway with "Indian Paintbrush" (at the top) and used that for the body.  The blue/rust/gold of "North Woods" was plied with "Cinco de Mayo" for the lace edge.  And "Blood Orange" at the bottom was plied with "Cinco de Mayo" for the ruffled edge.  I liked the idea of having one colorway that predominates and changes depending on what it is plied with.  All of the rovings were 100% Blueface Leicester except "Indian Paintbrush" which was a blend of merino/cashmere (80/20).  And I used a US3 needle to knit this project. I ended up using about 500 yards total and spun about 1100 yards, so I actually have enough yarn to make another capelet.  Hmmm . . . . project for my trip! although I was looking forward to knitting socks.

Will check in again at the end of June.  After my trip to Tennessee for Shakerag, I will be off to Eugene, OR, to attend Black Sheep Gathering.  After two weeks on the road, I plan on settling down for a month or so before my next trip. Hope everyone is having a great Summer!

Spinning for Knitting

I have finished the edging on the capelet that I am currently knitting.  The capelet is my original design -- the Sierra Aspens Capelet, so . . . . I am hoping to complete the pattern and offer it for sale in my Etsy shop . . . some . . . time . . . soon.  Of course, I've been saying this for quite a while. I figure I better write up the pattern or I just have to stop wearing the the various capelets I've made with my handspun yarns.

I am keeping very accurate records this time. The first skein I spun for this project was a combination of my "Cinco de Mayo" and  "Northwoods" colorways.  Both of those were BFL.  This second skein for the body of the capelet is a combination (plied together) of "Cinco de Mayo" in BFL and an 80%/20% merino/cashmere blend in "Indian Paint Brush". I'm trying to keep one colorway -- "Cinco de Mayo" -- running through the entire project and plying that with other colorways.  It's a fun project and it will be interesting to see how the colors play off of each other.  

Knitting needles are poised and I've got the first season of "Call the Midwife" ready to go.

Oh, and BTW, I managed to score some Inglenook Fibers batts when Macrina did an update on Etsy last week.  I couldn't believe it.  The first few I bought were gone by the time I went to pay for them.  Went right back to Inglenook's store and started clicking on batts. I felt like a little fishy in a tank full of sharks having a feeding frenzy.  WOW! That's all I can say.  But, of course, when they arrive in the mail, it's pretty obvious why they are so popular.  They're just the best.  

Keepin' Busy

For the past week or so, I have been doing quite a bit of dyeing, trying to restock my Etsy shop.  My supplies of rovings and other items was dwindling, the cupboards were starting to look bare, so I kicked it into high gear and spent some time out in my hot studio.  Thankfully, the weather has cooled down a bit.   Lots of new rovings in my Etsy store now.  

I'm still treadling away every day, too.  Spinning is such a calming and centering activity. This skein was spun using one of my handpainted rovings in merino/cashmere (80/20) called "Olive Branch" that I plied with one of Miryha's Blarney Yarns Polwarth rovings in "Sour Apple II".  Two-ply fingering weight, 442 yards, 3.9 oz.  

Another relaxing activity is knitting, which I try to do a bit of every day.  Here I'm using the handspun skein that was in my last post:  "Cinco de Mayo" plied with "North Woods". This is the edging of a shrug that I'm knitting.  

And finally, this morning, I dragged out the bins of eco printed fabrics that I have dyed and been accumulating.  Out came my scissors and rotary cutter and pieces were flying all over the place -- no plan, just snip, snip and cut, cut.  Then I started piecing some of the odd shapes  together. Like a jigsaw puzzle.  I don't know where this is going but . . . it's a shame to just let all those beautiful leaf prints sit around in plastic . . . and . . . I got some of those ideas swimming in my head down onto the table.  Whew!  That frees up the clutter in my head.  

Back to having fun!