In This Week's Dye Pots

Goldenrod and more Red Hibiscus

In the Fiber Room

Stolen moments... skirting, washing, carding, spinning, dyeing.

There is always 'work in progress' in the fiber room.

And, take a peek in the box above.

It's filled with our long-awaited shipment from Stonehedge Fiber Mill. 

There will be lots more to come about this beautiful yarn... probably the first of the week.

Scenes From Our Open House

In the Fiber Room

Wool ~ in all its glory

A glimpse of just some of the things that have been going on in our fiber room

Not Yellow

Naturally dyeing fiber is always interesting and often unpredictable. When anyone asks us what color we get from a certain plant the usual response is 'yellow' ... or 'probably yellow' if it is a plant we have never tried. This can be manipulated somewhat by the use of different mordants or afterdips, but still usually yellow or tan color based hues are the results achieved from local plants.

So it is always a great surprise when we make a dyebath from.....for instance.... blossums like these:

and these:

(14 oz. total fresh blossoms)

And add 2oz of alum and cream of tartar mordanted wool, and a tablespoon of baking soda in the last 15 min or so to change the pH....

And get a lovely bright shade of ...not yellow... but....green...:

So of course we have to add another 2oz of wool to the dyebath and get a still beautiful but pale yellow:

They do look very pretty together:





Now to see if the green can be duplicated with another dyebath.  May be  most likely be yet another surprise.



This Week in the Fiber Room



Dyeing Prudence's locks



Washing fleeces - this one is Blackberry's ram lamb

Carding and pulling Blackberry's lovely wool

Carding... sampling... note taking

More sampling... more note taking

Spinning some of Boy George's Heather Lavender batts

For those of you commenting on all the bright colors in one of the previous 'In the Fiber Room' posts, we thought you might be interested in this series by Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed fame.  He is giving us a peek behind the scenes in the creation of his fabulous new yarn Shelter.  He begins with some wonderful pictures and explanations of color blending at a mill scale.  It is a great story, and we love, love, love what he is doing for the wool industry.

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

Sunflowers, grown for dyeing, are providing plenty of sunshine... dancing in the wind on these cloudy, dreary fall days.

Dyeing, Spinning, Knitting

Just a small sample of what we have been up to... when we are not in the barn.

Rhubarb

Spring is not complete without the great taste of rhubarb: pie, jello, crisp, jam . . .  doesn’t matter as long as it is rhubarb.

 

Recently, a very gracious neighbor shared her bountiful supply with us. Having recently seen somewhere that the leaves are good for dyeing wool, we requested the poisonous leafy tops be left on so we could shred them up and try our hand at dyeing. We ended up with 6 pounds of leaves.

After soaking them overnight we put them on the stove. The boiling leaves smelled very good, and turned into a spinach-like mush.

We tried 4 ounces of wool in one of the pots, (had to boil them in 3 different pots we had so many) simultaneously mordanting with alum and cream of tarter. Brought to 200 degrees for 45 minutes producing a kind of semi-pretty gold/yellow/green color not represented very well in the following picture:

Then for the last 15 minutes we added tin mordant which turned it a pretty bright yellow which is actually somewhere in the middle of the hues that the camera picked up in these two pictures.

Closest to this brighter color.

Which is really one of the prettiest yellows we have gotten from our natural dyes. We may just have to try this same process again.

Spinning Easter Egg Painted Roving

 

Using two different batts that we colored with Easter egg dyes and kool-aid, I spun this colorful little skein on the drop spindle.

I stripped each of the two batts into narrow strips and alternated them on the spindle.

   It made a beautiful mix of greens and oranges.

Will make great colorful stripes in a hat or scarf.  Hmmm…..

 

Any ideas????

Spinning With Color

Sheeps and Peeps' youngest spinner, Lena, age 11, has been designing and spinning with the Easter egg and koolaid dyed roving and locks.

First, she has been spinning on the spindle with one of her painted rovings from the previous post with the following progress so far:

And she also has been designing spinning batts using wool from one of our our Lincoln cross ewes layered with stripes of the carded locks from the canning box of color adding generous amounts of angelina for sparkles. Some of these were given as Christmas presents to her aunts. But, she couldn't resist spinning up some for herself on the Minstrel with this result:

These batts were each rolled lengthwise and the pulled into roving which made a beautiful blend of colors.

Great job, Lena!! We can't wait to see what you create with these yarns.

Canning Box of Color

What do you do with a school snow day? Dye wool of course.

On a recent snow day we got out some carded lamb's wool batts and tried some kool-aid and easter egg dyeing.

We used tiny sponge rollers that came in some kind of paint-on easter egg dyes a few years back. They seemed to work really well.

Everyone got in on the artistic fun.

Then saran wrap and to the microwave.

Then to the drying rack.

The left over dyes went to locks for a canning box of color!

Pics of spun dyed batts to follow soon.