Another loom?!?

One of my fiber friends is a shopping genius, rarely pays full price for anything, frequents thrift shops and estate sales for bargains, etc. She spotted a Schacht Cricket on FB Marketplace and relayed the info to me. Not that I needed another rigid heddle loom, but it was such a deal I could not resist. So now I have three(!) rigid heddle looms.

It came with plenty of accessories: heddles (including a variable reed one), shuttles, pickup sticks, dividers, warping peg, a stand, plus a cute bag to carry everything in. My SO asked where I was going to put it. Somewhere....

I pre-ordered a book by Alexandra Brinck on mending: Knit Repair: A Comprehensive Guide to Invisible Mending for Knitwear. The ship date is not until November :-( but in the meantime I am subscribed to her Patreon account. Not that I have had time to look at that lately...

...because I have been dyeing with the indigo vat. Some of my results have been less than stellar, but I seem to be getting the hang of it. I have to remember to be careful and patient.

Dyeing: See above.
Fiber prep: I attended a mini wool washing workshop that the spinning guild sponsored; now I have some clean fiber to process.
Knitting: One sock is almost to the cuff, the other about halfway there.
Spinning: Still working on that murky fiber. I bought a telescoping stool for the e-spinner.

Weaving: For the rigid heddle study group, I demonstrated clasped weft weaving.

Whew! It was a busy fiber week. Summer is almost over, so things are going to pick up even more. It's both exciting and overwhelming.

Grandma hobbies?!?

In the news: Young people are taking up what the media refers to as "grandma hobbies". I am a grandmother and I have hobbies, but I took up fiber arts long before I aged. I guess I was ahead of my time. No matter. I'm happy to see young people becoming interested in such activities. Besides, knitting and its cousins are reputed to fend off dementia.

The Michigan guild's monthly lecture was by a woman who wove a color gamp from naturally dyed yarn. She "foraged" for the dye materials over the course of a year (some of the foraging was in her own kitchen). Her presentation gave me an idea for what to do with the bits and bobs I have from various dye experiments, but I wanted to create something smaller and simpler than she did. Of course, I didn't have the right loom to execute my idea, so I purchased this one from Beka for around $25. A bargain!

Dyeing: I indigo dyed some clasp resist items, but didn't like how they turned out, so I redyed them. Gathering daylily blossoms to dye with. The purple basil blossoms finally gave up some color, so I poured hot tap water into the pot to further it along. Some Cascade 220 has been divided into smaller skeins for dyeing with (once it is mordanted).
Knitting: I finished the second set of tie-dyed dishcloths. Some progress on the socks.
Spinning: Still Tour de Fleecing.
Weaving: Added a single crocheted edging to the selvages of the Neapolitan scarf; debating on what to do about the fringe. I actually worked on the log cabin towels, but I need to do something more about the tension - sigh.

There is a website to check out if you inherited unfinished objects or would like to help others in that boat. It's called Loose Ends. I have no experience with it, but it sounds like a great idea.

It's not fair

My schedule finally opens up, and what happens? I get sick, with an ear infection that is not responding to treatment. Over a holiday weekend, no less. Not fair! I'm not letting it totally incapacitate me, though.

I'm still able to keep up with watching/reading the indigo lessons, and today I have actually started the banana vat. It will need to sit overnight, so that gives me time to add resists to some of the fabric pieces provided in the kit.
Dyeing: See above. My SO made these resists for me.

Knitting: The Quirky socks are on their way; I knit on them while listening to Wiser than Me podcasts.
Spinning: I decided to participate in Tour de Fleece this year, and work up all that murky roving that I have been re-blending. Today is day 1.

Weaving: I checked the warp for the log cabin towels and fixed a couple of things; it's tied on and I'm ready to actually weave.

Hope you have a happy 4th!🧨🧨🧨

Don't do this at home

Knitting a curtain is about the dumbest thing I can think to make out of yarn. Blankets are larger, but at least they are cozy on cold winter nights. A curtain could be sewn from cloth in about an hour, max. This thing took *forever*. BUT it is an excellent stash buster of a project.

Pattern: My own concoction (using chart A from Hybrid Vigour Shawl on knitty.com)
Yarn: Dem-N-Nit Pure Indigo Cotton, about 9.5 skeins
Needles: US6

It shrank about two inches when washed, which I planned for (although the rod pocket is a bit tight). The indigo is kind of dark for my decor, but I expect it to fade as time goes by. I learned from another curtain project to make it wide enough, so it provides excellent coverage. All and all, I am satisfied. And *relieved* that it is finished.

Blue, I'm blue

I've attended several dye workshops, all geared toward yarn and roving, but ever since reading about shibori on Mason-Dixon Knitting, I've been yearning for a class on resistant dyeing. Yesterday, my wish was answered. Fort Wayne Parks sponsored just such a workshop, at the Botanical Gardens. Yee-ha!

The instructor, Lorelei VerLee, was the offspring of missionaries and spent most of her childhood in Japan, where her fascination with intricate fabric design began. She is now the Executive Director of Creative Women of the World (whose store front I must visit for xmas shopping). Both she and her assistant wore skirts of shibori.

Lorelei made a point of using equipment and ingredients that we could easily procure, including an indigo dye kit she purchased from Dharma Trading Co. To provide the resist in resistant dyeing, one can use just about anything, from ceramic tiles to cardboard tubes, from rubber bands to binder clips, from marbles to chickpeas. We each received a length of cotton to experiment with and a hemp scarf for a "final project".

For my experimentation, I tried several methods: folding the cotton like an accordion, first in one direction, then another, then sandwiching the cloth between ceramic tiles held in place with rubber bands; wrapping cloth around marbles and chickpeas, holding the objects in place with rubber bands; gathering the cloth like shirring, using needle and thread (this technique was a fail for me - too loosely done); wrapping rubber bands successively around the cloth to form a little tower; and folding the cloth like a flag and clamping with binder clips. (For the record, this step and the step of removing all the resistant materials can be quite tedious.)

Next came the fun part: after wetting the cloth, it was dipped in indigo for a while (a few minutes?), then the magic happened.

(It was during the post-dye bath rinsing where my hands turned blue-ish - it would have been nice if we each had a pair of latex gloves for this step. Most of the dye washed off when I did dishes that night, though.)

For my scarf, I wrapped the cloth around a cardboard mailing tube and secured it with rubber bands. I am not very happy with the results - too much white - so I may take it to the store and re-dye it, as Lorelei will have the vats available for a couple of weeks.

All this was accomplished in about two hours, which was just barely enough time. I didn't get a chance to chat up any of the other participants, although (from eavesdropping) I learned there were at least one or two knitters, some master gardeners, and who knows who else.

I always come away from these workshops with grand(iose) ideas of future projects. One that might actually happen is making a shibori sampler using 12" squares, sewing them together in a patchwork, then quilting the result to use as a curtain in my bedroom. I am also curious about using other dyes, like henna.

So many ideas, so little time.

Indigo-go

A week or so ago, I attended another workshop on natural dyeing, this one including indigo. I've been a little obsessed with the idea of dyeing with indigo ever since I read Kay Gardner's post on shibori, a.k.a. resistant dyeing. Not so obsessed to actually try it, but obsessed just the same. At this workshop, we worked only with yarn, but I learned how to dye with indigo, so when the itch must be scratched, I am ready (as soon as I accumulate the necessary equipment and ingredients).

In the previous fiber dyeing workshops I have attended, we mordanted the yarn before dyeing. In this one, we learned a one-pot method whereby the mordant was added to the dye pot. Either way, the yarn must be soaked beforehand. The instructor supplied one-ounce skeins, enough for each of us to have five. (That's a lot of niddy-noddying!)

The first dye batches we did were marigold and cochineal. The former produced a golden mustard color. The latter initially resulted in coral rather than red, probably due to the fact the cochineal was wrapped in cheesecloth; when simply added to the dye bath, it produced a rich red.

Then it was time for the indigo. We had two pots going, one for blank yarn, one for overdyeing some of the already dyed yarn. Indigo is fussy, but magical. The dye bath looks greenish yellow, as does the yarn when first pulled out. But contact with oxygen in the air quickly turns the yarn blue, right before your eyes. If you are not satisfied with the shade of blue, the yarn can go back in the pot repeatedly.

I chose to overdye the coral skein and one of the mustard ones, the latter producing a lovely green.

The instructor also tried dyeing with some turmeric root that is now available at the local food co-op. It produced a pale yellow that I like better than the mustard gold.

Here are the class rsults: indigo on the left, then marigold overdyed with indigo, then cochineal overdyed with indigo, then the two shades obtained from the cochineal, and in the back the marigold.

I had to skidaddle at the end of class for grandma duty. While driving the g'daughter to my house, I told her what I had been doing all morning. Of course, she wanted to dye some yarn, too. So I dug out some blank sock yarn and Kool-Aid, and we dyed our own. Being four, she did not quite get what we were doing, but I hope I am planting seeds for the future.