Dyeing Yarn

I’ve been having so much of a good time dyeing yarn. I got about 100 skeins of fingering weight yarn last month. I have been using different methods and they all achieve different results.

Candy Rush

Huntsmen

Forbidden Fruit

Chrisalis

Stubborn

 

 

Pathway

And the last but not the least, this is my Equatorial yarn. I got inspired by the Selvedge magazine cover from the Summer of 2013 issue.

Equatorial

They are all listed now in my Etsy shop. I think I still have about 80 blank skeins that I need to go through. Fun!

.

Fall is here…

And the rainy season is just starting. It is time to start thinking about what to plant for the year to come. A couple of years ago, while visiting Guatemala, I noticed that the weavers use a plant to dye cotton called Pericon (Tagetes lucida) that yields a yellow color.  I was able to find the seeds at Seed Savers Exchange. I learned that here,  in the US, the herb is called Sweet Mace, Mexican Tarragon or Texas Tarragon. After doing some research online I found out that it is a medicinal plant too, great for treating stomach aches. The funny thing is that my interest in knowing more about this plant started actually with my need to mitigate a stomach ache I had a couple of weeks ago.  I recalled getting a tea blend (for digestion) from a Tz’utujil women’s cooperative in San Juan La Laguna, located near the Lake Atitlan. I want to mention that this town was one of the cleanest places I’ve seen in Guatemala.

And so, I decided to give the tea a try, with happy results. Fortunately, the tea came with a label with all the ingredients written on it. Peppermint, Sweet Mace, Lemon Verbena and Lemon Grass. I will be able to recreate my own blend from now on, (because it tastes yummy too) since the ingredients are easily accessible. And as soon as I get the plants going, I’ll use it for dyeing wool too.

And talking about plants, earlier this year I planted some indigo, but they did very poorly. I’m guessing that the reason was the lack of warm weather in my area. I have decided to let them seed this year and see what happens next year. I’m enjoying watching the finches eat the seeds, and hoping that they will leave some for my next crop. I can’t wait to start experimenting with my indigo plants. I didn’t suspect that it was going to take a couple of years to do it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy spinning, and washing my fleeces that I got at the Dixon Wool Fair a month ago. I got two beautiful Romney fleeces from Wyammy Ranch located near Occidental. I also got an alpaca fleece from Valhalla Farms that I can’t wait to wash.

 

I think I will have plenty to do this winter;  fiber-wise. And now, some pictures of my latest handspun:

This batt is very special, because I got it from Lorah, that visited during the Fiber Fest at Windrush Farm. It was very generous of her to give me a couple of them. It was very pleasant to spin it. I wish I had better pictures of the batt, because it has gorgeous gold sparkles. I enjoyed talking to her about Peru, and the wonderful weaving and spinning tradition that this country has. She is one of the lucky people who has gone to the Gathering of Weavers organized by Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez, author of Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands.

 

I also ha a lot of fun spinning this hand pulled roving…

And for some reason, it reminds me of a bird’s nest…

And today’s project…

Super Yummy Soft Merino that I dyed in blues and pinks… And now, back to my spinning wheel…

Circular Weaving

Can anybody guess what is this?

Circular weaving has caught my attention! I found this link of a book called Weaver’s Craft by L. E. Simpson and it got me really interested and curios about it. And of course I had to try it right away! I combined some of my handspun yarn with commercial novelty yarn and some silk fabric that I cut into strips. The results where really stunning and with exciting possibilities of combining colors and textures. Now what can I do with a woven circle? How about using it for a hat! It is actually just perfect for that. I crocheted the brim, just because I like the look of the crocheted fabric. Of course it can be made with knitting needles. But I like the texture of the crocheted fabric. I’ve been searching online to find out if other fiber artists are using this concept to make  it into wearable arts, but I haven’t found anything. I love weaving, and I have a couple of weaving looms, but most of the time I just don’t have the time and the energy to set the looms. This type of weaving only requires a piece of cardboard that I cut into a circle. The next thing I did was to make and odd number of small grooves around the perimeter of the circle at intervals of about 1/2  cm.

This is my “state of the art loom”! The warp was set treading the yarn on the grooves starting at one given point and then going always clockwise, from one side to the opposite side. Am I making sense? I forgot to take pictures of what it looks like in the back of the circle.

What makes me laugh is how little time it took me to set the warp. And If I don’t like the color, I can just undo the whole thing and start with a new color.

Then the fun comes with  choosing the  yarns for the project and with the weaving itself. This is perfect for using up all those scraps that I don’t know what to do with, but at the same time I don’t want to trow them in the garbage. They are just too precious to do that!

This circle is almost done. I have to make sure to add chunkier yarns at the end, because the gaps between the warp are more separated that in the center.

This is my first hat with the crocheted brim. This is kind of addictive, because more ideas and color combinations keep coming to me!

I made this hat using some of my handspun llama.

I think this is a goofy hat. Did I mention this is addictive? I’m very excited at the different possibilities and I’m thinking about putting it into my Etsy shop for sale. I would like to know if anybody has tried this or if you do please feel welcome to send pictures to post them here.

“Don’t stand by the water and long for fish, go home and weave a net”

Chinese proverb