Busy, Busy but not a lot to show

Woolly Wednesday again and although May has been a busy month but I feel that there isn't a lot to show for all my hard work!

First the solar dyeing now one month on and really not a lot of change except that the dye stuff has lost colour so hopefully some colour has leached into the yarn.

 

Red cabbage has produced less colour than I had hoped for.  This is the yarn modified with iron is probably the best of the three so far....

 

 

The garden has taken up more of my time than spinning but hopefully the results will be well worth the effort...

 

This what I grandly call the 'veg plot' originally everything was sowed in nice straight rows, but Molly decided that she prefer the more random look - so the rocket and lettuce have spread over a much larger area than first envisaged!  Currently she is completely confused by the netting cage we have erected over the veg - she keeps pushing her head against the net and walks round and round looking for a way in!

Here is the fruit bed and where our first strawberries are plumping up nicely and finally the new Dyers Garden

In the left front corner I have sown Anthemis Tinctoria  (Dyers Camomile) and the other four corners will have Rubia tinctorum (Madder), Reseda luteola (Dyers Weld) and Coreopsis.  All are good for bees which is another plus as we have a steady stream of bees visiting our garden.  I am probably being over ambitious but my philosophy is to cram in the plants so as to not leave room for the weeds to grow!  The sticks are an attempt to stop Molly re-organising the seeds!  So far so good....... 

My new wheel Miss Bliss has been put to good use spinning up the natural dye samples and so far I am loving the wheel, it is very light to treadle and seems to cope well with what ever I have tried so far.... and a big bonus is that I can spin from my wheelchair comfortably.....

This was yesterday's production of samples, nettles, onion skins and cochineal.  Most of the red cabbage is still on the bobbin and will get plied later this afternoon.  When I have finished mordanting the next lot of fibre I shall be trying my luck with the colour I extracted from the leaves of Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' (Smoke Bush)!

            


I did finish my St Kilda Shawl in May, it is one of the biggest shawls I have knitted so far this year

and another view this time with the first shawl pin Mr S has made - American Cherry for the ring and Indian Rosewood for the pin

I also got a big surprise on Monday evening when I was presented with a very large Texel fleece - I vaguely remember saying how nice it was in comparison to some Texel I had spun and that I wouldn't mind trying some!  Note to self - do not to make encouraging noises when presented with lovely fluff! 

I am going to try dyeing fleece in the grease with this one - which will have to be done with Mr S out of the way as the method uses vinegar - not tried this method before, but the idea of getting a clean fleece ready dyed does appeal..................



Good things come to those who wait, and wait and wait........

Finally after nearly two weeks my Bliss Wheel has arrived! 

Here is the box

Beautifully packed - just love the tube for the bobbins - and it comes with a screwdriver for you to assemble the wheel with...

These are all the bits and bobs laid out and ready to go....

The main parts go together very simply - this in about 10mins into the assembly and just the treadle and spindle to go..

This is my contribution to the process - adding the hooks!

Viola - the completed wheel ready to go................ and here is the first singles I have spun on the Bliss!  All in less than an hour............

The best thing so far - I can spin from my wheelchair! So that's a big plus!!

Foraging for colour.....

For part of the display we (the SpinDyeWeavers) put on for demonstrations a friend and I have been working on samples of English Sheep Breeds and already have really nice selection (will post pictures after the Easton Arts Trail June 15-16th) of fleece, spun and knitted yarn.  Yes I know this has been done before but not by us!

In the same theme and in response to many questions about dyed fleece and yarns I have decided to make up a similar display of natural dyed samples - again I have done a braid of fleece, spun and knitted yarn.  For this I have been using some Cotswold fleece that had being lingering in the stash for some time and I am really please with the way things are turning out...

First off, was cochineal.  For this I duly pounded the dried beetles in a plastic bag using a rolling pin, poured boiling water over the beetles and allowed to steep over night.  The next day I simmered the mixture gently for around an hour - and the result was a deep pink liquor.  For this experiment I mordant three 50grams Cotswold top with Alum and Cream of Tartar and one was dyed using the cochineal liquor, no modifier and the braid on the right is the result.

The next one I modified with a copper solution and that is the middle braid and the final one I modified with citric acid and that's the braid on the left......... three very different colours from one dye pot!

Having been bitten by the natural dyeing bug I was on the look out for another project.  Onion skins, well to be precise shallot skins - 1 kilo for pickling and about 50grams of skins for me.  Again an Alum mordant (on the right) and one modified with copper (on the left)

Jenny Dean's book of Natural Dyeing suggests nettles, and there were loads of nettles by the entrance to the Caravan Site we stayed on at Tredegar House in Newport.  So we harvested a bag of nettle tips and as soon as we arrived home on Tuesday a big bucket of nettles was steeping, and the fibre was mordant with Alum, in preparation for a dyeing session on Wednesday.

This is the resulting colours from left to right - no modifier just nettle dyed, modified with copper, modified with iron and because there was still dye stuff a braid of nettle and citric acid which actually has more colour than the photo shows. The nettles are now steeping in rain water (natural bugs) to make a liquid feed for the garden - nothing goes to waste in Chez Sassy.....

While on a food shop I casually slipped a carton of blackberries into the trolley - not for eating, but just to see what colours I could get with them - a really subtle pale almost lavender, no modifier and just a Alum mordant.

Now I have run out of suitable yarn - not that I really don't have any fibre you understand, but I had made the decision to use an English breed not Merino or fancy blends, so a kilo of Cheviot will be winging its way from the lovely people at World of Wool after the Bank Holiday, so until then I shall have content myself with spinning and knitting up samples.

But I am already saving coffee grains and have persuaded Mr S that a Red Cabbage should be an the shopping list for next week - apparently you can get amazing colours from the humble brassica!

Fingers crossed I may actually get my Bliss Tuesday - a second wheel has been dispatched..........  and just for tempters........... there is another wheel that has long been on my WOOT list that will coming home very soon!