Summertime Yarn and Fibery Goodness!

This is my first foray into hand painting fiber. Forgive me if I use this term incorrectly as I am just beginning my journey into dyeing fiber for spinning. I have a short little video I will be uploading to YouTube that shows my dyeing process for this particular fiber. As this was my first attempt, I felted the fiber slightly during the dyeing process, I think it was the intense heat of microwaving that did it because I was very gentle with the fiber throughout the process. I really abhor microwaving. I have since thought of a new method of steam/heat setting the color on the stovetop that I will employ during my next batch of dyeing. I will let you know how it turns out.

For the fiber shown here I used Wilton's Icing Dyes, and I purchased small refillable plastic squeeze bottles for housing the dye mixture during dyeing. For this above roving, which is Lincoln Top that I purchased locally, I mixed 1/4 tsp of each of the following colors (green, lemon yellow, pink) in their own bottle with a TBS of vinegar and filled the rest of the bottle with warm water.

Then I laid approximately 4 oz of fiber (This one ended up being about 5.2 oz) in a snake pattern on the tabletop which I had covered with towels and sheets of plastic wrap. Then I proceeded to squirt the dye upon the fiber in a striping pattern, up and down vertically, alternating colors until I had used up all the dye. I then folded in the outer edges if the plastic wrap and starting at the top, I rolled the roving down towards my end of the table in a long tubelike fashion. when I had it all rolled up, I then circled the tube into a donut shape, put it in a glass dish and microwaved it for about 2-3 minutes. Then I let it cool before I unrolled it. The result is as you see above and below.

And this is what it looks like spun up into a yarn. I have not wrapped this yet to gauge its weight, I think it will be around a sport or worsted weight. The colors are more subdued than in the unspun roving. I really like this yarn. I have set the twist already and am just thinking of what I might knit with it. I call it Summertime, because it reminds me of fresh green grass, sunshine, and the shades of summer fruits like pineapple, honeydew, mango, papaya, watermelon and pink grapefruits. I could jump right through spring and into summer.... no problem:)

I ended up with more singles on one bobbin than the other, and so I spun the last little bit into its own small skein. The large skein is 189 yds and the small one is 52 yds, so 241 yds total. Not bad for about 5 oz of fiber. It should be enough for a simple little project.

I plan to check out Ravelry later today to see if something appeals to me. I want to start knitting with this over the weekend.

These are the rest of the fibers I dyed that same day. Each is approximately 4 ounces.

This one I call Peachy-keen. I used 1/8 tsp of pink and brown and mixed each in its own bottle with 1 TBS of vinegar and the rest warm water. (I used 2 bottles of each)

This one I call Calypso, and it was made using 1/4 tsp of aqua, 1/8 tsp aqua, 1/8 tsp of brown each in their own bottle with 1 TBS of vinegar and warm water to fill.

This one I call Eggplant, because as soon as I unwrapped it the purple just jumped out at me and I exclaimed, ooohh it looks like eggplant! This was made with 1/4 heaping tsp black, 1/4 tsp red, 1/4 tsp brown each mixed in their own bottle with 1TBS vinegar and warm water to fill. I was uncertain how this one would turn out because I knew the black would not really be black at all, I was amazed at the final results. The black turned shades of brown, purple and green and blended with the other brown and the red, and the red softened in spots into a soft mango color. This is my absolute favorite of all of them. I think I will spin this next.

I have traded some of my hand carved stamps for 16 oz of undyed merino roving. I hope to receive it within the next few days. I plan to purchase some new Greener Shades Dyes that I just discovered at Pancake and Lulu on Etsy. They come in 9 shades and can be blended to attain different shades and hues, and conform to the Organic Trade Association standards for Organic Fiber Processing.

I hope to do alot more dyeing in the future. I recently washed a whole Icelandic natural white (ecru) fleece that I purchased this fall at a fiber festival in the hopes of doing some dyeing once I get it combed and prepared.

I also just finished washing a natural black Icelandic fleece that I bought at the same festival. I have to comb this one too. I plan to sell some and spin some for my own use. We will see how it turns out. It has quite a bit of veggie in it still, little pieces of grass and straw and a bramble here and there. It is a ram fleece and it had to go through 4 hot water soaks in the tub before my house stopped smelling like a barn.

Hand Dyed, Hand Spun, Hand Knit Mitts

I fell in love with these mitts when I saw them in the IK Fall 2007 Issue and knew that one day I would knit them.

2 years later........I finally have!

I hand dyed the colorwork wools with Wilton Icing Dyes and spun them up in small batches to make the mitts. The body of the mitts is knit with a worsted natural gray handspun wool. My mother purchased a batt of it at a recent fiber festival in my hometown, sadly, she does not have the label telling what kind of wool it is. I can tell you it is a little bit coarse, but not scratchy, and it was a bit tricky to spin, as it was carded into a huge batt at the mill and the fibers are very short bits and pieces. I had to pull the batt in several directions to loosen up the fibers for drafting, I then rolled it loosely like a rolag and folded it gently in half so it formed a V shape. then I drafted it from the tip of the V which pulled the fibers sideways across each other, this seemed to help them twist more firmly together. I am a fairly new spinner, so if there is a specific name for how I drafted this I don't know what it is, but I would love to hear it if you do.

I measured out 2.25 ounces of this wool and spun up 90 yards of worsted weight yarn.

The yarn used for the colorwork is as follows:

Red 3o yds handspun 12 wpi

Orange 1o yds handspun 12 wpi

Teal 11 yds handspun 12 wpi

* I used this in the center colorwork of the 2nd mitt when I ran out of the red.

Salmon 15 yds handspun 12 wpi

Lime Green 27 yds handspun 12 wpi

lt pink 7 yds handspun 11 wpi

* I only used a very small portion of this yarn on the top portion of the 2nd mitt because I ran out of the Salmon color. The colors are so close that you almost can't tell the difference unless you really look closely at them together.

I really like the slight differences that resulted in the 2nd mitt due to the color changes. I knit these mitts over a few days. Each one took about 12 hours. I CO in the evening for the first mitt and knit for 6 hours. I picked it up again at 7am the next morning and knit until 1pm. The first mitt was finished. The majority of the second mitt was knit in a single day. I knit 27 rows from the CO edge in the evening and then picked it up again at 6am the next day and knit for a few hours in the morning, and then I knit again in the afternoon until the mitt was finished. I think the second mitt actually went a little faster, but since the first one was 12 hours of knitting I figured it would be safer to estimate 24 hours for the whole project.

I like these mitts so much, I think I will make them again in different colors. My mom wants a pair and I am sure my daughter would love a pair too.

The pattern for these mitts can be found on Ravelry here Interweave Knits Composed Mitts

Happy Knitting!

Dye Spin Knit Felt

Lately I have really been into felting Knitted projects. So much so, that I have made several felted patterns and made them available on Ravelry (I still have a frog toy to write up and post though). While browsing Etsy the other day I came upon many needle felted items, mostly adorable little animals. I have a needle felting tool that my mother sent to me and I decided I really wanted to make some little needle felted animals and things.

THE HUNT FOR FIBER WAS ON!!

Well, I am visiting my parents in SC right now, and I knew that anything I purchased on Etsy probably would have to go to my house in Michigan because I was going to be heading home soon, and I am very much a "Spur of the moment" kind of crafter. Once I get something into my head, I want to do it right now and waiting around for items in the mail is NOT an option.

So I took a trip down to Hobby Lobby to look at their needle felting roving packs. They really didn't have anything of interest. While I was there my Mother wanted me to check out the baking and Cake decorating aisle for those nifty silicon muffin molds (She uses them as soap molds because they are easy to manipulate and release the soap better). Well, sadly for her, they did not have any of those silicon molds, but goodie for me, I spied some wilton gel colorings in little jars and had an epiphany!

At 1.49 each, I grabbed up 8 jars of various colors and headed to the checkout.

Once back at the parents, I pulled out about 12 oz of natural ecru fiber I had been hoarding. 4 ounces of Romney and 8oz of BFL. I pulled it into shorter lengths and soaked it in a bowl in the sink for about an hour, until it was heavy with water and there were no dry spots left.

There are numerous posts online if you do a google search for "dyeing fiber with Wilton Dyes" too many to list them all, but I really liked this one by PieKnits.

I did not really write down measurements for this first attempt at dyeing. My goal here was to dye up the fiber I had for my own personal use, so I really just jumped right in and played around with it.

And this is what I did:

I put 3 separate saucepans on the stove top, each with 4 cups water and 1/2 cup white distilled vinegar. I brought the water and vinegar mixture to a boil and then reduced the heat to simmer.

I used a butter knife to measure out a small bit of Wilton Dye from the jar. Basically I covered about a 1/4 inch of the knife tip with dye from the jar. The dye is like a thick paste, so I mixed it with some boiling water in a small glass pyrex dish (very small custard style cup) until it was well dissolved. Then I added this color mixture to the pot of water and vinegar on the stove and stirred it in. I mixed a different color in each pot.

Now I took my bowl of soaking roving and poured it out into a colander. Then I removed each length of roving, one at a time, gently squeezing out the excess water and laying the roving on a small towel I had opened up on the kitchen counter.

Once all the roving was ready I put 1 short length into each pot. Now I just waited a few minutes, spooning the fiber up out of the water to check the saturation periodically. It really did not take more than maybe 5 - 15 minutes for the fibers to be well saturated with color. Many times the fiber would suck up all the color in the pot and the water would be clear once the fiber was removed. When that happened, I would just add more color and more wool to repeat the process. If there was color remaining in the pot when the wool was removed, I would simply place new length of wool in the pot to use up the remaining color. This is how I was able to get varying shades of the same color. As I went along, I became more confident and started mixing colors in the pot to try and achieve different shades. (I will be dyeing more fiber soon and will post detailed instructions on mixtures for the colors I achieve).

Once I spooned the fiber out of the dye pot, I would let it sit in a colander in the sink to cool for a few minutes and then I would rinse it with warm water until the water ran clear. I would gently squeeze the excess liquid from the fiber, shake it out a little bit to fluff it, and then hang it outside to dry.

And here are the results for my afternoon of dyeing fiber!

I used a little bit of the colored rovings to needle felt this little Mother Hen and her Chicks

and these 3 little piggies

And then I decided to spin up the wool I need to knit the Composed Mitts from Interweave Knits Fall 2007 Issue Here is the link to the Composed Mitts Pattern Page on Ravelry.

These are the mini skeins I spun up last night for the bits of color.

I am still spinning the natural lt gray to use for the body of the mitts. I am currently using my US4 Addi Turbo 40 inch circular to knit the Dream Twister Socks 2 at a time, so I will have to buy another pair to knit these mitts 2 at a time.

Next post will be an update of the ongoing Toe Sock Project and more knitting WIP.

Happy Knitting, Spinning and Felting:-)

How-to Wash a Raw Fleece

Since my comb and hackle set is almost completed, I thought it was time to wash the raw fleece I bought at my local fiber fest.

Since I didn't have the slightest clue where or how to start, I did a little research on Ravelry, and joined a new group here and they had alot of info on washing fleece including this link with step by step HOW-TO directions.

I printed out the directions and followed them exactly. Here is how I washed my fleece.

This is the fleece before washing...............dirty and with a strong farm smell that no one else can stand. I don't mind it at all. This is 1 pound of raw fleece.I started by filling a super large stainless steel pot with cold water

Then I submerged the raw wool in the water, gently pushing it under until it was all covered. The water became cloudy and dingy almost immediately. I let the fleece soak for 15-20 minutes before removing it from the bath and placing it in the colander.

This is the dirty water left in the cold bath after I removed the fleece.

Even after just 1 soak in the cold bath the raw fleece is distinctly lighter.

I rinsed the pot and added 1/2 scoop of powdered laundry detergent. I used Gain.

Then I filled the pot with scalding HOT HOT HOT water!

Then I added the raw fleece and used a long handled wooden spoon to gently push the fleece under the water until it was completely covered.

Then I placed the lid on the pot and let the fleece soak in the HOT soapy water for 15-20 minutes. I repeated this process with the soap once more and then I repeated it without the soap until the water remained clean when the fleece was added to the pot. After that the fleece still smelled very farmy and so I soaked it for 15 minutes in another hot bath, but this time I added shavings of lavender soap my mother had made for me. It eliminated the farmy odor and left the fleece smelling great. After that I soaked the fleece in a final HOT water bath to remove any leftover soap residue

This is my 1 pound of raw fleece all washed, bright, clean, and drying outside.

In Vogue - Elizabeth Zimmerman Snail Hat!

Some things never go out of style. I was browsing some of my favorite blogs the other day and read about the EZ Snail hat on Cosymakes blog. I thought to myself......that hat looks familiar, so emboldened by curiosity I clicked a few links and wound up on the Snail Hat Pattern Page on Ravelry where I was given the option to buy the pattern or, I was told, I could find it in the Winter 09 Edition of Vogue Knitting. Wouldn't you know, I happen to have that very copy of Vogue Knitting, hence why the hat looked so familiar. I had dog eared the page to knit later. Well I decided I would knit now instead.......added bonus Cosymakes is offering a handspun giveaway!I had just visited a local fiberfest and had 2.5 ounces of pink Angora/Merino/Silk/Angelina blend that I had spun up into a light worsted/sport weight yarn at 12wpi. Even though the pattern called for a bulky with a gauge of 2 1/2 sts per inch, I wanted to see how this would knit in the angora blend and figured I could hold on to it for a Christmas gift later. The finished hat is perfect size for a child of preteen age, say 8-12.I used a US 10 16-inch circular for the main portion of the hat, and switched to (4) US 9 DPNs to finish it off once I finished the round at (p1,p2tog,p2tog,k10,m1). From there I continued to decrease until I was left with a total of 15sts total, I decreased 2 more rounds as stated in the pattern and pulled the working yarn through the final 9 sts and finished off the hat. Using the tail of the cast on edge I seamed up the 2 edges of the garter stitch band at the bottom and weaved in all ends.I am very pleased with the results and can't wait to make another one of these luxurious hats. Imagine my joy at seeing how the wonderful Halo on this fiber appears in the final photos.

Scrumptious!