Belated Fiber Friday: Stockings are done!

I just love them.  They are colorfun.  I'm going to hang them up now and enjoy them everyday until Winter Solstice.



From left to right: Dad, Mom, Girl Kid, Boy Kid.

Plenty of yarn left for a pair of stockings for my feet or maybe a super cute colorful baby sweater.

Fiber Friday - What's Dyeing?

So if you happen to read this in any kind of blog reader.  Mea culpa.  I accidentally posted it earlier this week and updated later in the week and did it again.  Sigh.  Now it's posting today even tbhough it's not Firday.  I give up.  Fiber Friday comes early.

Anyways, I'm dyeing some yarn to knit Solstice Stockings for the family. I thought it was about time to have something colorful and fibery to put goodies in this year.

All the colors: Magenta , teal, dk yellow, and purple

I dyed the yarns in my dye crock pots using 1% stock solutions, of jacquard acid dyes, at depth of shade of one which means I will use 1 ml of 1% stock solution for each gram of fiber.  If I had done a depths of shade of two I would use 2 ml of dye stock for every gram of fiber.  I chose a depth of shade of one to get a medium dark color.

The yarn base is Oatmeal Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.  It takes dye wonderfully. I weighed out about 70 grams of yarn for each color and measured 70 ml of total dye solution for each skein.

Magenta on the top left: I can't give you an excact formula because I didn't not write it down right away.  So what I share is a guess

Magenta:  for the boy kid
40 ml fuchsia ( This is some fiber reactive color I used as an acid dye)
10 drops periwinkle
10 ml cherry or vermillion

Teal:  for the husband
This one was easy  70ml of  teal

Yellow Orange: for the girl kid
50 ml aztec gold
20 ml sun yellow

Purple: for me!
60 ml Burgundy
10 ml Periwinkle

Each family member chose the colors for their stripe and I will use all the other colors for the ribbing, toes and heels.  For example my husband chose teal stripes so he had purple ribbing, magenta heel, and a yellow toe.



So far so good.  Stay tuned for more dyeing fun and more stockings!

Fiber Friday: Rainbow!

While at Spring Yarn School 2011 I learned how to use a drum carder.  Not only that I learned what happens when you combine different colors.  The yarn samples you see below are from the same fiber batt.  The one on the left was only run through the carder once maybe twice.  The one on the right was run through the carder three times and maybe four.  You get two very different yarns with something that starts out mostly the same.  Its a really fun way explore color.  I love both of these yarns but I favor the heathered on the right.  I love me some heathered yarns.





So in my spare time I dyed up some primary colors with some Blue Faced Lester(BFL) I had on hand.





These are my vary sketchy dye notes using Jacquard Acid Dyes


Blue:
60 gram BFL maybe a bit more - 50ml of 1% solution sky blue with a little yellow

Yellow: 
60 plus grams of BFL -  added about 1/4 tsp of yellow to the pot

Red: 
60 grams plus BFL - added 50ml 1% solution red to the pot.

While watching movies on netflix I hand carded them into some lovely rolags. . 


Charging my carder lightly with each color in the portion below. So for example with Blue purple I added a small bit of blue then red then blue.  You don't want much on your carders then you don't get a very good rolag.  I' m not sure I did a very goo job of it myself. 

Blue purple: blue, red, blue Red purple: red, blue, red Orange: red, yellow, red

Dk Yellow: yellow, red, yellow Lt Green: yellow, blue, yellow Dk green: blue, yellow, blue

Then I got my spin on.  Spinning two bobbins of  singles with long rainbow color repeats. 





Then finally I had yarn! 





Spun on my Ashford Single Drive Traveler
ration 5:1  ratio and an attempt at long draw
2 bobbins chain plied to preserve the striping.

Skein 1 2.6 ounces    121 yards 744 ypp 8 wpi Bulky

Skein 2  2.6 ouncess  108 yards 667 ypp 8wpi Bulky

My goal was to make a self striping yarn but the stripes were longer than I wanted for the project I had in mind. So if I did something like this over again I will make each colorway first then make the project.  Someday when my spinning skills and patience align along with the stars I will spin a striped yarn.  I know it's possible but do I want to do it? That is the question. 

I have very basic notes how I knit these up on ravelry here.  If you've knit mitts before you they should help.  Basically it's knit in the round and the color change is a seed stitch.  So really easy peasy if you can be a bit fearless.  I'm working on a free pattern to share soon.  

Dye Progress

Just 6 hours later and the avocado pit dye liquor already looks much darker.



Here's what it looked like this morning. From left: 2 jars with avocado pits with water and ammonia, pits with water only, avocado peels with water and ammonia. I started the peel soaking today and it's super dark already.



Yarn I dyed earlier this year then did a post mordant with copper a few days ago. From left to right: Tansy, Osage Orange, Onion Skins. The copper gave the tansy a green cast to it and made it much darker. The Osage orange in much darker and the onions skin is slightly deeper color. What next?

To dye, dye, dye; to dye, dye, dye

is all I want to do, do , do....

With the cooler weather it's a perfect time to dig out all the frozen dye stuff and experiment. Not to mention I bought some other mordants from Carol Leigh's Fiber Studio in Columbia, Mo that I'm dyeing to use.

Wednesday I started with collecting some Black Eyed Susan flowers. I soaked them over night then boiled them and simmered for an hour on Thursday.



The flowers still have quite a bit of color so I plan to boil again and simmer for at least another hour.


The dye liquor looks quite dark.

Then I prepared some mordant liquors. Jenny Deans Natural Dyeing recommends making mordant liquors instead of measuring dye stuff every time you are ready to mordant. I used Carl Leigh's mordant proportions rather than Deans. She used the least amount per pound of fiber. As I understand despite these mordants being heavy metals that most of the mordant binds with the fiber so I can pour the leftover water bath into the garden without harm. Some of the mordants are especially good for certain plants. The only mordant I have not made up is chrome but I plan to soon. It's the one the scares me the most.


These are all in concentrations to mordant one pound of fiber in 24 ounce canning jars. From left to right: Iron: 1 tsp ; Tin: 1/2 tsp (will add Cream of Tatar (CoT)to the mordant bath) ; Copper: 1 tsp



I keep them wrapped in black plastic trash bags to keep them out of the light and store them in dark place in the house. Each has their own color of rubber band. Iron: red, Tin: white, and Copper: green. If you have young kids I suggest a locked cabinet.

Next up are the avocado pits I have been collecting and friends have graciously saved and donated to the cause.



After they thawed a bit I broke them up with a mallet. Sometimes I needed a way to break them up more so I used a drill bit to crack them open.



I added the broken up bits to my food processor to break them up more.



The two 24 oz canning jars each have 10 oz of avocado and 1 Cup ammonia topped off with water. The small canning jar on the right has 5 oz of avocado pits with only water.




I dyed these yarns last year. I'm warming them up to add a post mordant of Copper to see what happens. From left to right: Onion skins, Tansy and Osage orange.

Stay tuned tomorrows results.

It's Magic

Blocking is magic when you are making lace.

Before


After:


Close Up:


This is my Plume Shawl which I fondly call 7 0f 10 not 7 of 9. I wish I could call is 7 of 9 because that's the kind of geek I am. But I'm making 10 shawls this year and this is the 7th one. It's the 3rd one from my own handspun yarn. 560 plus yards of single ply and hand dyed with acid dyes. I am very pleased with it even though I had to frog back and adjust. I crocheted to the the last row of the edging and came up short. So I frogged back to the 2nd row of the pattern then started the lace pattern but only did 3 triple crochets. ch2 3 triple crochet for the the first edging row. I followed the pattern for the second row.

Ahhh Friday....

Kind of a miscellaneous week. A little bit of walking, a little bit of knitting, a little bit of skate boarding and making plans for the summer.

Last week after taking stock of the stash I started on a stashbusting project or two:



A felted bag made from leftovers of my handspun. It needs a strap. That will just have to wait.



A hat that was going to be a bag. The bling is not a part of the hat but I couldn't resist taking a picture with them still on it. The "jewels" are stitch markers. Maybe I can start a new trend?



I finally started the heel on my socks.

I know it does look like it but I really, really have.



Since temperatures are rising I finished the last square I will knit for a while on my Crazy Blanket. 67 squares so far. So I got quite a bit done. The photo below shows where I was on May 12th.



Remember my Iris Dyeing?



I used some of the iris dye liquor to overdye some onion skin yarn. That the bit on the left that's the lovely olive green. The stuff on the right was only iris liquor. The one in the middle was sort only iris dye liquor. It was meant to be only irises. It's a toned down color because the pink ties I used were dyed and it leached into the iris dye bath. I just harvested the last of my irises and out them in the freezer. There is something about freezing the flowers that helps bring out more of a blue. I'll let you y'all know.

The original plan today was to go harvest some food from a local farm but the kids, one of them balked. When they realized that we were going to actaully get out an do things this summer discussions ensued. We have 13.5 waking ours in the summer maybe more we need to take advantage of it. This does not mean screen time. It mean get out of the house and do stuff!


So on our list to do this summer is Letterboxing. We now have most of the supplies gathered. We still need some log books. Soon, very soon. First I need a beer.


Yes that is bottled beer from Free State Beer! Yum!

Iris Dyeing

Lovely irises that smell really good too. Another dyer on Ravelry did a some iris flower dyeing and got a lovely pale green. So I thought I would give it a try.



80 grams of flowers. I poured boiling water over them a let steep. Wait stop that, reverse that. Do not I repeat do not pour boiling water over the flowers. If you do you get nothing. The boiling water "kills" the colors. Pray pay attention! Place flowers in pot and let soak for a few days.

Okay lesson learned. So the next day I picked more spent blooms. Then in a few more days I got this:



So I took a wee bit of Alum mordant yarn and tossed it in the jar. Heated it to 180 deg for an hour and let it soak overnight.


Now I have this lovely pale green.



It looks prettier in person. Seriously. I'm going to let it soak for longer to see if it will get any darker. Maybe some solar dyeing will help.

Sunshine, Daisies, Butter Mellow

Turn this boring yarn:



Yellow!


How did I do it?

Onion skins about 4 ounces or so saved from this winter. I simmered the yellow onions skins in enough water to cover them for about an hour. I saved it for a month or so in some canning jars until I had time to mordant some yarn.

Yarn is mordant with 1 T Alum and 1 tsp Cream of Tartar.

Added the yarn to the onion skin dye liquor in my big pot and cooked for about at hour got it to 180 deg F. It made a lovely yellow yarn. Let me show you again!

Dyeing Progress and 8 of 10

A blurry pic but shows the neonish greens kooliad dyed mini skeins. I overdyed it with some acid dyes. 2tsp red, 1 tsp blue, 5 drops black. The mini skeins total up to about 100 grams of yarn.



I wish I had saved back some of the colors for a better comparison. I think photo above shows how overdyeing with a wee bit of red really tones down the colors. I like the greens much better.

On the left you see some of the Raspberry Sherbet next to Purple Rain. The Purple Rain is about 100 grams of the Raspberry Sherbet overdyed with 1 tsp blue, 10 drops yellow and 5 drops black, 50 ml vinegar.

While dyeing yesterday I started 8 of 10. Yes that means another shawl. I'm using my teal dyed handspun merino/silk.

Dyein' to Dye

I've been yearning to dye for for a few weeks now. Finally there has been a break in the cooking and cleaning to get some dyein' done.

I started by getting the dyes ready. Then washing up some of the bags I wanted to dye.

I wanted to make an Eye of Jupiter Bag inspired by the Eye of Jupiter painting and symbols from Battlestar Galactica.






I'm such a geek. The bag along with 180 plus yards of handspun will be a prize for the Ravelry BSG Games in July.

While the bag was dyeing I started on some of my handspun yarn.


This is merino/silk single about 500 yards plus. I went for a medium dark teals green color. I'm pretty happy with how the color separated in the dyeing.



I started with 1% stock solution and added 5 teaspoons blue and 2 teaspoons yellow and 100ml of vinegar in the water before I added the dye. Got the temp up to 180 deg for one hour then let it cool for a few more before rinsing and hanging to dry.



I can't wait to hook this up into a lovely shawl.

Then next day I started snagged some of my Knit Pick Worsted Weight Bare Wool and mixed up a redish color, 5 teaspoons red and 2 teaspoons blue, 100ml vinegar added to the water then added the dye.



Fiber peeps call this Raspberry Sherbet. I think it's a good name for it. I'm going to take half of it and over-dye it to get something a bit more burgundy or purple. This yarn will find it's way into my Crazy Blanket which I have done a wee bit more on since I last shared.



I really like this square with the stripes.