Textile Tuesday

A special order I got on the weekend - 

a customer liked the hat I had on my stall, and really liked "Crazy skein" - a yarn I had dyed and spun (shown right).

24 hours of project monogamy and this is the result..

The wool fibre was dyed prior to spinning. There were six colours, and I spun singles randomly selecting the colour order. I then andean-plyed, creating a 2-ply yarn, and then I andean plyed that, creating a crepe/cable yarn. The end result was this great striping effect. 

It is now sitting in the living room waiting to be picked up by its new owner. I hope she likes it!

Mandie - you Rock!!!

This post is spoiler free!

Just got the latest Ewe Give me the Knits fibre club installment, and I have to say... 

WOOT!

SQUEE!

YAY!

Mandie - the swag is fantastic! Made my day - and love the top paddock blend and the colour!

About to dash out the door to school, but I'm glad I was here when the postie stopped by. And also glad that he had my current ebay purchases for my Passap :) One less trip to the post office for me!

hippo birdbath... and some q&a

No post yesterday - I was out and about having an extremely good day due to the fact that it was my birthday! Da-dum!

Because it was a wonderfully sunny, warm day, Pierre and I walked up the road and met Mandy for lunch, who insisted on shouting because it was my day (never mind that it is her birthday today!)

We followed lunch by doing a bit op-shopping at 'Vinnie's' and 'After-a-fashion' where it obviously was my day because I found the book on the right for a whopping 2 bucks! It was a perfect find because I have wanted the Kaffe Fassett pattern library for ages but don't want to fork over $90 on it, and I just happen to be trying a little colourwork in my next planned project. Intarsia here we come! (it won't be quite as adventurous as Kaffe Fassett but we all have to start somewhere) Also in the picture are some vintage plastic (i think) patons DPNs, wrapped together with original label that I couldn't resist. I doubt I will use them - but nice to add to my collection of useless stuff.

In the evening Ness invited me over for dinner, and cooked a great roast with a Dijon, tomato and cream sauce, and some of my favourite roast veggies (sweet potato, spuds, carrot and garlic!) before completely spoiling me with caramel and baileys gelati (she didn't tell me the gelato was there, so I filled up a bit too much on the savory without leaving room for desert) We got a bit of knitting and chatting time in as well - she is well into her second sock ever, and I cast on with my latest favourite yarn, Jo Sharp Alpaca Kid Lustre. So far, loving this yarn and can't wait to wear it and feel it against my skin!

I got lots of phone calls from friends and family in Geelong (to think - I may be seeing them on a daily basis in a months time!) - and was told that my family have all pitched in to get me a fantastic kniterature collection that my sister ordered online for me. I mentioned that I wouldn't mind the Yarn harlots new book, or to increase my Elizabeth Zimmerman collection (current books - 1) and discovered that they have ordered all the other Zimmermann books, and the yarn harlot book, and another book on sweater design. I think I read on Jussi's blog that her friends pitched in to buy her amazon wishlist for her, and I now know how she feels!

Tonight is a bit of a party with the Rubi&Lana gang + partners. Mandy is having the do at her place and we are all pitching in with the catering (I'm taking over my baby espresso machine and some coffee) and I expect it will be a great evening. I will miss my knitting buddies quite a bit when I move!

A BIT OF Q&A

I have received a few questions in my comments I feel I should address -

• In a post where I mentioned the Rubi&Lana knitting group I got the following question -

Taueret said...
oh! you knit at the Rubi + Lana group? Is your group open to new members?

The Rubi&Lana group is always open to more members. We meet every second Saturday from 11-2 - I am not sure when the next meet-up is, because it falls on the 7th Apr - Easter Saturday and the shop may not be open. Send an email to ginger_nut(at)bigpond(dot)com and I will pass on the details as I get them.

• And another post where I showed off my hand-dyed yarn spawned theses Q's

abe-hap said...
have you been spinning these skeins with the merino you got a while ago? because they look great if they are.

Unfortunately, the hand-dyed yarns are not the product of my own spinning - I am not yet competent enough to spin uniform fingering weight yarn. These are undyed skeins I ordered directly from a spinning mill. If you are interested, a couple of places sell undyed yarn - Bendigo Woollen Mills, Nundle Woollen Mills and The Knittery.com to name a few. I would recommend buying direct from the mill, and you will avoid a higher retail markup.

Jejune said...
Love the Shadow wool - what sort of black dye do you use / spill ?

So far I have been using food-dye and kool-aid for my dying experiments - I like the idea of using non-toxic dyes as 1- I use containers also used for food preparation when I dye, and 2 - I know any extra dye that goes down the drain won't have a huge negative impact on the environment. I use Queen Bee liquid food dyes in 6 colours - pillar box red, blue, green, yellow, rose pink and black. I find you can get some fantastic blending and mixing happening with these dyes. You do have to use vinegar with your dye as a fixing agent - just like colouring Easter eggs!

• In another post about kool-aid dying

Did you sprinkle on the koolaid or did you premix it with water? Keli

I sprinkled the kool-aid on because I was trying to get a 'semi-solid' colour with some slight variation. If you dissolve it first you get a much more uniform colour.

In future I will try and answer questions as I get them!

AND FOR THE CANBERRA KNITTERS..

Who won the boobrock stitchmarkers??

Also, I'll be in town from about the 3rd to the 10th (I think, I don't have the diary in front of me) do you have any of your regular S'n'Bs during that period? I'd love to go hang at Starbucks with you :)

DVD Winners...

are listed in this post....

But first - meet 'Shadow'
Shadow was a serendipitous mistake! While playing with dye last week, I tipped over my bottle of black, and used the skein of yarn I was dying to mop it up.

I was trying to get some great forest greens and navy blues - but after cleaning up the spill, thought I was only getting black and green.

As the yarn was drying, I realised that I must have spilt some pink dye a little earlier on (I was dying on a black marble bench - so the pink spill wasn't visible!) and ended up with these fantastic maroons and mauves in the skein.

I put Shadow (and its twin) on my esty site last week, and, if you pop over there now, you will see that it has gone missing - neither for sale or sold. Because Sally wants to take it (and it's twin) off my hands. So this fantastic mistake yarn , that I probably will never be able to re-create - is my first yarn sale!

YAY ME (oh, and YAY Sally!)

...and now the winners...

Bells, Ape-Hap, ChocolateTrudi, TangelledAngel, Jejune, Taph, and Carrie...

Send you address to ginger_nut(at)bigpond(dot)com - you have Tropfest DVDs coming your way!

rainbow yarny goodness

okay.. so Taph was right, and that golden yarn didn't start out as straw. It was actually some of that food-dyed top I posted about the other day...

I was a little creative with the food-dyed yarn, and experimented a bit while plying, and came up with this -
Which I am calling "primary colour" - not really gold anymore, but now rainbow yarny goodness, using yarn for an experiment usually completed in kindergarten. I love it - its bold an fun. I will certainly be recreating this one.

It looks like candy all wrapped up in the skein. I want to make up some more of this to put in the etsy store, but am unsure of the colourfastness of food-dye. I'll play around with this one and see how it washes - but a question for you experienced dye-ers - what sort of a dye should I use if I want to be able to guarantee quality to a third party (ie purchaser, client, customer?)

I also relived the kindergarten fun of mixing colours prior to spinning. May I present my secondary colours - orange, a purple-y mix I hope will turn out with a nice variegation (dye was purposely dripped on and not evenly mixed before zapping), and a yummy green. The colours aren't quite what are shown - I didn't get a chance to take any photos in natural light so there are flash.

Of course, continuing in the kindergarten theme, I look like I have spent the day finger- painting. I really need to get some gloves!

adventures of unemployed gal...

I got up to all sorts of fibre fun today...
First of all, this is the merino silk roving I am spinning up

As you can see, it is a loverly green colour with some silver and deep blue stripes that spin up to a gorgeous effectI split this in half before I started spinning (50g in each bundle) so hopefully I will be able to ply it and not lose 25-odd grams like I did with the green merino (that's why it is a 74g skein - did you think it was a funny number?) I haven't figured out exactly how to get the Navajo plying to work yet.....

Now, onto other unspun wool...

When I first got my spinning wheel, I called up a friend (herein after referred to as Friend A) whose parent's own a farm and sheepies. I asked him if it would be possible to get a fleece from them after the next shearing (of course, I was willing to pay)

It just so happens that Friend A is doing a PhD (in carbon fibre, not quite the stuff you can knit with) and his office is in a building where lots of technical stuff gets done. In this building, a lot of textiles research is conducted. Friend A was chatting to another guy (herein referred to a Friend B) who does all this research, and mentioned that I was getting into the-spinning-and-weaving-and-making-my-own-yarn-and-fabric-thing...

Friend B then recalled some top, used for previous experimentation, that was excess and no longer required. He gifted this to Friend A to pass to me...

May I present my giant ball of wool...

(Pierre quite possibly is included for scale, but m ore likely is contemplating whether this would be fun to play with, or his imminent death - until today this was securely wrapped up in the garbage bag... but he is now acutely aware of the sheepilicious goodies hiding inside)

Yes - this is 15 kg of top. Scoured, washed, carded and combed merino fleece, of the highest quality that happened to have fallen off the back of some-one's truck.

As you can see... it is a tad bit white...

So I decided to play around in the kitchen for a bit... with a product I am sure has no nutritional value.... (The creative Celia passed these onto me after she decided she could no longer stand the smell. Yes, they are a little sweet, fake, candy, grape smelling - but not so bad. Perhaps they affected her badly whilst she was pregnant?)

I did a quick search on the Internet and found some instruction for kool-aid dying. I had seven packets, and I read that you should use one packet per oz of wool, so measured out 7oz on my fantastic metric/imperial kitchen scales.


This is what it looked like before it went into the oven - and on the right, how it came out an hour or so later... If I was clever, I would have read the packets a little more carefully and noted that the yellow packet says - ice white crystals, ice white drink - ie, will not have an effect on white top...

Inspired by this, I pulled out food-dyes and vinegar I bought last year during a very boring Easter long weekend. I pulled out three more oz of yarn, split it into three and had a bit of fun with the microwave. No pictures of this process - camera battery needed recharging, but here are the spoils of the day... drying on our verandah.

The three food-dyes are on the left, and the kool-aid on the right. I had no idea that the food-dyes would be so vibrant on wool. I will definitely be doing this again. There is a lot of white roving to be played with.... and perhaps it may lead to new additions in the etsy shop??

Oh - and that sheep fleece I asked for - Ness's parent's (who also have a farm and sheepies) came through for me. I have the fleece from the black sheep of their flock. Which leads me to my next request - I need some hand carders, and don't want to buy them new. I have been lurking on ebay, but nothing much has come up there. If you can help me out, let me know...

And thanks to Kate for her mention about the stitch markers she bought at my shop. Yay, my first satisfied customer.

PS - I won't be unemployed for long. My part time contract arrived today via express post. I start next Monday. Hopefully by then my fingers will no longer be blue - I may have to find gloves for future dyeing experiments