Christmas Dyeing

As usual, I'm working almost at the last minute to get Christmas presents made.  Each year my friend in the UK and I exchange something we've made.  As the years go by it gets more and more difficult to come up with something I haven't already made for her.  But this year I had a brainwave - why not make something, if not exactly for the Christmas table, then something for the table that can be used every day of the year.  Placemats and napkins!  And what better way to add my own personal touch than dyeing them with natural dyes.

I ordered some Egyptian cotton from Empress Mills in the UK.  They were offering pieces just big enough to make one placemat and one napkin for £5 which I thought was pretty good.  So I ordered two.  The fabric when it arrived was really nice quality and I can see myself buying more next year when her birthday comes around.

Firstly, I washed the cotton in hot soapy water to make sure there were no residues or finishing substances still on there, then I soaked it overnight to make sure it was well and truly wet through.  Since I've never done any tie-dyeing before, and it didn't look too difficult, I thought I'd give it a go.  I was hoping to maybe get something resembling flower shapes, so tied little scrunched up pieces of material with elastic bands.  So far so good.

The next step was making the dyes.  I decided to make life a bit easier, since I didn't have a lot of time, and use natural dyes which didn't need a mordant for the dye to adhere to the fabric.  Onion skins are usually pretty good for that, and I had a large bag-full in my cupboard.

After boiling the skins in water for an hour or two, the dye was looking pretty impressive:-

so in went one of the sheets of fabric and I heated it for an hour before checking the colour.  After an hour, the fabric had hardly taken any colour at all!  By now I was feeling a bit despondent, thinking maybe I should have mordanted.  Anyway, I gave it another couple of hours simmering and it started to look a bit deeper.  In the end I turned off the heat, thinking that was as dark as it was going to get, and left the whole thing overnight to cool.  I was actually quite amazed the next morning to see just how much more colour the fabric had absorbed.  It's not quite the same as dyeing wool with onion skins as normally I would have got yellow or orange, but I'm still happy with the colour.

At this point, you'll notice my photography skills were slightly lacking - i.e. I didn't take any of the fabric as it came out of the dye pot.  Still, I'll show you the finished result at the end.

Next up, woad.  Woad never lets me down, never fails to amaze me, and always looks great when it's finished.  I was quite hopeful.

I picked, washed and chopped about 600g of woad leaves and poured almost boiling water over them so they were all covered.

After leaving for an hour to steep, I strained out the leaves and added some washing soda to make the solution alkaline.

Then came the aeration part.  I used an electric hand mixer to whisk the whole lot up.  I think I may have used a bit too much washing soda because the suds were spilling over the side of the bowl!  You probably can't see too well in this photo, but the foam does have a slight blueish colour.

This was then left to stand for the bubbles to dissipate, then I sprinkled the surface with Spectralite which removes oxygen from the mix.  After about half an hour the fabric was carefully added to the dye liquid.  This was particularly difficult with fabric because it holds air in the folds.  The trick with woad dye is to keep all air out of it which is quite easy with soggy wool.  I did get air in the dye, and wondered if I'd get any blue at all.  Happily, I wasn't disappointed and the fabric came out a beautiful pale to mid-blue.  How can you not love woad?

Here are the finished results, starting with the onion skin dyed set.  It's quite a lot browner than I expected, but it's actually quite a nice brown considering it's a colour I hate with a vengeance!!  I sewed the name of the dye using embroidery silks, unfortunately not dyed by me!  I didn't exactly get flowers with this either, but the shapes are quite interesting.

The woad set is my favourite, I must admit.  Again, not quite flowers, but, given that the fabric was tied in exactly the same way as the other one, the woad attached itself in quite a different way to the onion skin dye.  Hubby thought this would make a really nice dress fabric, so that's something to aspire to next year.  I think I'll need more than 600g of leaves though!

The plan is to make another four sets like these for my friend, each one using a different natural dye.* I need to start in good time though because mordanting cotton is a bit more complex than wool and I want to be sure I get it right.  I think I was lucky this time!

*The friend I made these for is a little bit unconventional when it comes to sets of things.  I think she'll quite like the idea of having, eventually, six different coloured place settings on her table.  Last year she sent me odd socks after admitting that I sometimes wore them and her admitting that so did she!! 

Gift Bags

First of all, Happy New Year to you all, and I hope Santa was good to you!

With the aim of using up some of my hand spun stash, a few more crocheted bags happened recently.

One of my friends in the UK usually sends me something that she's hand made, so she was the first one to cater for.  I used the same pattern as I used previously for my sister - the English Garden Reversible Tote - a lovely, easy, crocheted bag which I suspect will be used a lot in the future.

The first was made from hand-spun and mostly hand-dyed yarn.  The brown is the only natural colour  - this is a blend of Jorrocks' baby alpaca and some charcoal bamboo.  The pink was raspberry acid dyed Falkland/Silk, the orangey one was all naturally dyed Falkland and the blue actually wasn't dyed or prepped by me - it was an unknown blend that I bought here in France.  The bobbles were made using a bobble making frame sent by my friend last year (the same one who'll receive the bag).

I've not been very organised about taking photos recently, so this (plus the next one, shown inside out) is it!

Incidentally, the fabric used for the inside of the bag was a hand-made dress I made years ago.  It was never worn because I realised after I'd cut it out and started to sew it, that the pattern was turning out a really peculiar shape.  I don't think it would have fit anyone!  I put it in a box with other fabrics and left it there to fester in disgrace.

The second one (same pattern) is for my next door neighbour, Tammy, who's birthday in on Saturday 6th January.  I finished this one this morning so for once, I'm not chasing my tail trying to finish something in time.

Again, I forgot to take photos of the yarns before I started, but this is what was left after I'd finished it:-

The main colour is a real mix - merino, alpaca, silk, soy, silk oil, nettle and a bit of sparkle plied with black alpaca.  The one at the bottom left was, I think, mixed fibres from a World of Wool Botany Lap Waste bag with some merino and Falkland mixed in, the top left was the remains of the pink from the other two bags - Falkland/Silk, and the blue was left over from the first bag I made.  Bit by bit I'm ending up with quite a little stash of small balls of yarn, which I have no clue what to do with (except there is that bobble making frame sent by my friend - maybe they'll all become bobbles)

Anyway, here's the finished bag :-

I think, out of all of them, this one is my favourite, but then they're all my favourites while I'm making them!  I don't know what I'll do when that raspberry pink Falkland/Silk runs out - I've used it on all of them so far.

Here's the bag showing the inside :-

The fabric was reclaimed again from a hand made item which was never worn - can't remember why!  A skirt this time.  

I'm looking forward to making one for me before too long, but I've a few more projects to do first, so, as usual, I'll have to wait.  I'm currently working on a baby blanket for a friend's impending arrival, so hopefully I'll be able to show you that soon.

Spinning Progress - Waste Not Want Not

Gosh, almost a month since I last posted - where is this year going?  It's not that I haven't had anything to show you; there's been lots of spinning around here.  I just haven't actually managed to finish anything!  Well, except for these :-

This was the order that Tammy received for 600g of hand-spun alpaca (I volunteered to do half of it).  I've tried and tried to get rid of the blue sheen on this photograph, but looks like it's here to stay.  The true colour may be more apparent on the next photo.

This is from Jorrocks - it's mainly dark grey with a slight brownish tinge here and there. Tammy designed the labels - I just cut them out!  I don't have photographs of her half of the order, but let's hope the recipients are happy with what we've done.

Well, that's it for finished items, but I have started preparing this for spinning :-

This is the green cotton I grew last year.  It doesn't look very green at the moment, but once it's spun and boiled, I have every confidence that it will indeed be green!  You can see a bit of green on the cotton bolls at the left of the photo.  So, unfinished project!

A few weeks ago I put in an order to World of Wool using some of the gift vouchers one of my wicked stepsons sent for Christmas (OK, not so wicked this time!!).  I ordered 500g of botany lap waste (one of my favourite products from WoW because it's always a surprise what you get in there).  I also sent for 500g of scoured Polwarth fleece.  Must admit, for the first time ever, I was less than pleased with this item.

It's not felted, but it's not in what I would call "good order" either.  It's full of clumpy bits that have to be pulled apart and I had a bit of a problem knowing how to prepare this for spinning.  I tried carding, but that wasn't very satisfactory.  What did amaze me was the amount of nepps in this fleece.  Because of those I decided the best way was to get out my combs and have a go.  The combing took quite a while because there was so much waste in there - just look at the nepps in the waste (on the right) :-

I ended up with half spinnable fibre and half waste - which isn't a good ratio in my books.

Mind you, the finished fleece is gorgeous and I look forward to spinning it, but I do wish I hadn't bought 500g of the stuff!  Life's too short.  Lesson learned though - don't buy pre-scoured fleece.  I prefer to spin "in the grease" anyway.

I have to say at this point, I did contact World of Wool and they were quite willing to give me a refund for this if I sent it back.  However, after checking up on postage rates from France to the UK, this was going to cost almost as much as I paid for the fleece, so I decided to keep it and just work on it in idle moments.  It'll get done eventually.  And those nepps will be thrown into leftover dyes and then included in textured yarns - waste- (if you'll pardon the pun!) not-want-not!

Finally, back to the Botany Lap Waste.  As usual, I was pretty pleased with what was in the bag, and fished out all my favourite textures and colours

Look at that sparkly amazingness.  I'm pretty sure there's nothing natural in that bit, but who cares, I love it!

First I spun each colour in sequence to give a stripy effect - two bobbins of this.  Then I took the fibre that was left, added in a few more shades, and blended it on my drum carder :-

That's my nifty milk bottle top diz I'm using there.  Ended up with seven of these luscious balls of fluffiness :-

Which were spun (bobbin on the left)

and plied together to make a pretty nice skein of yarn.  I was a bit worried it was going to turn into clown barf with all those colours, but I think I like it.

Again, another unfinished project, but it does make life more interesting having lots going on!

TdF Week One

Now that week one is over, I can show you the results of my challenge with Team DIY and Dye on Ravelry.  I finished spinning the filthy, ash-ridden alpaca and two-plied it from each end of a centre-pull ball.  That way there's no waste.  With normal two-ply, from two bobbins, there's always a bit left on one when you've finished.

Saturday was dye-day.  I'd washed the skein the day before and left it soaking in clean water overnight.    Here's the yarn waiting to be dyed :-

I'd decided to use Kool Aid to dye this and, also the day before, made up five different packets (Tropical Punch, Grape, Orange, Pink Lemonade and Lemonade) and froze them in ice cube trays.  Saturday I placed the different colours randomly on top of the yarn and blitzed them in the microwave for a couple of minutes.  Note the Christmas trees, snowmen, tree and snowflakes - I ran out of normal ice cube trays so had to use a Christmas one as well!

Hmmm, not much colour there :-

Put some more cubes on top and blitzed it again, each time leaving it to cool afterwards.

A bit better, but not what I wanted it to look like.  In all I put 4 lots of ice cubes in with the yarn and finally came out with this :-

This is still damp, so not a true representation of the colours.  The lemonade (yellow) did absolutely nothing at all, and the pink lemonade seemed to get swallowed up by the other colours - lesson learned.

Here's the final skein, dried and made into a centre-pull ball :-

 The colours seem a bit brighter now it's dry.

I think I'm rather pleased with the way this has turned out.  I did have my doubts as I was dyeing it!

What's On the Bobbins?

Or rather, who's on the bobbins at the moment.  I'm currently spinning some of Jorrocks' first fleece and  must admit I approached it with a little bit of trepidation.  Wouldn't you? This is what he normally looks like :-

But actually, his fleece was surprisingly low in vegetable matter.  Jorrocks is now 18 months old so has only had one shearing so far.  I expected to have a lot of work with this fleece - picking out grass and seeds, carding etc., but I'm spinning straight from the bin liner it's stored in.  Just grab a handful and spin.  Brilliant.  These photos don't really do him justice as far as showing softness is concerned, but they do show the different colours.

He has quite a range of shades in there, but is classed as a rose grey.

The yarn is turning out really soft and I'm looking forward to taking it off the bobbin - I'll probably Navajo ply it so I can use every scrap.

The other projects to show you are made from some hand-spun wool I won in this year's Tour de Fleece on Ravelry.  This was a mix of black alpaca/Gotland/Finn sheep which came from Australia - spun by Sharon (Shazzapug on Ravelry).  She also sent a skein of black alpaca/Icelandic, which is rather dense, but very soft.

Not long after I received it, I started knitting a shawl, the Lonely Tree Shawl.  It probably took a few weeks to knit, but then it sat in the bag for quite a while because it turned out a bit smaller than I'd anticipated and I planned to pull back the border and knit another pattern repeat.  Needless to say, it just sat in the bag, neglected, and the extra pattern never got done.  In the end, just before Christmas, I washed and blocked it and, hey presto, it stretched out to a size I was happy with.

I still had some of the yarn left, so made a hat for Eric for Christmas.

Here it is in progress, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.  We call it his "rasta hat", but really it's an Anemone Hat.  Here's the grumpy old man wearing it:-

He doesn't look too happy with his new hat, does he?  But actually, he really likes it - just keeps saying how heavy it is.  I think that's probably the alpaca/Icelandic wool, which is what I did the "tentacles" with.  It's also rather warm, but perfect for outside in the winter : he's just got to learn to take it off in the house!!

Christmas Time, Mistletoe and Wine

Merry Christmas everyone.  Hope your Christmas Day was spent with good friends, family, good food and all the best things in life.

We were awash with wine as usual (well we do live in a wine-growing area) and we spent the day with friends and neighbours.  The mistletoe was missing though - it doesn't grow here, although you don't have to travel far south to see the trees festooned with it. Everyone contributed to the meal so no-one had to do the whole lot.  This was our contribution (Salmon en Croute), along with lots of roast potatoes :-

A bit selfish really, because everyone else had Tammy and Rob's home-grown pork and lamb, but I don't eat meat so took this for me!  There was plenty for everyone, but after stuffing themselves with the meat I'm not surprised they couldn't manage any fish.  This will feed us both at least another twice, so I may have to freeze some for later.

Eric was in charge of after-dinner coffees so we took our super-duper bean to cup coffee maker with us.

We had a secret Santa too and everyone brought a gift destined for a particular person, but no-one knew who bought it.  There was even a present for Henry (super-duper coffee maker in background!) :-

He got two dried pigs ear treats, one of which he demolished in double quick time!

We ate at probably 2:30-3p.m., and it's now 6:45 a.m. on Boxing Day - I'm finally starting to feel slightly hungry again, although not hungry enough to actually get out of bed and do something about it!  Boy were we stuffed!!  Think we need to limit ourselves to fruit and salad today to try and sort out our digestive systems.

Happy Boxing Day!

Christmas Market

Sunday was the day our village Christmas market was held.  We were all up early and busy setting up our displays.  My 3 neighbours and I had booked two tables between us, so it wasn't too difficult to fill them with only half a table each.

I took my wheel and spent most of the day spinning, which attracted quite a bit of attention and lots of people stopped to take photographs.

The Two Christines

There was a steady stream of people in the morning, and the afternoon was quite busy. Santa was there (I told him what I'd like for Christmas and he said I needed to write him a letter . . . and gave me a chocolate instead),  and guess what?  I won a prize in the raffle - a memory stick for my computer!

So, what were we selling?  Well, there was Victoria's jewelry and dolls :-

and Sheila's knitted children's clothes (that's the clothes that are knitted, not the children!):-

Tammy had some lovely felted and sewn things for sale (and Rob had made some wooden lathe-turned items, but I don't seem to have any decent photos of those) :-

Tammy's felted shoulder bag - love the mouse!

and I was selling handspun wool, some knitted items, felted soaps, lavender wands etc.

I use the term "selling" loosely - in fact I didn't sell a single thing!  Oh, except a little beaded Christmas tree ornament that my sister had sent to put on the stall.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

Actually, I really wasn't upset at all that I didn't sell anything.  Whilst packing the basket with balls of wool I kept thinking "I hope no-one buys this one, I really like it", and "ooh, this one would make a really nice hat".  I think it was a good experience to see all of my yarns together to realise what I had and see which ones went well together.  So yesterday I started knitting - what fun!!