DC

So, not smoking has made me quite the bundle of energy. Actually, it's not that I have energy, but more like I NEED to keep doing stuff…hehe. Anway, so I woke up yesterday, and decided that I was going to finish combing out the Lincoln so I could dye it today. Well, I got on quite a roll, and did manage to finish the combing pretty early, so I decided to dye it yesterday as well. My original plan was to go about this systematically, keeping detailed notes of what I was doing, for future reference. Well, that didn't happen. I also wanted to take pictures of the process step by step, (because you know how much I love my digi-cam), but that didn't happen either. So, here's what I did.

First, I wrapped up the lincoln roving in some tulle, and set it in hot water with some Syntropol to get it nice and wet, and ready for the dye. While it was soaking, I got my dyes ready. I used 4 colors. For each one, I poured them into a 16oz squeeze bottle, added about 3-4 TBLS of vinegar, and filled the rest with water, and mixed well. Then I layed out the roving, and went at it. I basically just divided the roving into 4 sections, and made really big color strips. Flipped it over, and did it on the other side as well. Then, I wrapped it all up in plastic wrap and stuck it in the microwave. I "zapped" it for 1 minute, let it sit for 1 minutes, zapped it again, etc.. until the liquid in the "package" was mostly clear. I took it out, rinsed it, spun it in the spin cycle, and let it dry. Split it into thinner strips, divided it in half, and here's what we got…

Next, I was noticing how much dye I still had left over. Now, you can keep this stuff for a good deal of time, but I didn' t want to do that, I wanted to use it to play with. So…I took a look at the "fluff" that "didn't quite make it" through the combing. Now I know what I didn't just toss it out. I filled up my dye pot with hot water and a little syntropol and vinegar, and put in some of the fluff. When the water came to just below boiling, and slowing and (or so I thought) carefully poured some of each of the dyes into the 4 sides of the pot. I must have moved the pot a bit more than I realized, because, as you can see…there is a lot of blending. I don't think the color shows too well in the pic, but the batch of fluff has the colors of a forest fire or something. I'm planning on combing out this stuff by color, then blending the colors together (just lightly…I want the individual colors to show) and spinning it like that.

But that's not all! I STILL had some dye left, and still had some fluff as well. So, I dug around and found some canning jars. I divided the remaining fluff into 4 equal piles. I put pile 1 into a jar, squirted some dye (violet) on, added some water, and added the rest of the dye. Then, I stuck in pile 2 into the SAME jar, squirted some of another dye (lavender) added water, more dye, then put the cover on. I did the same thing wth the remaining 2 piles of fluff, the last of my dyes (yellow and orange) and the 2nd jar. I put these out in the sun for the afternoon. I could have let them sit longer, but being the impatient boy that I am, I wasn't having that. Here's the results.
By the time I finished cleaning up my mess, and putting everything away, the day was practically over. AND I barely thought about smoking!

Just 2 more pics for you. On Tuesday I went to a local spinning group (The R+R Spinners), and for some reason, one of the members gave me a bag of wool. I'm not sure, but I think it's Merino…very short, very fine staple length. It's a bunch of small batches of it in all different colors. Leftovers from a color workshop. The first pic is a shot of just some of the colors. The 2nd pic is of the bags that I didn't feel like opening to take a better picture of.

Ok, I think I've shown you enough for one night. After this weekend I'm sure I'll have lots more pics for you…stay tuned

Well, I've begun yet another craft obsession. This one is at least very compatible with my knitting. I'm learning how to spin my own yarn from wool and other fibers. I'm using a drop spindle, and whatever fibers I can get my hands on. Here's a summary of the past week's experiences.

I started my learning by using a type of wool preparation called "pencil roving". This is wool that is already prepared in a long, thin strip, so there is little "drafting" needed. It worked well for getting me used to the 'feel' of using the spindle. After a couple of hours, I ended up with this:

It's not really a useable amount of yarn, as it's only about half an ounce, but I'm pleased with it.

So, I continued with this process, with the intent of making an amount that I could actually use. I spun and spun, and ended up with about 2 oz. (approx 50 yards) of a much more even worsted weight yarn. Then I got an itching to dye it. While I really like the natural color, I wanted to play. So, I bought some Kool-Aid and went at it. This is what I came up with:

Kool Aid dyeing has got to be the easiest thing I've ever done. Here's what I did:
-First, I let the yarn soak in hot water while I prepared my dyes.
-The dyes are made from Kool-Aid (the little packets…NOT pre-sweetened). I used Grape, Berry Blue, and Blastin' Berry Cherry. For each color, I mixed up half a cup of water, 1 quarter cup of white vinegar, and 2 packets of kool-aid.
-Then I covered my work area with plastic wrap, big enough to let the yarn sit on it, and have enough to wrap it up in loosely.
-I squeezed out the excess water from the yarn and plopped it down on the plastic wrap and went at.
-I pretty much randomly dropped the color onto the yarn using a turkey baster. Make sure to rinse out the baster every time you change colors, or they will run together.
-Use your fingers (preferably with gloves on) to make sure all the fibers are soaked with color.
-I wrapped up the yarn in the plastic wrap, and stuck it in the microwave for 2 minutes, then let it stand for 2 minutes. Check the liquid in the pack…it should be almost clear. Mine wasn't, so I stuck it in for another 2 minutes, let it stand, and my liquid was mostly clear.
-I let it cool down a bit, then rinsed it in hot water until it ran clear, washed it with mild dish soap, rinsed again, and let it hang to dry.
-And that's it!

Now, while there really isn't a lot of yarn, I NEED to use it, so I think I'm going to make some simple wrist bands/ wrist warmers or something. I'll take pics when I get them done.

Finally comes the biggest moment so far. I have some wool top which I ordered off of eBay, in a yummy green color. I attempted to spin it (keep in mind this isn't prepared like the pencil roving), and it was a disaster. I won't go into all the details about how I figured out how to do it (if you really want to know, you can email me). I had some ingeo (a fiber made from corn) roving that I decided (with prompting) to practice on. I had an epiphany in the process, and figured out what I was doing wrong, and took a 6 inch length of the ingeo roving and ended up with this:

It's only about 6 yards, and it is far from perfect…very bumpy and uneven, but it's a HUGE improvement over my first attempts with roving.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'll try to update more regularly on this process, so I don't end up with another really long entry like this one.