Another productive weekend

How does a fiber artist spend their weekend? This one wasn't typical for me, but it was a lot of fun.

Yesterday I got up early and drove to a local fiber mill to drop off some fleeces to be washed and made into roving. I found a local source for Polypay wool and bought thirty pounds. My goal is to dye more local fiber whenever possible. It helps the farmers and it really interests me. I like having that connection to local sources. The opportunity to buy fleeces other than merinos is worth the extra effort. Polypays are bred to be good all-around sheep. They have lots of lambs, good weight gain for market and their fleeces are good quality. They aren't as super fine as some breeds and they can really vary, but I picked through and found the softest and crimpiest ones possible.



Three ewes missed their original shearing date and were done later, so their fleeces were longer. Although the mill equipment couldn't handle the length, I couldn't pass them up. The fiber is really soft and it's 6-8 inches long! I'm going to hand wash and comb these fleeces and see what happens.



After visiting the mill and meeting the very nice owner, I came home to warm up the dye pots. I focused on merino/silk yarns, firestar and the fiber for my April Phat Fiber samples. I stopped when my shower was filled and I needed to get to bed. I tried a new technique for the yarns, including an overdyeing step for some of them. I really like some of the colorways that resulted. One of them is gross and I need to re-do it, but I'll have to think about what colors I'd like to overdye with. Not every color blend is a success. In the photo, it's the weird pinkish-salmon and brown one. The red dye I was using didn't bond to the silk very well and it made this bizarre pastel color.



This morning I got up and headed to a local farm to demonstrate spinning. They open their farm for visitors to come see the new lambs and it's quite the event! Hundreds of people came through to watch me spin and ask questions. I like sharing my experiences with learning to spin and it gave me about six hours of spinning time. I took two bags of past Phat Fiber samples in blues and pinks and spun them one after the other to make a variegated yarn in each color group. I already did one in natural tones and I love how it turned out so I want to make more. These still need to be plied, but I think they'll be beautiful.





The best part of the farm visit is seeing the lambs. I still hope to have a farm someday and being around sheep makes me happy. The lambs were napping in a huge pile in the creep feeder pen this morning. Watching lambs dozing in the sunshine was a good way to start the day.



These are Targhee x Texel sheep and I brought home three fleeces from this farm as well. They're softer and springier, but will make very nice roving. I bought a sample of the roving from last year and really liked it. These will be going to the mill the next time I have a minute.

Tonight's plan is to wash some of the long Polypay fleece and then sit back with a glass of wine. I'm tired!

Turquoise toes

I've had several really good days with my dye pot lately. I try to save energy by heating it in the morning and rotating batches of roving in and out all day. It makes more sense than hauling everything out to dye one or two braids. During this last big day, I tried my first kettle-dyed yarn. I love how it all turned out and I am itching to re-skein it and see the final project. It takes forever to dry, so I'm having a hard time being patient.

This is my first batch of dyed roving. Several of these have sold already and I had a lot of fun experimenting with color.



I chained all of the roving into nice little "braids" and used the ragged and excess bits from the ends to spin samples. I wanted to test the Merino and Falkland fiber and see how my dye-jobs behave in action. The singles marl and self stripe a little, but the really interesting part came when I plied the yarns. They come out more heathered and the shockingly bright colors are tamed by the darker patches, even if there aren't many. It's really wild and I love the finished yarn. I'm not a huge fan of barber pole striping in yarn, and this kettle-dyeing technique seems to help prevent it.









This is my latest batch. The first four on the left, hanging on clothes hangers, are my first hanks of yarn. I love all of them and I'm going to have a hard time letting them go. The brown is based on the same colorway as the brown roving above. It's really interesting to see how the colors behave differently on yarn versus roving. The yarn I spun from the fiber is a really complex mix of browns and came out a sort of warm toasted sugar color overall. I'm going to knit swatches of those four yarns to see how much they actually stripe or if they come out dyed more to the stitch.



The reason for the name of this post is that I managed to spill a little turquoise dye on my kitchen floor. I didn't notice until I stepped in it and smeared it across the floor. It wiped up easily and will likely wash out of my (blush) acrylic sock, but it dyed my "protein-fiber" middle toe a nice shade of turquoise blue. I feel fancy.

Live and Let Dye

I finally saved up enough to set up my dye "studio" and I'm loving it. I've been sampling Greener Shades dyes and keeping copious notes as I try different ways to prep, heat and add acid to the fiber. My love of lists and spreadsheets is definitely coming in to play here. I have a special dyeing notebook for each batch and then I'm keeping fiber samples from each one in a photo album. I figure if I am going to ever be able to sell repeatable colorways, I need to know what I am doing. I keep telling myself it's a business decision and not my nerdiness shining through.

This is my third batch of dyed fiber, when I mixed three colors in the pot to see what would happen. I love how it turned out. I've now dyed samples of all the basic colors except black for reference purposes. There is a rainbow in my studio! (Click any photos to see them larger)








I also rearranged my kitchen to move some of my fiber blending supplies into my work area. I had a small bookcase doing nothing but collecting clutter in my bedroom, so I moved it and filled the shelves with blending fibers. I always do my carding on my kitchen table, and now everything will be close by. I can also keep my scale there, since I use it for both carding and dyeing. All of my dyeing is done right next to my kitchen sink so there is no risk of spillage. Fortunately, I have the type of faucet that pulls out into a sprayer and it reaches the dye pot. I couldn't have planned it better.

Now my combs are clamped to one chair, I have the carder and scale on the table, mixing fiber on the shelves, dye supplies in the bin, and more mixing fiber in the white box. Since this was taken, I bought a box picker for opening up locks of fiber. I used it to pick some of the red dyed fleece and it's a huge time saver. Wool locks, still in tight formation, are almost impossible to run through the drum carder. The picker loosens everything up and helps the bits of hay and debris fall out before they get mixed in to my batts. I got a great deal on a used one and it's the perfect size for my work area. I like that I can latch the cover so my cat can't get into trouble. The inside of it is full of spiky heavy nails. Honestly, most spinning equipment is bloodthirsty! My combs are a serious harzard and I have a bandaid on my finger after carding part of my knuckle last night on the drum carder.



I think this will all pay off eventually. I just sent out several more batt orders and I have an ever growing list of reserve orders for the Sarah and Jareth batts. I also carded some "Hoggle" batts, mostly out of alpaca, and I love them so much. I hope others will like them too.