And now for something completely different

Ok, so, first of all, it has been a LONG time since I have posted a blog. I have not stopped spinning, but I have not blogged about it. Maybe soon, I will upload some pictures of some of the most recent yarns I have been making/working with.

But I wanted to post some pictures of myself semi-publicly, and I don't take pictures with my phone. That makes Instagram kind of useless. This might be project related, if we call it my "self-confidence project".

I have become very tired of trying to style my frizzy, lifeless, brittle hair that looks decent maybe once a month if I am lucky. No, I am not sick... at least not any sicker than usual. I have just grown tired of looking at myself in the mirror. I refuse to do the cosmetic surgery, but I have found something to help me get a bit of my confidence back: Alternative hair.

Figuring out what works is not an inexpensive endeavor, and I am not sure what to do with the failures... But there are a few styles that I do think I look good in.

First, a few of the ones I do not, and will not, wear on a daily basis, although I think they are very nice. They just are not "me."

The first is Julia by Jon Renau in Cherry Cream (32F). This style is much longer than I would usually wear my hair, and the highlights are ridiculously blonde, but it is so pretty, and fun to wear on special occasions.

On the other extreme, also a Jon Renau in 32F, is Kaley. This is the shortest wig that I feel comfortable in. One thing I have discovered... a pixie cut is not for me!

For ones that make me fell more like "me," the first one I discovered was Kona by BelleTress in the color Cola with Cherry. I just love this color, which is a bit lighter than my natural color. The style is similar to what my hair used to look like if I just let it go... before it became a frizz-fest.

I ventured further into the BelleTress line, and discovered Miss Macchiato. I purchased this one in the lovely Cola with Cherry and also in the Cayenne with Ginger Root.

I really, really liked Miss Macchiato, but the left-side flip was a bit too aggressive... and the "bangs" would never stay out of my face. So I thought I would try a similar style. I was always kind of put-off by the overly-styled photos of Raquel Welch  Crowd Pleaser, but something always drew me back to her. I watched some reviews, but so many of them included "styling tips" that I could never duplicate. I finally found a review that made Crowd Pleaser seem natural. Many thanks to Geri for her wonderful reviews, which finally convinced me to try Crowd Pleaser! I picked up my first one in Cinnabar, but I think I will get another in Copper Mahogany. I love how the front hair does not flop in my eye the way it seems to in every other style I have tried. And I hate bangs, so I try to avoid those styles.

The Crowd Pleaser has a similar style to the Miss Macchiato, but seems softer somehow. Probably less edgy, but that is not necessarily a bad thing if I am going to be wearing it to work. And I like that the roots are not nearly as dark as they are on the BelleTress wigs. That would probably be my biggest complaint about that line.

Of all of the styles, I think I like the way Kona looks the best, but I have not been able to convince myself that I can pull it off at work.

What do you think?

A silky experiment

First off, let me just say... I like lemons. Lemons are good for so much more than lemonade. Sometimes, when life gives me lemons, I enjoy them just as they are. Some would say that being gifted with an autistic child is an example of life giving me lemons... but those people do not understand the pure joy of knowing that unique individual, who would not have been that particular unique individual had they been born with different wiring. No making of lemonade is required.

But sometimes, we can use the lemon for flavoring iced tea...

What does this have to do with crafts?

Recently, I had the opportunity of order some lovely custom-dyed silk from Mary of Camaj Fiber Arts. I even had the opportunity to pick the colors. Since my primary money-making ventures have been both jewelry and scarves, I saw an opportunity to tie the two together. I had previously done a custom order of making a scarf to match a necklace purchase, and many of my pieces would tend to fall into what I considered color schemes, I considered the possibility of making scarves, or even simply yarn, in color schemes similar to my jewelry.

I decided to start with making yarn to match one of my favorite stones: Fancy Jasper.

I chose colors that I thought would give me an good approximation to the coloring of the stone. True to my geeky engineering background, even went so far as to make a color swatch in paint, which I thought came close to the colors I wanted.

I have to admit... I was somewhat disappointed when I finally got my silk...

It just seemed too orange. Yes, I can see how that color is close to the color I chose... but not what I expected. All of the colors were brighter than I expected.

Ok... this seemed to be a situation where I could not quite accept the lemon as is, if only because I had some very specific ideas for this silk.

I needed to capture the deeper red color in the stone, and tone down the very orange segments. I started rifling through my dye arsenal to find the right shade. This one was too brown, that one was too pink...

And then, I found the perfect dye! Hey Kool-Aid!!!!

Is it sacrilege to blend Soffsilk(TM) with wool dyed with Kool-Aid?!?!?!?!

So, I dyed half a pound of mixed Blue Faced Leicester with several packets of Black Cherry Kool-Aid. It turned out very nicely, and picked up the darker reds in the Fancy Jasper.

I picked the large clumps of orange out of the silk (this is being saved for a later project) and blended the resulting silk with the dyed BFL,

The resulting thread was a bit too pink, and the natural Fancy Jasper stone is at least equal amounts of dark green, if not more green than red... The appropriate color green did not exist in my dye arsenal, but I did have some Aurora Heather Wool of the Andes roving from KnitPicks in my stash. For the second bobbin, I blended my silk with this rather than my Black Cherry BFL.

Now I had two bobbins made with the Soffsilk(TM), one blended with my black-cherry BFL, and the other blended with the Aurora Heather Wool of the Andes. Time to ply the two together...

All I can say is WOW!!!! It turned out lovelier than my wildest dreams!!! EXACTLY what I had in mind!!! It took some tweaking, but I am very satisfied with the result!

Now to turn my attention to the orange bits I picked out of the silk...

                                                

Tie-dying?

Inspired by a blog post by Mary Egbert that I read, I decided to try to tie-dye some roving. I did not do this with super-wash wool (because I don't have any in my stash... yet), but the Heinz 57 I bought from the Woolery (a nice, inexpensive top to use as subject for all of my evil experiments!!!)

I started by chaining one pound of top, dying it in a blue-purple mix, rinsing and re-chaining, and cooking it in a green-pink mix.

Some very cool looking top, if I say so myself! :-D I could not wait to start spinning it!

Note: there was some felting of the wool due to all of the handling, especially when wet, but it drafted quite nicely once it was fluffed a bit.

The top looked amazing (imo), but I soon noticed a problem... the color changes were shorter than the staple length!!!

The color variations were much more subtle than I had hoped for. A lovely color, mind you, just not quite what I had envisioned.

I plied this with some grey Icelandic wool. I really liked the color overall, but I wanted a yarn with a bit more impact. I took the skein (I had wound it on a 2.6 yard niddy-noddy) and chained the yarn itself. I sent it back for another round in the blue-purple dye bath.

I was very pleased with the result!

It is also knitting up quite nicely. I will definitely be trying this again!

A Roving Review - Part 1

Nothing too exciting going on. I am working on a pattern that I am knitting with the yarn I spun last week. So I thought I would give a review of the fibers I used in these yarns.

All fibers for this project were purchased from the Woolery.

First up was the generic white wool. This is basically the same wool that came with my spinning wheel, and what I started practicing on. The Woolery sells it under the name Heinz 57. It is made from the wool of multiple types of sheep. Drafts nicely, fun to dye with Kool-aid both before and after spinning. Nothing super special, but a decent low price fiber.

Next up, a Herdwick top. Herdwick sheep are raised primarily for meat, but their wool is useful as well. This wool cost almost twice as much as the generic white. Very coarse, and quite scratchy to the touch. Not recommended for anything that will touch skin, but it is supposed to have good insulating properties. Does not take dye well. But quite fun to spin! It drafts like a dream (a scratchy dream, but a dream nonetheless!).

These two threads were plied together to make the yarn that I posted in a previous blog. I dyed this after spinning. You can see that the Herdwick did not change color much, but it has a nice effect when combined with the dyed Heinz 57.

Finally, I moved on to a black churro. Churro is the traditional Navajo sheep. At first, I was vastly disappointed. It was more expensive than the Herdwick. It drafts nicely, but it was full of little pills and vegetable matter. But, I had already purchased the wool, and I had some specific idea of what I wanted to do with it, so I continued to spin. As I worked with it, I began to appreciate it. It formed a nice sturdy thread. I actually liked the feel of it: A bit rough, but not really scratchy.

When I plied this yarn, I appreciated it even more. A surprisingly soft and lofty yarn. I look forward to working with it!

Back to dyeing

I really wanted to make something cool out of my Herdwick and white wool yarn. I was inspired by a few youtube videos that I found on ChemKnitsBlog channel. After winding my yarn into loosely wound balls, I let them soak in a vinegar-water bath for about half an hour.

Mixing up a batch of black cherry, lemon lime, and grape Kool-aid with several drops of black food coloring, I partially submerged my yarn into the liquid. Unfortunately, the liquid level came above the midpoint, so I was going to end up with more than half of my yarn being red. Time to cook in the microwave...

After the yarn had absorbed most of the color and cooled for an hour, I then mixed up a batch of mixed berry and lemon lime Kool-aid, with some black and green food color, and flipped the balls over and cooked them again.






I really like how the yarn turned out, with one exception:
Uh.... it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! :-O

I don't much get into holiday themed items, and I don't think my spinning is good enough to try to sell my yarn yet, so I had to perform further experiments with it. Yes, I know, it is still wet, but as the dye tends to BRIGHTEN as it dries, I was afraid the effect would be even worse!!!

I did not wind the skeins back into balls because I had already obtained the overall effect I was trying for, just not quite the color scheme I was after. I mixed up a batch of mixed berry, peach mango, black, and blue, and dunked all of the skeins in. After cooking and rinsing, I think I was successfully able to get rid of the Christmas-y feel.

Once the skeins are dry, I will wind them back into balls and see what I have.

And this week, nobody dyed!

At least, not in my household!

I loved how the Herdwick and white wool looked after dyeing it. I wanted to try to make a larger dye lot, so I could make something significant with it. So far, I have four skeins of  130 to 150 yards. I am trying to decide if I want to make more before dyeing it. It probably will not get cooked until next week or so.

In the meantime, my son has been collecting walnuts from the yard with the expectation that I will use them to turn wool brown. He was well on his way to saving for me EVERY walnut in the yard. I had to let him know that I would not be able to use ALL of them!!!!

Unfortunately, I don't think I want to dye the yarn I am currently working on brown, and the walnuts will go rancid if I leave them sit around. So I am trying to freeze them. We will see how that works.

And some of my early spinning attempts did not yield nice knitting yarn. So, I am making felted balls out of them! I have heard that they work great in the dryer. I used the mistakes to form cores and wrapped them with some craft roving. Now to send them to the washer... along with a bag that I knitted like 8 years ago with the intention of felting it!!!

Dyeing the spun?

Well, I tried my Navajo plying, and it was, shall we say, an unmitigated disaster! Oh, what a tangled web we spin...

Since it didn't look like this skein would be good for much of anything useful, I decided to use it in additional experiments... BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Two packets of Mixed Berry Kool-aid and a few drops of black food coloring later:

Looks like the hot bath and subsequent drying did some good for it. I might even be able to use this yarn! Some very nice colors. And the orange-orange-orange-lemon lime over-dyed with the mixed berry and black somehow gave me the EXACT olive color I had been looking for originally! Who knew?

Time to try some spinning first and then dying. I decided to try my hand at spinning the Herdwick Top that I got from The Woolery. A bit scratchy, but it spins like a dream.

I plied a strand of this with a strand of generic white wool. I was so excited to start my dying experiments that I forgot to snap a pic of the yarn as spun! After several rounds of inadequately documented dying (but if I recall correctly, it involved Peach Mango, Mixed Berry, Grape, and Black Cherry Kool-aid and some black, red, and blue McCormick food coloring), this is what I have:

It really is a nice, if a bit chunky, skein of yarn. Since it is on the scratchy side, I don't think it will work for a scarf, and there is not enough for a sweater (only 145 yards). I have a few other ideas of what I can possibly do with it. The yarn itself is very pretty (imho) and would make a really cool fringe on a shawl. I am also considering knitting and felting a purse out of it. But right now, I am enjoying just looking at it!

I also dyed some more roving: I liked the way the lemon lime X2 + grape X2 made up before, so I tried a few variations, each on a 4 ounce piece of roving. The first was lemon lime X2 +grape X3, and the second was lemon lime X2 + grape X2 + black cherry X1. Here is a braid made from the resulting rovings:

The one on the left is a picture taken inside, and the one on the right was taken out-of-doors in the shade. In both pictures, the redder color is the one made with the black cherry. I am not sure why the lemon lime/grape roving shows up so green in the indoor picture, as that is not at all how it looks to the naked eye. I haven't begun to spin this yet.

Also, I wanted a longer niddy noddy. The one that I have is a Babe, which means it is comprised of PVC pipe sections.

Some of my skeins have been too long to make nicely with this version. I had some PVC tube lying around, and thought I would try to extend the device. The outer diameter of my pipe was a little smaller than the OD of the Babe pipe, so I wrapped the ends a few times with painter's tape.

I re-skeined a previous attempt that was too fat for the shorter version of the niddy noddy. The width was better, but it is kind-of on the long side. I might look for an in-between length of pipe, as this one might be too long. My daughter has claimed this skein of yarn, although she does not yet know what she is going to make out of it.