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.

Spinning the dyed

Onward and upward (I hope)!

As the roving dried, the colors brightened considerably. Initially, I was not sure if the colors went together. After drying, however, I thought perhaps they could all be spun together quite nicely.

Dyeing roving is apparently different than dyeing yarn. The roving tends to be more variegated, giving the resulting yarn a bit more depth of color. I also noticed some amount of felting. This did not make it difficult to draft, as the amount of felting that occurred was quite small. It did, however, make the draft look larger than it was, which resulted in some very thin threads spun.

I had planned on making a self-striping yarn, but as thin as these threads were, I decided that I would have to make a three-ply rather than a two-ply yarn. Unfortunately, my spinning wheel can only handle two bobbins on its lazy kate, so I had to improvise. 

It took a little more effort to handle the extra thread, but if I had an appropriately tensioned kate, it would probably have gone easier. 

Plying the various colors together definitely had the effect of toning down the yarn... possibly a bit too much. 285 yards, 6.5 ounces. I need a longer niddy-noddy to handle skeins this large. 

The overall effect is not bad. I used half of my dyed roving to make this skein. With the rest of it, I will probably try Navajo plying in order to preserve the stripes. I think I will try the three-ply technique with some brighter colors next time. And maybe a single-color skein.... the grape/lemon lime mixture made a fairly nice dusky lavender color. Perhaps I could try to darken it a bit.

Dyeing to spin (with Kool-Aid)

I am getting comfortable with the spinning wheel, and decided it was time to try my hand at dyeing. Starting with one pound of lovely wool roving, I wanted to make a large skein of variegated olive-color yarn. Using the recipes I found at a website, I tried to make several colors of what I thought would turn out olive.

I divided my one pound roving into 4 approximately equal sections. The first batch I dyed with a mixture of 2 orange to 2 lemon lime packets. The second batch, I used 1 grape and 3 lemon lime packets.

The grape and lemon lime turned out with some very bright lime colored sections. The orange and lemon lime looked a bit like a green-tinged butternut squash casserole. I was not convinced that these colors would go together. What was I to do?!?!?!

Instead of going ahead with my other planned recipes, I decided to make two separate skeins, one with the orange, and one with the grape. I chose ratios of 3 orange to 1 lemon lime and 2 grape to 2 lemon lime for the next two batches.

Time to rinse, allow them to dry, and see what I get.

Repost of previous blog

Including a re-post of my first blog, located for now on my jxe Designs website.

A tale of two dresses.

Part 1: Back in December, I bought several vintage crochet patterns on Etsy. One of these became an immediate project.

The "Sexy Red Dress"

When I got the pdf of this project, the first thing that I noticed was that my own personal  dimensions did not match any of the dimensions accommodated by this pattern.  After working my gauge swatch, I was able to calculate the number of stitches needed to re-size this, and proceeded to create a facsimile of this dress using  Lion Brand Amazing in Glacier Bay. First of all, I had to increase the size to  accommodate my middle-aged body. I also wanted a more flared skirt than  the pattern provided. As this was a "bottom up" pattern, that required a bit  more calculation before I could begin.  I am rather pleased with the final project, although it is arguably "less sexy"  than the original, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be  considered "red"!!! I love the finished product, but it is a bit shorter than I would like as a "dress" . . .  works nicely as a tunic, however. Part 2: In March, I found another vintage project to sink my hooks into. One of the most significant changes I made was to work the skirt in the round in order to avoid side seams. The pattern lends itself well to this modification, but it took me a few attempts to get the starting chain on each row to look like a bar stitch. Once I figured that out, it worked up quickly. The nice thing about crocheting in the round is that it is SO easy to try on the item and make adjustments accordingly. This one at least reaches to my knees, so I can probably bring myself to actually wear this as a dress. Since it is worked both up and down from the waist, I was able to shape the skirt as I went. I think this pattern would also make a great skirt pattern. There is so much swing to this. I am going to try this again in a solid color, and perhaps make a maxi out of it. It is so easy to vary it.  I received so many compliments on the incomplete project (especially on the color scheme). I wonder if anyone will recognize it on me!!! The "Goddess Dress" An adorable, lacy vintage dress. It provides a bit more coverage than the "red dress" above. I have some extended plans for this pattern. For the first iteration, I chose to work withBernat Mosaic yarn in Ninja.  As before, I had to adjust the pattern to fit my body. Unlike the previous project, I could accomplish most of the adjustment with a simple change of hook size. By using a K rather than the I indicated in the pattern (ok... it does not actually indicate an "I" since this is a UK pattern. WonkyZebra, however, is VERY generous with additional information to help in the cultural translation!) I used the I hook to help define the waist area, but other than a few minor modifications, the increased hook size accomplished all that I needed.  I wanted a longer dress, so I kept going for several additional rows.