Thursday, September 19, 2013

Spinzilla

I signed up last last week to participate in Spinzilla.  I'm unreasonably excited about this event!  The TNNA sponsored event is ostensibly to raise awareness of spinning.  I think it's really an excuse for all of us spinners to spend an irresponsible amount of time knitting and tell our families that it's for a good cause!  The goal is for a team of up to 25 to spin as much fiber (measured by length of singles) in a week as they can.




I signed up with Team Spin-Off, and can't wait to get started!  I've already discovered storage bobbins (why didn't I know about these before?!) and ordered some from Bobbins Up.   I have always wanted to buy more bobbins so I could make multiple ply yarns, but the cost is so prohibitive!  Now I can spin all the singles with the same bobbin, put them on storage bobbins, then ply them back off onto the original bobbin.



Because I payed with PayPal, I accidentally got them sent to Utah.  Surprisingly, the Post Office forwarded the package to me here in Virginia!  Thanks Post Office!  Even with the detour, the package came amazingly quickly.



Now, I'm planning to get all my random fiber in order to be ready for the second week of October.

And last but not least, the latest edition of Knitty has a pattern for Nymphalidea.  I am totally in love.



Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Finished Goods

I finished up William's yellow purse just in time.  I decided to put some arabic script in the patterning, but it turned out to be difficult to get the chart to fit on such a small piece.


After much time spend drawing on graph paper, I finally have a finished product.  Unfortunately, I don't know what it says in arabic!  Hope it's something good!


I also finished a batch of hats and gunnister purses just in time to send them off to William for his Pirate Fair as well.  It was a surreal event, according to William!  Fun, but not really a historic reenactor's type of event. 








Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Dyeing to get back to my projects

Boy has it been a crazy half year.  I knew it had been a long time since I last posted here, but had no idea it had been since Christmas.  I've been spending that time in absolute crisis busyness.  Since then, my whole life has changed.  Our family moved from here:


To here:


While packing, painting, and repairing before the move, I actually got so busy I couldn't knit for 2 months.  This made me crazy. I'm so glad to be have my therapy back.  My current project is to finish up some knits for my friend William to take to his next pirate festival.  He is the reenactor who has helped me find the great people who want to buy my historic knits.  My Etsy shop has also been very neglected during this move, so as soon as I finish knitting for William, I'm going to get my shop more like I want it.

Anyway, William asked for another Gunnister Purse.  This is the first one I made for him:


I made several others, but they sold so quickly I forgot to get pictures.  William wants a purse in yellow this time.  I didn't have the right yellow on hand, so I decided to use a turmeric dye bath.  Turmeric does a great job dying (or staining) wool with no mordent.  Perhaps more importantly, it fits William's pirate character, William Brand of the Mercury Crew, who spent some time in Jerusalem.  I believe the spice would have been sufficiently common there to use for its color.

I did a little research before beginning. The simplest tutorial on turmeric dying is from Lyon Brand Yarns.  Some other people suggest using vinegar in the dye bath, as you would with acid dyes, and I wondered if I should try.  The owner of Sweetfern Studio luckily did the experimenting for me.  She tried turmeric alone, with acid, and with a base.  You should check out the results, which are very interesting!  It was clear from her experiment that I didn't want to use anything but the turmeric for my desired yellow on wool yarn.

I didn't measure my water or the turmeric.  I put about a couple of teaspoons of turmeric in a pot of water (maybe a quart and a half) and set it boiling.


Next, I walked away and forgot about it until the entire pot of water had boiled off, and I started smelling the truly lovely smell of toasting turmeric.  I'd skip this step if I were you!


Then I scrubbed out the pot, was grateful turmeric isn't too expensive, and got another pot boiling.  This time I let it boil for about half an hour, stirring occasionally.  Near the end of the boiling, I started skimming the foam off the top of the pot, in hopes of keeping the yarn cleaner.  I think this was worth it!

Next, I put my mini-skein of yarn (only 10 grams) in the pot for 30 minutes, turning the heat down to a simmer.  I gently turned and stirred the yarn several times.


I should have soaked the skein first, but I was very distracted that day and forgot.  No worries, though, because the yarn came out a beautifully even marigold yellow:



Now the question was, to go darker or not?  With William's input, I decided to give the yarn another bath.  This time, I soaked the yarn first, then let it simmer for 20 minutes.  After rinsing and drying, it was obvious that the yarn hadn't dyed evenly.  I think this was because I forgot to turn the yarn.  See how great I am at this?


You can barely tell in the picture, but the unevenness was obvious in person.  The yellow also got more muted and mustardy with the second bath, but not darker.  

After a bit more debate, I decided to dye a bit more to even out the color.  Note that every time I do this,  I have to reheat the dye bath to boiling, adding a bit more water so that it doesn't boil off!  This time, I soaked the yarn again, and put it back in the bath for 10 minutes, turning it often.  I was starting to get worried about felting it from so much handling, but I was gentle and it turned out well.


The finished skein is waiting to be knit up as soon as I'm finished with the gunnister purse currently on the needles!

 The kids started school again yesterday.  My mother's heart ached to see them go, but I will hopefully have my hands more free to catch up a little...and unpack a few more boxes!