Hard corespun (hardcore)

Ah, reminds me of back in the day, when I was in a punk band, rather than now when I'm a grumpy hardcore Mum. Hardcore? You know the score!
Oh how I struggle with corespinning....
But this one turned out pretty successful.....Floofy and gorgeous.
I made it like this: Blended moorit shetland fibres with recycled sari silk, red angelina, a dash of purple and red merino; then I got some old unused commercial sock wool in orange brown and white, and put it through my wheel taking much of the plying twist off; then I "corespun" the fluffy blended batts onto the opened up sock wool back in the direction it was originally plied in. This has quite a specific action, I kinda teased it onto the core to keep it floofy, rather than sorta wrapping it around, as I have before. I also decided that as I've a always had such unwanted ENERGY in my corespun before to not "Ply in the direction the yarn was last plied in" as all authorities seem to suggest, but to do something else, that actually made sense to MY spinning brain instead, and this worked the best... I tried plying it with a commercial sewing thread after, to "Trap the fibres" but that didn't work out, probably because I'd taken too much spin off the original core.
NB I had to use small very fluffy bits of batts to get it fluffy enough.

Natural Multnomah Finished!

Well I finished this a while back, but I've not been blogging recently... But Hey I'm so proud, dispite the minor mistakes....
Something I'm really proud of is that it's made entirely of PLANT DYED wool fibres SPUN by ME. Most of the feather and fan pattern (a new one for me, and I'm a  uh, fan) was dyed by fibre artist Helen of My Heart Exposed from her Folksy shop. She (and her daughters) are really inspiring plant dyers. I want her to write a book so I can learn much more about plant dyeing...
The rest of the yarn was plant dyed by me, one ply mainly greens, the other purples to oranges to greens to pinks, and I love the shifts. It's really subtle, but striking, even at Wonderwool it was noticed, and that was Thee Place to Wear Your Handmade Shawl. My only regret is that a tiny portion of mystery fibre near the neck is scratchy, but not so bad. Hey, I'm just amazed I can do this, from dyeing, to spinning, to actually Knitting A Lace thing! Next stop owning and shearing sheep ( my pal Cathleeds is threating this as a reality....) Thanks to her for taking us (incl kids) to Wonderwool. Also loads of thanks to Helen for her fibre and just being an inspiration generally....

Grass and docks as dye plus Secret santa yarn

This top fibre is a recent experiment in plant dye colours. As always I am on the search for ways to obtain greens. I don't know exactly why I'm so obsessed with that colour, but perhaps it has to do with chakra colours! The green chakra relates to the chest/ heart area, and as I understand it the area of the body concerned with being open hearted and love. But maybe green just makes me happy!
Anyway, so to get the greenish yellow in the photo, I used dock roots, freshly dug from the allotment in a hope of having fewer docks scattering their seeds over my veg patch this year. These I cut up quite small and let steep in rain water for a few days. Then I remembered about them, and simmered the pot for about 40 mins on the stove. Then later that day I re-simmered them. Then I let them rest over night, and re-simmered them. Then, when the mixture had cooled, I strained out the veg matter, and mud, and inserted the wetted wool (Texel in this case for sox spinning) I heated the wool in the mixture 2 times in a similar fashion to extracting the colour from the dock roots.I added the juice of 2 lemons before heating. I let the wool rest in the dyepot over night. The crucial thing is to get as much colour as poss out of the docks, then to get as much as poss into the wool, without felting it. This takes as long as it takes, and letting the wool rest in the mixture is very much part of it!
Extracting and dyeing with the liquid from the grass was a very similar process to the dock roots, but the heated up grass REALLY STANK the HOUSE out! I don't know WHAT is in grass to make it so smelly when cooked but it honestly smelled of carnivore excrement. Yuck! My husband and the kids were NOT impressed. However, Fay was very keen on having the finished fibre when it was all dry and fluffy and not smelly.... In the photo the colours look more vibrant than they do in cloudy daylight, as they were taken on our table at night under artificial light.
 The other photo is WHAT I SPUN from the secret santa fibre I received from the UKSpinners on the Ravelry forum.(see a previous post). It was blended with various reds and silky noils and throwsters waste etc. None of the baby batts were more than 50% red. I'm currently really interested in how green combines with other colours, but especially reds. There is an exciting section with cocoons spun on, which I loved doing! It's a soft, slightly overspun, singles of 16 WPI (fingering weight). And I am currently intending to knit it into a cowl in the round. I am hoping that it's slightly overspun quality might make the stockingette twist a little, but I don't know if that happens after you've set the twist?

Drumcarder fun and spinning it

Boy have I been having fun with my borrowed mini drumcarder! It's so much fun blending colours and textures together, and then you get to spin them up and see wonderful yarns unfold before your very eyes...
My four year old loves to do it too!
The top three yarns in these photos are all drum carded wool fibres. The first Texel with various slubs and dashes of colour added in. The next various merinos, silks, texel blended together, and the last many different plant dyed wools, one ply mostly greens, the other various, as the Spinning goddeses took me.
I've leaned som much from making these yarns, and will probably learn even more knitting with it!

Hot Off the Wheel MHE yarn

This is a 2 ply yarn I spun over the christmas period. I really love the colours, and it was thrilling watching them unfold into singles and then a further blending into a 2 ply. This extra fine merino wool was dyed by My Heart Exposed, using plant dyes, and is called " Nature's Perspective" from the Lady Mya collection. I prefer to work with non merino wools, but I loved this colourway... I found that I was glowing with happiness as the greener and redder shades came through, and was a little restless if  I hit a patch of blue! Probably that means something other than I obviously dislike blue! Some pointer to where I need to do more soul work?
 But what shall I knit with it? It turned out a little thicker than I was hoping for my lacey shawl project, so I will have to find some other use for it.

Wool in every room

I fell asleep last night with the comforting thought that there was wool in every room of the house! Here are the photos and I'll explain...
1 Top: Bath of wool
2 Middle: Shelf of wool
3 Bottom: Bobbin of wool
The most comforting of all, is that some of  a Texel fleece (this one from Woolfest), is currently cleaning in the bath overnight. I aim to do it over night, and through most of the next day, so as to cause the minimum of disruption to my family. It will soak overnight in hot water with some washing soda, and then in the morning a hot rinse, and then another later on. Then by bathtime i need to have moved the fleece up to the loft to start drying , as it's winter, flat on a sheet.
I love to be washing a fleece, as it means lots more to spin. The only hassle is when you're having to do it in a hurry. I also love the fact that I know exactly where this fleece is from, and that only gentle cleaning products have been used on it, and that no electricity has been used to produce something spinnable.
And somehow, the whole process gives me a secret smile of satisfaction...
Photos 2 and 3 are both from the living room, and show last night's spinning from my own hand blended hand plant dyed batts, and "the wool basket", which has all sorts in, currently a dry felted Mother Earth who needs fixing, my Christmas present from the family (a niddy noddy), my current spindle spinning of hand blended batts in a red/brown/purple colourway of merino, silk, waste nylon glitz, blue faced leicester and other random bits, plenty of handspun, some hand dyed, hand blended singles, and some a My Heart Exposed fibre artist dyed two ply, also various knitting needles, a bag of knitting (currently a bootie), and small left over balls of yarn, which i constantly use to tie things up.
Both photos 2 and 3  have yarns in process which are very slender for me, as I am hoping to get something usable for knitting a lacey shawlette.
So that's the bathroom and the living room. The kitchen has some red and green two ply, handspun by Fay my 8 year old daughter, drying after having been set. Mine and Marc's bedroom has a basket and two boxes of unpun wool, mostly tops. One of the boxes holds my Etsy shop contents, mostly plant dyed tops at the moment. I happy to say that I've needed to do a slight restock recently as people have been buying it for spinning and dry felting. Hooray!
The loft has fleeces needing washing or carding in it, and my precious stash of yarn. The girl's room has Fay's stash of yarn, and her tops for spinning, and what she's spun too! Which makes a houseful of wool.
(ofcourse there's always my knitting and Fay's crochet projects, which travel around the house too....)

Logwood dyeing

Strangely, all of the above fibres are dyed with logwood. As is often the case with plant dyes, if you process them differently, you get different effects. Logwood (usually bought as a powder or chippings from dye suppliers) I have found, produces colours ranging from red to magenta to purple to brown.
Red was obtained by solar dyeing the fibres (cotswold wool) in a large Kilner jar, using rain water. The chippings of logwood were put in the bottom of the jar on our East facing window sill in the hieght of sunny summer for a week, unmordanted wool and water were added.A bold red resulted!
This red wool when immersed for 30 mins in water with washing soda added turned magenta, excitingly!
A deep purple was obtained from (hard) tap water with Alum dissolved in it, soaking the logwood chips in it over night and then slowly heating it to simmer twice. The chips were strained off. The dye liquor was allowed to cool, then wool was added and heated up to simmer twice, slowly.  I left it in overnight, and a vibrant purple resulted.
The same logwood chips were allowed to soak overnight with tap water and Vinegar ( a whole bottle!), and in a similar process to before, I obtained a deep brown.
The logwood in the photos above has made the purple, brown and pinky red.
Aparentally it can also make blue. And I find it is a reasonably priced dyestuff too.