Tree of Life Eco mitts

A dream realised, and I am mostly content with the result!
The reality is that REALITY and IDEAS ABOUT REALITY are not the same thing. This is especially true in the world of arts and crafts where you can have a brilliant creative idea, and what comes out of your dyepot or off your wheel and needles is just, well, disappointing. So mostly I am of the don't plan TOO much and see what happens persuasion. This is what doing abstract art at Art School does to your creativity...
However THIS project was pretty methodical! That's a knitting thing I think, knitting can be a very left brainy thing... The "see what happens" part of it was the dyeing and allowing a little magic into the yarn by not worrying too much where the 2 plies fell next to each other.
So. I found a pattern I really liked, although the mitts were a little too pointy for my tastes. (I understand it's a traditional shape, but it wasn't exactly me.) So "Tree of  Life". What could be more perfect for my "as low as I can go" low impact mittens?
Back in the summer I was gifted two fleeces from a friend who lives just up the road.(Yay! Very little carbon footprint there!) One a black hebredean, and one an unknown shearling. Upon sampling, they were both full of double cuts, but soft and springy. The shearling a little softer, the hebredean a little longer in staple. I set about gradually dyeing up the shearling fleece, mostly solar (& eco) dyeing over the summer, although the woad urine vat (see other blog post...) was heated on the stove every night and then wrapped up in a wool hotbox to maintain the required vat temps for the dyeing magic to occur.

Come the Autumn I got a drum carder! I was thinking of mittens. I was thinking of how the sky is in Yorkshire in the winter : layers of subtle greys, blues, pale yellows, odd hints of other colours. So I rummaged through my summer dyed stash and found a range of yellow to rust to grey to green, to beautiful woad dyed blues, all from Karen's shearling...., soft and springy. So I made them up into about 100g of batts: I carefully faded the batts from yellow on one side through browns and greys then to blues (with flecks of other colours here and there). I made two batts. I spun two bobbins short draw, (madly pulling out double cuts as I went) aiming to keep the colour sequence similar in both, and then plied them together to get " Wintery sky" the yarn above. The colours came out great, some parts more solid, some more heathery, which worked great for the winter sky effect I was going for. This was to be the background to the tree silouette, which I spun longdraw from rolags in the hebredean. (When I'd sampled it, longdraw worked out nice and soft, short draw, a bit too ropey...). The WPI was very very slightly thicker on the hebredean, which didn't matter too much...
On and off between Advent Fair and first snowfall, I squeezed in knitting up the mittens ( I was also knitting 3 Christmas presents at the same time...). Why is it harder to justify knitting for yourself?! I have no Catholic ancestory (or presentory...)...
I have done very little of this kind of knitting (stranding? colourwork?) before, only really some sampling of trad fair isle patterns on a scarf. So I was pleased it went so well, although some of the tree branches are a little improvised! The leaves were very pleasing to do, especially on the thumbs. One of the mitts has slight furrowing where I LINED UP MY FLOATS instead of staggering them, as I learned was best to do AFTERWARDS. But hey! live and learn. I'm not a perfectionist, and I'm pretty proud of the whole project, not least because they are very low impact on the sourcing and dyeing fronts, and quite beautiful in the snow/ bright sunlight!

pan modifying boring tan and yellows

Getting alot of uninspiring dye results? Try "modifying" your tans and anaemic banana dyeing . An easy process really, done after you've discovered your boring colour.
Well, when I say "pan" modifying, I really mean "rusty old collander", and "small copper bowl" which I put into my stainless steel pans with dyed wool in, usually with the already used dye liquor. In the case of using  copper, it's useful to reheat the dyedwool + dye liquor + copper (swabbed with vinegar for a few days previously) for about 20 minutes on a simmering heat, and best to leave it to all steep at least overnight, or if you're me, completely forget about it for a few days until you have to clean out the guinea pig and move that very interesting looking pan off her hutch... The really bright, deep copper colour (top left) was achieved this way, from an original boring, and pale looking tan from Pear tree leaves ( the locks on the left in the bottom picture).
The locks on the right are from some rose leaves, which with alum went a lovely golden yellow, on Wensleydale wool: These locks when modified with copper bowl, became the lovely grassy green locks in the bottom middle of the top photo.
The green tops on the bottom left are from privet leaves treated similarly. The more olivey tops are from birch leaves modified with copper as well.
The silver grey locks on the bottom right are rose leaves modified with the rusty iron collander, which you don't heat up. Just leave it in the dye liquor with the wool, until it's the right shade (but check it reguarly, as it can make the wool too brittle...) This was actually more accidental than my copper modifying, as I didn't realise the collander had got so rusty underneath...But you can also get a similar effect using a solution of steeped rusty nails, with water and vinegar. I don't often want a grey wool, as there's a wonderful array of lovely, naturally occuring (on the sheep) grey wools already, but it works well on Wensleydale locks as potential Crone's hair....
You can also get a very elfin silvery green modifying with the iron solution in or over yellows if you only leave the locks in for a minute or two, carefully watching them, so they don't go all the way into grey.

my 40th Exhibition: a blurry video, including yarn, artwork, knitting etc.....

this video was taken on Marc's phone, so is not of the highest quality! But it is the only document of the "exhibition" I had at home for my 40th birthday, of some things I've made in my 40 years. Including Slampt artwork (the record label I used to co-run), other prints and paintings, some plant dyed wool tops, and many yarns I've handspun.

Eco dyed batts:spun!

So recently, apart from all my massive work and family responsibilities ( challenging and rewarding, but leaving me little WOOL TIME), I've been spending what time I get developing my fibre eco dyeing and having fun with my NEW Ashford Drumcarder combining the lovely fluffs into delicious, and often "Art" batts. I've been finding it hard to resist spinning the fibre, and mostly haven't managed it, although a little has made it's way into my Etsy shop....
 The top yarn here is something I'm going to knit into "Tree of Life" mittens, along with the bottom yarn (when spun). My aim was to make a wintery sky inspired yarn, to back the tree. A friend of mine had given me a non-specific wool fleece, with short bouncy fibres (and a fair few doublecuts...) from her own flock. I'd  been gradually dyeing it up, using the woad urine vat method, and docks,  nettles, onion skins etc... I took approx 100 grams ( the Tree of Life pattern says you need "2 skeins" of a fingering/sock weight but doesn't specify how much each skein weighs...)of blues, yellows, green-yellows, greys and browns, and combined the bouncy fibres into 2 batts, which faded from blues on one side to yellows on the other, with greys and browns inbetween. The resultant batts were squidgey and bouncy, and mostly lovely to spun, which I did short draw. i say "mostly" because I did have to remove a fair few double cuts along the way, even though I'd been careful to remove any I could prior to carding. Not much of a price to pay for free fleece?(not that I'd generally put such a fleece into my "For Sale" Batts...)
However, the finished yarn is lovely to feel and behold! Bouncy and soft and the colours glow wonderfully together. If only I could knit with it now! (but I will have to wait until I've finished spinning the Black Hebredian first (also full of double cuts;) ))
"Thorn Rose" is the yarn I'm spinning for light relief , which may eventually be used for some socks (which I am currently obsessed with knitting. ALL OTHER PROJECTS ARE ON HOLD whilst the magic of socks grips me.) It's the pink one in the middle and was such a tasty batt to make: All eco dyed wool and silk fibres, all UK grown wool, with some more fun things like recycled sari silk fibres and bamboo fibre added in. It's lovely to draft (I am spinning it in chunks, from the fold, longdraw) silky smooth with texture and colour variation. N.B. that green is from privet....
I happy to find that most of the wool fibre I'm working with is bought, and grown, locally (North of England) some of it Yorkshire, some from just down the road. Hooray!

Some gorgeous fibres that have made their way into the shop (for now....) include curly silky Wensleydale locks and a few 50 gram Art eco batts.

Hot Box Natural Woad Dyeing

So, woad, what a fantastic quirky gift from Mother Nature...A leaf that yeilds a beautiful blue, but only if you hit upon the right alchemy...

This is my most recent method, involving that most maligned (because of the stink) of all waste products, WEE.
So first of all, fill a vessel with wee, let it sit, somewhere where it won't be disturbed or fiddled with for a least two weeks, until it stinks. You want the smell to make you gag when it gets you in the back of the throat. Then (if you're using powdered woad) add 2 teaspoons to approx 5 litres of gone off urine. With leaves, you just want to fill up your heatable vat (I use a big stainless steel pan) with as many leaves as you can and then pour the urine over them.
Then the method is the same: heat your vat with woad in to just slightly steaming point then PUT IT INTO YOUR PREPARED HOT BOX! This is the marvelous part of it for me, as I had to think it up myself!

I couldn't work out how I could keep my woad vat at a steady temperature, perhaps for several weeks, as I had no greenhouse, and our stove is never on constantly, as our house is too cosy, and doesn't need constant heating, even in the depths of winter. Then I remembered the hot box principle: Basically, heat whatever you need to keep at a constant temperature up to the temp you want it to be at, take it off the heat source, and then insulate it so that the heat stays in it. In my case, the most easily available insulation source was fleece (My house is literally full of the stuff). So I put a layer of it ( 2-3 inches)on the bottoms and sides of an old cardboard box, then placed the heated pots (in my case) with the woad urine vats in the hot box (see photo above) added a cosy wool covering to the pots, and shut the box up. I discovered that this will stay warm for approx 24 hrs, and then you just heat it up again to slightly steaming point, and put it back in the hot box again. Probably after 3-4 days the woad will have dispersed enough and the vats' oxygen reduced enough for you to begin dyeing. You should be able to tell because the vat will look greenish. If there is a blue scum floating on the surface you may need to add more gone off urine. I keep my wool fibre in for 24 hours to absorb the vat fully, and then I air it by pulling it carefully out of the vat on a stick and watching it magically turn blue in the Air! If it's too pale, I repeat the process and usually after 3 or 4 days it's a lovely mid blue. See above photo.
The important thing is too keep your vat at a steady temperature, although too cold is more easy to rescue than too hot, which can give you greys and maroons rather than the magical blue you are after.
I rinse my woad dyed wool in luke warm vinegar water to help it bond to the fibre. Then air it until I wash the smell fully out! The smell will always lingre a little, but generally only when the fibre is wet....
 You can top up your vat every few days with urine until the woad is worn out. If you have more woad, you can keep it going for weeks, but your family may not be impressed with the smell of you heating up the vat everyday on the stove.....

A thneed's a good thing that all people need!

So you do some experimental knitting with an experimental handspun yarn, and what do you get? A Thneed (copyright Dr Suess, but no truffula trees were harmed in the making of this garment..).
 The yarn is a singles of  various blended baby batts, mostly made up of a combination of greens (which I got from secret santa via  UK Spinners, cheers!) and reds with occasional luxury and texture from added silk throwsters waste. I'm interested in how the contrasting colours of green and red interact when blended together, and this was a chance to really dive into that. I also took the chance to experiment with a core spinning technique called wool chrysalids, which you add as you spin your singles, and make puffy gorgeous lumps on your yarn. I loved doing them, and wanted to particularly draw attention to them as they were knitted into the piece. As a result, and also to feel free and have some fun, I joyfully knitted this cowl/ hat/ headband/snood ie THNEED  improvising stitches as I went along. It's knitted in the round, starting with a multiple of the number of stitches you need for feather and fan to repeat (twelves?).I wanted a kind of rippling effect, so started with a quite regular feather and fan pattern, which then evolved into a more exagerated and less regular pattern, with sections where I wrapped the yarn around the needle 2, 3 or 4 times for big, holey  bumps in the texture. There is also a section in the middle which is just plainly knit, and from time to time to emphasise the chrysalids I would knit them purl, so they poked out a bit, wriggling a long like caterpillars.
 The only difficultly I encountered with this free form, responsive (to the yarn) knitting, was that after an exhilarating section with lots of yarn overs in I would have to remember to decrease in the next two rows or so, as I wanted to keep the garment in a rough tube form rather than turning fully into a funnel.
 It's very warm and cosy to wear as a head or neck garment. And I've named it "Hills and Gills".

TDF Finis: Coils!

The week started great with me spinning plenty of dyed by me high twist singles in a pleasing pinky, golden colourway. But then it came to actually plying the coiled yarn, which was excruciating. Hard to work out which way you hold the yarns... Hard to find the right yarn to ply onto... Hard to not get completely twisted up into knots...Hard to work out the right way to ply it...Well, this was my Tour de Fleece Challenge...
In the end what worked best for me after much fiddling about was: using an old singles, spun in the same direction as the high twist singles I was going to coil with and wound onto a spindle, which I could dangle between my knees. This spun around merrily as I coiled away, with the high twist singles on a lazy kate a little to my side so as to not tangle with the spindling singles. The spinning spindle took off some of the excess twist ( sometimes too much, making yarn fall apart!), so the resulting coiled yarn will not be too kinky once it's rested FOREVER on the bobbin.

I still feel there's something I'm not getting about coiling, and it's really intense work too, with limited application of the finished yarn! Great for viewing and fondling but no use for soft fluffy or flowy items. Could it be used for rugs? or bags? I may try it as an initial panel for a bag, or maybe a knitted felted pot Dragonarse style....

I also had a couple of days this week where I was SEPARATED FROM MY SPINNING WHEEL! As a result I took my spindle about with me to 2 parks, and on a train journey too. Plenty of Spinning in public oportunities... I was sampling some yak down that I picked up from Willo Alpacas at Woolfest which is gorgeously fluffy and very short stapled...Not really worth rolaging or any other prep unless you wanted to mix it with another fibre. The lady on the stall actually recommended mixing it with another fibre slightly, which I tried initially with Moorit shetland, but I preferred it without. I think if I carry on spindling it, it will be fine, but it may not stand up to the faster pace of the spinning wheel so easily...
The last photos are of me spinning on the last day of the TDF in my yarden and the final complete TDF stash.

 I loved doing the Shetland Wander last week, but also had the chance to sample fibres and methods I might not usually try, with the other yarns.

My husband curiously didn't seem to notice I was taking part in the TDF.. I said to him," You'll be pleased to know that the Tour de Fleece finishes today." He said "Why? you spin every day anyway...."