Spring: Finishing And Starting

Despite the fact that we had a winter wonderland outside (again!) Sunday morning, spring is just about here. Things are coming up in the garden, and work starts next week.

A lot of my fibre projects seem to be either finishing or starting right now also. On the finished pile, I have all 5 skeins of that pewter-grey llama I was spinning, plus my first official weaving project, hemmed, washed, ends trimmed, and ready to go to the Guild on Monday.

Also going to the Guild will be my basket from the class I was taking. I must say it's not exactly a perfect basket, but hey, it's my first try. The reed we used was really light-coloured, and the basket sticks out like a sore thumb, since every other basket I own is patina'd and rather darker. But by a nice coincidence, I've been doing my first dye-bath of the season - walnuts - and thought that the exhaust bath might be useful to stain the basket darker, even if it takes a few coats. So I'm trying that right now.

The walnut-dyed yarn is hanging up to dry. The darker skeins are going for a sweater for a cousin's new baby, commissioned by my aunt. It's wool from their sheep that they had mill-spun at MacAusland's, and the weight and texture are similar enough to Briggs and Little that I will add some colours out of my stash of B&L to get enough yarn for the sweater.

The lighter skeins had a cold soak for 30 min or an hour in the exhaust bath - I just want enough there for a tint, which gives lovely reds with a cochineal pink/red on top.

While waiting for the yarn to dry for the little sweater, I'm finishing off a pair of socks for me. Fleece Artist BFL Sock I bought at Rhinebeck last year. The only picture I have so far, though, is this one of Pumpkin having a lovely nap on my laptop case and knitting bag, with the sock sticking out of the sandwich.

And the last current finished thing is the first Cowichan-style sweater Joan commissioned (we're still waiting on the yarn for the kid's version). It's really cozy, even if knitting with Lopi does make me feel like I've got a hairball in my throat. And I found out that taking a picture of your own back is rather tricky, but I got some sort of picture in the end! (All right, so the easiest was taking pictures while not wearing the sweater.)

Dye Another Day

Mid September...we've had our first mild frost, and it's officially fall. The regular garden maintenance at work is finished, and it's too early to start cutting back and garden shutdowns. The boss talked to the garden team last week and told us this, and he was really sorry, but we were going to have a few weeks where we wouldn't be working every day, starting with this week having yesterday and today off.

He really did seem a little concerned, like he hoped we would be OK and not starve because work was slow. I said I totally understood that was how the industry worked, and I was happy to have a little extra time to do my own stuff. And in my head, I'm going "Yes! Perfect timing! Thank you!"

So much going on outside of work between now and the end of October! All fun stuff, happily. It turns out I may have not one but two natural-dyeing classes to teach at the local guild, and today when I'm out doing errands, they will include picking up a parcel of yarn for the class, making an extra couple copies of class handout notes, and getting some dye supplies. Then Sunday I had a visit from someone I've done a couple commissions for, and she had a few more commissions she wants me to do, the biggest one with a deadline of beginning of November. Which coincides nicely with my prep time for the guild Ex and Sale. And of course there's Rhinebeck in mid-October. I've started a shopping list, and will be making reservations for dinners and sightseeing for our group in the next few weeks. We're planning to go to the Vanderbilt estate out there - Mom and I went the first year we did Rhinebeck, and the others haven't been at all, so it's time we revisited!

This weekend has been all about the dye pots again. There's a group my mother is part of, all multi-craftual, talented women, who are getting together and doing a series of KAL-type things, only not all knitting. Weaving, woodwork, embroidery, who knows what else. The current project coming up is knitting, though. One woman has a book with gorgeous stranded socks and slippers, so they're going to do that - only since most of them have done natural dyeing with me, and one has a dye garden, they decided to have me come and lead a workshop there, and natural-dye the yarn for their projects. And they are very enthusiastic! It was supposed to be 5 skeins each, but there was some extra, and so many possibilities with mordants and baths, that they ended up with 6 skeins each, and a bunch of things where they're going to split skeins between people because they couldn't decide between possibilities...I was there from 8am to 6pm, and we must have done a dozen colours on over 40 skeins, including woad and Japanese indigo from the garden. It was super fun, and lunch was a pot-luck, with spaghetti and salad, and fresh homemade cheese curds one of the women makes from their cows' milk! You know a good time was had by all when they're already planning next year's session...

I was supposed to do my mother's share of the skeins for the project, but saved that for the next couple days while I dyed my own stuff at home. Less crowded dye pots, and more leisure to plan. I think it turned out to be a good couple days' work:

Isn't the red something? I finally got around to using some of the pokeberries I've been freezing. Mashed a couple litres of them and soaked them in vinegar overnight, soaked an alum-mordanted skein in vinegar overnight also, mixed the two solutions and the yarn after straining the berries out, and simmered (covered, thank you!) for an hour or so. It boiled a little towards the end when I wasn't watching, but doesn't seem to have harmed the result. The other skeins going away from the red, include onion with copper mordant, dried coreopsis with alum, greenweed and onion with alum, rudbeckia with alum and iron/onion/woad, greenweed with alum overdyed with woad, rudbeckia with alum and iron, and two shades of black walnut, no mordant.

Tempus Fugit

So...how did it get to be 3+ weeks into August already? I've been hearing geese and seeing red leaves - summer's almost over! And it's so dark in the morning now (and cool!) - the birds are only starting to wake up when I leave for work, instead of being up before me. The rabbits are up early, though - Julia's been chasing (but not catching) them in the mornings while I eat breakfast. The weeds in most gardens at work are starting to slow down, but now all the deadheading and cutting back starts. I got into my garden today for the first time in a month, and did the weeding and deadheading; came out with armloads of stuff to compost.

All my other late summer - early fall stuff is going on now too - that's my excuse for disappearing from the blog.

Dye plants are ready, and I've been doing a pile of my own dyeing for the fall shows (pretty, ain't it?), teaching a class in dyeing and one in spinning, and have two, maybe three more dye classes to teach next month. It's exciting that people seem to be really enjoying the natural dyeing. One of the classes, in fact, is a group where they want to dye their own yarn for a KAL of stranded socks and slippers. One of the members I know has done a bit of dyeing and is growing dye plants, and I'll be there to organize and answer questions, and make sure they get a nice variety of colours to play with.

One craft show down, next one in 2 weeks (the Roxham Woolgathering, which has been moved a week earlier this year). One agricultural fair down, one coming in 3 weeks. We exhibit a lot - and doesn't that occasion a pile of running around cutting flowers and scrubbing veg and labelling jam  jars! And thinking of jam jars...one batch of beet pickles and two of jam done, probably another round of the pickles to go.

And then there's the knitting - a few commissions, including socks for my aunt's birthday out of some of my natural-dyed yarn, and trying to accumulate stock for the shows coming up. Thank goodness for long bus rides, because otherwise I would get about 10 minutes of knitting a day after supper before I start nodding off!

Summer's First Dyeing

A gorgeous weekend, and one I get to spend out at the parents', having fun. Yesterday there was a trip to the local greenhouse to ogle their stocks (and their cat), then a run to Johanne's with my latest knits. The crescent shawl I was working on turned out nicely, and I had also finished a pair of short-row fingerless mitts (the Mixed Wave mitts by Sybil R).

Right now I've got a pair of socks on the needles, scrappy and in stranded patterns, for my brother's landlady. She loved the ones Mom made her daughter for Christmas, and has commissioned two pairs for herself, so we're each making a pair. No pics yet, but I promise there will be.

Today we have had some fun in the dye pots. One of the local weaving guild members who was in the dye course I taught last year wanted to dye some yarn for a weaving project, so she and a friend and her husband all came over. He took off for a nice rural bike ride, and the ladies and I ran an indigo pot. I made the pot fairly strong, and cooked up a batch of fresh greenweed for myself as well, then dyed a bunch of fleece after the yarn was done. Now the clothesline is cheerful with fleece in aqua from the greenweed overdyed with indigo, and sapphire from the indigo alone. I can't wait to see how they look as yarn.

Fiber Factor

Just to let you know, first off - we found the mouse that escaped. He was hiding behind the flour bin. One of the cats drew our attention by staring at that corner, and we saw the mouse, managed to capture him in a sour-cream container and let it out in the field. He may still be running, or he may be telling tales to all his mates at the mouse pub; we don't know, but it's a happy ending for all (except for the cat, who didn't get to eat the mouse).

Anyway, my holiday is over. Back in the city, back to school. It was a gorgeous, fiber-y week, though. Got a lot done. Two classes (spinning and dyeing) at the ranch, with enthusiastic students. And a lot of prep for the OVWSG show, which is now only 2 weeks away.

 Who says prep is work, though? It was gorgeous weather, warm enough to pick fleece or spin on the front porch, and admire the scenery.

Never any shortage of helpers for making sure my wool didn't escape, either.

Got several skeins of wool spun, and did two days of dyeing, got some lovely colors out of it (not that purple and pink stuff, but the rest is this week's work).

I did a bit of knitting also - finished the yellow and teal mitts and started the brown and white ones, and did a pair of booties in-between, except I haven't taken pics of those yet.

That is brown on the mittens, even if it's so dark it looks black. I dyed that last week with the new crop of black walnuts, and they are definitely strong. (My fingernails will be attesting to that until they grow out, probably. It looks like I've had a French manicure but in black instead of white).

Fiber, Various

A week since I taught my first dye class, and I'm finally getting around to showing off the pics of the day, and the newest member of Johanne's flock. We all went to see baby Achai before class started.

It's cute to see how all the females in the pen are kind of protective of him, and they would all move in front of Achai to keep us from seeing him, in case we were dangerous. 'He has a lot of aunts', Johanne said.

Thanks to Jo and Chantal's organization, we were ready to start promptly on time, with neat booklets of information and skeins of yarn for everyone. And all the students had a great time, getting into chopping plants and straining dye baths, ending up with a lovely row of samples to go home with.

You know it's a keen class when one of the comments from a sort of survey and discussion after was "You should have dye supplies for us to purchase so we can go home and do some more!"

This afternoon there was a bit of fiber fun of a different sort. Fibrefest is on in Almonte this weekend, and I snagged a ride with my mother and a friend. What I really wanted to see wasn't even as much the vendors as the exhibits at the museum (the MVTM, textile museum). I will say right now, definitely worth the trip. Go soon, before they're finished.

One exhibit was by a Peruvian tapestry artist, and while I'm not usually big on modern work, the colours and technique were incredible, as if the tapestries were painted.

(detail of the tapestry above)

The other exhibit I really wanted to see was a display of Coptic weaving, dating from the 4th-10th centuries. And they were amazing. Most of the pictures I had seen of Coptic weaving previously was monochrome, like the first picture, so to see a few colored pieces was exciting. This particular colored piece says it was likely a piece off a curtain. Think of it, these fibers were all handspun (spindle-spun, since spinning wheels were still hundreds of years in the future), natural-dyed, and handwoven, and they've survived for 1500 years since they decorated someone's clothes or home...

In Pictures

It's been a crazy month or so. Work, dyeing, getting ready for the Corn Festival back home (my first show of the season), Tour de Fleece, picking and jamming berries (made a raspberry/peach orange combo that turned out real tasty)...Tomorrow is back to school for me, so yay for not being out of the house 12 hours a day. On the other hand, now I get homework, and volunteer work, and prep for teaching dyeing classes, and Huntingdon Fair  is in two weeks, have to get entries ready...

Now, I'm not going to blither at length about everything I've been doing since my last post, and make all those imaginary blog entries I've been planning into reality. But here's a few pics and notes.

Tour de Fleece: Good choice with the Lanterne Rouge group. I was doing all right until the last week or so, when I kind of fell off my wheel, as it were. Total spun: 3.5 skeins. I finally finished the second half of the last skein (another purple one) yesterday.

I didn't show off the last dye batch, did I? It's pretty. I figured some semi-solids would be nice for a change, being more versatile than variegated.

Remember the little wrens we had raising a family in the plants at work? No sooner did they fly off than two robin families took over hanging baskets. (Next year, if I go back, I'm going to change the sign to read Canadian Tire Garden Center and Bird Sanctuary.) The first ones hatched only one of their three eggs, but the baby is kinda cute, in an ugly way. Daddy robin was very suspicious of the camera. I'm glad I got to see the baby before end of work term, though.

There's been knitting too...a baby sweater I don't have a pic of, a pair of blue-and-white mitts in progress that I think of as my 'china' mittens, since they're rather like cobalt and white dishes, a pair of cabled mittens. Now there's a shawl in progress - a commission, in alpaca/silk laceweight, dyed coffee brown with walnuts.

 Next thing on my list? Make sure all my school stuff is ready for tomorrow. Janice has us at 9am for Urban Agriculture, so it looks like we'll be digging in the veg garden before afternoon theory class. Can't wait to see how that's doing, and say hello to Ginger the cat again.

Oh, What a Beautiful Day!

Easter weekend at the parents'. You know, I can't think of a better way to spend a day than this. It's been warm and sunny all day - I did laundry and hung everything out on the clothesline for the first time this year, and it all dried beautifully, and smells of fresh air.

The chickens are strolling around the yard, clucking contentedly, picking at the leavings under the bird feeders, and taking dustbaths in the sun.

Mom had a few things she wanted dyed, so I fired up the first dye bath of the season. Black walnut hulls dried last fall, adding a lovely brown to some yarn she found at the 2nd-hand store, and some towels that had faded.

Now there's a chicken in the oven, and sausages defrosting in the fridge - there will be barbecue for supper! Hot cross bun dough is rising, getting ready for tomorrow's breakfast buns. And an Easter dinner to look forward to with ham from my cousin's pigs, and pie from berries we picked last summer. Life is definitely good!

Computer Bad; Quilts Good; News Sad

Still playing 'Fight the Computer'. Now it turns out the download from school, which I thought was Windows 7, is only an update. This after 2 attempts at downloading and a visit to IT at school. Which means I still need to beg or borrow a disk from someone of a reasonably recent Windows OS (Vista or XP), install it and partition the drive, THEN update to Windows 7 before I can put in the program I need. Beginning to wonder if the hassle is worth it.

Right, so now I've got that off my chest, something more fun...I skipped the Weaving and Spinning Guild meeting the other week in favor of the Quilter's Guild. The program for the night was a trunk show by Elaine Quehl, and a traveling display of mini art quilts from SAQA, which stands for Studio Art Quilt Associates.

Elaine I had met a couple times before, through a mutual friend. She does hand-dyed fabric, and the most incredible, often botanically inspired, art quilts using her fabrics. Click the link. Check them out in the gallery. Wonderful use of color and form.

SAQA was completely new to me. I must admit I'm not really drawn to abstract art, but I do think their idea of a traveling show is pretty neat. A whole group of small quilted panels by all different people, each piece maybe a foot square and framed individually, and sent from place to place to show people what art quilting can be. I think someone said this particular group had Hong Kong on its itinerary, so they are really traveling around. A virtual look at the show can be found on the SAQA website, for anyone curious.

One other piece of news to share, rather sad. (Stop here if you wish). The parents are back to one dog, and down one chicken. Allie made it rather obvious that even after being there for several weeks, she couldn't be trusted with the other animals unless under supervision. Mom had already scolded her away from the chickens that day, and she was being good. The minute Mom went off to check on the laundry, though, Allie tore one of the chickens to pieces, then compounded the felony by trying to hide the evidence, asking for the body back when it was discovered, and terrorizing one of the cats into hiding in the woodpile all night (found the next morning, cold and hungry but unharmed). Add that to the fact that she was showing a bit of a tendency to snap at people over the holidays, when everyone was home, and Mom felt they had no real choice but to put her down. She said she cried all day about it, but they couldn't risk keeping her, and wouldn't have felt right about giving someone else a dog that might harm them or their animals, especially in a rural area. Best case, she'd have to be chained or confined all the time (and what kind of life is that?); worst case, someone would abandon her again, or put her down after another person or animal got hurt. So there was no real way to make that a happy ending, unfortunately. Sometimes it just doesn't work, hard as you try.

Piling Up

I have no idea how some people manage to keep homes or workspaces relatively tidy. I suspect they have either less stuff or more space than I do. Last week I did a bunch of cleaning and tidying - and this week, apart from the decrease in feline dust-bunnies in the corners, it looks worse than before. My excuse right now is an influx of things.

The last few days, there has been dyeing going on. OKG Vendors' Night coming up in 2 weeks, and I've been filling in a few gaps in the stock. That means there's a drying rack in the bedroom, partly hung with skeins of yarn (the other half is devoted to the wool socks I washed the other day.) The last of the skeins just came out of the dyepot,  so I will at least be able to tidy the pots away soon. Will post pics when I get some taken.

And then there's the school stuff. I lugged an extra few pounds home today. Not only did our textbooks finally come in, but the garden harvest, having been duly weighed, measured, and analyzed, was put out for us to take home what we wanted. So I came home with carrots and parsnips and beets and celery and eggplants, in addition to 3 new textbooks (softcover, thankfully.) Counter space and table space all quite occupied now!

I'm not anticipating much tidying going on in the next few weeks, either. Thanksgiving, then Vendors' Night, then Rhinebeck (I get to go! My profs for the Friday classes are willing to let me make up those days elsewhere!), then the OVWSG Ex and Sale beginning of November. And fitted in there are assorted assignments, quizzes and midterms...ah, well, I'm sure it'll all get done somehow!

Tomorrow - must remember to bring camera to school - we're planting trees. Big ones. Apparently world tree day was last week. This should be fun.

Colors and Projects

Kid stuff goes fast. I re-started the baby hat yesterday afternoon (after deciding it was too big, ripping out, and casting on again with less stitches), and I'm already on the decreases on top:

I'm having super fun with the stripes, and I think I will make mittens to match. (There's a toque and mitt set category at the fair next week.) Yay for random stripes - fun and addictive. If you want to go play, it's at http://www.biscuitsandjam.com/stripe_maker.php.

When those are done, I expect I'll go back to the entrelac cushion cover, which still only has one corner done.

I did the cochineal dyeing and the walnut dyeing yesterday, so that leaves indigo to finish today and tomorrow if needed. I've got the first batch of indigo skeins dipping right now. Yesterday's cochineal took all day, almost. Always one of my favorites, and certainly not just mine, seeing as those skeins tend to disappear fastest when I have them for sale. Yes, it's expensive (over 10$ per ounce), but it's so strong you can just keep dipping lighter shades for 4-5 rounds, and doesn't take much for a bath. And you can get such a range of color out, between pH shifts and overdyeing! This is the finished skeins from yesterday (blurry but pretty), plus there's a whole shower rod of unfinished stuff (things that still need indigo today).

And speaking of indigo, time to go air the first of those. Ah, the excitement!

Start The Weekend Right

Ah, Saturday morning. Bright and sunny. I confess to a little bit of a sleep-in (to, say, 7 or 7:30 instead of 6:30) but I think I've made up for it.
Laundry: check. First load is done, second load is in the dryer.
Baking: in progress. There is a lovely lump of bread dough rising in the windowsill, two loaves worth, with a mix of white flour and stone-ground whole wheat from my aunt and uncle's . Debating whether to make filled buns out of part of it for school lunches next week.

Dyeing: in progress. My cochineal bath is just about ready, beautiful rich crimson. I'm not starting dyeing until I get the laundry out of the way, though.

And there are skeins of yarn everywhere - on the drying rack, over the bathtub, and soaking in the sink waiting for a turn in the dyepot.

My pile of school supplies is building up - I think I have everything I need now...only a couple days to go! It so looks like I'm going into construction, doesn't it?

Went for my last Friday spin-in-the-park yesterday. Only Julie and I, and neither brought spinning (it was rather wet weather, and I had errands before and after). I cast on for 2 knitting projects, though. More details tomorrow, when hopefully they look like something!