Washin' Fleeces

Random film pics

I love natural dyes!

I am in love with this set of dyed yarns.

This is a 30% silk, 70% wool blend yarn. It's worsted/heavy worsted weight. This set contains 12 skeins, all solar-dyed, and mordanted with alum. Each skein is dyed with a different natural dye material, or combination of dye materials. The colors are so lush, they just seem to glow from inside, that is what I love about natural dyes! And the combination of silk(blend) yarn and natural dyes is just FANTASTIC. I have a lot of "plain" wool yarn to dye up, but in future, I will be getting more silk/wool yarn to dye, because it just sucks up the colors like no other, it's really wonderful!

Each skein is 200 yards, so this whole set contains 2400 yards of yarn!

This post is for 2 of my awesome friends, who are brand new knitters. I love knitting, and I love recycling/upcycling/repurposing. Which is why I think taking a $1.99 Goodwill sweater and turning it into hanks and hanks and hanks of yarn is TOO fun.


When I started knitting, this was a GREAT way to build stash without spending money. (Wait...it still is!). IT's especially freeing if you're playing with DYEING. I have had some fairly disastrous natural dyeing attempts, and it is very comforting to know I didn't ruin/felt/uglify some expensive nice yarn. Just an old sweater that needed a new purpose.

So, here is an excellent blog post about how to take apart a sweater and turn it into an intergalactic megaton of yarn. I personally find Gap sweaters to be great to tear apart. They tend to have awesome fun yarns, and are easy to take apart.


and here is a great Knitty article about how to use koolaid to dye yarn! I never drink Kool Aid, but I DO enjoy Kool-Aid dyeing. So you can turn a solid colored sweater into MANY colored skeins of yarn!

I love supporting my local fiber industry - and am absolutely delighted to see that the UN has designated 2009 as the International Year of of Natural Fibres! Thanks to Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm for pointing out the link....I can't wait to get my roving from them....they assure us it's soon!

In other news, I'm delighted to be getting some fiber from Willow Ridge Farm in the very near future....I'll post pics when it arrives!

A bit of spinning turned these:

In to these! The bumps of fiber were pretty small, so I plied several of them with some commercial yarns, for different effects. (also a good way to use up leftover scraps of my commercial yarn stash).

And this is the infamous "my little pony" yarn, which, I actually love (even though I'm not usually a "pink" girl".) I left it as a single ply, and I think there's enough to make a hat. I'll post photos when I get something made with it.

You know your fiber-friends are over for a party when your bathroom looks like this:


That's some gorgeous roving dyed by the lovely and talented Jill! (please post pics when you spin it up Jill, we wanna see what it looks like!)


Jill made Terri and I these AMAZING hackles for Christmas - Terri used hers right away, but I hadn't, even though I was dying to; Jill hadn't had a chance to play with hers yet either. So last Sunday we all got together for a "fun with sharp fiber tools" party. My hackle is shown, above, loaded mohair locks, wool locks, silk, and some tencel, for my first try at hackling!


Here we are with a huge selection of fiber to play with! We had a little of everything....in all colors. I meant to take loads more pictures but we had too much fun (okay, and a small hurricane) and I forgot. Oh, none of us got injured either, which is pretty impressive, as those hackles are WICKED SHARP!
I wish I'd gotten pictures of Terri and Jill's creations as well - it was so much fun to see the textural and color combinations everyone came up with. Above are my creations- I'm really looking forward to spinning them! They are VERY textured - I did that deliberately, as I wanted to explore spinning some textured yarns. I can't wait to try this again, as I think there are many ways to create really interesting fiber, color, and texture combinations for spinning.

And now, a gratuitous kitty shot. We set up an impromptu workspace in my small living room (an old door and some saw horses), and the cats LOVED it. Boots didn't want us to dismantle it after the party. :)


oh! I also wanted to note - this whole adventure was inspired in no small part by Bonne's amazing hackle and color blending adventures, which are in the archives to her blog. Thanks for the inspiration Bonne, wish you coulda been here to play with us!!!

Yesterday, we went to see Spirit - a rehabbed bald eagle. It was amazing! BUT. I am disappointed. The information that the Polk County Conservation website gave was faulty. The website did not mention that a live bald eagle would be released at 3 PM - so I missed seeing it released by literally seconds. Also - the website specifically DID say that talks about bald eagles will be given at 1, 2 and 3. But...there was no talk at 3. I was most bummed! I really did want to learn more about these magnificent birds. Well...next time I will know to call ahead to get the "real" story.


I must be missing the caribbean - I dyed some roving shocking shades of ocean blue and green! (Note the feline "help").

My friend Terri and I are starting on a new adventure together - VERMICOMPOSTING! Yes, we're composting indoors with worms. She's ordered the worms....I'm supplying shredded paper and worm trays. I'm already saving up worm food - coffee grounds, eggshells, and citrus peels are "wintertime" compostables around here.

I'm pretty excited about this. Since becoming a locavore, my trash and recycling output has gone way, way down. Right now it's primarily cat littler (ew), some random bits and pieces (we produce maybe 1 bag of trash every 2 weeks) and, sadly, some compostables. But with our new wormie friends, the compostables will be turned into lush soil for my garden. I LOVE IT!

Yesterday was National Margarita Day. Which I of COURSE celebrated. Now there's a holiday I can proudly support!
Also, yesterday was laundry soap day. My frugal soul rejoices at spending 10 minutes and maybe 10 bucks and making 2 months worth of homemade laundry detergent.

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!

Just a few quick pics from my world. Here is Spike, inspecting my spinning job. This was some gorgeous merino/silk roving I got from Lorraine at Hedgeapple Farm. I spun it, then navajo-plied it to keep the gorgeous color repeats. It's soooooo soft.

I love our prayer flags. We got them in a Nepalese shop in the Twin Cities, inscribed them with our wishes, and hung them on a new moon. They have been up for months and months - nearly a year - and everytime I look at them, they make me happy. They're so colorful and beautiful, and I know as they wear, they are taking our wishes and turning them into reality. Here they are sporting a few icicles.


Here is some merino/alpaca/mohair roving that I dyed. I had been hoping to get enough to make a sweater (yes, I am nearly ready to venture into sweaters!), but, it spun up so lumpy-bumpy-bulky that I don't think I have enough yardage. oh well, it's still pretty.

Here is Sydney, helping me spin this morning. She LOVES fiber - she sort of nurses and kneads on it. Silly kitty.

All of a sudden, there are fiber CSAs EVERYWHERE!!!

First, was Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm (of which I am a proud member).

The our very own Cherie, a cool Iowan and member of our Prairiespinners group, started HER CSA, at Willow Ridge Farm, which I have heard complete rave reviews about.

Now I hear about another one! Serentity Sheep Farm has started her Sick and Twisted fiber CSA. (Love, love, love the name!)

I just think all this local farm fiber goodness is entirely too cool. go small fiber farms! yeah!

Speaking of fiber. Imentioned my spinning mojo had returned?

This lovely red/orange fiber was a gift from the amazing Lorraine, at Hedgeapple Farm. She as my "Secret Santa"! This is some of her wool, mixed with alpaca (I think) and handdyed by Lorraine. I then plied it with some orange 100% cashmere yarn I had recycled from a thrift-store sweater. It's so soft and quite beautiful! What shall I make with it?

And THIS - well, yum. Actually, John made it look nicer than it does in real life - good photographer that he is. It's 1 ply of gorgeous naturally colored Jacob X roving from High Prairie Fibers, and 1ply of lush chocolate colored Shetland from a small family farm that doesn't have a blog or website. I have over a lb of this wonderful stuff. What to make with it???

It must be my lucky day. First, I find a printer-paper-box FULL of fabric, for $4.0o. Yes, four bucks. I could not be more delighted. Most of it is cotton, and some really cool vintage prints. Overall it is perfect for me. I'm re-learning how to sew, and doing a bit of quilting, and while I do like quilting, it seems a *bit* ridiculous to me to spend lots of money for brand new big bits of fabric when you then spend ages whacking up into little bits and sewing them back together. What I love about quilting is the idea of using leftovers and scraps, to make something gorgeous and functional. So this box of random fabrics is PERFECT.

AND? Then, I win 2 skeins of amazing yarn from the nation's first Fiber CSA, of which I am a proud member.

lucky lucky me!

Here is a picture of the hot pink solar-dyed roving! It is up for sale on etsy now.

So, we had some leftover wool and silk that we had soaked, but not dyed yesterday. Today is about 90 degrees and blazing hot, so i decided to try a little solar dyeing. i used 2 big black canning pots. The left one has some grey wool, the right one has white wool and some silk spinning hankies. I put some hot water and a splash of vinegar in each pot.


Next i added some jacquard acid dyes - chestnut, burgundy, aztec gold and spruce in the left pot. Salmon, bright yellow, hot pink and some vermillion in the right. i shook the pots a little just to get the color slightly dispersed.


Next i raded my basement for a few big boxes, and my kitchen for a big roll of aluminum foil and some double-sided tape, to make a sorta really sad white trash/ghetto solar oven. I had help, as you can see.
Then i put the lids on each pot, and wrapped them each in a plastic garbage bag.

Then i hauled the boxes and plastic-wrapped pots out onto my hot hot hot driveway, in the hot hot hot sun. (No worries - the neighbors already think i am insane. this should not alarm them too much more). I guess I'll let them sit for a day or two and see what happens!

Yesterday, a couple of us local fiber-geeks got together and had some fun with silk, wool roving, and some jacquard acid dyes. Shown above is an AMAZING gorgeous silk "cap", dyed by Jill. I cannot wait to see how that spins up!!




the proceedings were carefully monitored by this little fellow. :) he wanted to make sure we didn't get *too* wild and crazy with the fun!!

Terri also played us a cd and video from her son's band, My First Earthquake. Very cool, fun band. suppose we can get them to tour the Midwest?!