Category Archives: Fibre preparation

March 25, 2015 · 11:17 am

Seasonal happenings: Autumn

The weather is turning toward autumn. Leaves harvested last season are being converted into new forms. This linen collar came apart with some effort.

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Here it is in the process of becoming a project bag. Along with prunus prints…

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And maple prints from leaves I found over someone else’s fence!

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I’ve been making the best of the remaining sunny days, making soy milk mordant.

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This is a task best done when it is neither too hot nor too cold.  Too hot can leave your soy milk smelling nasty!

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The making doesn’t take warm weather, but multiple dips and dryings are greatly helped by sunshine.

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My friends held a big passata making day.  Many tomatoes pulped, skins and seeds removed.

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Many beer bottles repurposed.  By the end of the day, they were gone and all kinds of jars and bottles were pressed into use.

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And then, for the long, slow heating.

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Ruby saltbush is still fruiting.

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Several colours of leaves and of fruit.

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I have been taking advantage of the season to collect for next spring’s planting.

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I even managed to collect some more bladder saltbush seeds. Autumn is a lovely season!

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February 26, 2015 · 12:13 pm

Fibre preparation

There has been a breakout of fibre preparation.  I got to the end of all my carded fibre.  So I started going through what I had washed and otherwise ready to spin.  Grey corriedale dyed with Eucalyptus Nicholii: before…

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…after.

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Polwarth dyed with indigo.  Apparently overlooked last time I was carding…

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Here it is ready to spin.  Just one random batt.

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Then there was some angora (rabbit)–just a handful.  A Guild member was gifted this at the Royal Show last year by a rabbit breeder and since she couldn’t spin, I offered to dye it for spin it for her.  I dyed it prior to the workshop I ran along with a huge batch of fibres for the workshop participants.

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It was reeeeally short, and there was not very much.  So I carded it into some natural white polwarth.  Tweedy angora flecks?

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I managed to spin it into a singles before I went to Guild, then plied it up for her on the night.  Here’s a rough and ready photo.  She was delighted.  She is a tapestry weaver, so I feel sure this will find its way into a tapestry in due course!

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January 23, 2015 · 12:45 pm

More workshop preparation: batts, batts and more batts!

I spent a lot of hours recently creating batts for my spinning workshop.  I had all kinds of bits and bobs, some gifted from Guildies, some fleece washed and (sometimes) dyed right here at home, some from here and there and all over the place.  Even recycled sari silk.

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Batts based on natural undyed polwarth; batts based on indigo-dyed polwarth; batts based on eucalyptus-dyed corriedale…

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And then some based on merino and crossbred roving from the Guild trading table in all manner of wild colours.  The pile kept growing….

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Textured spinning is the goal, so in went silk noil, silk roving, silk yarn scraps, viscose, sparkly bits, alpaca locks, mohair, you name it!  Phew.  There’s a lot to do to get ready 🙂

 

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January 19, 2015 · 12:44 pm

Unnatural dyeing

I have been preparing for a spinning workshop at the Guild, and the time came to dye materials for the class.  I weighed and measured my merino braids and soaked them overnight.

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I used a cold pad batch dye made in my state for this process, so I mixed up dye the night before and then put damp braids into plastic bags ready to be dyed… and poured on the colours.

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Then–silk hankies and silk noil got the treatment.

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My many bags of fibre and dye went into the sun for a 44C day or two before being rinsed.  My stash of plastic bags unsuitable for other re-uses (and ditto for rubber bands and all kinds of saved-up stuff)–came into handy at last, along with virtually every bucket I possess!  The silk hankies and noil came out rather pastel shades, which was a real surprise.

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Some of my own silk cocoons got a dip in the dye too…

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And the braids came out wonderfully well.  Certainly more than enough fibre here for my workshop participants to be able to revel in playing with colour, texture and technique.

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January 15, 2015 · 12:34 pm

The after party: indigo exhaust

The indigo vats got another look with a view to exhausting them a couple of days after the recent big event.  I prepared a little more fabric (ah, holidays).

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The fructose vat seemed in order but I thought it might be exhausted.

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The first dip confirmed this. Well, we’ve been discussing this in the comments… but this was the conclusion I drew on the day.  The fabric was very pale even when wet.

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Reheating and adjusting Ph and adding more colour run remover produced spectacular results on the colour run remover vats.

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I adjusted the Ph for one vat to suit cellulose fibres and re-dipped my calico samples several times.

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Happy results!

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The other I adjusted to suit wool.  In with some pale, spotted polwarth (cream and tan).

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During…

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After…

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There still seemed to be colour left in the vat so I entered a lot of grey crossbred fleece.  The last, overlooked bag of Macchiato the Mongrel.  I think he was named a mongrel partly because, you know, crossbred.  And partly because he ate the neighbour’s pea crop and had to be found a new home.  Thus capturing both meanings of this word in Australia.

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I’ve been spinning the deep blue result with delight since.  This is quite a coarse fleece, but I have just loved spinning every bit of it, and one of Macchiato’s humans brought me another fleece a while back… so once I’ve washed it, I can go again with all that pleasure.  Most of the first fleece went to a friend of my beloved’s who wanted to knit a jumper from it.  I don’t know whether she ever did, though!

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January 3, 2015 · 10:40 am

Some endings

Before the end of the year, we had a trip to Melbourne and I finally finished some socks I’ve been carrying around for quite a while. the triumphant moment when I grafted them occurred in a wonderful tea house our niece took us to.  She humours me as much as her aunt, so I recorded the moment for posterity (that would really mean, your viewing pleasure).

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I should admit that I don’t drink tea, so was very surprised to find myself relishing an iced peppermint and liquorice tea.  It was a lovely afternoon.  I have also finished the last of 2014’s (or was it 2013’s?) indigo dyed wool.  The last was polwarth.  I seem to recall I ran out of patience, which is always bad when you are handling wet wool, worse with fine wool, and possible only made still worse if also dealing with indigo.  Let me further confess, some felting resulted, which will not surprise other spinners.  This was the last of it, and I decided to just card it up and spin it lumps and all.  I have been drawing batts through a diz to make a roving.

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Rolled up roving:

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Spinning in progress, including lumps as promised! I feel sure there are more felted slippers in my future…

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So, here they are.  The last 3 skeins… all different shades, some first dyed with coreopsis or osage orange, and some involving quite a bit better spinning and plying than others!

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December 28, 2014 · 4:21 pm

Bark dyes

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What with all the bark collecting there’s been… there have been some bark dye pots too.

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I  smash the bark up small, the better to create a nice, strong dye.

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After heating, I get something more like this…

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For some reason the light out the back is making things look less spectacular rather than more spectacular (as is my camera’s usual tendency) as we head into summer–but as you can see I have scaled up to colour separation… grading the colours and carding them separately.  One of my friends put me onto this strategy and I just love it.  She’s very clever about colour and I feel lucky to have the benefit of her wisdom.

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And then carding…

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And more carding… and finally spinning, which is underway.  I hope your holiday season has treated you well and the new year is looking promising.  I think this kind of preparation, time consuming and sometimes boring as it is, always makes me think that promising things are in the future, and this is a year in which the collective project at our place involves focusing on optimism.   I will gratefully accept tips!

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October 29, 2014 · 5:30 pm

Free at last!

So many moths!  I spent time at wormspit and learned this one is female, with yellow eggs visible through her skin.

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They just kept emerging!

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Many, many moths.

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Last night the four friends at our house considered whether the silk moths should stay indoors or be released in the garden, where they can have sunlight, air and plants but may become someone else’s dinner.

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The garden won. For the rest of their short lives, when they will not even eat… They will be in the garden.

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We sat awhile appreciating their beauty and fragility.

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October 23, 2014 · 9:05 am

Week 8 Silkworm update

It has been a week of illness in our household, so this is a late update.  As I write this morning, there is just one silkworm left munching.  The rest are safely cocooned or in the process of creating cocoons.  On Tuesday, there were only a few more.  Mercifully, a friend at the Guild gave me a bag of mulberry leaves last week–bless her generous heart.

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I can confirm that I don’t know why some cocoons are golden yellow and some are cool white.  I marked their tubes as they went in during the last week, and there is no obvious relationship between the cream silkworms on the one hand and the stripy ones on the other–and cocoon colour.

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Meanwhile, the garden is a riot of green vegetables and herbs running to seed (chicory, lettuce, kale, dill and parsley)  and flowers.  There are at least three varieties of poppy blooming, and bees rolling around gleefully in the bowl of the larger flowers. 2014-10-20 08.54.46

 

The pelargonium is even more glorious than last year, too and some of the iris tubers I bought at the Guild turn out to be deep purple (I thought they were all yellow)… so my thoughts are turning to more preservation dyeing.  Petal collecting has commenced!

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October 13, 2014 · 4:24 pm

Week 7 silkworm update

Oh. My. Goodness.  Pampering these no-longer-so-little pets multiple times a day as they munch through their leaves is a little on the dull side 7 weeks in.

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Happily, there are less mouths to feed every day now. The picture above shows all remaining silkworms.

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The big ones are seriously big! Some are still creating their cocoons.  It is fascinating watching them start from the outside and gradually vanish into a home of their own making.

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Some have finished the job and the cocoons are the same mix of yellow and white as last year for no discernible reason.

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And… there are quite a few!

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