NATURALLY DYED SAMPLE PIECE

I wrote this ages ago and hadn't got around to posting - I'm trying to get a business started and all sorts of other things have got in the way of blogging - I shall try to be more regular now - so much has been going on I've got loads to pass on.

As I mentioned in my previous post a group of us get together every year and go down to West Dean (near Chichester) where we demonstrate natural dyeing at the Wholly Herbs open

 weekend. Each year we come away with a plethera of little woolly samples all dyed in those lovely shades that only come from natural dyeing.

The way we do it is to pre-mordant and wind all the skeins - 5 skeins to a batch - mordanted with alum, chrome, copper, tin and one left plain to be after bathed with iron. Each batch is put into a dye bath and we consequently get 5 colours from each one.

After the show the skeins are wound into balls, then the balls are passed to me to turn into a mini afghan - which is then shown at next years show.

This years finished afghan

Previous years

DYEING DAY

Last Saturday (actually it's a few weeks back now - pre Irish break) our guild held a natural dyeing day at one of our members houses. The weather was a little unpredictable so, instead of dyeing and spinning in the garden, we were housed in two barns - one for dyeing and one for spinning, chatting, eating and general conviviality. There was a good turn out and we also had visitors from the Mid Herts guild which was really nice.

We arrived in the morning and got ourselves settled in with tea and coffee and some wonderful home made biscuits - yumm. Then the mordant baths were set up and we all put various bits and pieces into each bath - four mordants were used - alum, chrome, copper and tin. These were then left to work and we went off and spun or knitted or socialised or all three. I had a sock knitting lesson - which was great fun and I may have a new obsession gripping me now!

After lunch various dye baths were brewed including coccineal, cota, bracket fungus (don't know which one) hollyhock, comfrey, coreopsis, dyers chamomile and maybe a few others - actually I wasn't paying proper attention as I picked three dye baths only, and then went back to sock knitting and yattering. I had some super wash merino and silk fleece which I split and put into the coreopsis and cota dye baths and I also had some alpaca, silk and wool fleece which I put into the cochineal dye bath. In the afternoon the tea and coffee came around again - this time with the most amazing cakes - I was briefly sent to heaven with a chocolate muffin stuffed with cream and jam.

I wasn't totally happy with the coreopsis samples, so I've over dyed one piece with some ancient dye bath which I'd had in the garden - I think it may have been madder - it was a little pungent and it came up a warm brown which I was quite pleased with - I'm planning to over dye another couple of bits - hopefully with a very fresh madder dyebath - perhaps next weekend when we get back from Ireland - I'm hoping that I'll get a stronger orange - can only try.

sadly I have no pics of the actual day as my batteries were out of power - lack of planning and forethought there!

I'd hoped to post this earlier but life is a little busy right now - my in-laws have just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary so it's been a very family oriented time with my niece and nephews over from Canada and brother & sister in law over from Paris and the celebrating and general getting together. Then my own father will be visiting later this week, in order to go to the cricket at the oval with my hubby. All of this means that housework needs to take precedence over spinning (and blogging) - how dull!

TOUR DE FLEECE - END OF FIRST WEEK

Well I'm pleased to say that I have spun every day so far - by Wednesday I'd finished the Carnivale yarn and on the same day received a little wrist distaff that I'd ordered in my last Etsy frenzy. So, obviously I had to have a little fiddle with that - more about that later.

Yesterday I started spinning some Persian cat fibre that I've had lurking about the place for a while. It starts off looking not much better than a fur ball and ends up looking and feeling wonderful - in fact I wish you all could feel it because it's indescribably soft and lovely. I've decided to carry on with this for a while, as I've some vague plan of making a scarf from it (yes I know I always make scarves - I like making scarves - in fact I like wearing scarves)!

Tomorrow will be exciting - we have a guild meeting at one of the members houses where we're going to be mordanting and dyeing ... stuff - whatever we bring. There'll be plenty of chat - also I'm going to be having a sock making lesson and hopefully spinning a bit too. We're all praying for decent weather - it's so much nicer when these things can happen in the garden.

FLEECE TO GARMENT DAY AT GRANGE BARN

Last Saturday the Mid Essex Guild held a fleece to garment day at Grange Barn near Coggeshall - the same event had been held last year and was a great success. It was a cold and miserable morning when I left to make my way there and I had that sinking feeling you get when it's an event open to the public and the weather has turned on you.

Upon arrival it was clear that fewer people were there than at the previous year's event and then Leslie - their Chairman - announced that the Lavenham guild had been called upon by the National Trust to demonstrate at another event so we were a team down as well. The upshot of all this was that a decision was made that due to lack of numbers we wouldn't attempt the scarves that we'd done the previous year - instead we were all to make 9" squares for a project by Oxfam to make a huge patchwork blanket to be sent to the government as a patchwork petition - as a protest against the number of women who die unnecessarily in childbirth every year -


see http://www.oxfam.org.uk/generationwhy/blog/2008/04/patchwork-protest.html-



These would later be broken up and sold in Oxfam stores to raise money. We were all up for this as it's such a worthy project so off we went in our little teams and started spinning the beautiful dyed fuzz that was available for us - all provided and prepared by one of Mid Essex's members.

Grange Barn is an amazing building and it has a wonderfully calm atmosphere - it's a great place to spin, especially with like minded people with whom to chat while working. There are a couple of old carts and some weird and wonderful farm equipment as well as various displays about the history of the building and others that are similar.


The day gradually warmed up - the atmosphere was already very warm and welcoming - and as time went on more people arrived - some to join in and some to watch. It was nice to catch up with another guilds news and swap tips and stories. There were some fantastic displays that various members of the Mid Essex Guild had set out Jackie Crook had a table full of luscious samples of all her natural dyeing plus signed copies of her book for sale. Jill Goodwin was there with more naturally dyed samples. There was a truly fabulous selection of hand made items for sale at ridiculous prices - truly made for the love and not the money! I bought my first christmas pressy here - a beautiful little bag made with deliciously soft and silky angora - the fibre was also for sale. I also saw two items of clothing that I WANTED..... a grey angora sweater which turned out to be slightly too small and a wrap around serape thingumy in amazing reds (made by Lesley - see below, also her lovely blue woolly).

photo of serape by Lesley Ottewell


Becky Poynter of http://www.yarnsmith.co.uk/ was there and being very helpful with us novice knitters. Rather fortuitously she had a selection of bamboo knitting needles for sale - which we needed for the squares as they required a different gauge to the scarves that we had been preparing to knit. I actually borrowed Hazel's needles, she then borrowed Hillary's needles and Hillary went and bought some bamboo needles from Becky!

There was also a display from Melford Alpacas - the fleece in the middle of the table was the softest I'd ever felt - I just wanted to make a nest in it! There was quite a selection of yarns and fibres available from super super fine to moderately coarse for felting. We were told that alpaca fibre is non-allergenic which I didn't know previously.

Oh gosh there was lots more to see and so many people to talk to - it's amazing that we got any work done at all. We did though - in our little group only Hilary finished her square - through sheer bloody mindedness - she was still working whilst we were packing up around her! I've almost finished mine - I need to put a border on it as it's not quite 9". There were a few squares handed in towards the end of the day - by the quicker knitters (or maybe they spent less time nattering and more time focusing on the job at hand!) - well done to all those who finished.


It turned out, once again, to be a wonderful day - full of interest and we were made very welcome - bring on next year's fleece to garment day!

WHOLLY HERBS AT WEST DEAN

Every year in May our guild is invited down to West Dean Gardens to demonstrate natural dying at their Wholly Herbs weekend. This was our 4th year there and four of us (plus one hubby) went 'down south' for the weekend - full of anticipation for another two days of playing with fibre and yarn.

The first of the two days was fairly grey and misgog and consequently quiet - We had a good day though with some pleasing results - in particular we were delighted with the rich, warm oranges and rusty colours on the batch of yarns that came out of the coreopsis dye bath.

There is a lot of preparation done in advance of the show, growing dye plants to sell, preparing kits for people to try spinning and dying, and skeining wool and mordanting it ready to be dyed at the show. One of our members skeined 30 sets of skeins, 5 in a batch mordanted with - alum, chrome, copper and tin plus one un-mordanted which we afterbath with iron. This means that we put 5 skeins into each dye bath and get 5 different colours out of each single dye bath.

The second day was a sunny spring day and there were a lot more people many of whom were very well informed and extremely interested. We also started an indigo vat on the second day and dyed several batches of un-mordanted wool yarn and fibre - and a pair of cotton trousers!

Among the dyes used were Avocado skins, weld, coreopsis, madder, rooibosh, daffodils, cow parsley, nettle, hopi black sunflower seeds, logwood, yorkshire gold tea, dyers chamomile, rhubarb root, juniper berries, dried lavender and several others that I can't call to mind.

I now have quite a bit of work to do as it is my job to turn all those skeins into a sampler for next years show - I crochet them up into 5 colour medallions which become, when joined, a sort of mini throw to go on our show table - the first two years I used a hexagonal patten from the harmony crochet book - last year, and probably this year too, I used a square pattern.

This year I thought about things in advance and got some fibre lined up ready mordanted with alum in 10g batches to go in some of the dye baths. I also had some un-mordanted fibre for the indigo vat. We achieved some lovely colours in both yarn and fibre and had a generally good time talking to people and visiting the other stands. It's also nice to meet up with people that we've seen in previous years - it's getting to be quite a little community in it's own right -in fact I'm already looking forward to next year.

EQUIPMENT - DROP SPINDLES

There are many different styles of drop spindles and a warning should be issued here - once you've mastered drop spindling there will be a temptation to COLLECT lots of them! I said, when I started, that I wasn't going to do that - but I'm up to 4 and I've had my eye on a few seen in Spin.Off and on the internet - just yesterday I saw a couple of gorgeous ones on Etsy (Oh no I can feel another obsession coming on)!

A starting point if you've never spun and would like to have a go is to buy or make a CD spindle - these are very light so for a more experienced spinner are not so easy to use. However if it's too light some blu-tac or other maleable material could be pressed around the edge to give more weight here - having more weight at the edge makes a spindle spin for longer due to cetrifugal force (apparently). I will try to find a site with instructions or where these are sold.



My most recent addition is a (possibly) Saxon spindle whorl - which doesn't yet have a shaft - it's carved stone - very pretty and supprisingly heavy for it's wee size - it weighs 15 grammes (1/2 oz) I can't wait to spin with it - have to find a wood turner first.....

My favourite spindle was a fourtieth birthday pressy - it's a Golding Ring Spindle. It spins forever and is an absolute joy to work with - it's a top whorl spindle which I think is more stable and easier to spin with than a bottom whorl one. I'm currently spinning some lovely caramel Alpaca fibre that I bought in Norwich during the Norwich & Norfolk Artists Open Studios.



My first ever spindle was a simple wooden one (bottom whorl) made by one of our Guild members. I paid very little for it except that having bought it I was instantly volunteered to demonstrate at a show in Harlow - Gosh you learn quickly when people are expectantly watching & waiting for your words of wisdom! Truth to tell it was almost as much drop as spindle that day but I did spin a sizable quantity of Black Sheep fleece that I'd been given and I learned and even began to enjoy drop spinning.



My second spindle is made of polymer clay with cute little sheep on it - I found it at West Dean's Wholly Herbs Show (Our guild demonstrates natural dying there once a year and a fellow stall holder was selling them) It's small and light and fits in a pocket - great for spinning on the go.

Sites for drop spindles:


Golding
http://www.dropspindle.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=106

Etsy shop - butterfly girl designs
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5207884&section_id=5123666

glass drop spindles
http://www.glasspens.com/glass-spindles.htm

Woolly Designs - with lambs, alpacas, rabbits........

http://www.woollydesigns.com/spindles/fancy.htm

how to make your own
http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/make-dropspin.shtml

how to use a drop spindle
http://www.handspinning.com/lollipops/spininst.htm

video - spinning basics by Abby Franquemont
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drXid5cT0y8