WIP Hunt

The pace of crafting has slowed down somewhat over here. My ME/CFS has gone downhill in recent months so my energy levels are pretty low now and I can only manage a limited amount of things on any given day.  Also, as it is such a busy time of the year in the garden, whatever energy I do have has been spent there. But I am nevertheless managing to do a bit of knitting in the evenings and some slow progress is being made on various other fronts.

But rather than wait for some finished and complete work to show you, today I thought I’d go on a hunt with my camera looking for some evidence of whatever Works-In-Progress there are. Here’s what I found during my hunt.

On the living room sofa I found a knitting WIP, a V-necked raglan sleeved T-shirt from undyed linen yarn. I started this last summer, but it has recently come our of its winter hibernation.

On the kitchen counter I found my Peasy cardigan that is nearly there, only one sleeve and the button panels to go. Why it’s in the kitchen I have no idea…

And this is my little sewing room in the attic. As I have never had my own craft room before, this is a great luxury even if the room is so small you can only stand up right in the middle and there’s no room for tall shelves for storage so it is constantly completely stuffed with things. Lets have a closer look at what we can find here…

This is where I am currently making lots and lots of small skeins for the summer dyeing season.

Some of the skeins I have already made can be found on the arm chair. Most of these are fine silk yarn for my embroidery thread collection (yes I do need another stash, in addition to all the other ones I already have). The poster by David Hockney also counts as a WIP as it is waiting to be laminated so that I can hang it on the wall of my dyeing area in the outbuilding

This is my current carding/spinning WIP. I have been blending Shetland wool in various shades of grey, the next step is to blend it with some angora wool. Eventually, hopefully by next winter, it will be turned into a beanie and gloves for hubby.

A few other random things can be found here, for example the results of my silk “paper” making experiment (although I don’t know if it counts as paper given the number of holes in it, but I still like the texture).

And here I have been practising different kinds of embroidery stitches in different kinds of yarns. I started making them very even and neat, but soon I felt I had to abandon such neatness and start playing around, varying the width and length and the overall shape.

Moving on to the garden, here’s my new pride and joy, a brand new border for my dyeing plants. As I need to be able to walk around there to gather the plants, I’ve put some pavings slabs in the middle as stepping stones.

My black hollyhock plants that I grew last year are already growing in the new border, being biennial they should flower this year. I am so looking forward to seeing what kinds of colours I will be able to get from it.

Some of my dye plant seedlings, such as these Black-eyed Susan and Purple Loosestrife seedlings here, are still only germinating now, so they may not be ready to be harvested this year. Judging by the amount of moss on the tray, I may need to fine tune the watering regime…

But my Japanese indigo is doing well, even if only less than half of the seeds germinated and initially the seedlings were very thin and leggy as they didn’t get quite enough light on the windowsill back in March when we had very little sunshine. But they are in the greenhouse propagator now, so they have been growing sturdier.

The tagetes however are growing strongly, so they should definitely produce enough dyeing material later on in the summer.

And tickseed (coreopsis) is doing well too, they are ready to be transplanted very soon. These came from the seeds I gathered from last year’s coreopsis, so I am really chuffed they worked out. There are lots of other trays of seedlings too, but I am sure you’d be bored to tears if I showed all of them (especially as a worrying number of them do not show any sign of life), so we’ll leave them for now…

It’s an Addiction

And this dyeing season, I’m going to need approximately 10 000 sample-sized skeins

Given that this spring has been the second coldest on record, and so far there’s no sign of the weather getting any warmer or sunnier (it’s snowing here even today), my dyeing season hasn’t really got started yet. I dye in an unheated outbuilding which has no window, so it’s not really a place where I fancy hanging around in cold and damp weather. But my dyeing fingers are definitely getting very itchy by now, so I have been using this seasonal delay in getting super organised and prepared.

Last year was my first dyeing year, and I started like every does, full of enthusiasm and no idea what I was doing, and improvising as I went along. But towards the end of the season, I had established a way of working that suits me and was naturally getting more organised about it. I also learned that natural dyeing definitely brings out the inner scientist in me, I like trying to get as many colours from a particular plant as I can, and enjoy experimenting with different mordants and modifiers. And as I am still very much a beginner, there are so many dye plants that I haven’t tried yet, so this year I am trying to grow an even longer list of plants to try, as I wrote here (well as long as my seeds just agree to co-operate and germinate in this cold weather).

This year, having learned the basics, I also want to take my dyeing experiments even further. I want to try new types of materials,  such as silk and cotton, and cotton being a plant fibre of course requires learning about how to mordant it. I also want to try making my own mordants from plants such as willow and rhubarb leaves. So this season, if all goes to plan, in any given dyeing session there will be a lot of more fibre types and several different mordants to take into account.

Although systematic experimentation is a great method for learning about natural dyes, it also does require quite a bit of organisation, not least because you need to have lots of skeins  and those skeins need to be labelled carefully, otherwise you lose track of them very fast.  With wool, if I am trying a new dye plant I normally try to get at least 6 colours per dye and mordant combination: for example when using alum, I’d need skeins for the following combinations

• plain dye colour just using alum
• alum with iron modifier
• alum with acid modifier
• alum with alkaline modifier
• alum, acid and iron
• alum, alkaline and iron

So that’s 6 skeins per mordant, and if I want to try willow and rhubarb mordants, as well as the usual alum and copper, then for any given dye, I’d need at least 24 different skeins. As you can see the amount of skeins you need for this approach can get out of hand very quickly. The only way to make it manageable from a cost point of view would be to use either very small skeins (which take a lot of time to make), or perhaps use small squares of fabric just for sampling purposes. I may well end up using fabric rather than yarn samples as they take less time to prepare, but since I promised my dad I’d dye a nice range of colours for his needlework this year and I also would like some naturally dyed embroidery silks for myself, then I won’t be able to avoid having to make lots and lots of mini skeins.

Last year I remember reading about a dyer who would get all her mordanting done in the early summer while waiting for her dye garden to start producing materials to dye with. I remember thinking, wow, that’s so organised, but I would never be able to manage that, I’d never think of it on time. But obviously this idea has been percolating in my head as recently I have started thinking it might actually be a good idea, especially as some people believe that doing mordanting several weeks if not months ahead of the actual dyeing will improve the results.

So this year I am going to have a go at separating the mordanting process from the dyeing process, which makes sense if I will be working with at least 4 types of mordant for wool and perhaps a few more for the cotton fabrics. And since I am mainly growing my own dyes, then mordanting early in the season definitely fits well into the natural seasonal rhythm of things. It may be a bit dull first, but by the time your garden is bursting with plants, you can just concentrate on dyeing.

And being well prepared may well be the only way I can manage carrying out these grand experimental plans, especially since the dyeing process is physically quite strenuous for me (because of my ME/CFS) even if I keep it simple with using just one mordant and one type of fibre . A long day at the dying workshop just isn’t an option for me, so I need to break down the process into smaller steps and being organised is the only way I can reconcile such grand plans with a limited amount of energy.

But I’m not entirely convinced that I’ll be able to pull it off being so organised and systematic all summer, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if in the end I just ended up chucking random materials into my dye pots, not bother with labelling anything and instantly forgetting what exactly I had been doing.

It’s a bit like gardening. Early in the season you have great plans, and as the season progresses you get more and more overwhelmed with all the seedlings and plants and the amount of work and watering they need. By July, each year I make a solemn vow not to make such big plans ever again. And all winter, I keep thinking “I will resist making big plans, I will resist making big plans, I will resist… “.

Yet, by the time spring comes,  first I get the grand new ideas, then the delusion that this year it will be different, of course I will be able to do all those wonderful things,  because this year I am going to be so much more organised than I have ever managed before. There will be no problems whatsoever…

And so, every single year I end up with plans even grander than the year before. I don’t what it is about me and making over-ambitious plans, I just feel compelled to make them even if I know I already try to do much more than I can possibly manage. Focus and prioritisation just seem way beyond me. And this year, I’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch with my ME, and yet, here I am, completely unable to resist planning for some great new achievements.

And who knows, perhaps this year I will actually succeed.

Bobbins

The craft world is full of mysterious dysfunctions. Some people suffer from Startitis, others from the Second-Sock Syndrome. And all those U.F.Os (UnFinished Objects), surely they are symptoms of that most mysterious dysfunction of all, Losing-One’s-Mojo-itis.

I certainly have my fair share of U.F.Os, but I don’t consider it a huge problem. I like variety and believe in following my inspiration, and not forcing myself to toil on a project that I don’t feel like doing. Crafts are a passion, a joyful hobby, not a duty. If something doesn’t inspire, just move on, leave it until it does.

So to me at least, a U.F.O is just a project whose time has not yet come (although I do not deny that, occasionally, it’s a good idea to see what you can find in your craft baskets and try to finish some of them. January is often a good time for this, when you are in a mood for some worthy activities and need to prove to yourself that you, despite all the evidence to the contrary, actually have some self-discipline and the will power to finish a project).

My spinning basket is full of these Projects-Whose-Time-Has-Not-Yet-Come (or PWTHNYCs, which I do admit is not as catchy as UFO). But there is a reason for this, and it is a fairly rational one.

Spinning to me is such a soothing and relaxing activity that I always have some wool on the go. Often I don’t even spin for a specific project, I just spin. I know it would probably be better if you had a specific use in mind for the wool before you start. That way, you can try out different approaches, sample and determine the best way to proceed. And I do that, too, when I need to. But often my spinning is not that rational and goal-oriented. Spinning is something I do if I feel too tired to think about anything else, or feel the need for some crafty therapy if I am in a grumpy mood (of course I spin in good moments too).  In those tired or grumpy moments, I just feel the need to spin something, no matter what exactly it is. The less I have to think the better.

So if I don’t already have a project on the go when the I-Must-Spin-NOW moment comes, I grab the nearest wool that inspires me at that moment and just start spinning. And often the first important decision – how to spin the wool – is not such a big decision at all: the wool itself, and the form it comes in, typically suggests a good general approach. If it is long fiber, and comes in a top form, I’ll do worsted in short draw. And a good supply of ready prepared top in some beautiful colour is always a good thing to have on these moments. But I love long draw spinning, and whenever I have short enough fibre, I will do that. I aim for twist that sort of looks about right for that wool. Not very scientific at all (no matter what Anne Field in Spinning Beyond Basics recommends).

But when it comes to plying, you need to commit to some sort of an outcome: do you want two, three (or even more) plies? And for that, it definitely helps if you know what you are going to use the yarn for. So, quite often, my spinning projects enter a period of hibernation at this point.

As a result, I have a basket full of bobbins that have some singles yarn that is waiting to be plied. And I am happy to let them wait until the right time comes and I know what I want to do with them. So, you see, they are just PWTHNYCs waiting for the right time.

This approach does mean you need lots of bobbins, and we all know wooden ones are very expensive. So it was necessary for me to invest in a bobbin winder and buy some plastic weaving bobbins for storage. But yarn stored this way takes less room than a finished skein, so it is not a bad way of storing your stash.

Here’s a little tour of what can be found in my basket of bobbins at the moment:

singles from a painted Falkland top. Ideal for spring, I love these colours so I am sure I will get round to plying these soon

This is Shetland wool in the Moorit colour. Unusually, I already know what this is going to be (a lace shawl)

My first silk spinning experiment using Tussah silk top. I need to ply this into both 2-ply and 3-ply yarn and knit some samples.

I’m pretty certain this is grey Shetland, but why on two different bobbins??

And these are just some remains of a sock yarn I spun for my mum. (note to self: must really do something to free up these bobbins…)

And this, I have no idea what this is…

New Plans for My Dye Garden

With my trusted dyeing books and a few packets of seeds, I’m ready for the new season in the garden!

It has been a cold and grey spring here so far. We had two wonderfully sunny days last week, the crocuses and bees were out at last, but unfortunately it didn’t last.  This week the winter is back we had 10cm of snow on the ground this morning. But it’s prime seed sowing season nevertheless, and it has been keeping me busy in the last few weeks.

To avoid the inevitable spring rush, I was super-organised in the autumn and ordered my seeds already then. And yet, as I have been going through those seeds now, I realised that some of my seeds should have been sown already in the autumn, and quite a few need a period of cold before they germinate. I can’t believe it – I’m behind already and I have only just started!!

Last year was my first year of growing dye plants, and this year I have an even bigger list of plants I want to try to grow. I have a new border dedicated to dye plants, which is pretty exciting. As well as useful, I want this border to be ornamental too so I have chosen plants that look pretty as well as are suitable for dyeing. I am also going to scatter a few of these multi-functional plants  in my existing ornamental flower borders (just to have even more room for them!).

So here is the plan for dye plants that I am going to grow this year. Just for my own benefit so that I remember what I should be doing, I’ve grouped the plants according to sowing time and method.

Seeds that need an early sowing:

• Japanese Indigo (Polygonum tinctorium). After my success with woad last year, I’m very excited to try the Japanese indigo this year.This needs a long season especially if you want the plants to set seed. It is not hardy so I have started these in-house, soon I will move them to heated propagators in my unheated greenhouse and hope to keep them going that way until late May when I will plant them out.
• Dyer’s Broom (Genista tinctoria), this will need an exposure to cold before germinating. After sowing, I kept the seeds in the house for 2 weeks, then put them outside for the chill treatment. And I already have a few plants in pots that I managed to grow last year, but never had the time to plant somewhere permanent.
• Purple loosestrife (Lythrum Salicaria). This is a pretty native plant with purple flowers that is ornamental as well as suitable for dyeing. It needs damp soil, which luckily we have. We have a pond in the garden as well as very sticky clay, so by the pond it is often completely soggy. Seeds should be sown in winter in a coldframe.
• Goldenrod (I’m trying Solidago canadensis ‘Golden Baby’). Seeds should be sown in late winter/early spring.
• Black-eye Susan (Rudbeckia fuldiga ‘Goldsturm‘). Sowing in early spring in a cold frame.

Spring sowing (seeds to be sown in spring in a coldframe or in an unheated greenhouse):

• Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum). This is a very tall perennial that butterflies adore. It can also be used for dyeing. Seeds can be sown in a cold frame or unheated greenhouse in the spring.
• Medowsweet (Filipendula Ulmaria). Another multifuctional plant that needs damp conditions ideally by a pond.
• Tickseed (Coreopsis tinctoria). A perfect multi-functional plant that I grew last year. It looks pretty and gives a nice range of yellow, oranges and brick red as I wrote here.
• Purple basil (I am trying variety ‘Purple Ruffles’). Not a hardy plant so needs to started indoors. My soil is not ideal for basil, but I am going to try it anyway, and perhaps keep some in pots.
• Red Perilla. This is an oriental cooking vegetable that is decorative too. The seeds only germinate after their dormancy is broken. Apparently keeping the seeds in a fridge for 1-3 months before sowing might do the trick. So I am putting them into the fridge now and sow a bit later on in the spring.

Direct Sowing (March to May):

• Bronze fennel. A truly multi-functional plant, very ornamental, used in cooking and also dyeing. The seedling of fennel do not transplant well so it’s best sown directly in late spring.
• Woad (Isatis tinctoria). Last year I was more successful with my woad when sown directly (the seeds I tried to propagate in the greenhouse just didn’t germinate). It’s a hungry plant so needs extra fertiliser once it gets going.
• Weld (Reseda luteola). Another one that I just could not get to germinate in the greenhouse last year, so this year I am going to try sowing it directly in a dry gravelly ground next to the south facing wall of our garage – lets see if I am more successful this way.

Plants that I already started last year:

• Dyer’s Chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria). This is a perennial plant so it should flower again this year.
• Black Hollyhock (Althaea rosea var. Nigra). As I have been reading about the dyeing experiments by Pia from Colour Cottage with this plant, I am so happy I already started some plants last year. It’s a biennial so mine should flower this year.
• Rhubarb. I planted quite a few rhubarb plants in my kitchen garden last year. As well as the stems that provide nice puddings, the leaves (which are poisonous) can be used as a mordant. The roots you can use as dye. But you are supposed to let them grow 2-3 years before starting to harvest them so I may need leave mine alone this year.
• Buckthorn (Rhamnus species). This is a hedging plant, and I am going to fill some gaps in our hedge with some plants that I bought last year and have been growing on in pots.

Shrubs

• Elder (Sambucus nigra). I’m going to plant both the green and black varieties in my garden this year. The flowers and berries can be used in cooking and the leaves and the flowers can be used in dyeing.
• Blackthorn, “Sloe” (Prunus spinosa). There’s a wild sloe bush in the forest near our house the berries of which we’ve used to make wonderful sloe gin but I’d like a sloe bush in my own garden too.

And in case I won’t have enough on the list already, I really would like to try these too:

• Dahlia
• Staghorn sumac (useful as a mordant too)
• and some hardy variety of eucalyptus

Now that I am looking at this, I’m realising it’s quite a list. I am always way too over-enthusiastic and ambitious with my garden plans and by April I know I am in trouble. Despite good intentions this happens every year, so I’m sure this year won’t be an exception. But being sensible  is not fun, is it?

Gloves for Dad

For last Father’s Day, which in Finland was in the late autumn, I decided I’d knit my dad a pair of gloves from some home spun yarn. Given that I only got this idea about one week before Father’s Day, I knew I was already hopelessly late to get it done on time, but little did I realise the gloves would finally be ready in February, months after the event. But here they are, finally.

I wish I could post a little sample of the yarn I spun, because it was the softest loveliest yarn I’ve ever made –  an angora & Shetland blend which was a bit tricky to card but absolutely beautiful to spin and knit. And the resulting fabric is just gorgeous, warm and soft, easily compares with cashmere, I promise I am not exaggerating (at least not much).

Before I started carding and spinning, I consulted the good ladies of the Online Guild of Spinners, Dyers and Weavers about what is the best approach to spinning angora. Here’s what they advised:

• angora felts if you as much as look at it the wrong way, so it’s better not to wash it before spinning. Good angora should not be too dirty even in its raw state because the rabbit, if well cared for, looks after its own fur (if the fibre is not clean you need to change your supplier). Mine was very clean, so I was happy to leave the washing until after it had been spun.
• only buy angora from a reputable supplier, as apparently there can be animal welfare issues with commercial angora (a bit like battery hens, they are sometimes kept in very small cages).
• a good companion for angora is Shetland wool, as it is about the same length and has enough crimp to make a bouncy yarn even after it has been blended with angora (which is more like silk in that it’s fine and non-stretchy as it has no crimp).
• the best way to blend wool and angora is to make a layered sandwich, with a thin layer of wool at the bottom, angora in the middle and a thin layer of wool at the top and then feed this sandwich into a carder

Carding this blend was the tricky bit. Initially I had fed in wool and angora into my carder individually, and the angora would just get stuck in the smaller drum. After a bit of trial and error, I realised the fibre sandwich needs to be made before feeding it into the carder, and not try to feed the fibres separately. Even so, if the sandwich contained too much angora, it would just get stuck in the smaller drum, so the angora fibre definitely needed to be well covered with wool before feeding it in. I took each batt several times through the carder, each time adding a bit more angora and that seemed to be the easiest way increase the angora content of the batt. This way I managed to blend perhaps 25-30% angora to 70-75% Shetland wool.

Given that I was going to knit men’s gloves with this yarn, I decided a medium grey would be an ideal understated colour, made from a mix of black and very light grey Shetland. As you can see in the picture the angora fibre was a most beautiful shade of pale grey (if I was good enough spinner I’d definitely try to spin it on its own).

The yarn looks tweedy with some black and light grey bits in it – I didn’t actually intend this to happen, it is just the way the fibres behaved, but I quite like the effect as it created some subtle interest in the otherwise very plain yarn. I’ve noticed that whenever I spin Shetland there will be little nepps in the yarn, so perhaps that’s just its character?

And the knitting pattern – it was the free “Modified Army Gloves” pattern you can find in Ravelry. It turned out to be a good basic glove pattern, plain and classic, just what I was after. The gauze of my yarn was slightly different from the one used in the pattern, so I had to do some maths to adjust. I also knitted the fingers a bit longer than it was recommended in the pattern, as they seemed a bit on the short side. But otherwise, it was pretty straight-forward and I am sure to use this pattern again (particularly as I too would now like a luxury pair of angora-Shetland gloves).

Crocus Bud Shawl, second time

My second version of the Crocus Bud shawl is finally ready (the pattern can be found here). I made it quite long so that there would be enough of it to wrap around my shoulders, and in the end it took about 1200m of yarn, that’s one and half skeins of Natural Dye Company’s 100% silk lace weight yarn.

Although it has taken me quite a while to crochet it, it’s funny that I almost don’t remember doing it. That’s because the pattern is so simple I always crochet’ed it while watching tv, and I’ve obviously been so absorbed by whatever I was watching that I hardly noticed I was crocheting too. I am all for mindful crafting, and really focusing on what you are doing, for example when I am spinning, but I must admit this project definitely wasn’t an example of such mindful and meditative concentration.

The yarn being 100% silk the character of the shawl is very different from the woolly version which was soft and airy, and slightly fluffy. This time, with such a crisp yarn you obviously get excellent stitch definition, and the silky yarn is very drapey too.

Beads

Although I rarely wear any jewellery except for special occasions, the inner girl in me (or is it an inner magpie?) just can’t resist beads. Especially ones made of semi-precious stones. It amazes me that nature comes up with such wonderful colours and patterns in a mineral form. I know it is entirely irrational, but like shoes or handbags, a girl just can never have too many beads (or buttons, fabrics and yarns, if you are the crafty sort).

So on the occasional idle moments when I can’t be bothered to do anything else, and I have already looked through new Ravelry patterns and Pinterest pictures, I might browse through a few bead shops on the internet (like Kernowcraft, Bluestreak Beads or Beads Direct) and admire their offerings. Until recently I had resisted buying anything from them, as I knew it would be dangerous and open the flood gates, and yet another stash of craft materials would be created.

But I do have one sister, and three sisters-in-law, as well as a mother, a mother-in-law and various other female relatives, so it is always good to have present ideas that appeal to the female audience. So in November I decided to give in and have a go at bead making.

Although theoretically a simple thing, I did need to buy a book about it as there were so many bits and pieces and tools on the websites that I didn’t quite know what exactly I need. But once I had read a few chapters of this little book, it all seemed pretty straight forward.

And it was a lot of fun: quick and easy and very nice results to show for it. The beads I made as Christmas presents really went down well. Compared to making knitted presents you really are working on super-sonic speeds with bead making. It’s almost too quick: as it doesn’t take very long at all to make one necklace, and so you just want to keep making them.

And very soon you do discover that it is in fact possible for a girl to have too many beads (which probably explains why there are so many jewellery makers on Etsy and various craft shows). If you start making them on regular basis, you either make lots and lots of presents or else you are going to have to start selling them. I have no intention of becoming a jewellery maker, but as an occasional diversion from my textile crafts I can see it being a lot of fun.