Three of 16 skeins.
The start of my cabled afghan.
I can’t wait to get started!
Stay tuned.
Category: Dyeing
A Bit of Dyeing and A Bit of Art
It's that sad ritual of late summer — the beginning of another school year. Our two youngest started on Friday — we have two more to return, a week apart, to school up north. In the middle of shopping for clothes and packing, I've managed to steal away a few quiet moments for art.
A long-forgotten back order of roving showed up in the mail a few weeks ago and I've been itching to dye it. An early Sunday, with no one else up, proved to be just the solution for that. I decided to dye some complimentary rovings, using the same base colors, thinking that perhaps when it was spun it could be used together somehow. I've dyed (actually, am dyeing as the last bits are cooking now) about 40 ounces total, both superfine Merino and Blue Faced Leicester, and can't wait for the final results.
While roving was marinating in dye this morning, I found some time to play with a yard sale find — this charming little frozen charlotte head. She is currently gracing my skein winder, although I'm not sure that it will be her permanent home. She has such a serious, demure little expression.
Charlotte watched over me while I worked on a canvas I've been playing with. I very rarely work in this large of a format, but I wanted to play with textures on a larger piece. This piece went through a very colorful background texturizing stage, which I've now glazed over with white. I have no idea where it's going, but thought it might be fun to share the process. I'm sorry I didn't get a photo of the earlier colorful stage as well.
You can see a little bit of the earlier incarnation in the upper left corner.
One fringe benefit of taking the kids back is lots of time while flying and settling in to knit. I'll be taking a couple of squares of Ellie's quilt along with me, and am trying to decide on a larger project to bring along — probably the Far Away So Close shawl. I'll share the progress along the road.
A Bag of Hand-Dyed Roving
It looks so pretty, all packaged up in a little drawstring bag with a tag so it can be returned back home after it's spun into yarn.
I couldn't resist sharing a picture of it before I put it in the mail. I can't wait to see the yarn it's going to put into. The Baby Alpaca seems to be a very long, but extraordinarily soft, draft fiber. I bet it's going to make a lovely yarn!
Dyeing Alpaca Roving
I saw this gorgeous handspun yarn on sale today. It wasn't really enough for any of the projects I have in mind, but it looked like it was so beautifully spun that I was unable to resist an offering for a "your fiber, my spinning wheel" slot. Although this appears to be a brand new spinner, or at least new to offering her yarn for sale, it was too beautiful to resist.
So, I'm spending some time tonight with this.
This is some Baby Alpaca roving that I've been saving for an extra special use. I've got about 13 ounces of it, and decided to dye it in the old Elliebelly Melted Crayon colorway, so I could have some special yarn to use for Miss Ellie's fall sweater. I can't wait to see the results!
Studio Sunday
Among the joys of a rainy three day weekend is having a lazy studio Sunday.
I'm spending some time dyeing; but as you can see, this one is a surprise for now. Any guesses?
The multi-blue square I've been working on for the knitted Barn Raising Quilt is finished. I'm meeting my goal of one a month — I didn't want to shut down all of my other knitting to work on it, but it's hard not to. The squares all look so pretty together. I need to pull them all out soon and do a photo of them together for you to see how it's coming along.
I'm devoting most of my day to working on a collage piece. I started this a while back, prepping the canvas and dyeing a piece of silk organza to lay down as the background. The problem was, I liked that simple, paler-than-ballet-shoes-pink rectangle so much I became unable to work on it.
Yesterday, an old post card of the Capitol caught my eye and I decided to play with this piece. It is evolving into a multi-page altered book spread, done on one canvas. This is an idea I've been playing with for a while.
The basics of each of the three pieces are blanked in, but I'm still working with ideas for unifying the piece and I'm still auditioning the embellishments. I'm hoping I can find a larger skeleton key tucked away somewhere, as the one thing I definitely want is a long key that stretches all the way across the middle collage.
I like the buttons anchoring the bottom here, but am thinking I may want some darker buttons. Either way, I'll sew them on as the last step.
I'm still debating how to adhere the mica here. I rarely use mica, but it seemed just right on this piece. And that sweet little flower, which came off of an old hat, is definitely destined for this piece.
This last segment is still very unformed. In the studio it isn't shiny as in the picture, but rather it's a very textural bone colored base for the tiny collage I've temporarily adhered with nail heads (who knew you could make them gold by smashing them into a gold stamp pad and baking the color on with a heat gun?) This part is very much in play still. Really, the whole thing is. I'm glad to have some time to see what it's going to become.
More Felting — Chad Alice Hagen and the Amazing Mokume Scarf
If you are reading along from earlier today, we picked up after lunch with the amazing process of turning the fulled and stitched scarf into a tightly pleated snake, that was ready for a second bath to over dye the original colors. The stitching and pleating acts as a resist.
The snake went into a deep purple dye bath, and an hour later, out popped the most beautiful thing imaginable! Unfortunately, due to the joys of hotel room photography, you're going to have to imagine the colors for now, but the photos at least give you an idea of the patterning.
The actual colors are a deeper purple with soft earthy brown variations.
Unfortunately, better color pictures will have to wait for tomorrow, but at least this gives you the idea. I adore this scarf, and imagine that between the soft merino, the fabulous bark-like texture of the pleats, and the beautiful colors, this one will be a favorite.
Today: Felting a Scarf
Today I am felting with the wonderful Chad Alice Hagen. I've admired her work from afar for years — having the chance to take a class with her was an incredible opportunity. The class is called "hand felted bark scarf" and is based on Japanese Mokume dyeing.
Because we only have one day to work, Chad pre-dyed our batts for us. Mine looked like this.
We've spent the morning, first felting the batts and then stitching them for the Mokume patterning.
I think they look sort of pretty just with the stitching in.
Next in store for them is a second dye bath. I'm leaning towards purple, although a rich brown still isn't out of the question. It has been a great class so far!