I’ve
realised that I tend to write when something is finished and there hasn’t been
a lot of finishing happening around here recently. I was busy at work during January, working an
extra half day with a staff member on holidays.
It doesn’t seem much but sure eats into the weaving time, especially
when there are long, and not very exciting warps on both looms.
Fortunately
we had a holiday for Australia Day on the 26th and I was able to
make an extra long weekend of it. I
wanted to do some dyeing and with four days, knew I would have enough time to wind
warps, set up, do the dyeing and put it all away again. I wound some warps for dyeing and painting,
got some wool top ready to dye and knitted a blank from some 3 ply I’d found in
a bargain bag from Bendigo Woollen Mills.
I’d planned to dye on Monday but all the prep took longer than expected. It made good sense to get the newspaper and
plastic wrap all in place on Monday night and, after attending an Australia Day
breakfast, come home and do the dyeing.
There I was
setting up, I had the newspaper down and was getting the dyes out. I wrote here about finding very good new jars
to store my dye solutions to replace the ones with the poorly fitting
lids. You may have guessed by now where
this is going. I picked up one jar by
the lid – Rubinole – if you’re interested, and the jar fell from the lid,
bounced on the stone bench and dye went everywhere including all over me. It didn’t taste good but does not seem to
have had any serious after effects and believe me, it won’t happen again. First thing was to put my head under the tap
and rinse off as much as I could. The
tee shirt, an old dyeing one, went straight in the bin and then I started the
clean up. Although the dye was a darker
red, it looked a bit as though there had been a murder in my kitchen however
the clean up went surprisingly well. The
newspapers absorbed a lot, there was probably only about half a cup spilt
altogether but it went a long way and it came off the hard surfaces, including
the white cupboards easily. The only
real casualties were one of the blinds
When you think about it, it’s probably not surprising that it cleaned up so well since soaking in soda ash and heating are what sets the dyes on cellulose fibres and none of those conditions was operating when the dye hit. By the time I cleaned up it was quite late but I had a shower to get rid of any remaining dye as I wanted to be sure it had all gone, and my hair wasn’t pink before I went out next morning. As I stood under the shower, late at night, little pink trickles kept running down my skin.
I was much more careful doing the dyeing after
that and I won’t forget this lesson.
Here’s the
finished result
I liked the
blue and green wool top so much I started spinning it before I took any
photos. It’s already been spun and plied
with a very fine thread best described as ‘bling’ in a co-ordinating colourway
During
January I did manage to knit some socks.
I have knitted them in the past but was not that excited with the result
and decided to try again. I had bought
some Tofutsies yarn with the idea of weaving with it but I realised that the
very short colour repeats would not work for weaving. I could hear a little voice saying ‘knit me,
knit me’ and of course the obvious thing was to knit some socks. It was a good blend – 50% wool, 22.5% cotton, 25% soysilk and 2.5% chitin(from shrimp and crab shells) – to knit during the hot weather. One pair finished and another sock almost
finished.
I’ve also
been working on spindle spinning, I think I’ve got the hang of it and I like
the portability but I don’t think I’ll be getting rid of any of my wheels for a
while yet.
On the
weaving front, the tea towels are still in progress but need to be done for a
market on the first Sunday in March. I’ve
done one in natural, one in lemon, one in a textured gold yarn, one in a light
salmon cottolin and have just started one in natural linen.
Helen
