Preparations for the sock talk are going well. I’ve finished all the samples I want to show. There are a few optional ones that I’ll see if I have time for next week.
I’ve been having fun the last couple weeks getting the fibre prepared and yarn spun to make a pair of socks to show at the talk. Continue reading
Special thanks to Van Waffle for taking the pictures in this post.
Back in November I took part in the Sheep to Shawl competition at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.
My guild had two teams in the event this year. Team A was made up of the seasoned members who’ve done the competition for many years. Team B was made up of first timers and others who have been in the competition before. This was my first year in the competition, so I was on the second team.
There were ten teams in total with sixty people competing. It was awe inspiring to see that many weavers and spinners all going for glory!
It’s a quiet, grey day here in Guelph. It hasn’t rained yet this morning, but it’s coming soon.
It’s been a couple busy weeks since the last post.
I’ve finished my spinning certificate class and had a blast with it. Last week was spent getting my homework in order and working on a commissioned pattern. That pattern is coming along very nicely. I just have a few tweaks left and then it’s off to the test knitter this Friday. I’ll be getting the yarn for the pattern sample soon and I’m really excited to start working with it. It’s a new yarn to me and looks and feels amazing.
I thought I would post some pictures of the dye experiments we did in my spinning class. This year was dyeing with fibre reactive dyes and creative dyeing techniques. These were all a blast to do, but it got pretty hectic having twenty people all dyeing at the same time. We managed and thankfully no spills or accidents.
Dyed with fresh Elderberry berries in alkaline and acidic dyebaths.
The fibre is Fleece Artist 50/50 merino and silk blend. The yarn is Cascade 220.The fibre on the right was done in an alkaline dye bath that had about 7 tablespoons of baking soda added to the dyebath. The mordant was 2% iron and %2 alum. The fibre on the left and skein were done in an acidic dyebath, with 5% copper, 5% alum and 2.5% cream of tartar.
I’ve had an interest in natural dyes for about 10 years. I became interested in them from my spinning guild and from a couple friends who had worked with natural dyes.
I’ve taken several classes on dyeing with natural dyes and have played around with many dyestuffs, both local and exotic.
I love the subtle colour differences that you get in the dyeing. The colours are more complex then from man made chemical dyes. There are many different shades of colour making up the colour. I also love the unpredictable nature of the colours from year to year. You can get similar shades, but you will likely not be able to exactly duplicate a colour from one year to the next. I also love the scents that the dyestuff impart to the fibre.
Some of the materials I have dyed with are:
Goldenrod flowers
Elderberry flowers, leaves and berries
Black Locust seed pods
Mountain Ash leaves
Beach leaves
Indigo – man made and natural
Saxon blue
Cochineal
Ossage Orange
Black Walnut
Butternut or White Walnut
Padauk
Brazilwood
Madder
Natural Dye and Mordant Suppliers
Maiwa – Canadian supplier of many natural dyes
Earthues – American company with lots of dye concentrates
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Bleu de Lectour – French company supplying Woad extract products
The Fibre Garden – Canadian supplier of various natural dyes
Good books on natural dyes and dyeing
Indigo, Madder and Marigold: A Portfolio of Colors from Natural Dyes, by Trudy Van Stralen
Wild Color, Revised and Updated Edition: The Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes, by Jenny Dean and Karen Diadick Casselman
A Dyer’s Garden, by Rita Buchanan
Dye Plants And Dyeing, by John and Margaret Cannon
Lichen Dyes: The New Source Book, by Karen Diadick Casselman
Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments and Myco-Stix, by Miriam C. Rice
A Handbook of Indigo Dyeing, by Vivien Prideaux
Spectrum Dye Plants of Ontario, edited by Nancy J. McGuffin, Compiled by Burr House Spinners and Weavers Guild
Indigo: From Mummies to Blue Jeans, by Jenny Balfour-Paul
The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet, by Brian Murphy
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire, by Amy Butler Greenfield
It’s summer here in Canada. Time to start heading to the cottage on the weekends and summer vacations and time for a little guide on fibre fun you can bring along.
General thoughts
Keep your projects small and light. Bring several! Have things you can do while traveling and ones for when you are at your destination. Variety is good! Pack things in sealable containers or ziplock bags to keep them from the elements, especially if you are camping.
Knitting
Small and simple knitting projects are great to bring along, like socks, hats, scarves and mittens. Travel time is a great time to work on your projects.
Spinning
Spindles are great for traveling with. Supported spindles, like a Russian spindle (or here) or a Takhli, can be used in the car during traveling.
If you are staying at a cottage or someplace indoors then a folding spinning wheel is also an option. Most should fit in the trunk or back seat.
Fibre prep is something you can also do. Hand cards and a dog brush are pretty portable. You can go through a bunch of fleece in no time on a relaxing evening.
Dyeing
Dyeing can be a fun activity for the whole family. Before going you can do research with the kids to find out what plants are available where you are going and figure out which ones you want to try. Once there you can get them to help gather and prepare the materials and help out with the dyeing.
My partner and I sometimes do natural dyeing when we are up at the cottage. We bring the dyepots, mordant, stir sticks and fibre/yarn with us. I would suggest using only Alum and cream of tarter, as these have the least impact on the environment. Also, make sure to only use as much mordant as needed for the amount of fibre you are working with. This will reduce the amount of left over mordant that will be disposed of.
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We use either lake water or spring water from up the road. We use the propane stove in the kitchen, but you could also use a campfire to do the dyeing. You have to watch closely with a campfire to make sure the dyepot doesn’t boil.
We usually collect our dye materials from the area. A good rule of thumb is to never collect more than 10% of a plant in any given area. For example, if using leaves, only take leaves from 1 or 2 branches of a tree and spread out your collection over a large area.
Used plant material can be used for compost or spread out in the bush to decompose. Left over mordant baths can be disposed of onto sandy areas, like a dirt road away from the house and septic system. Do not pour it down the drain into the septic system! Left over dyebath can usually be disposed of this way as well. Make sure to dilute both baths with a lot of water before getting rid of them.
Weaving
There are several very portable options for weaving and traveling
Weavettes and small weaving frames
These are very portable hand help frames. The small ones are great for working on while traveling! You can whip off a square in 15 – 30 minutes.
Backstrap looms and ground looms
These can be setup before you leave and used once you get to your destination.
Weighted warp loom
This is a very simple version of a weighted warp loom. All the material can be kept in a medium sized container.
I love working with colour in my designs and in my projects. I’m such a magpie for beautifully hand dyed yarns and fibres.
Using colours and choosing colours is a skill that I have built up over the years. It has taken me a long time to learn what works and how to “see” what a colour is.
I’m more confident now in my colour sense then I was even just five years ago. I’ve done a fair bit of dyeing and colour sampling in that period and I’m finally at a stage where I can look at an object and start figuring out what components the colour is made of.
These days, I love just playing with colour, seeing what I can come up with, rather than getting stressed out and all technical about it.
Back in the late 90’s, early 00’s I did photography as a hobby. I worked mostly in black and white, as I understood that more. I did print in colour, but it was more difficult and more expensive.
One tool from colour photo printing that can help dyers is a Color Print Viewing Filter Kit. These are cards with gels in cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green and blue, with three different densities of colour on each card. You use these filters by holding them in front of you eyes and viewing the object you are working on. You can then compare what you are seeing to the colour you want to replicate. I found these very useful when I was printing colour photographs because I didn’t yet have enough of a colour sense to be able to figure out what I needed to do to get to the colour I wanted.
I work with both chemical dyes and natural dyes. I like natural dyes more. They give more complex colours and they often impart distinct aromas to the yarn. I also enjoy being able to go out and gather many plant materials to do my own dyeing.
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These are some samples of things I have dyed over the years.
Silk hankies dyed in weak acid dyes. I dyed these last year for classes I was teaching on spindle spinning silk. These were dyed in mason jars filled with dye and steamed in a large canning jar for 45 minutes.
These were dyed as part of a natural dyeing class taught by Harriet Boon. The three primaries were Cochineal (red), Osage orange (yellow) and Saxon blue (blue), which is derived from indigo.
The secondary colours were made by dyeing in one colour and then over dyeing in a second colour. The secondary colours are arranged so that the colour they were overdyed with is the one they are closer to. For example – in the greens, the one closest to the blue was first dyed in Osage orange then in the Saxon blue, the one closest to the yellow was first dyed in Saxon blue then in Osage orange. We did it this way so we could see the difference that the order of dyeing would have on the final colour.
These are socks made from a batch of yarns that my partner and I dyed up at the cabin on Lake Fletcher. The yarn was pre-mordanted in tin. The light colour is from Black Locust seed pods and the dark colour is from Mountain Ash leaves with a copper mordant added to the dye pot. The skein was treated with an ammonia after bath.
The skein was dyed by putting a little over half the skein in the first dye pot and then doing the same on the other end in the other dye pot. There is an overlap of about two inches that has both colours.
Today I’m taking you through a tour of the Display Room from the Ontario Handspinning Seminar 2013 that happened June 14 – 16, 2013.
You can continue the tour by going to the following videos:
Baggie Challenge table
Skeins for next year
Special Projects Competition
Skeins Competition pt.1
Skeins Competition pt.2
Just for Fun! tables
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I worked on the display committee this year with one other woman. There is minimal work over the months before the seminar. Most of the work is done at the seminar.
Before the seminar we take care of finding judges for the competitions and planning the layout of the display room. We make sure all the materials needed for displays were passed along to us, gather additional display materials as needed and print updated signs for the current years displays. We also update various forms for the competitions, judges, Just for Fun and Fashion Show items.
During the weekend we are responsible for taking in items for display and competition, setting up the room and displays, helping the competition judges, watching over the displays during public times, helping during the fashion show, getting the items back to the owners and clearing up the display area. Thankfully we have great volunteers helping the two of us with all of this!
We were also responsible for creating the awards certificates, gathering up all the prizes, taking pictures of the winning items, updating the slide presentation for the awards ceremony and handing out the certificates and prizes at the ceremony.
I had an awesome time being on this committee! You do work long hours at the seminar, but it’s so worth it to be able to see all the amazing work that comes it. Plus we are the lucky ones who get to handle all the items and get a good look at them.
My final projects from years one through five
I’m heading into the sixth and final year of my spinning certificate program. You can see an outline of the years here.
It’s been a pretty amazing journey.
My class started when I was 40. At the time I figured I could do the program then, rather than waiting till I was 46 or 52 to do it. It was also the right time as I wanted to take my spinning more seriously and I thought this program would give me a structured way of learning all this stuff, rather then me trying to find classes all over the place to learn things.
The teachers for our classes are amazing people. Their knowledge and generosity are humbling. And lets face it – the thought of having to grade homework for 25 to 40 students is pretty intimidating, yet they do that, year after year.
Some highlights for me:
All of the dyeing classes. We’ve done both acid dyeing and natural dyeing. These have been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot in them.
Spinning woolen. This was probably the hardest challenge for me when we started. I’d mostly spun worsted or semi worsted. Learning to spin light and lofty was challenging. I still don’t spin enough of this and have to retry it each year otherwise I forget how to do it.
Bast fibres. Flax, hemp and cotton. I had tried these before, but it was pretty dismal. Last years class finally made things click and I was able to spin them. I think these fibres have moved up from the “Ugh! Argh!” list to “Ok, that’s not so bad”. I think with more practice I could actually spin enough cotton for a decent sized project – like a shirt or light sweater.
Silk has become one of my top five favourite fibres to spin. The diversity of silks that we have available to spin now is pretty amazing. I also love dyeing silk.
The other other students in the class. We have a very diverse group filled with really amazing people. For the first three years there were a lot of us in the college cabins, which bonded us all to each other. It’s great being able to share with these people, and to know there is a group out there that supports you through getting the home work done and supporting you in your life. I’ve met good friends through this class.
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I thought I would finish off by showing you what part of an assignment from class looks like.
This is from my year five final project. The criteria we had was to make a project using a bast fibre, with at least 150 meters of yarn. After that the choices were up to the student.
I chose to make a crocheted bath scrubby out of hemp. After doing sampling I found that I liked a 3-ply yarn that was the size of #10 crochet cotton. The gold coloured hemp was fairly easy to spin – it was a well prepared fibre. The purple was not a nice experience. There were sections with very short cotton like fibres, and other sections where the fibre may not have been retted very well and were clumped together and hard to draft. The final purple yarn was thicker than I was aiming for, but it worked out fine in the final product. I pretty proud of the final product, thought it certainly isn’t economical. The final project took a total of 71 hours. That includes all the sampling, spinning and making the final project, and doing the documentation and mounting.
You have to document your thought process on the project – what you wanted to make, why you chose which fibres, fibre prep and spinning techniques you did, what worked, what didn’t, and your comments on it. You are also to show and document any sampling you did to get to the final yarn you used.
Part of the final project is to show a mounted skein of the final yarn, plus the final object.
For the mounted skeins, you need the following:
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After years of crocheting a lot of doilies and lace things in my teens and early twenties I figured I never wanted to do anything lace related again.
WRONG! I guess it must be in my blood. My grandmother on my mothers side was a great crocheted lace maker. I figure the need to make lace comes from her.
I can thank Ted Myatt again for getting me interested in knitting lace. He makes phenomenal pieces on seemingly impossible sized needles. You can see a few of his piece here towards the bottom of the page.
I can also thank Joan Kass and Dorothy Seimens and several other women in Toronto’s Downtown Knit Collective for lots of inspiration and guidance. Joan is an amazing knitter and Dorothy writes some pretty amazing lace patterns.
A man knitting lace is one of those funny contradictions in the knitting world. Big burly guy, tiny needles and light as air fabric. It just shouldn’t be, but it is.
There’s is such a fascination in making something that can be so complex and so fragile looking. The yarn can be quite delicate, but once the piece is made it can usually stand up to a lot of stress when blocking it out.
Lace really needs the final blocking. Until then it just looks like a mass of spaghetti, but once blocked is blossoms into something amazing.
Here are a few of the lace items that I have made over the years.
This is a small triangular scarf. The pattern is the triangular scarf from Two Lace Scarves by Dorothy Seimens.
The yarn is some of my first handspun lace yarn made on a drop spindle. The fibre is a 70% merino and either 30% alpaca or mohair blend. I left off the tassels from the pattern as I didn’t have enough yarn to make those.
These are pics of one of the Lotus Blossom Shawls I made for a couple friends. The pattern was originally made for a yarn that was slightly heavier then dk weight. That original yarn was discontinued years ago and Dorothy updated the pattern to use a dk or light fingering weight yarns.
This is the Faroese Flower Shawl by Lucy Neatby. I purchased this as a kit and made this shawl for my sister. One of the nice aspects of a Faroese style shawl is that there is extra shaping at the shoulder area of the shawl and they stay on the shoulder better then just a straight shawl.
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This is my Diamonds and Roses Shawl pattern. I had a lot of advice from Dorothy Seimens on creating the charts for this shawl. I still like making it! I plan to make it from handspun yarn one day – naturally dyed with either madder or cochineal.
This is a simple triangular shawl I have designed. The yarn is spindle-spun chain plyed (3-ply) Tussah silk, dyed by Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks. I kept the pattern simple to highlight the colour changes of the yarn. I had tried other lace patterns, but the patterning was lost in the colours.
Some lace designers that you should know:
Margaret Stove
One of the true lace goddesses. She has spun and knit many fine creations. She has also published several books on spinning merino and lace knitting.
Sharon Miller of Heirloom Knitting
Amazing Shetland Lace patterns.
Dorothy Siemens of Fiddlesticks Knitting
A Toronto designer that I’ve known since she first started creating patterns for sale. Beautiful designs, clear instructions and large easy to read charts are the hallmarks of her designs.
Katherine Matthews of Apparknitchick and Ravelry
A local Guelph designer. Ted Myatt introduced us. She has many fun designs.
Anne Hanson of Knitspot.com
Many wonderful designs for lace and other garments.
Birgit Freyer of Knitting Delight and Die WollLust in German.
Many amazing designs.
Judy Marples of Purl Bumps
Many lace scarves and other patterns.
WARNING!!! Sock pron and yarn pron ahead! You have been warned!
My name is Danny… (Hello Danny!), and I’m a sock-yarn-aholic.
I confess that I am powerless to the will of my inner magpie (Ooh! Sparkly!) and my resolve is weakened by the yarn fumes of pretty sock yarns.
I don’t remember who persuaded me to knit my first pair of socks. It was either someone in the Toronto knitting guild or Ted Myatt.
Until that point I always thought they would be too hard. Like many people the thought of turning a heel frightened me and I also couldn’t see myself spending so much time knitting on something that could be warn out and need repairing!
First socks made in Jawoll
I picked a fairly simple sock pattern and just bravely went ahead and the rest is history!
I LOVE making socks. They may take me a long time, but they are some of my most restful knitting.
Over the years I’ve knit socks in with many methods. Double pointed needes, 2 circular needles, magic loop on one circular needle. Toe up and cuff down. Heel flaps and short row heels.
About the only things I haven’t done yet are sideways socks and colourwork socks, but those are on the list. I also haven’t done lace socks. Given that I usually make socks for myself, and my sister would find them to frilly, I don’t think I’ll be knitting any of them soon either.
My standard go to mindless sock is done toe up using magic loop method, sometimes two socks at one time. I start with either a lighter circular cast-on, figure 8 cast-on or Judy’s Magic Cast-On. I then do a standard toe till I have 72 or 80 sts, depending on yarn and guage. Plain knitting for the foot, with gusset increases at the bottom of the sole and a heel flap for the heel. The leg is K3, P1 ribbing till about 1.5 inches short of wanted length (or amount of yarn!) and the finishing in K1, P1 ribbing and then a loose cast-off, like Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.
These are socks that I have patterns for:
The sock on the left is the Crossing Cables Sock pattern.
The one on the right is the Diamond Waffle Socks pattern.
These are a couple more patterns that I have coming out soon:
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The sock on the left is Raspberry Socks, the sock on the right is Gansey Socks. The Gansey Socks are made from The Black Lamb’s City Silk, which is a lovely Merino and Tussah silk blend.
And now the danger begins. But remember – sock yarn doesn’t count towards stash. Really – it doesn’t!
Good all purpose sock yarns:
Kroy
Regia
Yawool
Trekking XXL
More interesting patterned, striping and painted yarns
Zauberball
Opal
Malabrigo Sock and Finito
Manos Del Uruquay Alegria
Amazing luxury and hand dyed yarns that I’ve used and love
Canadian Yarns
Fleece Artist – BFL Socks, Trail Socks and Merino 2/6
Handmaiden Casbah
Rhichard Devrieze
Koigu
Dye-Version – BFL Sock, Bamboo Sock and Wool Sock
Indigo Dragonfly – Great colour names – my favourite is: Plumber’s Butt: Release the Cracken!
Shelridge Farms – Solids with a limited quantity of handpainted colours
Wellington Fibres – They do sell the sock yarn separately, but is isn’t listed.
The Black Lamb – My favourite of their yarns is City Silk Yarn.
Tanis Fiber Arts
Waterloo Wools
Other countries
Madelinetosh
Lorna’s Laces
Bluemoon Fiber Arts
The indie dyed yarns are the ones that can be the most dangerous. Amazing colours and fibre choices. They are not cheap, but when you are making something extra special for yourself they are totally worth it.
Also remember that sock yarn can be used for a lot of other things besides socks. Much as I love socks I just can’t knit them as fast as I can buy yarn. If you look on Ravelry you will find lots of pattern ideas for things using sock yarn. Just in case you have a little stash that needs to be used up. Just saying.