St. Distaff's Day- A real holiday

Yesterday I attended the St. Distaff's Day Spin In, an event that made the news...

http://www.king5.com/video/featured-videos/Hundreds-of-yarn-spinners-gather--136886693.html

While happily bustling around the house to get ready in the morning, I found my husband smirking at me.
"What?" I asked.
 "That's so cute, you think this is a real holiday."

Knit Romney

 I've been thinking about the concept of "slow clothes".  Us knitters and spinners have been making slow clothes all along---definitely not a new concept.  But just like the "slow food" movement, it's about slowing down and enjoying the process. It's about shunning Mc Donalds or "Mc Fashion".  Last month I decided I needed a new sweater.  On Dec. 10th I purchased 3 1/2 lbs of raw Romney at Weaving Works.  There was a blue ribbon in the bag of fleece and the sales person said it's from Washington State.  Other than that, I do not know the origins.  It felt soft and lovely and the color was interesting, so I bought it.  I washed it on Dec. 10th and 11th.  I began spinning on Dec. 12th.  I was done spinning on Jan 2nd. 

The pattern was chosen on Jan 2nd and I began knitting.  I'm on the second arm of the sweater...photos to come later.  As you can see form the photo above, I separated the light, medium, and dark lock so I'd have a variety of shades to knit with.  In the end, I ended up with a bulky weight three-ply yarn.

It's all in the bag.

Vintage fabric, with a twist spun into it...

Cotton warp, hand spun yarn, leather, wool fabric, silk sari-scrap yarn, cotton fabric strips...

...a leather bottom and wool fabric straps.  It's a mixed textile tote.

Busy Knitting

 Although I haven't been blogging, I have been busy knitting.  First I made the Basket Weave Cowl out of a two ply hand spun.

 Digging through my yarn stash I found a 3 ply yarn that I died with Cochineal.  I made up a cable pattern and knitted a little hat. 

 This floppy hat is made from hand spun hand dyed merino.  I used the basic beret pattern called One Day Beret Recipe and modified it with rounds of purls to make a little ridge every so often. 

 Using the same beret recipe, I've started another hat.

 A few months ago I got this half-made hand knit sweater at the thrift store.  It still had the knitting needles in it!  I ripped it out with the intent of recycling the yarn.

I used the recycled yarn to make a hat and a pair of fingerless mitts.

Stinky Finian

Who's Finian and why does he stink?  Finian is that little Shetland in the photo.  I bought his fleece last summer.  I washed it with really hot water and Dawn using the top loader method.  Then I dyed little batched of the fleece on the stove with various dye stuff.  And guess what! You can still smell his stink.  I don't know why.

The yarn samples above are from Finian's fleece dyed with marigold with alum as a mordant.  I ran the locks through my drum carder just once.  The staple length is so long that it barely worked to card it that way.  I was trying to decide between a 2 ply and a 3 ply yarn.  I'm going with the 3 ply and plan spin a whole skein now.

Natural Dyeing - this time with iron

For the next batch of natural dyeing I used iron as a mordant.  I'm pretty sure that I used too much because the wool feels somewhat sticky.  The purple-blue grays were achieved with logwood and the light khaki green is from marigolds.  The wool is Shetland.

Natural Dyeing

This weekend I got out the old dyeing pots and some natural dye stuff that I've been storing. I used the Shetland that I washed in a washing machine a few months back.  It's still stinky so I figured dyeing it will at least change the smell---hopefully for the better.  I used Alum for the mordant for all of the colors above.  The dye materials consist of logwood, madder, marigold, cutch, and red onion skins.  As I spin this fiber I will label it so you can see which dye stuff I used for the individual color.  For now it's all drying on the deck while the next batch is on the stove. 

This one skein took all week to spin.  It's the Polypay I mentioned in a previous post.  I flick-carded the locks then spun right off the little individual pieces.  It's a two-ply. I want to dye it and make something lacy, but I really don't have a project in mind.