sweetgeorgia

Wicked

Isn’t it wonderful how you can be wicked tired, barely able to drive down Highway 1 without falling asleep, and then perk right up just _talking_ about dyeing. Then _actual dyeing_ causes you to go hyperactive… But who wouldn’t be all excited about this:

Last night in spinning/dyeing class we dyed up some raw Romney — I dropped in about 3/4 tsp of CIBA dye powder and the pot didn’t exhaust. There was about 12 oz of raw fleece and we calculated the dye powder at 1 tsp per pound — I guess we were so excited about putting colour on wool, we forgot a couple things: raw fleece is heavier than clean fleece (hence too much dye powder) and greasy fleece resists the dye (hence too much dye powder). But here it is — a wicked indigo, moody blues kind of colour — washed in Dawn and dried, kind of teased, and ready for carding. I think we are making boucle with this next week.

####Wicked Carding
In other _whoa_ technology kind of news, take a look at what a bunch of local girls [have done to their Pat Green Beverly carder...](http://twistedbychoice.blogspot.com/) How smart is that?! Maybe I should have called these girls before I went and bought my drum carder!

Getting warped.

I think at one point last year I may have mentioned to Michelle that she should bar the doors and windows and take away my wallet should I ever decide to get into weaving. Ignore what I said earlier, Michelle.

Last night was my very first weaving class… This one is at Place des Arts and also taught by Irene, my spinning instructor. Being the absolute beginner, I started with learning how to wind a 2-yard warp on a Leclerc 1-yard warping board. I would show you the warp, but it’s really just a pile of string right now. Next week, we actually __put it on the loom__ — with all those little holes (heddles?) and slats (dents?!?) it looks like it might cause premature blindness.

And so here’s a question. Where are all the weaving blogs? Here are a few:

* Charleen’s Fiberblog at
* Sara Lamb’s Woven Thoughts at
* Sheepless in Suburbia at . This one is great — she’s doing the Masterspinner’s Natural Dye program and you can see [photos her work here](http://judelbug.typepad.com/photos/msp_natural_dyes_project/)

If you check out the [WeaveRing](http://www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=WeaveRing;action=list), there are only 20 weaving blogs whereas there are something like 2000 knitting blogs! Why the discrepancy?

####Interweave Knits Spring 2006

Ah ha, this preview is official. [See it here...](http://iwpshopinfo.interweave.com/Knits/2006newsletters/IWKspring2006projects.htm) Hmm, I might make the Trellis Scarf (by Evelyn Clark) or the Fair Isle Rib Zip Jacket (by Melody Griffiths). Lovely.

####White Castle

Notice that Mari is wearing the wristwarmers that she knit out of my Fondant handspun on her trip to DC! And check out the [photo of her at White Castle...](http://marirob.blogspot.com/2006/01/rob-and-mari-go-to-white-castle.html) That’s my smile for today.

Dye happy.

It was terribly unfortunate that my yarn order hadn’t arrived by the weekend, so I had no yarn to dye! Agh. Well. In lieu of dyeable yarn, I dyed some wool and silk noil over the weekend…

Last Wednesday was our last spinning/dyeing class and so we did some handpainting with Procion dyes. I’d never used Procion before, so this was a good, new experience. Procion dyes are used for low temperature dyeing of cellulose fibers including cotton, linen, rayon, and ramie. It also dyes silk. Procion comes in both a powder or liquid form and we used powders to mix dye stocks.

I forgot to bring fibre to dye, but did purchase 1 lb. of tussah silk noil from the instructor which I used for dyeing. This silk noil was _cheap_ — about $16 CAD per pound. And one pound of silk noil is about the size of a bedspread! Of course, it does come with complimentary silkworm bits that you have to pick out…but did I mention it was _cheap_? When I get my drum carder, I want to blend the silk noil with some other fibres for some textured yarns.

Also, one of my classmates had given me a lock of ramie fibre a couple weeks ago that I pulled out and handpainted. This fibre turns out so shiny! But feels a little like really soft linen. I was very impressed with how the colours turn out so vibrant.

I did get an order of new dyes from ProChem last week that I wanted to try out — some new Lanaset and WashFast colours in several shades of green and red. So I did some hot pour dyeing with wool — basically, you place the wool in a shallow amount of water (just enough to cover), then pour a little bit of dye onto sections of the wool. Wait for it to strike and exhaust, then add other colours to the other sections. Oddly, some of the dye colours separated a bit, so something that was supposed to be burgundy separated into reds and violets.

Two and a half hours until the new wheel arrives!!