sweetgeorgia

Accidents in carding.

It was not a happy meeting today, the skin of my hand and the sharp metal teeth of my electric drum carder. However, it was a fantastic meeting this morning with a lovely fellow fibre fanatic who inspired me to unleash said drum carder. But rather than obsessing about my scraped hand, let’s obsess about the pretty puffs that it produced…

I swear, I’ve been trying to be completely authentic with this fleece. Purchased in raw form, I was on my hands and knees by the bathtub washing this thing. Then, delicately dyeing chunks of it in natural dye… my plan was to then card and spin all of it into worsted weight yarn which would then end up in a handwoven blanket… and then I got bored.

I didn’t want to spin a whole pound of cochineal-dyed fleece and then another pound of logwood-dyed fleece, etc. So instead, I just started to randomly drop hand teased fleece into the feed tray of the carder. These are like happy accidents. I hope they’ll end up spinning into some nicely heathered and randomly coloured yarns. And, most inauthentic of all, I have a large chunk of fleece that I overdyed in green acid dye. I thought all those natural pinks and purples needed a hit of green.

And for a nice hit of colour to dream about this weekend…

The gift of silk and light.

Years and years ago, a fellow blogger, Freecia, was inspired to buy me something at a local fibre fair and send it to me as a gift. This was completely and totally out of the blue. She wrote me this lovely note and sent it along with a bit of the most divinely smooth and glowing cultivated bombyx silk fibre. Bombyx silk is still like the caviar of fibres to me. Absolutely delicious. I was very touched by her thoughtfulness and saved the silk package in my A-list stash… and sadly, it stayed there for years.

Late last fall, when I came to the supposed crossroads (why do I keep meeting this crossroad?) about whether or not I could continue to dye, I happened to find this gift and the note that accompanied it. And after my year-long hiatus, this was the first thing that inspired me to dye. I ventured down into the cold, dark laundry room and randomly dyed the package of silk in turquoises, blues, greens and browns. Distraught and sad at the time, I absentmindedly continued to pile on colour after colour… until I realized, “hey, this doesn’t look good at all”. The whole pile of silk seemed like it had been covered with murky, black dye and looked like a disaster. What a waste of a beautiful gift? I had ruined it! I was angry and disappointed with myself, even more convinced that I should just give away all my dye stuff and walk away.

Anyway, I set the dye with a bit of steam and then let it cool and exhaust. Days later when I finally went back down to the laundry room, I poked a bit at the crinkly dried silk roving and all this lightness came pouring out. I had been so absentminded that the dyes hadn’t penetrated all the way through the silk! I really was a dumbass. What I thought was a complete disaster, ended up being this beautiful, subtle mix of blues, warm greys and light. I spent a long time going over the roving, looking at the transitions between colours and values. Maybe I see things where there isn’t anything, but to me this was all about how things really are never as bad as you think they are. There is light in everything. Sometimes, I just need to be patient and I find light where I least expect it.

Thank you Freecia.

* Okay, honestly, my mistake was dousing the silk roving in too much vinegar to begin with. So as soon as I put dye on it, it would strike and fix to the outside of the roving. If you’re going to dye silk roving, use less vinegar in the soaking bath OR work the dye through the roving really well OR gently spread the roving apart so you can access all the bits of silk that need to be dyed. Personally, I don’t really mind undyed bits because it’s like “whitespace”. It offsets and makes the colours more interesting.

Return to [sweetgeorgia] Mountain

Soon soon soon. We’ll be re-opening SweetGeorgia Yarns online in the next few weeks after I return from Whistler. My office is starting to look a lot like it once did… piled high with brightly coloured yarns and fibres… tags hanging delicately off the end of each skein. I’m excited to show you what I’ve been working on, but here’s a teeny tiny sample…

Yep, that last photo is my fridge full of pre-mordanted yarn. All I need to do now is add some colour… soon soon soon.

Some days I want to gough my eyes out.

And other days, I am saved by the beauty in things like this:

It’s 100g of 20/2 cultivated silk. First dyed lightly in weld. Then dyed in marigold. And finally overdyed in madder. It’s absolutely gorgeous in the skein. And I am grateful for the light it brings into my life. When all else is dark and despondent, I am thankful that I can see and see beauty in something as simple as colour.

Stretching to grow.

Without a doubt, I love me some sugar-crazed pink and red. But lately, I’ve been going completely out of my element and dyeing colours that I absolutely love but are just so unlike me.

The weld and walnut are from Earth Hues in Ballard, Seattle. The indigo is Maiwa’s natural indigo. And the silk is all different weights… fine 20/2 silk laceweight, dk-weight silk singles, heavy worsted silk/merino singles.

I’m experimenting and just trying to work with colours that I’m not entirely comfortable with… I’ll grow into these. The most interesting combinations are actually the walnut dyed silks that are overdyed in indigo… the result is this earthy green, dark gold colour. It’s almost impossible to describe.