sweetgeorgia

Tangled up.

I’ve been making warps. Many many warps. Mostly because I have a lot of yarn lying around… naturally dyed, undyed, synthetically dyed, commercially dyed… omg, that’s a lot of yarn. Rather than using handpainted yarn throughout the whole warp, I’ve taken to mixing it up with a bunch of other solid coloured yarns.

The six-yard warp will end up as two 2.5 yard scarves or shawls (I haven’t decided… there’s still a lot of handpainted yardage remaining that I want to use up)… each one will be woven with a different coloured weft.

The bamboo was dyed in a pot with a bunch of other fibres and took on so much less dye. The dye pot was a mix of cutch, cochineal and iron in various combinations with silk and bamboo in the pot. I probably wouldn’t wear any of these colours on their own, but optically blended together, they become more interesting. The weft will likely be plain undyed bamboo, and then the whole piece will go back into the dye pot. Maybe more cutch. We’ll see.

Finally, this is the silk yarn that came out of the same pot. Unplied DK-weight silk yarn to be woven with some 2-ply cutch-dyed silk yarn… it might be overwhelmingly cutchy brown. Hmm. But luckily everything can be overdyed and re-worked. In fact, I dropped a small plain weave silk sample that I wove last year into a cochineal dye pot earlier this week… and you know, I LOVE it. Multiple dyes, overdyes, piece dyeing… I want it.

Diamond Fantasy

Vancouver is seriously lacking sufficient light to take photos right now. These were shot at 6400 iso. 6400. I can’t even believe it.

The Diamond Fantasy Shawl is done and blocked. Knit out of the Silk Lamb Lace yarn, I followed Sivia’s instructions to the letter — the shawl is 10 repeats with the icord edging. The perfect size. Divine and soft, I love it. If you are in Vancouver and want to see it up close and personal, it’s actually at the [three bags full](http://www.threebagsfull.ca) shop right now. I’ll probably leave it there for a couple weeks… and I doubt I’ll need to wear it anytime soon!

Here and there.

There’s a coolness in Vancouver that is beyond crisp now. Yep, it’s downright chilly today. Feeling the need to have warm, comfy and cushy Zara sweater NOW.

I’m making progress, yes, I am…

In light of the fact that I seem to have zero spare time these days, I’ve been taking a tip from various knitters who encourage knitting a row here and there throughout the day… That’s three rows in the car, two rows before a client meeting, three more rows while waiting for dinner… It’s amazing what a few minutes here and there can do.

Similarly with my weaving, I was able to warp up my loom with the new handpainted silk log cabin scarf project during the daylight hours. Since I haven’t had time to move my work computer down into the _finished_ (yahoo!) office, I’m still sitting three feet away from my loom… which means that when I have to upload a file that takes 10 minutes, I can turn around and fuss with my loom for 10 minutes.

This is 144 ends (72 purple threads and 72 black threads) spread out neatly through the built-in raddle that is positioned on top of the Spring loom. I’m being extra careful by running a thin strip of painters tape over the top so that stray threads don’t pop out of their spots… or that I don’t accidentally pull a chunk of threads out of the raddle. Yeah, been there, done that.

Those are two lease sticks that I’ve tied to the back beam of the loom — they keep the warp nice, neat and tidy… The last warp I put on was, well, shall we say, put on haphazardly without a tidy cross or lease sticks… and well, let’s just say, it got a little messy back there. So, I’m being good and conscientious here… hopefully it will pay off in terms of a better-tensioned warp and less mess.

And this probably should be filed under “too much information” but, yeah, I’m crocheting the bikini from last summer’s issue of Knit.1. Now, to figure out how to properly do crochet decreases…

Retreat

I need a vacation. Yeah, I know this is technically the end of summer vacation but… but… [Astor](http://www.knittingAstor.com) is hosting a [knitting retreat](http://www.hollyhock.ca/cms/index.cfm?Group_ID=3799) this Fall at [Hollyhock](http://www.hollyhock.ca/) on Cortes Island. Hollyhock is an educational retreat centre that hosts programs, camps, and workshops about everything from Tibetan Buddhism to Sea Kayaking to Poetry to Ashtanga Yoga… plus they also offer massages! That would be perfect… do a little knitting and then go for a massage… The retreat is called ["A Pull of Wool"](http://www.hollyhock.ca/cms/index.cfm?Group_ID=3799) and runs from September 29 to October 2.

Unfortunately, I can’t go because I’m taking the three-day [Colour Institute workshop](http://www.maiwa.com/symposium/w_colour.html) with Michele Wipplinger as part of the Maiwa Textile Workshops. Actually, I’m taking dye workshops nearly every weekend in September, starting this Friday… I’ve got ["Introduction to Dyes"](http://www.maiwa.com/symposium/w_intro_dyes.html) with Anne Babchuk which will give an overview of all different kinds of dyes — including fibre-reactive (procion), acid (washfast and lanaset), and vat dyes (like indigo). I’m also taking ["Natural Dyes"](http://www.maiwa.com/symposium/w_natural_dyes.html) with Charllotte Kwon which should result in a reference book of 80 different natural dye samples. The class I was really hoping to take was ["Precision Dyeing"](http://www.maiwa.com/symposium/w_precision_dyeing.html) which is all about using Procion MX to create a complete colour wheel… but the class falls on the same weekend as my five-year wedding anniversary… So it was celebrate my wedding anniversary or dye, celebrate or dye…

And there is weaving to do… I finally finished dressing the loom with some leftover silk warp and started this little stole. It’s 20/2 silk in a block twill. I basically threaded groups of twelve ends on shafts 1,2,3,4 or 5,6,7,8 somewhat randomly. This is really a test for a bigger silk shawl I plan to do and I just wanted to see how big the blocks might be and how it would look overall. But I was up until about 1 am last night fixing a couple threading errors and had to fashion my own string heddles to do so… very cool. I feel kind of empowered now. And using all eight shafts and ten treadles? Also very empowering. I like.

Oh, yes. And there is also knitting. In fact, I finished Sizzle. But there are no photos. Taking photos of yourself by yourself is hard work. So instead, I have photos of the Diamond Fantasy Shawl in progress…

_Mmm hmm._ And deadlines. And work. And more work. I’m tired. I think the very best news that I’ve heard in a long time is that we are returning from Hong Kong a couple days early (the travel agent’s mistake) and we’ll be able to squeeze in a surf trip to Oregon. It’ll be the very last weekend in October. The water will be cold but _I can’t wait._

The Golden Fleece

Nothing says “it’s time to finish washing your fleece” like an upcoming fleece sale. That’s right. This Saturday, June 10, there will be a fleece sale in Langley. I was really considering driving down and buying a nice local fleece — maybe something mohair — but then thought, “hey, maybe I should finish using up the Gotland fleece I already have on hand”… so, out come the dyes…

I had just over 1 1/2 pounds left of the fleece, so I washed it, mordanted with alum and dyed it up with Pomegranate and Osage Orange natural dyes. Pomegranate dye is made from rinds of pomegranates and is high in tannin — it is supposed to give a gold/brown/yellow kind of colour. I think it’s better described as “caramel”. The Pomegranate comes as an extract, so all you need to do is add water and go. Here is the dye extract with just a bit of water… it looks just like chocolate ganache… and smells sticky sweet like port and maple syrup…

The Osage Orange, on the other hand, comes as sawdust… It’s cheaper this way. You can buy the liquid extract but Maiwa happened to be sold out when I was there. The Osage dyebath is easy enough to make though — put the sawdust in a pot with enough water to cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Decant and repeat. Since I was waiting for the fleece to finish mordanting, I simmered and decanted the Osage dyebath three times, straining it through an old nylon stocking each time.

Unfortunately, I ran out of alum and so the fleece that was dyed with Pomegranate only had half the amount of alum that it should have. That probably affected the final colour. The Pomegranate dye pot had lots of sticky scum on top, so I was anxious to get the fleece out of the pot and rinse it.

The final colours on this fleece… honey and lemons. That’s what I got. Caramelly honey colour and light lemony yellow.

I’ve separated the darker fleece from the lighter fleece so that when I card and spin the Osage Orange fleece, I’ll get a beautiful, clear lemon yellow yarn and a darker grey/green yellow yarn. The darker yarn will then go into an indigo bath to turn it mossy green. Yeah, sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll do an indigo day and overdye a little of everything I have in the stash — yarn, fibre, wool, silk, whatever.

The colours turned out very much lighter than what I expected, and I have to admit I was a little deflated by that initially — but now when I see that caramel-coloured fleece in the living room light, I love it. It’s subtle and gorgeous — I could dive right in. So this Saturday, instead of buying more fleece, I’ll be playing with this beautiful golden fleece!

Oh, and while I was dyeing on Sunday, Michelle dropped by to show me her first spindle-spun handspun. This is before setting the twist… so wonderful!

And we reviewed my second attempt at getting the right purple on silk…

The Lanaset worked _so_ much better on these skeins of silk. They were immersion dyed in a big pot and the colour is quite even throughout. The skein on the right, the dark eggplant purple, is actually a mix of five different Lanaset dyes to give a colour that is deep but vibrant and glittery.