Fear of Warping

I never completed my final project for my weaving class because I was pretty much on my own. My teacher was out of town for a good six weeks and I felt so intimidated by warping the loom without a hand to hold.
I do have a backstrap loom around here and a rigid heddle of a sorts (old and a different from the ones I see in weaving catalogs).
But I found the solution or so I think at this point.

This is a Brio loom. Brio as in Thomas the Tank Engine train set and all those other wonderful toys for preschoolers!
The fact that it is for a child makes the warping less intimidating. Although I imagine the warping is probably supposed to be done by an adult while the child gets to do the fun part-the actual weaving. Still I think it might help me get over my fear of warping.
I picked the little loom up at a thrift store. It just seemed to be the perfect opportunity to wrestle with this uneasiness.
While I was there, I picked up 21 copies of an old magazine "Handweaver & Craftsman", all from the sixties and early seventies.






I looked through the magazines quickly and am now going through one by one and reading the articles. But one of the first things that caught my eye was this wonderful wheel called the Penguin Quill.



Isn't it cool? I want one. I don't care how it spins.


In the first magazine I went through pretty thoroughly, I found an article on Lichen Dyeing. This is wonderful since I missed Judith MacKenzie McCuin's class at Black Sheep Gathering on that very subject this past weekend.
For such a short article, I gleaned more information on the practical approaches to lichen dyeing than from a book devoted entirely to the subject.
All of the lichens that produce the scarlets and purples need ammonia to extract the dye. Soaking for a few days or even a few weeks in a solution of ammonia & water (I'll check on the exact ratio) will yield the colors. But a quick way to check if a lichen will produce these colors is to put a drop of Chlorox on the powdered lichen. If the drop turns scarlet, then you have your hands on some wonderful dyestuff.




I spun up the kid mohair roving that I dyed in turquoise & brown leaving lots of white spots. I love the yarn!

It's about 220 yards of a 2 ply that is half way between fingering weight and laceweight. I thought that it wasn't enough to do much with. Perhaps I'd get a wimpy little airy scarf. Then I realized that I never consider combining my handspun with commercial yarn. I began to get playful, pulling out balls of yarn and finally found some Crystal Palace Kid Merino that I thought would be fun.





It's just a scarf. It really is fun to knit because the blueish yarn changes so much that I keep knitting just to see what's next.
I was imagining if I had more yarn what I would do with it. The scarf feels like a swatch. Of course I have enough for a cap.




But I was fantasizing about having enough do make something like this:





Well I liked the turquoise, brown & white colorway so much I dyed about 4 ounces of silk caps with the same dyes.
Silk caps are the degummed cocoons laid out over a mold that is shaped like a bell or a cap. There are many thin, thin layers.


They have more white than I planned on. I soaked the silk for a couple of days to wet it properly but either I have to break up the caps into thinner layers or I have to weight the caps down with something. The dyes will only penetrate thoroughly wetted fiber.
It should be fun to see what it ends up looking like spun up.

Missing In Action

Wow! It's been more than a month since I posted!
I haven't been completely idle...just busy with many different things.
I've been dyeing quite a bit in hopes of selling in my Etsy Store.
Here's some mohair top in the process of getting handpainted.











The mohair came out a little less vivid than I wanted.
This one is not all that attractive in the roving form but the idea is to have the chocolate and white tone down the vividness of the turquoise.












This one I'm calling Spring Mix and I'm guessing the spun yarn will be a grayish yarn with shimmerings of blues and pinks with a bit of green and brown.









My absolute favorite colorway so far. I used this one on some tussah silk I sold and here it is again on some angora top. I'm so tempted to keep this and spin it up myself. This is actually proof that mixing your own colors gives better results. It's just Jacquard Scarlet and the Scarlet mixed with Sun Yellow. It would be very difficult to find a premixed orange-y peach to complement the Scarlet. Of course this is color mixing in its infancy but it's encouraging. That book by Deb Menz Color in Spinning was so helpful. I do actually own Colorworks by Menz which is a crash course in color theory. I really need to pull that out again. For now I'm thrashing about madly experimenting and having fun with no thought of wasting fiber. Well, it can always be overdyed or plied with another color. And sometimes the most hideous rovings turn into the most beautiful yarns.













And sometimes the most beautiful rovings make so so yarns. But I think the angora will not be one of those.












Alright...this is a little clownish but I purposely left the core of the fiber undyed (instead of redyeing it when I discovered the lack of pigment inside the roving) so the colors will be more muted when spun. Not exactly pastel but moving in that direction. This is Henry's Attic superwash roving. So delightful to spin! It always makes such a springy yarn.


I have to smile at this colorway. I am really tempted to spin it myself to see what will happen to it. Which brings me to the problem of wanting to spin up everything I dye, just to see what will happen, just to see if it's okay.
I will end up spinning one of the mohair tops and part of the clown roving and at least a small bit of the angora just to be certain of all of them being a good product.
If I continue dyeing, it is always going to be tempting to just go ahead and spin everything. I see trouble ahead for this new enterprise.
I have been spinning a bit. I finished up some merino in Mojave colorway from Ashland Bay which right now is having its twist set in the bathtub so it's not pictured here.
But I struggled with my camel/silk roving that I bought from Crown Mountain Farm. It's not the roving, it's me. I spun less than 4 ounces so far in a very stressed state. It has to affect the yarn. I'm making a 3 ply and I still have only 2 bobbins filled.
















For the past week, I've been spinning up this merino from Ashland Bay in Sage. I think I had about 6 or 7 ounces and still have more to spin but I'm tempted to just go ahead and ply what I have to see what this yarn is going to look like. It's going to be a very thin 3 ply. I don't think I have the patience to wait.



Besides I'm ready for a little color after camel and sage!!!





At the last minute, I decided not to use my handspun for the Gothic Leaf Stole. I walked into Weaving Works when they were having their Mother's Day sale. I'd been eyeing the Henry's Attic Prime Alpaca and it did occur to me that I am a mother.
I'm so pleased with the alpaca and I love the stole so far. You can't see the lace pattern yet but maybe this will give you some idea.












I had to throw it in the hay pile to photograph it because everything is so messy around here. The hay pile is really the neatest area.

It is so much easier to use a thicker yarn for lace! I really did overchallenge myself to start out with such thin yarns and slippery ones at that.
I am proud to say that I haven't used any lifelines so far. I've hardly made any mistakes and those I have made I've been able to correct right away!!




I was picking up a copy of Handwoven because I knew that I would have my name in the Welcome New Weavers section but I was doubly thrilled to see that my teacher, Sue Willingham has an article in this edition.