Blending with Natural Sample Number Four

I snuck away from my mean boss yesterday and spun another quick variegated and natural sample. I like this one so much I wish I had made it much bigger.

This is a variation on the last sample, the insertion, but a 2-ply. I used much less natural this time, pieces about the length and width of my index finger. I put the natural in different place in each ply, so it wouldn't ply on itself.

I put the natural before the purple/blue in one ply and after the purple/blue in the second ply. I really like how it marls intermittently in the yarn. I may have found another way that I like marling yarn.

See, never say never!

When I started knitting the swatch, I wished I had about 50 more yards just for swatching. Those intermittent marls become blips of natural in knitting, I really like it. I think it would look even better with a bigger sample that didn't match in the plying.

I'm going to have do this sample again with more yarn. I have a feeling that it would make a cool garment.

Are you playing with anything new this week?

Tea Dyeing Cotton Thread

Before I started stitching my first square I upended my fabric stash to look for linen. I have a not-so-secret love for linen. I love to wear it, love the weight and that very particular fluid crumpled look of it. I got it into my head that I want to stitch on linen and nothing else would do.

The only color of linen fabric I had on hand was light-ish purple, not quite lavender, with a bit of grey to it. The other idea I had was to make this first stitching tonal, which meant a pink or purple for the thread.

All of my purple threads were too dark, too contrasty with the linen. I dove into my bag of pink threads. I'm not a great fan of pink and the pinks I have are very much on the bright and light end of pink. Too dark of a color I can't fix, too light can work. I picked a color that lives on the same block as Pepto Bismol and those plastic spoons from Baskin Robbins and decided to tea dye it to make it a murky pink.

I did no special prepping, didn't wash my thread or mordant it. I found and empty pickle jar, filled a tea bag with black Lapsang Souchong (because it smells so gorgeous) and stapled it shut. I dropped the tea bag and thread into the jar, topped it with boiling water, capped it and let it sit overnight.

Because the nature of this project is fluid and fleeting, I'm not worried about the dye being permanent.

The result of the overnight tea dunk is lovely, like the pink was dragged through the mud - in the best possible way. It looks great with the purple linen.

Now (of course) I want to dye more things with tea, it casts the most wonderful brown. Has anyone dyed commercially prepped top with tea?

Back to Stitching

I decided that this year I'm going to revisit all of the fiber crafts I've started over the past two years and work on getting better and enjoying them, rather than starting somethng new. Over the past couple of years I've started stitching, crochet and weaving. Of course, I'll still be spinning and knitting.

Stitching is first on my list. I read the book Slow Stitch over the holidays and enjoyed it immensely. I tend to race through things, I try to learn as fast as I can and throughly miss out on the enjoyment of learning. I'm going to try and pace myself this year.

I've cut myself a small stack of linen squares that are 4"x 4". I'm planning on stitching a little most days. Each square will be a single stitch. It's a way to practice stitches and working smaller. The small size of the square fits into my planner, so I can always have a square with me. I'm using regular 6 strand DMC floss, and stitching with 2 or 3 strands.

My first square is running stitch. I'll probably come back to running stitch more than a few times. I think if I can feel in control of that stitch it makes all of the others easier.

I did break my 'nothing new ' rule and dyed the thread with tea. It was a confectionery type of pink and soaking it in tea for a few hours made it a sludgey type of pink. Much better.

Blending with Natural Sample Number Three

Here's another sample in my experiments with adding natural to a variegated top, Maya from Cjkoho designs.

This time I spun a singles and integrated the natural as an additional color in the yarn. It was easy! As I spun the top, every time I finished the blue/purple color, I broke the top andI spun a chunk of the natural. I like the finished yarn, but when I knit it, I see that maybe my chunks of natural were a little too big. I like the frequency of the natural in the yarn, but the next time I do this I would probably reduce each natural chunk by a third.

The next sample I do will be a 2-ply using this idea for each ply. I think I will reduce the natural by half or more and and place the natural after a different color in each ply. Check back next week to see how it comes out.

Have you been experimenting with anything?

Guest Spot in SheepSpot

I wrote an article in the latest Sheepspot newsletter on how to spin a gradient yarn from a variegated fiber. Always playing with my fiber!

Do you subscribe to Sasha's Sheepspot newsletter? It's a great fiber and color resource and you get to find out about new fibers and yarns first. You can sign up here.

My Three Big Things of 2015

I had a crazy busy and crazy wonderful 2015. I've been rolling it all around in my head for the past couple of weeks and I think I've managed to group the year into three big things that made it especially great.

My family, of course, always. This year was more fun, maybe because the kids are older and we're all so busy that we need to makean effort to spend time together. My absolute favorite thing was our camping trip in northern Michigan. Everyone put down their phones and we just just hung out. Our bigger family welcomed a new member this year, a perfect little boy, more family to love. My youngest started middle school this year and my oldest is a Junior, making college plans; time goes faster and faster. We have fun family plans for 2016. I wonder where we'll camp this year?

Teaching in person and on video. I taught at the Craft Guild of Iowa City, at the inaugural Yarn Fest and as the first instructor at my friend Carla's new studio. I taught measuring for spinning as a webinar and put out two spinning videos with Interweave. I really enjoy teaching, talking about my way of approaching spinning and hearing about everyone else's ways of doing and thinking about spinning. And the people! Nothing compares than the live and in-person coming together of spinners and fiber people, it is an explosion of energy.   I never feel luckier and more grateful than after teaching. I have a lot more teaching for 2016 and I'm doing two more videos with Interweave.

Writing a book. Holy crap, I wrote a book. It comes out in July-August and I still can't really believe it. I did a whole lot of writing this year, my book (eee!) and articles for PLY, Spin Off and Knittyspin. I wrote a lot of blog posts and did an out-of-my-comfort-zone blog series for Schacht with Beth on spinning and weaving.

2015 was amazing. 2016 is going to be even better!

Blending with Natural Samples One and Two

I did my first few samples of blending variegated fiber (Maya from Cjkoho designs) and a taupe-y natural colored fiber. They are my standard three variations, the ones I do first. I make them a lot, teach them in my color classes, and I never ever get tired looking the the results. And having all of the samples in the same colors and all together to compare is even better.

My first sample is a single of variegated and a single of variegated plied together. It's the classic candy cane, barber pole or marl. When the colors are high contrast I don't like how it looks, but marled yarns where the contrast isn't so extreme are growing on me.  In these samples the natural color and dyed colors are mostly evenly distributed in the yarn. In the swatch the taupe looks flecked on the colors.

The second sample is variegated fiber and natural drafted together in a singles, a combination draft or single marl. I like the blendy-ness and uneven distribution of color in the yarn and the swatch in combination drafted yarns.

The third is the variegated and natural drafted together and then plied, in this case into a 2-ply, double marl or combination draft 2-ply. This one is always my favorite. I like the smaller spots of color and the extra random distribution of color and natural. I like how the natural look more integrated into the colors.

If you are in the mood to knit with marled yarn, but don't want to spin one, Jill Draper makes a gorgeous tonal three-ply yarn called Rockwell.

In my next round of samples I'll add plies and play with adding the neutral fiber between colors in a single before plying.

What are you experimenting with?

Handspun by Floyd Skloot

Handspun by Floyd Skloot
 

My wife sits in her swivel chair

ringed by skeins of multicolored yarn

that will become the summer sweater

she has imagined since September.

Her hand rests on the spinning wheel

and her foot pauses on the pedals

as she gazes out into the swollen river.

Light larking between wind and current

will be in this sweater. So will a shade

of red she saw when the sun went down.

When she is at her wheel, time moves

like the tune I almost recognize now

that she begins to hum it, a lulling

melody born from the draft of fiber,

clack of spindle and bobbin, soft

breath as the rhythm takes hold.

Folyd Skloot lives in Oregon. His most recent book is Approaching Winter, from Louisiana State University Press.

Thanks to Beth at Lorna's Laces for first posting this!