Fiber Friday with Small Girls

In my frenzy of stash organizing and decluttering I came across quite a lot of undyed fiber in a box. A couple pounds of Falkland, some merino/tussah silk, a pound and a half of Targhee. There was also a pound of domestic wool that I received when I bought my wheel way back when. It occurred to me that the girls might enjoy dyeing fiber for their own sweaters for next winter. The fact that the activity might eat up an afternoon was also quite popular with the holiday-parental unit.

I pulled out my sample cards and showed them which colors I had. They each picked four (both, strangely enough, went for fuschia) and I sent them off to watch Tom and Jerry while I made up stock solutions. And then the fun began.

We started off by soaking the fiber in a big plastic tub - I added some citric acid to the soaking water to be sure that the dyes would strike - and once the fiber was wet, the painting started.

The girls had to be convinced to part with their top.

Devil did hers in the crockpot with brilliant blue, fuschia, turquoise and scarlet Jacquard Acid dyes.

We cooked it on high for about an hour and a half. I was kind of worried that there wasn't enough liquid in the pot, so I added about half a cup of water. The end result was that the bottom layers of the top ended up much darker then the top layer or two.

I'm not sure how it will spin up, and she's not all that thrilled with it at the moment, but we'll see how she feels once it's yarn.

Boo chose yellow, orange, green and pink. And then used all the colors I'd made up instead. Her top was done in the oven in a roasting pan, and the colors that came out were, um, a bit bright.

Thirty minutes in the oven at 190, the kitchen smelled like wet sheep, and we had this:

Boo is pretty thrilled with this, when I can get her to stand still long enough to venture an opinion. We'll see how the yarn ends up, but I suspect it will be quite cheerful (if nothing else!).

The final results:

This dyeing session and my recent organizing made me appreciate even more the talents of the dyers I get fiber from. I put all of my Hello Yarn Fiber Club unspun tops together. There's quite a bit...

That's something like 5 or 6 pounds of fiber. And if I get really brave, I might even be able to combine some of those colorways to get some interesting yarns for larger garments.

A room of one's own

When Himself and I moved to Houston, we bought a house. A house with a lovely two car garage. Which was promptly rendered unfit for motor vehicles.

Some wood

Some more wood

Some tools

I can't really complain about this since I've ended up getting some really really really gorgeous furniture out of the deal. And I was not surprised when one of the criteria when we were looking at places to live in the UK was "where am I going to put my workshop?" Our current adobe has a garage, something not very common here, and it is also blessed with off street parking. So...long story short, part of our container shipment of "household goods" included a router, a drill press and a whack-load of hand tools. And our car sits happily in the driveway.

The bits and pieces of my hobby have been scattered around the house for quite a while. Most of the stash was in the gear room upstairs (the ridiculously small fourth bedroom that held all our camping stuff, skis and most of my yarn), but there was a big box of fiber under Devil's bed, and an ever-growing pile of stuff in progress next to the couch by the TV, and a spinning wheel and fiber all over, dyeing equipment in the laundry room... You get the picture.

A few weeks ago, I decided that Something Needed To Be Done. I have an inherently greater tolerance for clutter then my husband, but every so often I get a bug up my ass and Must Clean Immediately. The result of the most recent bug (and yes, this was inspired by the discovery of M*(&*@)#^$ in my yarn), was the movement of all yarn and fiber, as well as some fabric, down to the empty room in the playhouse at the foot of the garden that was being used as tri bike storage. When I was done hauling boxes down there (and putting yarn in the freezer), it looked like this:

There was shit everywhere. However, a few afternoons while the girls played "Butterfly Catcher" in the garden and a £75 trip to Ikea and it now looks like this:

The yarn stash. All of it. Doesn't seem so bad, does it?

Fiber stash and fabric, miscellaneous project bags on wall

I sorted yarn, I threw out (gasp!) things I was never going to do anything with, I put all my leftovers in one bin so I can use them up in little things. I also got a desk which is not yet quite cleared off, and there are a set of drawers next to with stitch markers, measuring tapes, my hand combs, sample cards and various other miscellaneous bits and pieces (where the heck did all those beads come from anyway?) The last thing to do is hang up a cork board. I envision using this as a lovely escape to design, work on projects, etc, but I suspect it will really just serve as a repository for all things wooly that aren't being worked on this month. Even so, it's so nice to have some space for my hobby.

Plus, I think Himself appreciates not having it spread all over the house. At least not quite so much as it was!

Mother's Day

Almost five years ago, on my first Mother's Day, Ironman took wee two month old baby Devil to an all-women's triathlon (he was "volunteering")and left me by myself for six hours. It was bliss (except for the exploding boobies part - thank you Medela!). It was the first time I'd been by myself for more then half an hour in a long time, and I loved every minute of it.

This year, I actually got to celebrate Mother's Day on Saturday with a similar event. IM went for a run early, and by 9:45, I was on my way to the Tube, with instructions not to come home until dinner time. Ummm...ok! My first stop was the Handweavers Studio, a lovely shop in Finsbury Park. Although it is largely a weaving shop, complete with shelves and shelves of gorgeous yarn for weaving in the most incredibly array of colors, they also sell spinning fiber and wheels. They had a bunch of undyed fibers of both the animal and plant varieties (mmmmm....cashmere/silk blends!), but I came away with 50 g of tussah silk dyed by Treetops Colour Harmonies, in "Thunderstorm" (always with the blues...). And a copy of Abby's book, which I've been wanting to get for a while now. And I'm much happier to buy it from actual people rather then Amazon.

Then it was off to Loop, in Islington. What a lovely store! Small and cosy, with what I assume is a classroom downstairs (lots of people were coming in for a crochet class). They've got a nice range of yarns, including a bunch I'd never seen before. I came away with three skeins of sock yarn...

Crazy Zauberball, for the first sock of Sock Madness IV.

Some Misti Alpaca Hand Paint sock yarn, in slightly more manly colors, that I'm thinking will be socks for the Man with the -20C toes.

And some Handmaiden Casbah Sock, in "Blackberry", that I just could not resist.

After doing serious damage to my bank balance, I then went to Leicester Square, ate ice cream and saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", which was grim and in Swedish (! I had no idea). Thank goodness Hollywood didn't get a hold of this one. The book is very dark, and LA would have twisted it into something with car chases and explosions. But this version was pretty true to the story, and the actress who plays Lisbeth was great. After the movie I headed home to meet up with the rest of the family, who had happily spent the day at the Dinosaur Museum and the Princess Diana playground. It was a lovely day.

Fiber Friday: Oh. Oh my...

Some of the goodies that Adrian has sent to my mailbox in the past few months...

Pallid Rambouillet,

Parritch Targhee,

Loch kid mohair/nylon/merino.

I'll be in my bunk...

A bit of a spree

As those of you on Ravelry know, a number of designers chose/are choosing to donate some of their proceeds from pattern sales to various organizations offering aid to Haiti. Using their nifty "Help for Haiti" tag, you can browse the patterns, or filter the results to patterns that you've already favorited or queued.

The ease with which I was able to find patterns that I had already noted down meant that I dropped quite a bit of imaginary PayPal money on patterns. Including:

Snow White
Gosport
Honeybee Cardigan
The Manzanita Collection
Francie
Northman Mittens
Triskele Mittens

And I don't think I'm done yet. A number of designers (including me) are extending the donating period well into February and even later. So get out there and start buying people!

The next question, of course, is what do I cast on first with my four sweaters worth of stash (at least). Any suggestions?