The Kool-Aid Dye Project

My fiber guild proposed a challenge this year: dye fiber with kool-aid, make something and display all of the resulting projects in the fiber room at our annual county fair.

Seems like a good idea, but I floundered for inspiration for awhile until I saw someone's fabulous handknitted kneehigh socks on Ravelry.  They had wonderful striping action, and I knew I wanted some for myself.  Now, the socks I admired were from handspun yarn, but I wasn't going to have time to dye fleece and handspin the yarn for the socks.

So I compromised.

Knowing that 100g of sock yarn doesn't quite yield a pair of knee high socks (think mid-calf), I purchased 2-100g of undyed yarn from Knitpicks.com.  Now, I could have dyed the fiber in the skein, but I wanted stripy rather than variegated yarn.  So borrowing a friend's knitting machine (thank you Lindsey!) I turned each skein into matching sock blanks.

Now I had a canvas onto which I could paint kool-aid stripes.

Using Biscuits and Jam random strip generator, I selected my colors and stripe width and repeat parameters, printed out the result and had a guide for my stripe pattern.

The dyeing is pretty easy.  Kool-aid is considered edible and non-toxic (depending on who you ask, right?), and pretty easy to use, with a minimum of prep.  Knitty has an excellent tutorial on dyeing with Kool-Aid, complete with colors achieved from different flavors.

Mixing up the colors, two packets per color.

Ready to dye, the two blanks laid out together.

Wrapped in plastic, ready for microwave "steaming" to set the color.

On display at the fair with other kool-aid projects.  If you look closely you can see the beginning of a toe in the upper left.

Best thing?  The socks still smell like strawberry kool-aid.

There and back again, a fiber tale

It's that time of year again, when vendors, knitters and other fiber enthusiasts descend upon the Santa Clara convention center for the annual Stitches West convention, where there is easily an acre of booths all selling yarn and fiber related stuff.  This is the best opportunity to see indie dyers and craftpeople in person, touch yarns you've only see in glossy pages on through the gentle blue glow of the computer screen.

Last year at this convention I struggling with epic pneumonia, and had no idea how radically my life was about to change.  It was nice to relax and get high on yarn fumes with a few thousand like minded fiber enthusiasts.  It's one of those rare times when my knitting worlds converge into one place, including Auburn Knit Night, MeadowFarm, and Fiber Trash Girls, as well as friends from the blogosphere and Ravelry.

There were pajama parties, great food, and lots of squealing over color, fiber and accessories.  Here's my acquisitions for this year.

Miss Babs' Yowza.  540 yds of luscious hand-dyed yarns.  This is going to become a Harmonia's Rings sweater.

This was the first time I've seen Western Sky Knits, but fell in love with this glitter sock yarn in the Rustic Rainbow colorway.  I've made socks before in the same yarn base, and they're yummy.

Of course I had to acquire more Abstract fiber.  This is Polworth in Lauren Hurst colorway.

And I took my very first stitches class this year, a fair isle for socks how to with Janel Laidman, author of such sock wonders a Sole Enchantments.

Another Coco Knits pattern that just could not be resisted.  I'll have to see what I have in stash to make this...

And, I won this awesome organizer from Chicken Boots in the daily prize drawings.  I had just been admiring Rowen's organizer when other friends informed me that they'd hear my name announced as a winner, and I was thrilled with my prize!

Friends, food, fiber, so much to absorb...  My senses are still reeling with everything seen, touched, tasted, heard and felt.  I'm really going to sleep well tonight!

The Green Sweater Project: Dyeing

Another belated post, this time from August 2011.  

In July I started cleaning a Romney fleece acquired locally from a friend in the fiber guild, resulting in about 5 pounds of decently clean wool.  I had decided at some point that I wanted this to be a sheep-to-sweater event, just to say I'd done.  I decided that I wanted a rich, multi-toned green, maybe even a bit heathered. 

So I pulled out my dye sample book and newer color box, picked out the colors that made my heart sing, and set about dyeing.

First is soaking the wool in hot water with a splash of vinegar. 

I found I could comfortably work with about 3/4 pound at a time.  More than that and things got unwieldy, and the fiber didn't have much room to move in the dye pot.  I used a large steamer tray insert in a buffet server to do my immersion dyeing.

Here's a result of the primary color drying on the rack.

I processed a total of six batches over about four days.  Two of the primary green, three of other shades, and one of a fuschia that was supposed to be a bit more salmon as a contrast color.  We'll have to see how that works out during the blending.

A new way to sample

I first leaned to dye samples last year with Sara Lamb and the Fiber Trash Girls.  Then Jan showed up this summer with a dye sample box, rather than a binder.  Using embroidery floss organizers, she samples small amounts of dye, keeping very accurate records of the combinations used, then wraps the small amount of yarn around an embroidery floss bobbin for easy viewing. Her idea was featured in Interweave's Fall Color ezine, Spin Knit. 

I loved this idea, and set out to increase the amount of sample colors I had.  I began by sampling my primary Lanaset colors: turquoise, mustard, yellow, scarlet, fuchsia, and navy and black.  I sampled each at DOS 2%, 1%, .5% and .25% to have a range of tints.  Four jam jars fit nicely into the crock pot for steaming.

I then picked my favorite two-color blends and sampled at 2%, 1%, 1% with a drop of black added, and .5%.  Here's a different selection of greens drying.

Here are a selection of my colors, all wrapped up and ready for their box.

 

This project is by no means even close to being finished, and it'll take me a very long time on my current schedule to fill my sample box.

Processing the Fleece, Part I

Last year I acquired a Romney fleece from Lindsey, and there it sat in a garbage bag in my shed for the remainder of the year.  I knew I could pay to have it sent off to one of the mills to be professionally processed, but I wanted to get hands on with at least one fleece, and this was going to be the one.  I just needed the proverbial rainy day to get started.

So finding out last week that I was going to have some extra time on my hands, I decided it was time to fish out the fleece and get started.  I missed taking a before photo, but lets say that it was a yellowish bunch of wool that filled a large trash bag and weighed many pounds.

The first step is to scour, or clean, the wool, which essentially involves soaking the wool in large tubs with a bit of Dawn.  I used two 15-gallon tubs and split the fleece in two.  The first water bath is hot, to open the scales on the wool.  The water was instantly muddy brown with lanolin and dirt.  These were left to soak and cool for several hours.  The process was repeated three times, each time the water being cooler.  (Note that there are both hot and cold water taps outside the house.  Somebody was thinking ahead!)

You have to be very careful to not felt the fleece during the cleaning stages.  Hot water + soap + agitation = felt, so there is no rubbing or squeezing of the fleece.  In between water baths it was gently lifted out as a mass and placed in a giant colander for straining.

Finally satisfied that the fleece was reasonably clean, it was placed in the bottom of the washing machine for some quick spin action.  Again, no agitation.  We went straight to the spin cycle in an old-fashioned upright for some centripetal action.  Look how fluffy after just a minute!

Finally the fleece, being reasonably clean, is left to dry outside on a rack.  I occasionally shift the masses around to expose all of the fiber to dry evenly.  I suspect it will be dry by this evening, and I'll be able to weigh what I have left after most of the dirt and lanolin were removed.

Shearing Day

Last Sunday Carl the Shearer came to shear Sue's goats and sheep.  There are Romeldale and various Romeldale crosses.  The white one is a Corriedale, and the greys are fleece mutts.  Carl trimmed toes and sheared using his mobile electric shearer.  

The process of trimming a sheap or goat has been called the two-minute waltz.  Before mechanical shears, it would take six men approximately2-3 minutes to collectively shear a fleece.  With mechanical shears and using a consistent pattern to turn the body of the sheep, a good shearer can shear an entire animal in under two minutes by himself.  Mechanical shearing and the techniques that were developed by the Bowen brothers in New Zealand mean faster shearing with a more uniform cut edge and fewer cuts to the sheep, all which yield a higher value to the fleece.

Here's a short video of the shearing of Queenie the Angora goat, which gives you an idea of the process of shearing.

Here's some pics of the various wools after shearing.  These will need to be skirted (removing the poopy bits) and then sent to a mill to be professional cleaned of vegetable matter and processed into fluffy roving.

More babies!

 In total we hatched out seven baby chicks between the two mommas. I wasn’t sure what the babies were going to look like, given that we had four varieties of chickens involved, but it looks as though we have two Ameraucanas, one gold-laced, three silver-laced and possibly one blue-laced Wyandotte types.  It’s great to see that they take after the individual varieties so strongly even though they are mixed parentage.

This week also yielded more goat babies!  This was Pi’s first pregnancy, and her birth was over almost before it even began.  I got a quick call that she was in labor, and six minutes later a second call that we already had one baby.  By the time I made it home from work twenty minutes later, everything was over and we had two cute little bucklings.  

We do not need these boys for breeding stock, so they will be wethered (neutered) and sold as pets/brushers.  They’re super cute with elfin ears.  Being second (?) generation mini-manchas, they’ll stay a manageable size, about 70 lbs when full grown. I prefer the minis because I can handle them, even with my torn sacrum ligament, and they don’t overwhelm my nieces and nephews.  We'll try again next year for some doelings out of Pi.

Last week kicked off the Tour de Fleece/Tour de France.  I’m part of Team Spinning Spinderellas.  Organized by Steph, our goal is simply to spin everyday the riders are riding.  Most days I’m spinning in the evening while the family watches tv.  I started with this delicious batt from Rowen.

Yesterday was the monthly spinning Saturday hosted by our fiber guild, and several of the team members joined in the air conditioned meeting room to share what they’ve done so far and get in a solid three hours of spinning.  Alas, I forgot my camera, but Birdsong posted a pic of the pile of finished yarns on the floor.  I started spinning a roving by Steph, "Gonna Nail That Catfish to a Tree."

More spinning today at Tin Thimble’s spinning Sunday!

Of course, between the heat and the spinning, some things like gardening have fallen to the wayside, at least for the moment.

Stitches 2010

Ok, it's been awhile, but I've been busy, which means I have lots to catch up on sharing.  We'll start with Stitches 2010!

Vail and I undertook our yearly pilgrimage to the greatest concentration of yarn, fiber and knitters on the West Coast, possibly the entire northern continent.  All the hotels in the area were booked, and chances were that if you saw some knitted, crocheted, or felted item, it was probably handmade by the wearer.  After explaining what Stitches was to a puzzled male passenger on the hotel elevator, I suggested he should compliment the wearer of any such garment as we were armed with pointy sticks.  He wasn't sure if I was being comedic or serious...

My typical strategy is to scope out the market during the Thursday night preview, armed with my Ravelry queue, noting yarns and prices of interest.  Go back to the hotel room, crunch numbers, and start making purchases Friday morning.  Once the basics are taken care of, then it's time for free-form shopping with the remaining budget and a second-pass through the market.  This is of course, interspersed with squealing, fondling, complimenting others' sweaters and knitted items, and breaking for meals and snacks with other knitting friends.  No one thinks it odd that we are knitting everywhere, and I always find it distinctly amusing to see knitters congregating like so many other convention goers.

Here are Daniella, Barbara Sue, Vail, me, Sierra, Dee, Eva and Sue Flynn waiting in the auditorium for the fashion show.  Thanks to Mardi for taking the picture, and congrats go to her as well for winning one of the fashion show prizes.  Say cheese everyone!

Well, some of you may remember that last year at Stitches I was bit by the spinning bug, and so much of this year's budget was dedicated to all things fiber.  There were five fiber colorways purchased at as many vendors.  Of particular note were Abstract Fiber and Snicklefritz Yarns, both offering hand dyed rovings.  At Abstract we got to talking about drop spindles, and they want to come to the Foothill Fibers Drop Spindle Retreat in May, as they too are on that crazy drop spindle train. 

Snicklefritz has a traveling gnome that she uses to inspire her colorways, and she had this carbonized bamboo fiber, which she likened to crack.  I didn't get any of that, but I think that Stephanie and Rhodi might have.  

I bought Gnome in the Sierra in BFL roving.

There was some Miss Babs mixed BFL roving,

And some Lisa Souza superwash merino roving,

And Pigeon Roof Studio's superwash merino roving.

There was yarn too.  Here's Northampton Bulky wool for the Cabled Hoodie Cardigan,

and more of the silk/cotton/modal blend for the Penelope shirt.

And least you wonder who is this person who didn't buy any sock yarn, well, of course I bought some sock yarn!  Madeline Tosh Sock in "Jade" called my name while I was in line and that was that.

Home again now, and some more posts coming soon.  After all, we have drop spindles, goats, cheese, and chickens to discuss - those baby chicks and goats from last year didn't stop growing you know!

A busy summer...

A friend remarked today that her autumn sense is tingling. Yep, the lessening daylight and lowering incline of the sun in the sky, the desire for handknit socks in the morning and an extra blanket on the bed at night. Next we'll be chopping wood... Fall is just around the corner, which leads me ponder, where has summer gone?


The garden has been prolific, probably something to do with all of the chicken and goat poop and bedding that I mulch the beds with. The winter squash, which turned out to be a kabucha and not an acorn, has taken over one side of the garden. Several kinds of tomatoes are slowly ripening, and the eggplants are in super production mode. In particular, the fairy tale eggplant is doing magnificently.


At my last posting, we had a baby boy goat. Well, he's not so little anymore. He easily weighs 45 lbs and is nearly as tall as the smallest of the minis. If he were going to remain a boy it would be time to separate him from the girls. Instead, Finn is undergoing a procedure that makes my husband cringe to talk about, but the rough part is already over and Finn is handling it like a trooper. We plan to look for a home for Finn, not really needing another browsing animal, but he is pretty adorable, with the same sweet temperament of his momma, and so we find ourselves tempted to keep him anyway.



What else? Well, at the beginning of summer, a friend and I took an intensive spinning class, and I'm now the proud owner of a Ladybug by Schacht. It's small enough to fit under my craft table and take to knit night or spinning events. I used it to spin this green sock yarn which won first place in the novice spinning category at the fair. Woo hoo!


The fair. That took a week of my life, and it was immediately followed by the land trust's annual benefit concert, which took another week of life. Then there was the week of recovery... And that was about it for August.


I've been knitting all summer, some baby items for new arrivals and a tank top that I hope to finish this week. With the whisperings of cooler air, my fingers are itching to do more knitting and spinning, and get warmer projects finished up.

Upcoming Class

Math of Socks
Thursday, August 13
2 hours, $25

There's nothing more disappointing than knitting a pair of socks in beautiful hand-painted yarn to have them not fit. If this has happend to you then you need this class. If you can balance your check book (and even if you can’t), you’ll be a master of numbers and your knitting at the finale of this class.

While this 2-hour class is geared to fitting socks, the underlying concepts apply to all knitted garments. Bring a tape measure, a calculator, pencil, and a 2”x2” swatch of sock yarn knitted in the round.

RSVP to The Tin Thimble, 916-663-2134.

World Wide Knit in Public Day

Saturday is World Wide Knit in Public Day!
In Grass Valley there is an opportunity to knit at the Growers Market at the Fair Grounds from 8-noon.
Does anyone want to go to this knit in, or try to stage our own at the Auburn Saturday morning market?
Check out this link for more info and to find a WWKiP event near you. I know there are two in Sacramento!

There and back again - a knitters tale

Last weekend was the annual Stitches West convention in Santa Clara. Haven't been to a stitches? Picture thousands of knitters and fiber enthusiasts taking over a large hotel and convention center for 4 days. Just imagine. The hotel was overbooked, knitters were rearranging furniture and the baristing machine was out of milk. Not a one lost their temper. They just pulled out their knitting and in the words of Elizabeth Zimmerman, knit on through any crises.

Yes, four days with my people. We practiced the knitters handshake (petting of sweater, "Oh, did you make that?") without fear of reprisal. We exulted over beautiful, one-of-a-kind hand dyed skeins, and almost lost our dignity when we stuck our hands in the yak/silk roving. So soft! And we shopped.

Most importantly we knit. Everywhere. We knit at the table waiting for food, in the lounge with an alcoholic beverage, in our rooms. I'm sure some of us knit in the bathroom. I cast on a sock the first day during lunch and finished it at the Small Farm Conference on Monday.


I bargained shopped and hunted high and low for the special splurge yarn, which turned out to be Tactile's merino/silk laceweight in pomegranite. The picture doesn't do this color justice. The score turned out to be a mill end of lightweight Sock That Rock in an unknown colorway. Great bargains were also at Webs, where I scored sweater amounts of yarn to do two sweaters from the new book French Girl Knits.


Webs is also the source of my newest project, the Trumpet Flower Cardigan, which uses yarn I purchased last year. Nice, brainless knitting.


And then I made a tactical error. I went to the spinning guild's drop spindle demo. This would have been a good time for an intervention, because I think it's too late now. For just a $5 donation I acquired a starter drop spindle and some roving. I'm hooked. I've already spun the ounce I started with and had to get more at the Tin Thimble. And a friend is loaning me a better quality drop spindle. I can already see where this is headed...

Knitting Classes - Math of Socks

I've been remiss setting up my knitting class schedule for the next couple of months.

I know I'm teaching Math of Socks (description below) twice in the next month, once at Meadowfarm Yarn Studio on Jan. 30th 11-1 and again at Courthouse Coffee in Auburn, date to be determined, although it will be on a Wednesday or Thursday evening. I still need to coordinate with the owner.

For Meadowfarm reservations call 530.470.8862.
For inquiries about the Auburn class, email me or post to the comments.

This class is designed for people who have made socks and want to understand how to make them fit and make their own socks patterns based on their measurements and gauge.

Math of Socks - 2 hours, $20
Aha! Don’t let the title scare you. If you can balance your check book (and even if you can’t), you’ll be a master of numbers and your knitting at the finale of this class. We'll discuss where to measure the foot, how to adjust for narrow ankles or wide arches, and how to calculate the number of stitches you'll need to make your sock fit. Bring a tape measure, a basic calculator, pencil, and a 2”x2” swatch of sock yarn (sport or fingering). This class is designed with previous sock knitting experience in mind. This is not a learn to knit socks class.

Short row heel - no wraps!

This tidy little video showed up in my inbox this morning, and it looks to be such a great (and simple) technique that I wanted to share with all of my sock knitting friends. I'm going to try this on my current socks in progress, so I'll be able to let you know just how practical it is soon.

Auburn Festival of Lights Parade

Last weekend was the Auburn's annual holiday parade, the Festival of Lights. Often called the Electric Light Parade of Auburn, this is a well-attended event every year, often drawing visitors from far away locations. People pack the streets to watch the over 100 float entries in the parade.

Auburn Knit Night and Courthouse Coffee joined forces to be in the parade for the first time this year. The knitters used glow sticks to knit in the back of Courthouse Coffee's '69 Ford pick-up. People cheered our glow sticks, the knitting, and the owner of the coffee shop. We cheereed and waved back, feeling on par with our favorite knitting celebrities Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka The Yarn Harlot and the authors Kay and Ann from Mason-Dixon Knitting. (Psst, Santa: I still really want the new Mason-Dixon Kntting book.)

The group able to be in the parade left to right is Debbie, Gail, Earin, Luci and Sharon.
For more parade pics, check out this link.

Auburn Knit Night is open to knitters, crocheters, and other hand crafts. We meet Tuesday evenings at Courthouse Coffee in Auburn from 6-9pm.

And to plug Courthouse Coffee, let me just say that it offers so much more than coffee. There's an exciting variety of Fair Trade drinks and high quality salads, soups, sandwiches, pie and other goodies. Also, wi-fi internet access, space for local groups to gather, and is convieniently located adjacent to the year-round, Saturday morning farmers' market. And did I mention the wine and beer?