Coming In Like A Lion......

March, that is.  Last week we had 25 inches of snow in three days.  Four days later temps were in the  50s and it mostly melted.  Three days after that....back in the teens.  I won't show you pictures of the snow because aren't we all just about done with that by now?  However, I do know one thing we are not tired of and that is pictures of cute corgis in the snow!

I can't help it.  The snow on the face kills me dead every time.  


I think you can tell by my latest bit of handspun what I've been dreaming of.......

Yep, just look at the beautiful sunny yellow.  If I can't have sunshine outside, well I will just make my own.  
To go with it, I am working on this:

Doesn't this look like I'm spinning up a bit of the ocean?  This is from hand dyed roving I ordered from an Etsy shop called Woogatherings.  Oh, she has the most beautiful fibers.  This is polwarth, which I've never spun before, and I have to tell you it is a dream to spin. I'm going to try to Navajo ply this.  I've been practicing.  We'll see.  There is a little more hand-eye coordination involved than regular plying and I'm most definitely in a learning curve.
So.......what's going on with all this yarn?  I really want to make this shawl by Carina Spencer:

It's called the Faraway-So Close shawl and I think it is just stunning.  Many people on Ravelry have made this with their bits and bobs of their handspun and it makes a beautiful sampler shawl. 

Spin, Spin, Spin

Sorry for the long break, but I have been busy, busy, busy playing and having fun.  One of my new friends up here is a spinner.  No, not just a spinner....a Spinner.  She has been spinning since the 70s and has taken a group of us who either want to learn to spin or who are beginning spinners under her wing.
A few weeks ago she lent me this:

I know, I KNOW.  I am just peeing my pants excited to have this in my house.  I quickly dyed up all the roving I had and have been playing around with it ever since.  Seriously, it is so much fun to see what colors do when you blend them all together and then to see what they do when they are spun.  It really is a color adventure.  So far I've done this:

The first two skeins on the right are from batts I bought and the two on the left are from batts that I made.  
This is my next batt:

Yeah.......do you think someone is craving a little sunshine?

Dyeing Roving: The So-Not-A-Tutorial; Part 2

Alrighty then.  We've put the dye on the roving and now we need to put heat on it to set the dye.  Today I'm going to try steaming it in a pot on the stove. 
Take the plastic wrap and bring both sides up over the roving, scrunching the two sides to make a seam down the middle.  Then wrap that baby up just like a little burrito.

I know....it looks a little gross at this point, but hang in there....it all works out in the end.
I used a large roasting pan.  To keep the roving out of the water, I placed a small colendar in the bottom of the pan.  You could also use a steamer or even bend a wire clothes hanger to hold the roving.  I added just enough water to the pan to barely touch the bottom of the colander.
I placed the roving in the pan and covered the pot with a lid.

Then I brought the water to a slow boil and let the steam penetrate the roving.  I let it steam for about 30 minutes.  At the end of the 30 minutes,  I turned off the heat and let the roving cool to room temperature.  When it is cool, I rinsed the roving in room temperature water until the water ran clear.  Remember to handle the fiber gently so that is doesn't felt.
At this point, I remove the excess water by givng a spin in the washing machine.  Just set it on the last spin cycle.  Don't take through a whole wash.
Now I let it dry and voila.....

Here it is drying and this is what it looks like once I braided it....



And here it is spun.....

So what did I learn?  First, I would use fewer colors--maybe three-- and I would leave some white space in between the dyed areas.  This would let the dyes run into each other.  I also need to learn more about how to measure dye and how to control the intensity of the color.  This turned out darker than I have envisioned.  But all in all not too bad for a first attempt. 

Dyeing Roving: The So-Not-A Tutorial

As I said, I've been hankering to learn to dye roving and yarn.  I already have my fingers in the dye pot as far as wool fabric is concerned and feel pretty comfortable with that, however, the technique for yarn and roving dyeing is just a bit different. 
So I have been watching YouTube videos, reading tutorials online and consulting books and, without further ado.....I give you my first attempt!
Oh, and I apologize in advance for the crummy pictures.  We have a dark kitchen and when you factor in a bad camera with my even worse photography skills......well you do the math.
First I gathered together all my supplies.

I used ProChem dyes because that's what I use to dye wool for my rug hooking and have it on hand.  I also needed a glass measuring cup, vineger, plastic squeeze bottle and an old chopstick for stirring and poking things down.  In addition, I needed old newspapers, plastic wrap, a colander, plastic glover and a big enamel pot.
First, I soaked the roving.  I added a bit of Jet Dry to the water so the wool would absorb the water quickly.

I know, it looks like one of those Halloween party things where you have to stick your hands into a pan full of guts.  Or maybe that's just the kind of Halloween parties I get asked to.  Never mind.

While the wool was soaking I put newpaper over the kitchen counters and then plastic wrap over that.  I put two long strips of plastic wrap down and then pinched them together to made a long seam in the middle.  This will all become important later on in the process.

Next I gently took the wool from the pan and gently squeezed the water out.  Gently, gently, gently.  Handling the wool roughly will cause it to felt and we don't want that.

I laid out the wool folding it back and forth so it all fit on the saran wrap.  Now for the fun part.....

Adding the color!  I chose four colors:  Evergreen, Teal, Plum and Bright Orange.  Although it doesn't look like it in this picture, I added a toothpick tip of Brillant Blue to the Orange to tone it down a bit and make it a more of a rust color.  I won't go into how I measured the dye and mixed it because I am learning some new ways to do that and will write about that in another post. 

Anyway, I carefully poured the dye into the squeeze bottles, which I bought at Walmart in the section where they had the small kitchen items.  Only 97 cents each! 

Then I squeezed the dye on the roving in wide strips.  Wearing plastic gloves, I made sure that I gently worked the dye into the fibers all the way through.  Remember....gently....see above.

What comes next?  I'll post that tomorrow!

Dying to Dye

One of the things I love about rug hooking is dying my own wool.  So I guess it is not too much of a surprise that once I starting spinning that I would would be equally obsessed with dying yarn and roving.  I know....just what I need is another interest to pursue.  I don't know what to say...I seem to be powerless over my lack of focus.Anyway, I ordered this:

Oh wait....someone (Lucy) tore my brand new book apart (Lucy) because someone (Lucy) couldn't go for a ride in the car with us (Lucy).  So not to mention any names, but someone in this household now has to spend her alone time in the house confined to the front porch.

Okay, I ordered this book and this DVD...

 I just started watching the DVD and it looks like it will be a good resource.  What I find interesting so far is that she uses the metric system for measuring and that she weighs her dye rather that measuring things out with a spoon.  That way, because all dyes have different weights, you end up getting the same saturation of dye in your dye solutions.  Or I think that was the reasoning.  My mind tends to wander during any kind of technical type of talk.  So I ran out and bought a kitchen scale and will be trying the whole weighing thing soon.
I did try dying some roving using a combination of information from You Tube videos and my book.  And let me just say that yarn-and-roving-dying people are so much more laid back than rug hooking-wool- dying people. 
In rug hooking, everyone is using 20 different dye colors, Grey measuring spoons and worrying about actually how far do they dip the toothpick in the dye--and is it a wet or dry tooth pick?  And what about the minerals in the water and, you know, the humidity can affect your dying also.
Yarn dyers, on the other hand, just seem to use the colors that ProChem seemed fit to give them STRAIGHT FROM THE JAR.  They dump the dye in the pot and start dying yarn.
Pretty refreshing if you ask me.
Well, I could write more, but the one who really runs this household is telling me that I've spent my hour on the computer and that I should be spending my time time taking her for a walk.

And seriously....who could resit this?