Dyeing in the garden

Did anyone else read 'dying in the garden' ?  When I received a tex from my friend Jenny saying 'come over on Wednesday afternoon, were dyeing in the garden'...just for one moment...  But it's high summer and her cousin Jo is staying and they both like to cook up some colours in the garden.

I'm not sure whether I am ready to get messy with colours and fibre yet but I do have a new camera (a tiny Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ8)  and it was the perfect afternoon for tea, chat and some snaps.

Apparently dyers do not usually share their secrets and so I have decided this post will be a lot shorter on words than usual and let the photographs (and my new camera) talk for me.

yesterday's fibre drying in the sun

virgin BFL pre-soaking 

dyes mixed and ready to go

some silk (far right) some BFL and some spun (Monet's garden)

spun autumn

and finally more garden colour  inspiration

xx

c

A little progress

A bit wiggly and somewhat over-spun but I have created A Whole Ball of Yarn and it's yarn I could knit with!

Last week after struggling with trying to teach myself, I took a class with a lovely lady called Carol who spins and weaves in a beautiful summer house in her garden in Liss in Hampshire.  I loved her way of teaching, beginning with the history of spinning and how over time spinners progressed from drop spindles to something called The Big Wheel to the spinning wheels we recognise today.

I knew that the term spinster came from those who spin but I did not know that the ability to spin a fine thread was considered to be a sign of virtue.  Hence Roman Emperors' wives having their portraits painted holding a spindle.  These women had no need to spin their own cloth, they had legions of hand maidens to do this for them, but the message was clear, the emperor's wife was a woman above reproach.

The first thing Carol did was substitute my puffy cloud of BFL,

with which I could only produce snail-like twisty lumps

for something less processed and a little coarser

And this is how I got started.  I still found it very tricky to spin with my wheel.  If you look at the picture of my flyer here...

you can see that the diameter of the whorl (on the right ) is about half the diameter of the wheel on the left. The whorl controls the amount of twist put on the yarn and tightening the scotch tension knob, wound around the larger wheel with string (all sooo high tech) adjusts the rate that the spun yarn is wound on to the bobbin.  On the Ashford spinning wheel the two are the same diameter, meaning it is possible to spin slowly without adding too much twist.  I'll get there eventually, when I learn to draw out the fibre faster I can increase the winding speed but until then I have to keep practising so that my spinning style can become compatible with my sort of wheel.

The slightly puzzling thing is that when I look at websites selling the Lendrum they all say that the wheel is sold with the fast whorl instead of the standard, yet I cannot find anyone selling the standard in the UK.  So if anyone knows where I can buy a standard flyer do please let me know.

I am actually getting on better with drop spinning.  Carol explained it was important to begin with the drop spindle to get the feeling for spinning at a slow speed.

I found this lovely puff of mixed fibres in my stash

.
And have spun a fair amount of thread

Blues, greens, grey and white with a hint of sparkle.  I am going to spin the whole bag,  no idea how many yards of yarn I shall spin but once I know I shall decide what to make with it.

xx

c

The Lendrum and a plea for help

I have signed up for an entirely new experience, I am going to learn to spin and this is my new baby

This is one of my mother's wheels, the other a traditional Ashford sits in my sister-in-law's dinning room waiting for her to learn too.  When my mother was alive I was not particularly interested in spinning, I did have a go one day and was rather impressed that Mum could spin but I preferred the local yarn shop experience of wandering the shelves marvelling at the colours and feeling the textures.  But it seems to me that if you are a yarn junkie then one day you have to face up to the ultimate fibre experience - spinning

Until last evening I did not even know what sort of wheel it was - all was revealed by scrolling through Google images of wheels until I found one that looked similar to mine and by following the links I am fairly confident it is a Lendrum.  But that is all I know and before I take my wheel to my first spinning class I would be so very grateful if any of you lovely readers of my blog could help me a little.

The wheels I found by my Google search seemed to have two pedals - mine has one, what is the difference?

I found one YouTube clip that showed the 'top bit' had less hooks than I have here - are all these used when threading the lead yarn?

Have I got the back knob in the right place (It had some yarn wound around it which seems to help it to lock in place)

And - is there a list somewhere of what all the parts are called?  Can I buy a hookey thing somewhere or do people improvise with a piece of wire?  I think this hook is the only bit missing, what do you think?

Finally are there any YouTube films that you would recommend for me to learn a bit more before I get to my lesson?

I'm itching to begin, so if anyone could help, I would be ever-so happy.  I have this basket of billowy alpaca

And this bowl of creamy BFL - all ready to go

xx

c

A surfeit of exuberance

It's not that I haven't been knitting - I have, every evening.  But I don't have a lot to show for it...  yet.

I really want to finish the half done WIPs (I really do) but I began by un-ravelling.  The Araucania cardigan, begun months ago, was over half finished (back and fronts done, side seams sewn and shoulders grafted) but when I tried it on I knew it was all wrong.  And it's to do with The Problem.

The Problem does not only affect my choice of pattern, and my propensity to further embellish the pattern with little modifications of my own but also my choice of yarn.

When choosing what to knit and what to knit with (or lets be honest what-yarn-to-buy-never-mind-what-I-shall-knit-with-it) it's all about superlatives - gorgeous, beautiful, soft, fluffy, intense, rich, jewelled. Then there is beaded, indy-dyed (and spun) BFL*, alpaca, silk and simple good merino.  Buying yarn is a little like buying sweets or cake - I have a tendency to go for the bright and fancy with lashings of cream.  Patterns are no different - I go for the frills and furbelows. It's my undoing... It's The Problem

Yet if I go to a shop to buy ready made, restrained is my watchword.  I look for elegant lines, cool neutral colours, natural fibres and most definitely no fancy trimmings.  No wonder sometimes I finish something with a big fanfare and much rejoicing only for it to come out very rarely as once more I pull on my old fine cashmere crew necked sweater. Or cotton knits in cream and grey

And so it was that last week  I ripped out my Araucania, marmalade** coloured jacket with its contrasting garter stitched stripes in a slightly different weight and colour yarn, the peplum and the planned button band made of applied i-cord.  The colour is fab, all the colours of  Seville orange deliciousness; the yarn a beautiful blend of hand finished fibres but why was I tempted to embellish?

There's another connection with marmalade as well as colour.  Have you seen how many ways there are to mess with the original, simple stuff made of oranges, sugar and water?  You can buy it with added whiskey, spices, nuts - even marmalade made without oranges!!  But the best way is surely plain and simple, just as with this yarn.

And so I have reined in my imagination and chosen a simple sweater pattern with a shawl collar.   I am not absolutely sure I shall have enough yarn so I began with the sleeves and will knit the body in the round up to the armholes so if necessary I can make it a little bit shorter.

 And so the Araucania is sorted, that just leaves the multi-coloured, multi-textured stash (some with beads) much of it in very small amounts - there might be a lot of hats and scarves (and several pairs of socks!)

xx

c

(I bought this today, isn't it pretty?)

*BFL - Blue Faced Leicester, a breed of sheep whose fleece spins into the perfect knitters yarn
** Marmalade - after last week's blog a twitter friend @KismetIslander suggested one could not combine Marmalade and knitting.  Ho Hum...