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Took some time off work this week and indulged my craving for color.

Tuesday was Gaywool dye in Paw Paw

resulting in this buttery, mango-y gorgeousness

Wednesday I did another Gaywool shade- Raspberry. I dyed both white yarn and also a couple of Tuesday’s Paw Paw skeins to achieve peachy and salmon colors-

also overdyed some medium grey fleece to exhaust the dye bath, and found that grey+raspberry = violet purple! yay!

With those two fairly straightforward batches behind me, I started to get myself organized for the grand finale- the indigo vat.

I’d collected all my materials ahead of time- I had to order more thiorea dioxide (thiox) online and pick up flavorless gelatin at the grocery. But I already had the Lye on hand, and quite a bit of indigo powder, so I thought I was all set.

As it turns out, The last time I dyed with indigo was longer ago than I remembered (time flies!), and lye apparently loses some of it’s potency over time (go figure!). So getting the stock solution prepared was a bit of a trial. I had to use quite a bit more lye than the recipe I was using specified, which made me rather nervous.

I eventually resorted to using the large vat that was heating over the propane burner as a water bath to get the stock solution to clarify and reduce. It was still kind of the wrong color (more of an amber yellow than a yellow/green) when I added it to the vat, but i felt like as long as the solution was no longer opaque, I was on the right track. And once I added the solution to the bath it started adjusting toward the green shade. The Man help me out with capturing the magic indigo color change for posterity:

I found that by the end of the day, I had gotten a pretty good feel for telling if the vat was properly reduced or if it needed a bit more thiox. But pH can be hard to judge accurately with paper test strips, because of the color of the dye! Would have been nice to have a pH meter. Put that in the list for next time.

I was so pleased with the nice saturated shades I got out of the vat! (green is indigo over a sharp yellow, and purple at bottom is indigo over a light shade of raspberry) ((ignore the bright purple at left- that’s next week’s show and tell 🙂 )) And the gelatin seems to have been successful in protecting the wool cuticle in the alkaline bath.

At the end of the day I added a little bit of soda ash to the pot to bump the pH up a bit for the last items I’d planned to dye- a pair of cotton cargo shorts and a linen top that I’d sewn a few years ago, both a rather blah shade of beige

but look at them now!

Love, love, love the indigo.

And it isn’t exhausted yet. I’m letting the vat sit for now. Perhaps I’ll have another chance this summer to do some more blue-ing.

Here’s the whole assembled array of dyed goods

My kind of staycation.

Just a couple photos tonight- a new band fresh off the inkle looom

And steady progress on Daphne’s Bea

And a little closer

It’s a lovely combination of fuzzy and silky. Light and lofty. And with this last batch spun and plied I think I have enough of the the right weight to finish the project.

And with that, I will sign off. Taking a little staycation this week, and hope to do some dyeing, as well as sweater maintenance/renovation. Hope to have more to share soon!

Have a good week, folks 🙂

Tomatoes, most peps, cukes and melons are in the ground. Drip/soaker irrigation is turned on. We have liftoff!!

The garden takes a lot of my time and energy this time of year. But elsewhere in in the yard, the bees have been busy pollinating, setting us up for a fruity feast later in the season- It makes me so happy to see all the tiny fruits forming on the trees-

Perhaps that’s why I turned to fruity colors in the wool stash to work on at Saturday’s Spindrifters mtg.

We met at the Wonderful Woolies sale this month, and I came away with a bump of beautiful Shetland roving (Priscilla) from Marietta Shetlands. 🙂

I’m making steady progress on Daphne’s Bea, but it’s funny how a whole garment comprised entirely of garter stitch can sometimes feel restful and meditative, and sometimes feel mind-numbing and tedious. It’s beauty is in it’s simplicity, and I think it it is going to be great to wear, but it still doesn’t look like much yet

I have tried it on, and the fit is good. Just keep knitting. Just keep knitting. And one of these days I’ll get to the exciting bit- picking up stitches for the shawl collar.

In the meantime, for a bit of color-play, I’ve re-warped the inkle loom. New band pattern:

(minus the last thread on the right)

and IRL:

So springy!

K. that’s all I’ve got for now. Take care, folks-

May is go-time! Seedlings are hardened off, the soil is warming up, and everything is fabulously green. At the start of the garden season, everything feels possible. So much potential in all these little baby plants.

I always have extra veggie starts (because it’s always better to have too many rather than too few, right?) and so this time of year I’m looking to trade with other gardeners in the area for things I haven’t grown myself. One such opportunity is the Alger Sunday Market garden swap, which happened earlier today.

I took my extra tomatoes, and came home with strawberries, mustard greens, walnut tree saplings, and bamboo (cut lengths, not plants)!

I decided to plant the strawberries and greens in the greenstalk vertical planter, and utilized some of the remaining romeldale fleece from last year’s Wonderful Woolies sale in that task-

I used a layer in the bottom of each tier, and also to fill the center area. Voila! Fertilizer and filler in one.

Also planted out cukes, melons (in hoophouse), delicata squash, shallots, zuchinni and cabbage (outside).

On the woolly side of things, I’m getting fleeces washed, and taking another stab at collecting lanolin from the washwater. Here’s a batch of Fiona drying outside-

And here is the lanolin that I’ve skimmed from the washwater of Fiona and Daphne fleeces so far

It’s currently a paste-like consistency. I’m thinking that once I’m done washing the wool and collecting the lanolin, I’ll alternately heat and cool it, and see if i can get the remaining water to separate out. But maybe let it sit open and evaporate some first.

So that’s what I’m up to. Will sign off Dottie and Fiona sharing a broccoli plant from the hoophouse

Have a good week, folks-