Washing Art Yarns

Now the evenings are long and dark, the wind is howling and rain is slashing agaisnt the window I am having a lovely time sitting  at my wheel playing with colour and texture.  Quite suddenly I can't  get enough and look forward every evening to  to the time when I can sit down and spin.  This is when I rnew my stock of art yarns  which have  been selling like hot cakes  but I do have a few up on my website.    Here I couldn't   resist a photo of the yarns being washed.  I thought it showed them off quite well!  I wash the  yarn for a very short time in very hot water with a little of my lovely  organic shampoo so the yarn hangs nice and straight and it firms up soft fibres a bit.
Of course every scrap of fibre is naturally dyed.

A small Success with the Mohair Art Yarn

I rang up my friend Anne who has been mentioned on this blog more than once.  and had a bit of a whinge.  "I can't seem to get on top of these new yarns I  want to spin" I said full of  misery and moans -talk about the January blues.  "I think" said Anne,  expert spinner and generally a wonderful crafts woman "that you need to concentrate on  one and practice till you get it right" So I went round to visit  and practised and came home and did a bit more and here is  a lovely white mohair yarn on a fabulous mohair and  silk core yarn. yum It reminds me of snow and ice
Now the challenge is  how to describe it to  Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers for whom I  running a workshop in the rear future

And
snowdrops
are just starting  to appear

and now I am feeling a bit better

Spun Mohair

This is the  first spinning of the carded mohair  I dyed in my previous post.  I carded it with a little-just  a little glitter, used a glitter thread as a core thread and then plied it with yet more of the sequined yarn.
mmm!
Am I happy?
It is okay but not quite the cloudsof mohair I wanted.
I shall  have to try again

Stand for my naturally dyed merino

Dyeing with plants from the garden and making a gorgeous range of colours is one thing packaging and displaying  well to sell is another and  one of the challenges  about having  a stand at a craft fair is making good use of the vertical space.   If you hang things from the tops of the stand they don't sell but if they are on something that stands up they do. My merinos and hand spun yarn  are particularly hard to display and although I have tried all sorts of ways I finally asked   John Stoker the partner  of the Mulberry Dyer to make  me two stands  one for my hand spun yarns (on the left)  and then one large one for my merinos which at Woolfest and Wonderwool occupied one side of the stall.  Then having got got used to hanging my merinos up I was frustrated as I could not take this large stand to many of the smaller events I  do.  For  example next week I am off to teach at Malvern Hills Summer School where I will have twelve students in a small classroom  (Incidentally there are a few places left I believe on the Felted Collars-where we will be using 15micron merino.) .  After a table for samples this  leaves me one table for the "shop".  So. a few months ago .........from the back of my studio I stumbled on a  rotating stand made  many years ago and found it useful  for hanging merino only a little small.   I tried it out when I taught the North Wales Embroidery Guild and the Fiesty Felters in Shrewsbury and found I seemed to be selling more merino despite a price increase. So I decided to ask Michael Williams   who made the stand to make another one only a bit bigger.   Efficiently he still had the design for the first  one although it must have been a few years ago and made me a new one  and  here it is  it arrived yesterday .

Update

I am coming to after a hectic time. First we had ITV Wales filming the garden as part of National Garden Open in Wales. For those of you not from the UK this is a uniquely British event where people open their gardens sometimes just for one day sometimes for groups visiting . All the gardens are listed in a famous yellow book. The visitors fee goes to Charity. Most of the gardens are absolutely stunning and often very grand stately homes but also little tiny cottage gardens too. My parents were very fond of visiting gardens and when my father moved up here he and I went round gardens together although mostly I think because my father was very partial to the home made cakes that so often feature! Quite where I found the courage to propose the dye garden to the organisers I don't know. I think it came from the day when we opened the garden last year as "Shopping for Colour" and it was so obviously enjoyed. Someone said to me you should open under the National Garden Open Scheme and here we are. We are open to groups visiting when Enys and I talk about the plants and I talk about dyeing and then conduct them around the garden. The solar pots have been a very good way to introduce people to the colour of the garden especially the madder , birch and golden rod pots.
So last week -was it really only last week?- ITV filmed. I forgot to ask Enys to take pictures of me demonstrating woad dyeing and I only took a few of her but it gives you the flavour of the day. We both enjoyed it it very much and it was a fascinating experience. I picked woad leaves six or seven times while they filmed it from different angles-amazing that the woad leaves held up. I kept finding another little plant hiding under something else as it has self seeded around the dye beds.
Two days after that we loaded the car, squeezing an unhappy dog into one tiny corner and set off for Woolfest. "Don't buy anything will you" said DH "there is no room even in the top box". Not buy anything! Go to the Woolfest and not buy anything. The poor man obviously had sun stroke. Fortunately a good friend with an empty car came to the rescue and took back my two fleeces and a swift and I sold some big bulky items such as all my new solar pot kits complete with 2 litre Kilner Jars which took up a lot of space. We could have sold these twice over they were all gone by 10.am of the second day. Another great success of the Woolfest was my inks of which I sold a lot. These inks designed by me for painting and writing turnout to be excellent fabric paints too. I painted some pre-mordanted silk with them steamed and rinsed. No colour came out at all

In between ITV filming and setting off for the Woolfest my new Aura wheel, the fantastic new spinning wheel from Majacraft, which had arrived but was sitting tantalisingly in it's box was set up. My original vision was that I would sit spinning some fantastic textured yarn at Woolfest to advertise both my fibres, my packs and my new Beyond the Twist Yarns. A good friend ( I am very lucky in my friends) recovering from a hip replacement carded me some batts to spin and some batts to sell. Did I get a chance to spin? Well I expect you are smiling as you read this . Of course not- except for a few minutes here and there. Plus the fact that people bought the batts which were meant me to spin so at the end I had no batts at all! The wheel attracted a a lot of interest. I directed them all to poor Martin of PM Woolcraft who imports them and from whom I bought mine. I say poor because none of his ordered wheels had arrived. I was very fortunate to have mine as it is at the moment one of only three in the UK. What is so good about it? Well it spins like a dream. The huge flyer and fantastic threading system (no hook pulling the yarn through a tiny orifice) means it will spin from laceweight to bulky yarn. A hugely versatile tensioning system with two different tensions means it is very flexible. In the picture you can see some fine yarns ( some of my cashmere and silk plied with a laceweight merino) and an over the top yarn with teeswater curls spun in whole.
What am I doing now?Getting ready for the student coming on Monday for two days. Which means tidying up my studio. Sigh! (And I still have not fully unpacked the car)

Work experience and the Woolfest

For the next two weeks I have Tara here for Work Experience. The idea is (I think) that Tara gets an introduction to working life as a school girl and I get the use of an extra pair of hands. Tara came to me because her mother (clever woman) brought two of my pictures and emailed asking if I might be interested in having Tara . I asked members of the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers what they thought and they on on the whole thought it was a good idea provided I met Tara and liked her (which I did). Most butnot all of them had had a good experience of having someone for work experience.
So
Here is what we did.
I am getting ready for two days of workshop next weekend, the dye garden open to visits ( two next week) and in three weeks time I shall be having a stand at the Woolfest. There are three areas I really need to work on. Inks-I was getting down to just a few bottles. A good range of colours on the 23icron Merino. And my hand spun "Beyond the Twist Yarns". I had 24 different hanks at Wonderwool now I have ten which barely fill my yarn stand. All the knot yarns, , all the multicoloured single yarns, and all the very textured slub yarns have gone and all the Lesley Prior's Devon kid mohair and silk. This leaves me with some teeswater and silk and one of the welsh kid mohair . I am trying to spin for the Woolfest and none of the things I will get Tara to do is to drum card batts for me.
Yesterday Tara wound off 2kilos of Merino into 20hanks. and labelled them, and did the same for about a half a kilo of cashmere and silk and then we made up 5 different dye baths of complex dye mixtures to give red purples,blue purples, violet, terracotta, and reds. After lunch I started a stock check on my stock but did not get beyond the inks which were low. I sold quite a lot at the Natural Dye Day on Saturday and found I had only one green, and no purple . So I made inks and Tara stuck the labels on.
Today we will start to mordant and to get the dye baths ready. This will take up all my electric rings. In the afternoon Enys will be coming round and provided we can get into the garden we will be planting out the Japanese Indigo and the Chinese Woad But as I write this it is raining so I am hoping we will manage it.

Art Work to Yarn

I am only doing routine sort of dyeing at the moment , getting purples and greens for some up and coming workshops in February but nothing of note. However I suddenly yearned to create colour so while renewing bonds with a textile group Chameleons I indulged in translating a photo by Linda Jones- a member of the group- into a painting. Linda takes fabulous photos. A textile artist herself she has an eye for pictures that will translate into textiles. This one that I used is a photo of water moving into a mossy water weedy surface so is full of whites dark greens.turquoise wit the odd flash of pale terracotta. unfortunately my photo of her photo not very good nor for that matter of fact is that of my painting which is a shame as neither show clearly the colour or texture. I had fun painting with my natural dye inks and then putting pastel over the surface although I had no particular plan in mind which is the way I like to work however the following evening , on my own and deciding to watch a film I decided to card some fibres for spinning.. Three or four trips ( because I kept going back for more colour or more texture) to the studio resulted in dark green, blues, purple merino, white and dyed silks: laps, throwsters waste and textured wools. I used a wide coarse carder, and put the fibres though once and spent an happy evening making three large rolags. Each one represented an area of the picture.
The following day I started to spin a singles yarn on the top whorl of the jumbo flyer of my Lendrum pulling strips off the rolag and spinning from top to bottom of my picture.
I gave the hank a very hot soapy wash at the end and was pleased that there was little colour loss and gave the fibres a tug to straighten the fibres out.
I really enjoyed the whole process and I love my yarn.

Some dyeing after all

Just to show that I am dyeing here is some of my latest stuff.
At the moment I am playing around with dyeing merino pre flets-a lovely soft flexible needle felt that has all sorts of possibilities. It takes the dye beautifully. I have tried it with extract dyes and also a logwood bath which is really violet although it looks blue in the picture.
Underneath that is a Christmas present, 16 micron merino, some tussah silk and silk caps also dyed with extract dyes, logwood, cutch waste and chaste tree, while finally on the bobbin is some of Lesley Prior's kid mohair from her Devon farm being spun for a scarf for DH who may get it in the New Year rather than Christmas. I am going to ply it with indigo dyed tussah silk.

Handspun Beyond the Twist Yarns

A few people have asked me where they can get my yarns if they are not locals. So this is just to say that I have uploaded my Beyond the Twist Yarns to my website soooo if there is anyone out there hankering for them have a look.I am spinning most evenings so I will be adding to them too. I have put my new felt kit with my new method of felting on the website as well. It contains not only fibres but also grated soap and plastic sheeting.

Art Yarns or Extreme spinning! ( And the Textile market)

I have been having fun! Early on this year when I was recuperating from Pneumonia I came across Pluckyfluff's book Intertwined , full of wonderful textured yarns. A light bulb moment came "Idid not need to spin for a project-which I find boring- I could spin for fun!" and as the mood took me and use up some of my stash into the bargain. This November after the dreaded horrible asthma and huge doses of steroids etc etc I suddenly felt as though all the energy had drained out through the bottom of my legs and gone somewhere. On top of which we now have a wonderful cosy sitting room with fantastic wood burner.
So guess what? Some ( but only a tiny bit really ) of my stash mysteriously moved into corner of the sitting room My lovely lovely lendrum spinning wheel took up residence and I was away spinning textured and very textured yarns in the evening when I am too tired for anything else . At first I thought I would just spin but everybody ( well nearly everybody) was so enthusiastic about the resulting Yarns I decided to sell them. I had a few at the Real Colour Show where I sold some but here are the ones I have spun for my Next Event
The Textile Market at Trefriw Woollen mill 5th /6th December

This a wonderful event-last year it was called The Artisan Market and there were only three of us selling but this year it is much bigger with Me selling fibres ( new range Beyond the Pale- merino's,cashmere and silk, teeswater) Beyond the Twist Yarns, natural dye inks ,brooches books& kits. Debbie The Mulberry Dyer, with dyes, books, yarns tools, my friend Anne with brooches, scarf kits superb designer knitted scarves and more more more!
I will be putting the yarns on my website in the next few days.