More on Art Work to Yarn

I spent a weekend with my friend Anne. It was her birthday and she is possibly the only person I know who, on receiving three carded batts as a birthday present, utters a cry of delight. She spun them all that evening and we both felt so inspired that the following day we decided to card and spin some more.
For starters we choose as design source one of Anne's husband's pictures. I adore his work and DH and I have no less than 5 of his but this one is one they kept, and so we picked out as many colours as we could to match from Anne's fibre stash. We carded them on her carder which had fine teeth which was unlike my coarse tooth one on which one could add lots of texture so the rolags were different, fine and delicate as you can see. It took all morning to card four rolags-it is a time consuming process- and then we both spun them. I had my lendrum with the jumbo flyer and the band set on the biggest whorl, Anne wwas using her versatile Louet also on the biggest whorl. Possibly because the rolags were so fine much to my surprise I found myself spinning a relatively fine yarn while Anne spun a thicker one.
Here is mine after a dunk in hot soapy water . I love it. And I enjoyed every step of the way!
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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.

Waterfall 3 framed

I got the picture back from the framers done in double quick time-just 6 days. Tim and Chanel of of the Cathedral Framers St Asaph Denbighshire ( in case you want some work done-strongly recommended by me) normally like 3 weeks so I was really grateful. It is hard even to believe that we were in such desperate straits, snowbound and with freezing weather as now we have had a thaw and there is only a little snow on the hills and we are back to a green world again.
I am really really pleased with it.
Just to compare here is Waterfall 2 done in 2007, Waterfall 1 my first piece done in 1997 I have no good photos of unfortunately

Indigo:natural versus synthetic

Leena has just pointed me to a site that aims to explain the difference between synthetic and natural indigotin( commonly called indigo). This is an translation of a Japanese paper and in summary say that while the synthetically derived Ai ( Japanese Indigo) is chemically the same as natural ai the bonds between the natural are shorter. Someone adding acomment says that the natural ai aggregates. This has an impact on the way it behaves while bonding to textiles and means that natural ai bonds better , is less likely to be washed off and less likely I think to crock. Interesting piece of research!

DYe Garden in snow and waterfall 3

Heavy snow today, a most unusual event in this part of the world and my most recent picture Waterfall 3

Cold weather felted collars and starting to knit

This time of the year my studio feels very cold when I first go in. Today I rushed in and lit my trusty wood burner, a stove pipe type one similar in design to second world war ones. It heats up very fast and after an hour the studio is warm enough to work in. However I have to dress up for it and here is me with about four layers on three pairs of socks ( the cement floor is cold) and my felt boots on a rare outing. They are so warm I don't usually wear them
I needed to make a felt collar for my January workshop having stupidly sold my other
one without a decent photo so I braced myself to get out into my frigid studiol However I thoroughly enjoyed making it and listening to an excllent play on the radio too, and when it is dry I post a picture up. In the meantime here is a picture of my knitted scarf for Isabella- we seemed to have started an informal learners group on the Online GuiId after Isabella confessed to making it her aim for 2010 to learn to knit. I can knit in the sense I can do garter stitch. When I tried before I tried to go too fast and got thoroughly exasperated at my failure to be able to follow simple patterns and gave up in despair but I really do want to learn to knit and now I am taking it slowly and steadily. So I started this scarf for DH but after advice from a member of the online guild I am going to unravel it and knit it longways.

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.