Study for Meditation Mat

Study for Meditation Mat
Handspun Tapestry Weaving

Thursday 31 July 2014

I Lichen Like That: The Natural Dyeing Adventure Continues

One of the places we stop while heading to Kelowna is a private campground on the edge of a lake.  Huge cedar-hemlock trees stand through and surround the property.  There's a trail through an old growth forest.  As we walk along the path, we come to stillness among the flora and the remnants of a fire from a century ago.  Even Morris, the ever-barking terrier, is silent in these woods:







(These burned out tree trunks are at least five feet across their base. You could live in one and in some of them, it looks as though people did.)

Every time I visit, this campground offers me another gift-the wind blows through and down come blankets of lichens.  Lichens are unique organisms, in that they are a composite of a fungus and an algae (usually) or a bacterium.  The two co-exist, with the algae or bacteria assisting in photosynthesis.  Lichens are found in virtually every eco-system in the world. Most people are familiar with lichens which grow on tree trunks and rocks; those flat orange discs you see on old gravestones are lichens.  Lichens are slow-growing, but long-lived. They're susceptible to climate changes and air pollution, so their population numbers are often used to track air quality.  From early times, lichens have been used as food for people and livestock, medicine and dyes.  Harris Tweed cloth was dyed with lichens, which contributed to their decimation in that region; the famous cloth is now coloured with synthetic dyes. (Because they are increasingly rare, I no longer go in search of lichens. They are in abundance in this campground, so I gather the ones that scatter along the driveway and our site; I leave anything in the forest alone.  It's illegal to pick plant life from provincial or national parks and it's not a good practice any time, unless you know what you're collecting, have permission to do so and take just a small amount of material.)

It's the dyeing properties of lichens which fascinate me-you can get some idea of the spectacular colours available from some lichens by clicking on the link here.  Depending upon the variety used, dyeing with lichens gives a range of colours from light tans to screaming fuschia.  If you work a little magic, some of the rarer species will give blues. Some of the colours are light and wash fast, but the purples and blues tend to be very fugitive when exposed to light.  Although the colour survived repeated washings, when I left these socks sitting near a sunny window for only a day, the sock toes demonstrate the damage done to the colours:



There are two ways to dye with lichens, by boiling them in water or by a longer, more involved process using a cold water/ammonia bath.  Dyers recommend trying both.  The windfalls I've collected over the past seasons have given me this lichen:




I am not a lichenologist (yes, there are such people) and given the number of similar lichens I found when researching this one, I won't hazard a guess as to what it might be.  It's similar to other lichens I've used which produce browns, so that's what I'm hoping to get.  I'm cooking out the crushed lichen today.  Note that the dye bath is quite pale.  I thought this meant that there wouldn't be much colour, but my old dye books assure me that a pale bath is common, as the colour goes directly to the wool.  We shall see:



This is the best use of pantyhose I know!


Whatever colour I may get, it's the smell of the boiling plants that seduces me, a distinctive fragrance of grass and wood and time.  The odour clings to the wool, even after repeated washings, but it's a pleasant sensation, nostalgic, taking me back to the paths we walk, in the forests, near the lakes, by the mountains.

Namaste.

Wednesday 30 July 2014

Peaceful, Easy Feeling: Why I am Not a Warrior

Those who train wholeheartedly in awakening unconditional and relative bodhichitta are called bodhisattvas or warriors-not warriors who kill and harm but warriors of nonaggression who hear the cries of the world. These are men and women who are willing to train in the middle of the fire. Training in the middle of the fire can mean that warrior-bodhisattvas enter challenging situations in order to alleviate suffering.  It also refers to their willingness to cut through personal reactivity and self-deception, to their dedication to uncovering the basic undistorted energy of bodhichitta. (Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You

This quote popped up on my Facebook feed this morning. I've read much of Pema Chodron's work; I found The Places That Scare You a most difficult challenge because I read it during a time of great personal struggle.  It's been a while since I've revisited Ms. Chodron, but her words carry over to much of my life. The quote was timely because I've been thinking a lot lately, about warriors and the healing process.

One of the most difficult things to teach beginning fibre artists is to let go, not to fight and wrestle with the wool, not to pick the stitches so fiercely that arms and fingers ache with effort, not to beat the weft into submission to the point where warp threads snap and fabric buckles.  We want things to behave, to be the way we want them to be, so despite all encouragement and evidence, we take up battle with our fibres.  We become fibre warriors.

It never works.  As we continue to struggle and struggle and struggle, everything-our string, our cloth and our bodies-tighten.  Our work doesn't improve; it gets worse. Those who refuse to trust the process, who can not be convinced that a lighter touch is required, are never quite satisfied with the work they do.  Sometimes, they give up altogether. Those who learn to let go, to bring trust and love to the yarn and string move on to discovering the yarns and fabrics they desire.

The same process applies to yoga.  While we may struggle in a pose, it is only the yielding which brings us to the point where we find stillness and a measure of grace. Students who are determined to subdue asana, to make them fit their own images of how poses should be are often frustrated.  They risk emotional and physical injury.

When you are introduced to cancer, when you are on that journey, whatever image or process works to get you through your adventures is the process you must follow. There is no right way to get through things, just as there is no one method of treatment.  Cancer is individual, so dealing with it must also be.

One of the most popular images about cancer is "The Fight Against."  Patients are encouraged to fight cancer, to wage war against cells recklessly dividing in the body, to take up the Battle Cry against cancer and all it entails.  Cancer means War.  Those going through it are presented as Great Warriors. That image has never worked for me. Practically speaking, if you are waging war against cancer, you are fighting your own body. Cancer cells represent your house, divided.  Cancer cells, your own cells, refuse to stop growing; they divide and continue to do so until the body, You, runs out of resources.  It seems to me that fighting your own body is not necessarily a productive approach because it leaves a sense of The Body being The Other.

And what if you do not Win the War on Cancer?  Nearly every day, we see obituaries stating that this person and that "lost her/his brave battle with cancer."  For me, having what may be the last record of your life speak of defeat is depressing.  After all, who among us gets out of Life alive?  Are we all to be thought of as fallen soldiers who lost a war?  Or is it only cancer which wins every time?

Last week, I spoke to the students in the Renew Yoga for Cancer class about the healing process. Although I recognized the struggles which cancer entails, I suggested that we turn our attention in class to another way of seeing cancer and its treatment.  Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about learning to heal, despite knowing that some of us may never be cured of what ails us.  He tells us that, "As long as you're breathing, there's more right than wrong with you."  He works to integrate body and breath, mind and body, to bring strength and determination into a time when we need it most.  In doing so, we may be able to view our bodies in a different light-not as something which has betrayed us, or the cells within it as something which need to be destroyed in battle, but rather as a vessel which can guide us through a journey which scares us, but through which we can pass, healed, if not cured, alive, even if the body might decide it must part from the spirit.

And so, in Renew, we laugh and we chat.  We breathe and we practice.  Sometimes, we get angry. Sometimes, we cry. We struggle, but we are not at war.  If we do see ourselves as warriors (and many do not), it is not as warriors against anything. Rather, we are healers, looking for and often finding, peace in times of anger and struggle.  We speak softly to ourselves, and to others. "Breathe Now.  Be gentle.  Give yourself time to heal." It's not easy. In some ways, it's likely harder than taking the Warrior Perspective, for that view of dealing with struggle is the prevailing perspective in the popular culture.  We fight against what we don't like.  We war against what is wrong.  But, what and who is Wrong, exactly?

In learning to become healers, we can soothe the Warrior whose instinct is to fight.  Think of what such an approach might mean for our Selves.  Think of what that same approach might mean Now, as we watch what is happening in the World which insists on War and Warriors. The world needs more Healers, not Warriors.  Or so it seems to me.


We can be like the mountains, strong, full of energy, sometimes destructive, but above all, healing places for the Earth.


Namaste.

    



Sunday 27 July 2014

When Day is Done: A Fine End to Tour de Fleece 2014

The house is a mess.  The dust bunnies are once again overtaking the place; mercifully, they're kept in check by the piles of dyed fleece and yarn drying all over the house, waiting to be packed up, labelled and spun, some day.  I've taken over the barbeque; it not only services my more pungent dyepots, its lid makes a fine drying rack-there's a batch of Rambouillet locks drying on it now.  It's the final day of Tour de Fleece 2014 and it's been a productive cycle.

I've spun approximately 2000 metres, 2 kilometres of yarn.  That's slightly less than the distance covered by cyclists in the Tour de France, but, trust me, a fair bit of wheel spinning has gone on here. 1600 plus metres of that made this yarn, intended for a shawl:



The other 400 or so metres is still on the bobbin, organic cotton singles which may be a 3 ply yarn for a sweater, should I ever finish spinning the bags and bags of cotton sliver I have left to spin.  At least the bobbin is a little fuller, several spinning days after I posted this photo:




I love it all, but what gave me most joy was discovering the colours in my natural dyes.  The Corriedale and wool skeins kindly posed for a group shot:



The photograph doesn't do the wool or the colours justice.  Every bit of wool, even the stuff dyed with more subdued colours, in the iron pot, is vibrant, rich, soft and alive. Working with the wool inspires me, feeds my soul and makes me happy.

If only I could say the same thing about housecleaning.  I've set aside the day for scrubbing and scouring; this time my attention will be centered on the mess left behind when I'm busy doing what I love, instead of what I should.  It's high time to return to daily duties. I've scared myself coming around the corner into the living room and mistaking a dog/cat shed pile for an actual animal.  I've run out of clothes (not that anyone would notice) and Mr. DD has taken to reading outside on the deck in order to avoid disappearing under a cloud of Corriedale.  I'll try to bring the mindfulness I give to my favourite pursuits into shovelling out the house.  (Yes, David McM., I said, "try.")  We'll see how it goes.

Now, if I can just find my housecleaning shovel. . ..

Namaste.

Friday 25 July 2014

Simply Red, Part II: Do What You Like

"I experience myself like the tip of a great iceberg of consciousness." (SLOMO, John Kitchin, via Colin Hall)

Colin posted a video yesterday.  SLOMO is a 16 minute documentary about someone who got away-away from cultural expectations, away from constant materialism, away and into a life of, well, simply Being.  You can watch the video here:



Despite the fact that I'm neither a 69 year old man nor any kind of skater, I discovered that I have more in common with John Kitchin than I would have expected.  I'm not there yet, but like Slomo, I'm working towards a practice of Being. Like all meditation practice, it's a simple one, but not that easy.

Long ago and not so far away, I was a person who drove a fancy car (a Corvette, which I loved) and wore silk dresses (which I also loved). It was silly of me, really, because both the car and the dresses were inappropriate for the job I was doing, but I was young and foolish, and believed in the importance of such stuff.  I'd like to say I made deliberate choices to move away from these things.  I'd like to say that, but it wouldn't be true.  Instead, time and circumstance determined much of my life's direction.  Unlike John Kitchin's conscious decision to walk away from a life of Stuff, I fell into my practice, which is still about Stuff, but it's at least different Stuff. I am rather like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, bumping and muttering along the way.  I don't always enjoy the journeys, but I have to say that both the journeys and the landings (of which there are and will be many) have been interesting and probably worthwhile. (There are days when I'm not convinced of that last bit.)

What on earth does this have to do with a post on natural dyeing, you ask?  Well, part of exploring that rabbit hole has been wandering about the natural world, not necessarily all that far from home, but I've attempted to explore what I was seeing around me, to discover what gifts were available in that world, away from what money could buy.  It began with testing plants around our farm, checking out what would happen if I dipped this and that plant, boiled up those leaves, drew on the bracken with charcoal after a fire burned down the old slaughterhouse.  What would happen if I explored what was There. Here. In front of me. Now.

It's been over thirty-five years since I looked down into the rabbit hole (Yikes!) and I'm not ready to surface yet. I spend my days playing with fibres and plants and string.  I practise yoga and meditation.  Like John, I'm not balanced yet, but I'm working on it.  (Mr. DD, the skater, pointed out the balance thing with Slomo.  I know nothing of skating, except how to land on my butt. Hard.) That means that I pretty much spend my time playing with the world like this:


Today's Cochineal pot with Corriedale fleece. The fleece was soaked in alum water and I added juice from a lemon to shift the colour to red.

The resulting fibre after rinsing.

Next in the pot, a skein of commercial wool, a gift for a fellow knitter.

None of this practice makes me a better person.  In fact, I agree with Slomo in that my goal is to avoid becoming an asshole, which seems to me a rather good thing.  I also recognize that I can do this practice because I live in a world of privilege not open to most of the world's peoples. Since this is where I am at the moment, I might as well use it to advantage.

Slomo was led to his life by an old man who told him the secret to old age was to "Do what you like." Sounds good to me.

"These are your good old days." (Slomo)

Namaste.
  


Wednesday 23 July 2014

Simply Red: Another Dye Day for the Tour de Fleece 2014

It's a hot, sunny, breezy day here.  I thought I'd take advantage of the warm weather to start the next dye pot. I've finished my black walnut husk bath, from which I extracted two rich browns (no mordant except for the tannin in the husks) and a steel grey, from the exhaust bath cooked out in a cast iron pot:


White Corriedale fleece dyed in exhaust bath (iron pot): Note the vegetable matter in the wool.  I have some prepping to do!


I've decided to go for something brighter again, using one of my favourite dyes-cochineal. Cochineal, grown and harvested in Mexico, where the insect is raised on cactus pads, gives beautifully rich reds to luxurious purples, depending on the mordants used and whether the bath is acid or alkaline.  (I shift the pH of the bath by adding lemon juice or vinegar to make it acidic, or baking soda, if I want to move to purples. Cochineal is a substantive dye, requiring no mordants; however, adding different metallic salts will extend my range of colours.)  There are few natural dyes which give true reds; unfortunately for vegetarians or vegans, most of them are animal based, and the dyes are obtained by crushing and boiling the insect to release the dye.  Because of this and the fact that cochineal, lac and kermes are expensive, I limit my red dyeing to once or twice yearly and I use every bit of the bug to full advantage.  I honour what has been sacrificed so that I can experience Red.

I begin by weighing out a small amount of the dried insects.  (As little as 1% of cochineal to WOF (Weight of Fibre) can colour the fibres.)  I'm using 25 grams of insects, which I grind to a powder, using mortar and pestle.  A coffee grinder works well, too, but the one I used for grinding dyes bit the dust just before I left for Olds and I haven't yet replaced it. Besides, careful grinding with these old tools adds to the alchemic feel of the process.  

You wouldn't think that something which looks like this would do much to colour anything:





Place the powder in a section of pantyhose and soak it in a pot of warm water which has been left to stand overnight (to release the chlorine and other chemicals which can weaken the dye) and magic begins:




That rich colour appeared within five minutes of the cochineal hitting the water.  I'll allow it to stand covered in the hot sun for a day or two before I begin dyeing fibres.  You can read more about the process of raising, processing and using cochineal as dyes by clicking here, but be prepared to learn more than you might care to discover: cochineal extracts are often used to colour foods and drinks. That vegan-friendly consumable may not be as animal free as you think.

The cotton spinning is progressing, but my bobbin looks much the same as it did in my last post, so I'll spare you photos of that.  This afternoon, I'll be walking over to the studio to teach Renew for Cancer yoga.  Given the heat, I may arrive with a red tinge of my own!  (Not really-I'm that woman you see wandering the streets covered head to toe in hat, long-sleeved shirt, pants and a wrap around my neck.  "My Woman of Mystery Look," as Scott, one of the instructors at Bodhi Tree Yoga, referred to me when he saw me arrive in my garb. I cling desperately to the image that phrase planted in my mind.)

Namaste.



Saturday 19 July 2014

Learning to Fly: Siddhis, Balance and Cotton Yarns

We had a gathering of the yoga teacher trainees (now officially teachers) the other night.  A few of us came together for drinks, snacks, chats and a practical application of the Yoga Sutras, in particular the section on siddhis/magical powers.  Things went pretty well:

Photo used with permission of Kathy R.

I'd like to say I stayed there for a long time.  It seemed like a long, long time before my balance shifted and I did a face plant.  There are no photos of that nor are there any of the equally impressive bum splat I did while trying to balance on the backs of my thighs. It was great fun and I have to say that I was impressed that I could balance at all in any direction. The secret to finding balance in this pose was to look up and let go.

Every summer, I haul out my stacks of fleeces and play for a few weeks.  The wool is fresh; I love sorting locks, spinning in the grease, flick carding and combing aligned locks into smooth, smooth yarns.  Around mid-July, I shift to cotton spinning, working once again on the enormous stash of organic cotton tops, sliver and rovings I have in my fibre room. Cotton behaves very differently than wool.  I've heard many spinners declare that they "are afraid of cotton and don't like spinning it," which, to a person who has met few fibres she doesn't like, seems strange. (Well, there's Merino fleece. The grease in that wool defeats me every time.) After all, cotton has a long and rich history.  It's been spun by people all over the world on simple spindles and wheels. It's the go-to fabric world wide for relatively inexpensive comfort, although synthetics are increasingly encroaching on that territory. I think the fear of spinning cotton fibres comes from the discovery that, no matter how experienced we may be, not all fibres behave as we expect. What works for wool spinning doesn't necessarily work for shorter fibres.  Wool will show a great tolerance for a spinner's tendency to clutch the fibres and watch for every small lump and bump in the yarn.  Cotton, not so much.

I enjoy that shift from warm, long-stapled wools to cool, short-fibred cottons, but the transition from one to the other requires a shift in perspective and spinning styles.  Wool fibres tend to be very forgiving, but cotton fibres, which may be as short as 1/4 to 1/2 inch, are more demanding of a spinner's attention to balance. Just as the slack line requires finding the sweet spot between effort and relaxation, so does cotton. In order to spin cotton well, I have to look up and let go.

I spin cotton on my Louet Victoria wheel using an unusual drafting style-for lack of a better term, let's call it, "long forward draw."  (I know, I know. The last thing the fibre world needs is yet another term for a drafting style.  I'm sure I didn't invent this one.  At the first available opportunity, I intend to have a few spinning buddies watch me spin cotton and tell me what drafting technique I'm using, but for now, long forward drafting is the way my mind explains my movements to my body. It's a style I use only when spinning on my upright, scotch tension wheels. With my tahklis or charkha, it's long draw all the way.) If you're familiar with long draw, you'll know the sensation of allowing twist to travel from the forward hand (or near the orifice) to the back hand holding the fibres, as the back hand draws away, against the building twist.  Now, imagine that same feeling, but with the forward hand pulling the fibres away from the back hand. My hands are a good 8 to 12 inches apart; my back hand is stationary and propped on a table to support that arm. Once enough twist is built up between forward drafting hand and the back hand to make a stable yarn, I add more twist as required and allow the yarn to feed into the orifice and onto the bobbin. I need to know and find the moment when I've added enough twist to make a stable yarn, but not so much that my yarn kinks. That's the point of balance. It requires both acute attention to awareness of the fibres and the fullness of letting go, of trusting that my hands know more about what my fibres need than my eyes may be telling me. That's where looking up enters into the picture-when I shift my gaze away from the twisting fibres and allow my body (in this case, my hands, fingers and feet) to do the work required, my cotton yarns find balance.

Although I found enough core strength to hold myself up on the slack line, I could not begin to come into balance until I trusted myself to let go.  Even then, letting go was not quite enough.  After several attempts at lifting my hands off the ground, someone watching me said softly, "Look up a bit." That's when it all came together.  My awareness changed from looking at to looking up and then seeing. My vision shifted up and away to what was not there-no ground, no heaviness.  Just me and my body, floating, balanced on a 2 inch wide piece of nylon strap. In that moment, I learned to fly.

Cotton spinning works the same way for me.  When I trust that my body knows the balance point between enough and too much, when I learn to let go and look away, away from the forming yarn, away from the twisting fibres to a point just beyond the place where it will either happen or things will fall apart completely, that's when twist and fibre and action come together. In that union of letting go and looking up, the yarn appears.  It's spinning siddhi, if you will, a magical moment attained by practical exercise.  For a time, all is perfection.  And I have yarn.


Easy to Spin Green Cotton.  Boiling will darken the colour.


Namaste.




Tuesday 15 July 2014

With a Little Help From My Friend: More Tour de Fleece 2014 Action

I spent the day plying, plying, washing dyed fleece, plying, teasing dyed fleece, plying, washing the purple logwood dye off my hands from teasing dyed fleece, plying, then finally winding and washing this skein of yarn:




That's 836 metres/193 grams of 2 ply yarn spun from 2 braids of Blue-faced Leicester from The Wacky Windmill.  Susie G. had given me a 4 ounce braid of Superwash BFL some time ago; when Kim and Donna came to town to sell their fibres, I bought a coordinating braid of BFL top.  (Yes, you can combine superwash and regular wool. I did, anyway.)  I spun the superwash braid straight from the top and then split the second braid into four long strips for a kind of, sort of fractal spinning experiment. I spun this skein with more care than usual; I counted treadles, measured drafting lengths, plied to specific counts and sampled, sampled, sampled. This skein is actually sopping wet at the moment-I wound it for the photo and wound my 70 metre sample skein into the large one. If you look closely at the photo, you'll see bits of chain-plied yarn in the middle. I liked the chain-plied skein, too, but my plan is to knit this yarn into a Prairie Sunset Shawl, which is better suited for 2 ply yarns. (I was pleasantly surprised when I googled, "Prairie Sunset Shawl, " and images of my design appeared.  You can see them here (top and second row).  I'm calling this one, "Emerald Dream Meadow," a combination of the names of the two braids.

More wonders came out of the dyepot and are now drying on the front step:




The wool is washed, white Corriedale fleece, dyed with (from left to right): madder (exhaust bath), madder and alum, logwood and alum.  The purple logwood is to die/dye for, but it loves to bleed and crock.  I used as much alum mordant as I dared-too much will make the wool sticky-and I washed the fleeces in Power Scour to remove excess dye, but there's a pool of purple underneath the wool and my hands are stained from teasing the wet fleece. Logwood is one of those dyes which seem to fix to fibre over time, so I may have to hide the wool away for a bit (up to a year) before I attempt to use it.  It's impossibly pretty, though, and I haven't met a purple I didn't like, so I can't resist using it.



The lighter purple is the logwood exhaust bath, with the same problem of bleeding and crocking (rubbing off), but not to the extreme of the darker colour.

Who's that astonishingly handsome helper?  It's marvellous Mick, my 17 year old bundle of grumpy companionship.  Mick is taking his evening constitutional, which means he sits on our front step for a bit until the birds and squirrels scold him back inside.  He's annoyed because that blasted fluff has overrun his observation post.  He takes no interest in my fibre, unless it's alpaca, in which case he insists on rolling in it, eating it (no, he's not allowed) and batting it around the house, if he gets a chance. Mickey spends most of his time sleeping now (except when he's eating which is whenever he can).  He's slowing down, but for an abandoned, near feral mess of an injured cat when we brought him home over 15 years ago, he's done well for himself here.




Another lovely day is nearing its twilight.  I have a logwood and iron exhaust dyebath to cook out tomorrow and then I may take a break.  The prediction is for hot, hot weather for the rest of the week.  There's yoga tomorrow and a yoga workshop coming up on the weekend with David McAmmond, the teacher of my teachers. Yoga will balance out this body which has spent the day hunkered over a spinning wheel and hauling buckets of water back and forth in the yard.  Balance is good.

I hear clawing at the screen door.  The old cat has had enough of chittering squirrels.

Namaste.

Thursday 10 July 2014

That Old Black Magic: Cycling Through Tour de Fleece Week One

"I look upon the dyepot and all is lost."
It's not really magic, certainly not a dark art of any kind, although once upon a time,  if you were a woman, especially a single, older one, your pots could land you in a world of trouble. I like to think of it as akin to alchemy, but it's not that, either. There's no mystery in it and it's not difficult-find a plant (or sometimes, an insect or a snail), cook it out in a pot of water, add a bit of this powder and that liquid to mordant the fibres.  Stir the pot gently, heat things up, then sit back and wait.  The mordants-substances such as alum, tin, chrome, copper and iron-allow the dyes to "bite" into the fibres, so that the colours are true and fast and bright. (Or not, as you wish. Mordanting in an iron pot darkens or "saddens" the colours; copper greens them.)  Wash the residual dye off the fibres, set them out to dry as you bask in the beauty of it all.

It's not magic, really, but there's a sense of magic involved when I use natural dyes. While it is possible to replicate colours from natural dyes, just as one does from synthetic dyes, I prefer to indulge in joyful play with my pots, as I dye small amounts of wool, adding a pinch of this, a dollop of that, in the hot, summer days while the sun is strong enough to do much of my work for me and I can cook out my dyes in the backyard on the barbeque, rather than steam up my kitchen. In the past few days, I've dyed Montadale wool fleece with yellow onion skin, dried marigold flowers from my brother-in-law's garden and madder root, an ancient dyestuff once used to produce Turkey Red:

Right side: White wool  dyed with onion skins; bottom: white wool dyed with dried marigold flowers and various mordants; top left: white wool in exhaust bath of marigolds in an iron pot.

Madder and alum on Montadale fleece prior to rinsing.

Dyeing this week has kept me from spinning as much as I planned, but I'm almost through my first braid of BFL (Blue-faced Leicester) from The Wacky Windmill. I have another, similar braid and plan to do some fractal spinning  for a shawl with this yarn.

No, it's not magic, really.  But it is really magical.

Namaste.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Oldies, Goodies and the Tour de Fleece 2014

It was wildly hot and humid yesterday, so of course, it was a perfect day to wash wool and dye fleece. The Tour de Fleece kicked off yesterday which means I should have been spinning, but apart from making a few metres of yarn on a couple of spindles, I didn't produce much string. I'm part of Team Golden Willow, and I'm afraid I let my team mates down on Day 1. (If you're wondering what Tour de Fleece might be, there is information about it all over the internet, but Studio Strategos blog will give you some idea of the intensity of it all.  Click on the link to find out more.)

Instead of spinning much, I dyed this:






I should have taken a "before" picture: she's a cashmere wrap, from my hand spun singles, which I knit a long, long time ago.  I'm not sure how long ago, but she has a fancy knitted border and she's knit in the round, which tells me I was still in my Master Knitting Certificate days, so I'm guessing I made her in the early 1990's.  It was my first time spinning cashmere and I did not know what I was doing.  The yarn is slubby and using a singles for cashmere is rather foolish, because cashmere is not known for its strength.  The finishing is sloppy.  I never wore the wrap because the cashmere was a grey-brown colour, which doesn't suit me at all. I couldn't give her away; I had always meant to dye the piece and see what happened.  Yesterday was that day.  I used Ashford Acid Dyes, left over from the time when rainbows were invented and I used Purple straight out of the jar. To say I was pleased with the results is a bit of an understatement.  The colour is perfect and the dyeing covers up many of the flaws in my work.  The singles held and there are no breaks or weak spots.  She's delicate, but she would be with this yarn. I now have a new neck piece for fall and winter.

When I wasn't tending to dyepots or washing fleece, I managed to spin a bit on these two beauties:




The spindle on the left is my latest purchase, picked up at Fibre Week from Legacy Studios.  I'm not sure of the maker or the woods-she didn't come with a card-but the top is inlaid with Vietnamese silver.  I'm spinning Tricoloured Alpaca roving from Ancient Arts Fibre Studio on her.  To her right is a pretty little thing of a spindle made from a ceramic whorl on a chopstick, which I bought in a local destash.  She's holding combed mohair which I'm spinning as a sample for the Level 2 Workbook of the Master Spinning Certificate Programme.  (I thought I'd better keep up with the students!)  You get a better idea of the beauty of the whorls in this photo:




That was my day yesterday-hot, sunny and perfect. Today, I have Montadale fleece to deal with; it holds grease in a way I've never seen before, including (my nemesis) Merino.  (If you click on "Montadale," you can learn more about this sheep, but the authors clearly haven't met my fleece, because they claim that the wool contains little lanolin.  I should send them my batch to scour.)  Perhaps there will be a little more spinning in the sun.  There's a pomegranate dye pot ready to cook out and cider in the fridge to cool me after I slave over a hot dye pot.  It's a good day to dye.

Namaste.  

   

Tuesday 1 July 2014

Holiday: Unwinding on Canada Day

It's Canada Day and the sun is shining.  We've had torrential rains here for the last few days; parts of the city have flooded and some celebrations in the park have been cancelled, but we've had nothing worse than some damp spots in our basement, so we are lucky.  I'm unwinding from my adventures at Fibre Week, after organizing the last bits of paperwork to be submitted to the College, unpacking supplies and checking fibre resources for information on twist in yarns.

Strange as it may seem, I hardly spun any fibres while I was away.  Apart from the hour or so I spent at the Spin-In and the few minutes of demonstrating techniques to my class, I was either too busy or too tired to make yarn.  As a counterbalance to that, I spent yesterday just spinning, without concern about consistency, twists per inch, angle of twist, plying or end use.  I just made yarn. The result, 130 metres of a chain-plied blend of Merino, camel and silk from West Coast Fibre Works, is nowhere near perfect, but it's pretty, soft, good-for-a-winter-hat yarn.







It felt good to forget all the rules I've learned (and am still learning) about how hand spun yarns "should" be spun.  I put "should" in quotations because, much as I love a discussion on the technical aspects of spinning, and as much as I believe in knowing the rules, I do these things to give myself space and freedom. Sometimes, it's a fine thing to allow the lumps and slubs, the thick and thin spots, the not-quite-right strings to make an appearance.  Sometimes, it's wonderful to play and be a beginner again.

That was my plan yesterday.  Today, the sun is out and the mosquitoes are not, so I'm going to sit in my yard for a while.  I'm going to enjoy the light and the overgrown lawn and the weeds that are making a jungle.  I'll watch Morris play with his new Kong.  I may spin.  I may not.  Whatever I do will likely not be what I should be doing. Thank goodness for that.

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.' Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met the soul walking upon my path. For the soul walks upon all paths." (Kahlil Gibran)

Namaste.