show

Totnes show today.  Haven’t been for a few years, mostly due to weather.. really is not much fun when its muddy and raining.

But the weather was ideal – warm but overcast, and along we went.  And we did enjoy looking at the sheep and cows, and humming and harring, and dreaming about what we might have one day…and looking at the craft stalls, and saying we could do that (only somehow we never do) about various things,  and the usual saying hello to several people we know –  which is a nice community thing.

I think the show is just the right size.. big enough to tire, not so big you cant get around it all.

Tired though, with the humid warmth, all that interacting etc.  Nice to come home and do normal things.. even if for us that is plucking and drawing cockerels, picking, podding,blanching and freezing several colanders of peas, all the while discussing the plans for next years chicken breeding program, and what natural dyes we will try next.  Normal for us.

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new knitting project

Last year, one of the goals for the year was to knit a jumper for each of us.  I only managed one.. But have higher hopes for this year. Well we shall see.

The problem with the jumper for himself, was settling on a colour.  He wanted a jumper from our own wool, dyed ourselves, and hand spun.  Fair enough – the ideal of being self sufficient in jumpers is very appealing! But he could not decide on a colour.

Not knowing how much yarn it will take, we wanted to stay away from a solid colour, as we would have to dye the right quantity to start with, whereas a blend would be (I hope) more forgiving. I like to blend colours on the carder, prior to spinning, and use at least three colours.  Himself became indecisive (his favourite colour is ‘warm’) and the jumper never started.

This year, I took matters into my own hands, choose the combination, dyed and experimented to get the right colours, blended the batt, and the finished skein was produced and himself approves.

I’m stalling now.. on knitting a test piece.   I love how the wool looks in skein form… what if it does not look so nice knitted up….

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snow dyeing and thaw

Finally the thaw has started.  We have been iced in for over a week, though fortunately we can easily walk to the village shops.  Yesterday we dug the car out finally and made a trip out to family for lunch, and it was wonderful to get out and about.  And surprising how little distance made a difference to the landscape, we still have a white world here, but the snow was gone there.

Everything is drip dripping now, and only some persistant lumps of ice make the road slow going.  I’ll be glad when its all gone and the fields are green again.  But, for a while there, it did have its appeal, and we took the opportunity to do some snow dyeing again.  I suspect you could get much the same results with low immersion techniques, but this is fun.  Particularly pleased with the purple and green version.

I plan to buy some white cotton t-shirts for when we next have snow, for more snow dyeing fun, and if that means we don’t get snow again.. that will be a result too!

 

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snow dyeing

Last year – when the snow came, the blogosphere was awash with tales of snow dyeing, and I was jealous, as we don’t often get snow here, and when we do it is only usually a dusting, yet last year we had lots.. but it had gone by the time I found out about the dyeing technique.

So, even though we only had a few inches of snow yesterday, I decided to give it a go.

Take one piece of material (this is part of a second hand sheet of the loveliest cotton), place in a rack (I used one of those plastic veg boxes they give away at greengrocers), over a bowl or box. Cover the material  with a few inches of clean snow, making sure all of the material is covered.

Sprinkle over dry dyes – choosing compatible colours – I went for red blue and purple.  Probably used a bit too much dye..

Now at this point, I had kind of forgotten that the dyes that work on animal fibres (and wool is what we dye ) dont always work so well on plant fibres (cotton in this case) and vice verse. Luckily the cotton I used had not remembered this fact either.

So the idea is the snow melts, the colours run very gently into one another as this is happening, and then you heat treat the material to fix it as per the dye instructions.

I carefully saved the melt water/dye so I can use it up dyeing wool.

That was fun, and we shall definitely be doing that again, next time we have snow.

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dyeing with rhubarb

I pulled the first of our rhubarb at the weekend – and delicious it was too, made into a crumble.  It’s been a couple of years of waiting, since we moved house, bringing with us part of the crown from the old place, and then planting two new plants.. then changing our mind about where they were and moving them – we have left them alone to settle in.

And in a moment of home grown food meets natural dyeing, we used the leaves to dye a skein of wool.

One of the great things about dyeing with rhubarb leaves, is there is no need to pre mordant the wool first.  The oxalic acid (which is what makes the rhubarb taste sharp and the leaves poisonous to eat), prepares the wool fibres perfectly to take up the dye.

Once again, I used  Jenny Dean’s book, Wild colours (which is being re-released!) as a guide – but rather than stick to her usual formula of same weight of dyestuff to yarn, I used 6 rhubarb leaves to the one skein. The leaves were cooked up – the liquid strained and leaves discarded, then the skein dropped in and simmered gently, and left to sit overnight.

I’m really pleased with the results – a lovely warm yellow.

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