Fiber Monday - All the things

Since we had a lighter school week last week, I had more time to play. Are you ready? There's quite a bit. 

Spinning

I finished the color gradient that I had dyed. I really like how it turned out.

I still have no idea what to do with it. It's about 200 yards of DK weight yarn. The yarn is... rustic, meaning that there are slubs in it. If I had carded it more times I might have gotten the shorter bits out, now they're adding texture. It's cheviot wool which means it is not next to skin soft, but would be very warm. Do you think someone would buy it if I tried to sell it?

Here's a close-up of the darkest skein.

In other spinning news the breed study kits I ordered arrived. I bought these with some of the money I earned teaching spinning and bought them both because I really want to play with them and because this is what my students who are continuing on next year will be working on. This way they can see the boxes and collectively decide which set they will do. 

Look, aren't they cute? They are little 1 oz packages of prepared wool twelve different sheep breeds. They each have their own label and come with tags to record information for each one.

I really can't wait to start playing with them!

Dyeing

First, here is some fiber I dyed for my students. We're coming to the end of the year so this will probably be the last braid I need to dye.

With spring arriving, it also means that plants are starting to sprout. My goal for this summer is to try some natural dyeing. This is why I planted a whole tray of dye plants that I am happy to see sprouting.

These are Dyer's Coreopsis and Japanese Indigo. I do find it a little frustrating that I had to order these seeds from a dye supply company as my usual seed suppliers sold no dye plants. I would think there would be enough overlap to at least stock a few.

I've also found some other things to gather to dye with. Our huge old cherry tree has an entire limb that is dead and dropping it's bark. It seems cherry bark produced shades of pink so I gathered that up to safely store. I also found quite a bit of lichen on some branches that had fallen and were next to the burn pile. Not all lichen produces color, but I decided it was worth trying. This isn't quite ready to try dyeing with yet, I need to cook it a bit longer, but there is some color in there. (That's a dedicated dye pot, by the way, and not one of my kitchen pots.)

Knitting

I finished the socks!!

I wove in all the ends today and handed them off to J. You know, by finishing them, I am guaranteeing that spring will officially arrive and it will be too warm for J. to wear them. I am glad I ripped back the first sock. It looks significantly better and now both socks match.

Here's my new project. It's a shawl that came in a kit I picked up on sale a while back. It is a pattern that requires fairly constant attention, so not good for knitting and talking or doing anything else that requires attention. I may need to figure out a second project that is more mindless.

Weaving

I managed to dress my loom this past week (with the too short warp) and have been able to start weaving an actual project. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love this loom! I'm currently working the dish towels which will become gifts and then measure a second warp for the napkins. The whole project will just take me a little longer than I had planned.

I also figure out how to use the little pin loom I bought in Arizona. It's small, maybe two inches across.

Here are the little hexagons that I wove on it. I can see using it to weave samples, for instance for the breed study yarn if I spin it small enough. But the woman who own Tempe Yarn had the most amazing shawl made out of these woven hexagons connected by freeform knitting and crochet. It was beautiful and I need to learn to do it. Plus, she gives lessons via Zoom. 

The red is made with fingering weight yarn and the orange is thicker. I like the thinner yarn better. It took me about ten minutes to make one once I figured it out. 

I think that's it. We're back to regular school this week, so probably not nearly as much playing will happen.