Fiber Monday - All the things

Are you ready for this? I think I have been experiencing stress crafting this week. Usually when the state of the world feels more than a little precarious I engage in stress canning, but that takes lots of cooking and boiling water, none of which sounds remotely appealing without air conditioning. So I guess my fallback is making things. I'm not even sure where to start. 

How about with some fleece? Last fall at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival (the one where I wasn't going to buy anything), I came home with a beautiful corriedale fleece that was several shades of grey. I washed it before it got too cold and it has been living in a closet ever since. A few days ago I decided I really needed to get it out and take a look at it, which is why I spent quite a bit of time separating three pounds of fleece into separate shades. 

The dark grey is the smallest pile that you can there in the back. And since I had it out it made sense to do some sampling to see how it sound up. The first step was to comb a bit.

Well, you can't let that lovely combed wool just sit there, so I spun in up and made some yarn. 

It's beautiful yarn and I love the different shades. I think this will make a fantastic sweater. There is a lot of combing between now and a sweater, though.

Next up is some painting. Last year I took a warp painting class which I loved. The warp has been in storage ever since then for a couple of reasons. First, I was waiting to get all the shafts working on my loom because I wanted to use them to weave this warp. The second is that I had decided I wanted to paint the weft as well and just hadn't gotten around to it. What better time to start a major day long project than in the midst of compulsive crafting? Here they are before I steamed and rinsed them. 

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and I hope they work well with the warp. 

I also did a little gathering. 

I have Dyer's Coreopsis and marigolds growing in the garden, both of which are great natural dyed. I've been clipping the flowers and freezing them until I have enough to do something with.

The bottom flower isn't a dye plant, it's called the toothache plant and when chewed it numbs the mouth. These are going to be dried as they bloom to save. They are completely non-fiber related, they just happened to be collected at the same time.

Finally, let's talk about the fabric for the dress. I'm now on to Plan K or something like that. I am just a tiny bit away from using up all the handspun I'm using for weft. I will have about four yards of fabric out of it, which is actually more than I hoped for once I realized I didn't have enough. So I called the dyer from whom I bought the fiber thinking I could get more, though I wasn't excited about how much time it was going to take to spin it all. Well, she didn't have any in stock, but was willing to custom dye some for me, but it would realistically take about three weeks. I actually thought about it for a bit, then decided that there would be no way I could pull this off if I was just starting to spin at the end of July. 

I have a new, more reasonable plan. I think I can use the four yards of fabric with the handspun to make a jacket, them I'll weave the last five yards with a purchased weft and use that to see the dress. I think the yardages will work, though I might have to get a little creative with how I fit things together. This feels more doable since I can weave a couple of yards in a couple of hours. 

Today I went out to get some samples of weft possibilities.

The bobbins (what is left of the handspun) are sitting with the fibers I'm auditioning. The cone at the top is from my stash and it is just the wrong color family so I probably won't even sample it. The others are good possibilities and I'll be curious to see what they look like with the warp. 

One last thing to share. Look at the birthday present B. and his fiancee gave me.

It's a spinning set with different types of coordinating colors and fibers. Those are all blue shades in the bag, even though it doesn't look like it. I can't wait to play with it. Right now it's sitting in a basket in my studio so I can stare at it and think about what I want to do. And it makes me smile. 

Congratulations on reaching the end of this outrageously long post. Maybe things will calm down this week and the need to compulsively craft will abate. One can only hope...