Ordinary Time

This morning I turned in my inventory sheet for the holiday market. This means I have everything made which I'm going to sell. Note that made is very different from finished. I have ironing to do on the guest towels; hemming, washing, and ironing to do on the dinner napkins; and I need to wash and do a final weigh and measure on much of the handspun. But this is still a much better place than I was a week ago.  On Saturday I realized that I was quickly running out of time for one of the ideas I had in my head. I had a bunch of merino handspun mini-skeins that I thought would be fun to dye different colors with natural dyes. In theory it sounded good, but some of the dye stuff I had never used before, so it was a toss up if it was going to turn out to be something I could sell. And since the inventory lists were due today, it didn't give me a whole lot of time to get it all done. And nevermind that starting today the kitchen was going to be consumed with Thanksgiving preparation...

While I did a lot of things this past week, well, one thing... Canning. It's hard to can and do fiber type things. Pretty much for most of the week all I was able to get in was a bit of dyeing. Clearly the theme of the week was put things in very large pots and cook them. Things such as cucumbers and choke berries and more cucumbers and some goldenrod. Here are the results: The bottom skein was the first in the dye pot, then the next day I put in the top one because there was still so much dye left. I could have probably gotten a couple more skeins dyed with this batch, which would become increasingly paler, but I didn't have the skeins, and if I did, they wouldn't have been mordanted. Maybe I can do this next fall, and be prepared with the right amount of yarn, because it would be really pretty.  Then came the weekend. Saturday was filled, so no fiber things that day, which brings us to Sunday. I had plenty on my list... Winding the warp into the loom, tracing my new musli...

It was just a quiet day at home today. A day where I canned nothing. After multiple days spent entirely in my kitchen, I needed a break. So I started a fiber project... in my kitchen and put a bunch (250 g. to be precise) of goldenrod into a pot. I'll share the results on Monday. It also rained today, first early in the morning and then late afternoon. We really needed the rain, but the last time I looked at the forecast it wasn't due until around 6:00 and it came a little over an hour early. Because I was caught off guard, Emmy had time to do her very favorite thing in the world before I made it out to the barn.  And finally, one of K.'s most recent photos. I really love this one. He said he hadn't realized he had caught the lightning until afterwards. 

Because this is a lot even for me. I'm going to start with my decisions as to what I'll be making for the holiday market.  First are guest towels.  I finished my exploratory warp and hemmed and washed everything. Here are what I've decided to make. A red patterned towel, though I'll probably make some in a forest green as well. They will be one of three patterns. This one: And these two: All the towels are hand hemmed. There will also be two types with border patterns on a natural color. Trees: And a red flower-like design: After I weave a bunch of the guest towels, I'll put on a striped warp and make more napkins like these: I'll probably weave a variety of patterns.  Now that I've done the trial run, I'm happy to take orders. I know some of you have expressed interest.  Along with weaving, I needed to do some dyeing because I have a couple of Sheep and Fiber classes coming up and I needed to replenish the fiber I use to teach spindle spinning. Over the...

With Easter being tomorrow, I needed to try my experiment using natural dyes to color some eggs. Here are what they looked like when I started. (They are hard-boiled.) (Those are weird shadows on the white eggs from the cabinet above.) I wasn't sure what to expect or it it was going to be worth the effort. A couple of days ago I tried using beets to color some eggs and this was the decidedly lackluster result.  Not very exciting, huh? Today I decided to try yellow onion skins, purple onion skins, and tumeric. (2 cups yellow or purple onions skins or 1/4 c tumeric in 2 cups of water, boil for 10-15 minutes, drain out dye matter, set aside to cool. Add 1 tbsp white vinegar to dye.) Out of the three the purple onion skin dye looked the most interesting.  Here are some eggs soaking in the dye.  Yellow onion skins  Top: tumeric, bottom: purple onion skins And the final product: L - R along bottom: yellow onion skins, purple onion skins, tumeric -- those are just blue eggs...

Easter will be coming and that means egg dyeing. My crew haven't had much interest in dyeing eggs for a couple of years, and when egg prices were so high and the chickens weren't laying, this was not a bad thing to my mind. We still tend to boil a few dozen eggs, though, for egg salad sandwiches to have for Easter lunch. With the hens all laying again (13 yesterday, 9 today for example), I will probably boil several dozen.  And then I came across this. (credit goes to littlepinelearners.com ) Aside from the hibiscus flowers, the rest I typically keep in my kitchen or can easily purchase. Even better, this way I can boil the eggs and dye them all at the same time. I bet the masses might even be interested in this kind of egg dyeing.  Yes, I know Easter is still five weeks away, but by putting it on the blog, I stand a far better chance of finding this picture again when the time comes. And now you do, too. Plus, any little bit of beauty and happiness we can find right now is a ...

Here is the current state of my studio table: It's a well-known fact around here that my desks are a pretty accurate reflection. While my working desk is fairly organized, my studio table, as you see, is not. This is the combination of planning for my Sheep and Fiber classes which begin tomorrow and a whole lot of flitting from project to project. It is starting to bother me, but it was also the result of not being able to settle. Figuring out why is the key to me being able to tackle the chaos and move forward with straightening things up.  Step one was needing to do some dyeing to get ready for the classes. It's no fun to learn to spin plain white fiber, so I always try to give students dyed fiber. I have 21 students coming through, so that meant I needed quite a bit of fiber. I had forgotten a bit how much I enjoy dyeing fiber. Over the weekend I dyed 300 grams of corriedale roving. I always find it very interesting to see the differences between what the dye pot looks like ...