Yes, I am still alive.

I am almost embarrassed to post. It has been so long. I realized that I had been avoiding my blog because I was embarrassed that I had totally slacked off. I have retreated from my online life. The real one has been getting in the way. Go figure.

Here is a quick review of my life...

In my fiber life I have been knitting wildly on My Man's Durrow sweater. I have ditched the pattern and am following the ideas of The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee to finish the yoke & collar. I am also continuing the cables up & over the shoulders. Why stop a good thing early?

In my spinning life I have tons of natural camel 3ply ready to dye or skein up & post on Etsy. But, sadly, there it sits. I did have a friend over to spin and that was way cool to spin with someone. I actually didn't spin, I taught my 4yr old fiber wiz-kid to spin. She did a fabulous job seeming how she couldn't treadle & keep the fiber at the right angle to enter the orifice smoothly. My majacraft is set up pretty high and her little body is just too short. I will post pictures when the cows come home. I am thinking about getting another really short band that goes around the wheel so I can adjust the wheel to fit her. She really liked spinning. As her mother it is really fun to watch her balance (or really try hard to) all the different parts of spinning.

My dying life is comatose. Talk to the camel about that.

My sewing life is all about Needle Cases. I just finished my first 5 roll up cases for single & double point needles. They have graduated pocket sizes, labeling strip on the pockets, roll up, hang up & come in lovely colors. You can find them at my LYS The Tangled Skein! Now I have to make more of the hanging ones because all but 2 have sold! I am changing the pocket sizes on the hanging ones to make them more user friendly for the larger needle types. I think I might keep some in the old style for all the sock & other fine knitters out there.

My real life is quite exciting! I went back to school this semester to start learning how to be a computer drafter and actually make a decent wage when my children are all in school. I really like it. It has slowed the fiber life, sadly. That is part of the reason for the lack of posting. The REALLY exciting part is that I had applied for a grant way back in December. I found out about it on the internet. About 5% of applicants are chosen. I thought I had about a snowball's chance in hell.

I am not a Heller for no reason.
(note to readers: Heller is my maiden name.)
I AM THAT SNOWBALL IN HELL!!!
They picked me!!
They are going to give me lots of money to learn how to be the best lil' Computer Drafter out there!!!

yes, I realize that the use of exclamation points has gone a bit over the top. I am REALLY excited though!!!!

I think I will end on that exciting note. Ya know, someone has to get all that money out on the internet! Today, it happens to be me.

Momentum

It is probably too late at night to be writing a blog...but I am anyways. I have been so excited about selling yarn that I have been telling everyone I meet and handing out cards. The problem being I haven't got my detail pictures of the yarn to post on Etsy. So no goods on Etsy. Oops. This week looks like a small tornado going through my life, but I have made it through day 1. I am waiting for the technical yarn guru who lives deep within to come to the surface and give me some words to say about all my yarn. For now I am satisfied with words like soft, squishy, smooth, fantastical, fluffy...words that might describe a small dog or one of my skeins of yarn. Enjoy a picture of Lupine Valley (above) and Blue Fire (below). Both are hand-dyed, but only Blue Fire by myself.

Hand-dyed & spun by Yours Truly. I really love this yarn. I might not sell it. I might keep it for myself and my own selfish knitting. But I think I will still put it out at the craft fair. It is superwash fiber that I hand-painted and wrote about in the post "Dyeing to Tell". The fiber started as a bright saffron. The original dye job spun up very dark as a single, so I dyed more with lots more space between the colors. Used the same colors and got a much brighter single and plyed together they created this lovely skein. I have around 250 g of this colorway. Enough for an actual project!

Now, the 2 skeins below are the sky blue fiber I dyed. The picture on top is the roving with red that I added and didn't know if I would like. The bottom picture is the roving with blues, purples & black in it. I plyed both with the original plain blue roving. This is where spinning gets interesting. I wanted to see how they both looked plyed with the same fiber. I like the muted one. But the one with the red is not quite on my palate. I like neither as much as the top picture. My mom, who is not an orange fan, loved the blues. So, I trust that there are more people like her out there in the world and that they will like the blue yarn.

Spinning Up the New Stuff

Believe it or not, I spun up these singles right after I dyed them and it took me this long to get them into a post! I really like how the singles spun, but I definetly need to work on my color spacing when I dye. I stripped down the rovings really thin. Not quite pencil roving. The ones I didn't go as thin on turned out the most bland as I spun. The colors are too close together to get strong color blocks. I really liked the green popping out, so after I realized how important the thickness of the roving was, I really stripped it thin. I was going to ply the two similar rovings together, but after a foot or so of that realized how bland a yarn it would be. So, now I have a new dye job to do. I want to dye a light roving and a dark roving to compliment the med. tone ones I have now. The light will be mostly saffron with lt.orange, a little red & the same green just not as strong depth of shade. The dark roving will be mostly red, green and a little saffron & lt. orange. So, some colors just different placements. I am excited and hope to get that dying done this week.

Dyeing to Tell

Here is the saga of my latest dyeing adventure. I painted rovings! Starting with superwash rovings is supposed to insure that I don't felt the roving before I get a chance to spin it. To the right I am prepping the fibers, spreading them out so there are no thick spots to inhibit even dye uptake. The rovings are all wet from a long soak in warm water with synthropol. I am using Jacquard acid dyes. The saffron (pictured) & sky blue rovings are mill ends from The Shed.

Starting with a colored fiber means I am over-dying and the original color will tint every color I paint onto the fiber. With that in mind, I chose Fire Red, a dark orange mix, a light orange mix and pure Sky blue for the saffron rovings. I was hoping that the red would be strong enough to completely overpower the yellow fiber, and it did. And the Sky Blue would tint into a bright green which it also did. The colors interacted with the saffron pretty close to what I expected. What I did not expect was how much the dyes would wick down the fiber. My stripes of color almost all turned out too close together and I lost much of my fabulous green to the red leaking over it and turning it purple. Not really what I wanted. You can see from the upclose picture of the roving that the stripes were relatively separate when I applied them. However, as they soaked in and then got steamed, they spread out quite a bit. To the left is the 4, 1oz strips of saffron just after painting. To the right is the close up of the stripes. Can you believe that most of those narrow, dark stripes that look green are actually pure blue and got covered up by the red stripes to either side? Cool.


After painting the rovings on both sides I rolled them up into saran wrap coils. They had been prepped on top of saran wrap, so this step was relatively easy. Then I steamed them in a big pot for at least 20 min. Let them cool overnight and then rinsed them out. I was really impressed with how little dye bled out. That steaming really sets the color! Next I laid them out to dry. After a day or so trying to keep the kids from knocking the trays with the fiber over onto the floor they were ready to braid up for storage.

I love the picture below of the colorful rovings drying.
I wish the sun had been shining on them, but that will have to wait for another day.



Finally, we have the finished products. A colorful mass of fiber that, I hope, will spin into bright, confetti yarns. I will try a different colorway on the sky blue next time. The red covered over more than I expected. I think it would have been better with just the dark blue, black & purple. The entire process took much longer than anticipated. I thought I was embarking on an hour or so playtime at 9pm and instead finished wearily at 12:30am, leaving the coils cooling in the steam pot. I definitely learned a ton. So, anytime you want to paint some rovings, come on over and let's have at it! Just plan for twice as long as you think it might take.

Let the dyeing begin!

I realize, as I sit down to write this note, that I have no pictures to wow you as to the total coolness of dying. When I start dying I tend to let the world fade away as I pretend I am a mad chemist mixing potions that will change the world. My poor children. It is as if they do not exist. Which is why today I only mixed potions. I do not have enough time before needing to make dinner to ignore the universe.

I am planning ahead this time. I would like to recreate any awesome color I happen to make, so today I made 1% dye stock solutions. Before I began actually mixing I delved into the topic of the ideal dye powder to use. Jacquard Acid Dyes or Sabraset dyes.

Deb Menz recommends Sabraset. I adore Deb Menz. I have her book, Color in Spinning, and it is well on it's way to becoming dogeared. I took her workshop on plying as well. Which is why I bought her book. She is a color genius and entirely more concerned with the details than I am and her book has LOTS of info on dye formulas, DOS and everything else. She ONLY used Sabraset for protein fibers. That is a problem. Sabrasets are available from Pro-Chem and until I call them and whine about shipping to Alaska, the shipping is PROHIBITIVE.

Jacquard Acid dyes are available all over the place. Dharma Trading seems to have them for the best price and the shipping is half that of ProChem. Hmmm, do I sense an AK prejudice?

prepare for shipping rant: Extreme shipping to Alaska is usually charged by companies who think saying 'continental US only' excludes Alaska. HELLLOOOOO we are on the continent of North America, just like you!! In fact, Fed Ex & UPS have, like, their 3rd largest hubs in Anchorage so the chances that your packages go through AK on a regular basis are pretty good. Contiguous is the word to use and when a company or person knows the difference I accept their shipping prices. If the shipping is still unreal after using Contiguous I politely use a different vendor. We use the same stamps that you all do. We even share the US Dollar. Okay, rant getting out of hand. Whoa there Nelly! Let's go pet a moose and remember why we live here.

Jacquard dyes use only vinegar or citric acid to bind and have lots of pretty colors to choose from. If I wasn't obsessed with mixing and blending I might not even have to if I ordered all their colors. But that would take all the fun away.

Based on availability I have decided to go with Jacquard for now. Besides, it is available in my studio RIGHT NOW. And I would have to order any Sabraset and wait. I hate waiting. So, today I mixed up 1% solutions. Why? I guess it will be easier to mix colors, less mess to inhale when I don't have to mix powder each time, and I get to have big jugs of mysterious chemicals on my shelves. What more could a wanna be chemist have? The next step is to photo all my fiber in it's current state. Do a ton of math to figure out my Depth of Shade (DOS) etc and come out with exact amounts of dye stock, vinegar, water & fiber. I am exciting just writing that. Lord, help me, I'm addicted.

Dyeing left & right

This week I am going to dye. With a y e, not an i e. I am going to dye cashmere, camel & yak from Mongolia. I will also do my first attempt at dying roving. I am going to start with gold superwash roving because it is really hard to felt superwash fibers. So I've been told. We will see. I have some lovely handspun that will go into the dyepot as well. Pink is on the top of my list of colors. I will also do some red, orange and lavender.

Anyone have any other requests? Yes, I realize that the only people I have given this blog address to are my two sisters. I also posted it on my Ravelry page!

The picture is of the single ply camel yarn. I will ply a bunch of it into 2 & 3 ply yarns and kettle dye it. I am a little tired of plying after the dying process. I still have a lot of dyed singles ready to ply.

Wish me luck. Handling chemicals is always a blast!