I'm dying here!

Well the shawl is all done and the loose ends tucked in and I am loving it. It is way too hot to wear it now, but I can't wait for the cooler weather.



Right now I have not started another knitting project. I still have a sock on the loom that is in hibernation.

The Tour De France will be starting soon and for all us Ravelery followers the Tour De Fleece will start. I will be spinning as I watch the Tour. I plan to spin every thing that I bought in Wooster at the Wool Festival.

I also have been spinning the wool I got from Liz. I managed to get 2 skeins done, and I got to use my Niddy Noddy for the first time. I usually just wind every thing into balls, but since I wanted to dye this wool I put it into skeins.




This Saturday was our Guild meeting and we were going to learn how to dye wool. Bob, Nate and I drove down for the meeting. Our leader Dave pulled out a whole fleece and put it on a table for us to look at. It was smelly and dirty. Yes it had poop in it. He showed us how to look at the fibers and judge their strength. This was a bad fleece and the hair pulled apart with a snap. You could hear the fibers breaking or crackling like rice crispy's. We tossed that one aside.
The next fleece was even smellier than the first if that was possible. It was a beautiful honey brown and white. It had good fiber strength and this was the one we were going to use. We all pulled off some fleece and put it in a potato bag to keep our batches separate, choose a color of dye, put large pots of water on the stove or other heating sources, and the fun began. We are doing a method that was called dying in the grease. The fleece was unwashed. To the boiling water we added liquid laundry soap. Next we added the dye, and then the wool. We could get several in each pot. The dye we used belong to the Guild as well as the fleece. I think is was called one step and the name says it all. You don't have to set the color in.

Bob and I choose Ripe Tomato for our first batch. It sat in the near boiling water for 20 minutes. Then we tried a skein in a tap water hot pot called Blue. Our next skein went into a pot of cornflower blue. We were having so much fun that we took some more dirty wool and put it into a pot of Blue berry. When the Red was ready (it was gorgeous) you were to take it out side and give it a whirl to extract the extra water. YIKES! I got red splatter all over me. Then we laid it out on a flat surface to dry.



The Blue skein came out and it was fantastic looking. Dave was excited that it was done in tap water hot. We hung that one up to dry.


The Cornflower Blue was also excellent. That went next to the other skein to dry.
The Blue berry wasn't ready so we added more dye to the pot and went in for lunch.
After lunch we went out to get the last bunch out of the dye. It was just so so. Because it was the last dregs of the fleece it was very dirty. The Dirty areas didn't take the dye as well as some of the other areas. Every one says not to worry that when it is carded it will blend together.

After lunch it was pretty much a free for all. Dave was experimenting using a electric skillet and using many colors producing striped roving's. People were mixing colors together to get different colors. There was some amazing color ways going on.




Another friend brought in 2 of her fleeces and they showed use how to skirt the fleece, which is saving the good stuff and getting rid of the bad. One was so dirty they determined it was not worth the effort so it got tossed.I can't believe how much I learned and can't wait to try it at home.

That said I have been spinning more Liz wool and have completed another skein.

Time flys

WOW where did the time go? Bob and I went to the guild meeting on the third Sat. of the month. There was only half the usual crowd. The town of Carrolton was celebrating the reopening of it's restored McConnell house (civil War era) and was holding reenactments and other festivities through out the weekend. When we detoured around we saw them rolling in the cannons and soldiers marching along behind. Some of the guild members also belong to the historical society and were working the event.
At the meeting I bought some more Mohair blend from Julie and she showed me a technique for plying three strands using 1 spool or yarn called Navajo plying. It was like doing a very large daisy stitch. I watched her for a while then she let me try it on her wheel. I got the concept, but what threw me was using her wheel. I had no clue that wheels could be so different. I could not keep an even speed going and the wheel would stop on me.
I also talked to some of the knitter about a few issues I was having that will be reveled later. I also turned in the pumpkin hat.

I needed a new project so I went to Pat Catans and horror of horrors bought some yarn. I wanted to try to knit a shawl and didn't want to wait and spin wool. I didn't have the right size needles, but I wanted to knit now so I used what I had in a circular needle. I loved the colors I chose and have been enjoying the knitting process. I used several different types of novelty yarns and different textured yarns.
This whole project is a learning process. Some of the textured yarn one called home spun tends to snag. Using novelty yarn was interesting, it is very hairy and hard to find the stitches. It is also very fine and I was worried about breaking it. Thus the beauty of knowledge from the ladies of the guild. One was working with the novelty yarn and was using it combined with another yarn. Now why didn't I think of that? She also was knitting a shawl and she showed me a way to self fringe the edges by starting a new thread and leaving the ends stick out the tieing a knot. Confused? It makes since to me. :-) I also was running out of cable on my needles and I had a long way to go. The ladies showed me their cable needles with different length cables that attached to different sized needles. HUMMMM!I went the next day to the small knit store and bought a set. They are expensive, but now I shouldn't have to buy any more of the regular size needles.

I hope!

Bob and I went to the Great Lakes Fiber Festival in Wooster on Saturday during the holliday weekend. This is our first fiber festival and we had no idea what to expect. The event was free and so was parking. It was held at the fair grounds and the weather was good. The first barn we went into had vendors selling wool of all sorts.
I bought several gifts and walked around a bit then came back to a booth to buy 4 oz. Liechester longwool

and 5 0z. of Icelandic wool.

Both are in shades of white and black or grey mix. When I was done we gabbed a bit more then she said "You know there are 5 more barns"
EEEK! This was going to be expensive!
I decided to go for different types of wool and things that I have heard on pod castes but don't see around here. That said, there were vendors from every where. I saw PA., IN, WI, MI, NC, and more.

I did pretty good and only bought 5 oz. of corriedale and 50z or this wool that I have no idea what it is but I love the mixed colors. I passed the booth several time until I gave in a bought it.

While there I had a pleasant surprise of seeing a guild friend named Liz. She had a booth there. I had purchased wool from her before and on the way out bought 1.5 pounds of white ranboulae (spelling) for the meeting next month.
We are going to learn how to dye and I didn't have any thing to dye. Now I have to spin like crazy to have some thing ready for the next meeting. Also the guild had a booth and Dave and Nancy were tending it. I had no clue they would be there. I guess I should pay better attention. I also bought a few other do dads but can't say at this time what they are because of certain blog readers. We briefly saw the sheep auction,but that could be dangerous and we had a great lunch of lamb dog (very yummy), lamb sandwich (also yummy), 2 lemonades, and a funnel cake all for way under 20 dollars.

I had been spinning and plying. I plied more of the brown and white mohair mix
and I plied some of the purple/white I got for Liz with mohair.
I love the mohair because it is soft and some of the wool can be scratchy and this makes a nice mix
My poor sock has been abandoned for a while. ;-(

I need to spin, but I am going hiking this week end.
Molly is looking better, but still is skinny. She is a pukercat at least once a week. Daisy is getting better around molly. Today they were face to face.

Maybe next time they will be in the same photo.