Snail Spirals

The problem with getting behind on things I want to blog about is that I get so far behind, and then I become paralyzed and feel like I can't blog anything until I blog that thing I wanted to blog about, so no blogging gets done at all. Blog blog blog, what a funny word.

I have weaving, spinning, and dyeing that I want to show off, Emma's first school play, several blog-worthy rants while at the gym, thoughts on laundry and lawnmowing and Earth Day (Every Day), my "garden" this year, and other things I can't think of at the moment. Probably I won't get to everything, even in multiple posts.

Let's start with spinning and dyeing, shall we? I am participating in the Sheep-to-Shawl event at the San Juan County Fair again this year. I just love that fair, all my spinning friends are there, and it's just a really meaningful event to me. I am traveling from La Grande, Oregon to Friday Harbor, Washington for the express purpose of going to the Fair and Sheep-to-Shawl. Well, and to pick up Shaun, who is spending six weeks doing research at the Friday Harbor Labs this summer, ending right around Fair-time. But I was going to the Fair, regardless of whether Shaun was spending the summer doing research there. The timing of his research stay just worked out really well. Unfortunately, Emma and I probably won't be able to spend the summer at the Labs again this year. It's expensive for one thing, to live there and still pay rent here. I am also hoping to be working again this summer, though I haven't heard anything yet.

Anyway. Sheep-to-Shawl. I got to design the shawl this year, and will be weaving it at the Fair! I played around with colors and patterns a bit over the winter, and did a couple little samples. Which I promptly lost. Seriously, I have no idea where they went. I looked everywhere. So, in the interest of being able to actually communicate the design to the other members of the S2S team, I had to do them over. That's what I spent a couple days last week doing.

I wanted the warp and weft to contrast, with the warp dyed and the weft natural white. Both will be a blend of 70% dyed Romney/Border Leicester wool and 30% undyed alpaca. I dyed a small batch of wool (all I have on hand that's not dyed is Rambouillet x Cormo, but this is only a color sample so that's OK) on Wednesday, and combed and spun it Thursday, blending the alpaca in with the combs.



Yum. I did this by weighing out 30% of the wool weight in alpaca, then splitting both into rough thirds before combing. I didn't try to get the color perfectly even between comb loads, since I wanted a somewhat marled yarn.



While the finished yarn is lovely, it wasn't quite the color I was going for. I wanted a mossy green, and this is a little too blue. So I dyed up another handful of wool on Friday and tried again.

Now, let me preface this by saying I have had a really hard time with my dyes this week. Nothing set properly the first time through, the dye colors broke unexpectedly, and nothing came out the way I wanted. It was quite frustrating. I wonder if the town has been fiddling with the water treatment plant?

This is the green wool I finally ended up with. The first dyebath (the perfect mossy green, I thought) broke and produced wool that was brown, teal, bright sky blue, and a little green. Hideous. The brown was OK and parts of the green, but the blue had to go. So I overdyed it with the barest smidge of yellow, and that evened it out enough that I thought it would work. As you can see, there's still some blue and that chartreuse green is way brighter than I wanted, but at that point I was fed up and just wanted to SPIN ALREADY.



I added the white alpaca and combed it three times, and what do you know?



The perfect mossy green.



This is pretty much exactly what I was aiming for.



I was completely skeptical until the second time through the combs, when the color started to blend. Fiber work never ceases to amaze me. I guess I should have somewhat expected this, based on the clown wig purple I blended a while ago, but still...

(I love my combs, by the way.)

Surprisingly, the Rambouillet x Cormo was pretty much the same staple length as the alpaca, which worked out well for the combing. I though it was much shorter at first, since after the washing (three years ago in Friday Harbor) and dyeing, each lock was a bit shriveled. They opened up and stretched out well, played nice with the alpaca, and made a lovely yarn.



So, so, so soft. And BOINGY!! I must make more of this yarn.

In other dyeing news, I did up some more laceweight for my shop.


1. Frosted Plum, 2. Seaglass, 3. Parsley, 4. Bayberry

These were part of the frustrating dye experience last week. The yarn that I ended up calling "Frosted Plum", in particular, was supposed to be dark red, pink, and rich brown. It looked great after I painted it and wrapped it for steaming. During the heating, though, it somehow became green, blue, yellow, teal, purple, and maroon. It looked like a vomitous rainbow. I really should have taken before and after pictures, because it would have been really funny if I wasn't so upset at ruining all that lovely yarn. However, I knew that overdyeing solves a lot of mistakes, and violently threw plunked the yarn into a kettle of purply-black dye. You see the results. One of my favorite skeins to date.