mama-of-purl

It's been so hot and muggy here the past week, I *holding my breath* didn't feel like knitting!

Add a few frustrations, like

• twisting and joining the beginning of another kids' sweater, the ultra adorable Blossom I ordered at jimmybeanswool,
• totally misreading the Pretty Petals pattern for sock nr2 and not realizing it until about an inch into it, and
• casting on for the second River Rapids sock with the wrong needle size,

I was off dyeing roving and spinning again.

I dyed with 6 different red shades of kool-aid (which you're not able to tell apart that well) and plied the singles I spun from it with the pink&orange singles. Here's the result: 

Today I also had some nice wool yarn in the mail, which I'd ordered at Schoppel-Wolle. The colorway kind of reminds me of Trekking XXL and I think I'm making a nice hoodie for Johanna with it.

Something that was STILL NOT IN THE MAIL: my dye-o-rama yarn:-( My not-so-secret pal Katherine mailed it a month ago! PATIENCE, mama, PATIENCE...

Here's just some pictures of the low-maintenance dyed roving I've spun & plied. The larger hank could use some more spin to it, I think I'm going to give it another round on the spinning wheel. It was amazing to see how the spots of color spun into pastels and that there's hardly any natural colored fiber in there.

Not my favorite colors, but it was nice to experiment.

There are no socks this month for the Sock-A-Month KAL. Spinning got in the way. Big time!

I've done some no-fuss, no mess dyeing where I just threw the pre-soaked and gently squeezed out roving onto the baking sheet and randomly applied spots of blue, green, gold and pink kool-aid with a spoon and stuck the whole thing in the oven at around 90°C for an hour. VERY low-maintenance! In some places, the spots went all the way through the pile of wool, in some it didn't, so this is going to be an interestingly variegated pastely yarn. I've spun 1.5 bobbins of it, and it's mainly light green/blue. SHould look nice when it's plied. 

I'm starting to feel pretty confident spinning, so I do a lot of it these days:-) 

now with a hint of orange!

So I ran out of nice and colorful roving and decided to dye some more late last night. With the ususal 1-hour period of trying to keep the dye bath just below the boiling point, dip-dyeing in pots requires way too much attention, therefore I've started putting the pots/other containers in the oven. Last night, though, one of those containers was an old glass bowl. Not a great idea.

When I'd placed the roving in the different dye baths and added more water so it'd be covered, the baking grid couldn't support the weight anymore and crashed to the bottom of the baking oven. Yeah, that was quite a mess already. After a few attempts to slide the grid back in, and the whole set-up crashing down again, that old glass bowl busted right though the middle. 

Even a greater mess. There was an orange river in my kitchen. Had to sacrifice a few towels. 

Lessons learned: use the baking TRAY! no breakable glass containers!

Anyhow, I transfered the pot and dish to the baking tray and let the rest of the roving dye in the bottom of the tray that was completely filled with orangey liquid. What a MESS! 

You wouldn't think that the dye job worked despite this chaos.

Actually, I'm quite pleased with the result- pretty much what I had in mind. And it didn't mat/felt like the last roving I dyed.

Spinning with dyed fiber is so much more fun, too. I love seeing the colors change and how the fibers intertwine. So beautiful.

Here's the single I've spun from my last kool-aid dyed roving and a 2-ply that I used scraps of colored wool I had leftover from wet felting and the natural color roving I had. It's wonderfully lightweight and I'm sure it'll knit up very pretty. Only 50 grams (2oz?) though, that'll only be enough for a hat or something.

...my own WHEEL!!

The last spinning I've done was with my mother's ancient wheel she used back in the early 80s, and after I'd spun that nice natural with colored flecks yarn, the leather strap to adjust the tension busted. I did a makeshift repair, but it didn't run as smoothly anymore. it's not unusable now, it only needs a new strap. But I was never too fond of the wheel, all the parts are dark turned wood,  and it's a little too small for this tall mama;-)

This bebe here is a used Ashford I won on ebay last week. I have no idea what the model is called, it's kind of like the Traditional but has a more simplistic look, which I prefer.

I was so lucky with this auction, the wheel is about 20 yrs old, but in excellent shape. The seller had taken the bigger parts apart, so it was easy to re-assemble and I was surprised how quickly I could adjust everything and start spinning! I put in a few hours of spinning last night and produced this chunky 2-ply. The red yarn is made from roving I dyed with Kool-Aid (you can see part of it in the upper right hand corner of the wheel pic) in anticipation of the wheel's arrival last week. The dyeing went kind of weird with the roving- I used the ususal 1 package per ounce of fiber, but the dye bath was not at all exhausted. I kept the roving in it for quite a long time, but it simply didn't soak up the dye like other yarns do. And I also slightly felted the fiber in the process. I can still pluck it apart quite easily, but I'm afraid it will be scratchier than the undyed yarn.

Does anyone have tips on dyeing roving?

Oh, I realized I'm already hooked on spinning when I woke up too early this morning because I felt a strong urge to start spinning again...;-)

I haven't blogged about this yet, I've just been too ambiguous about it- SPINNING. Just after Easter, my mother lend me her spinning wheel she's used heavily in the early 80s during her crunchy granola phase. She showed me the basic movements, but I wasn't very impressed with my skills (I'm actually a very impatient person) and was easily frustrated. Maybe I don't accept my mother in a teaching position anymore either. Well.

When Elsa, the other member of SnB Hamburg :-), told me she was quite an experienced spinner, I asked her to come over last week and help me improve my plucking technique and learn more about spinning. We had a great night eating berry tiramisu (YUM!), spinning some fiber and chatting. At some point I kind of interrupted her asking:"Hey, do you want to see my sock yarn stash?" It was so weird, like I'd asked her if she wanted to see my stamp/record collection or something... But I got out my *mumble* four boxes of sock yarn and it was great sharing my ideas of what I want to do with the different skeins. I'm such a yarn dork.

Anyway, there was still a lot of frustration going on, but it was great having someone who gave me tips on how to do different parts of the spinning process better. At the end I felt a little more capable and on Sunday, I got out the wheel again and did some wild experiments using the natual color roving with some solid dyed roving I had left over from felting. this is the outcome: 100 grams of not-so-bad looking wool. Enough for a toddler's vest. Of course, there's still parts that are overspun, but I can live with that for now. I'm still learning.