I swear I'm not really a dyer, Part 1: Indigo, and Battling the Squirrels for Walnuts

Here is what the indigo vat looks like with things soaking in it. It is still going, with the aid of the heating pad and not-yet-freezing temps. I will feed it next week (probably some store-bought plums - our tree is finished for the season, but my vat really liked the plums), and then pack it off to a brave friend's house where it will sit and be cared for until our mid-October BYOP* Dye Madness Day.


I'll have to get a picture of the scarf once I've washed it out. It came out stunning.

In the meantime, I've been spinning some of my indigo-dyed fleece into a weight hopefully appropriate for cross-stitch in single ply, and satin-stitch embroidery in two-ply.


Indigo blue with a creamy white Dorset filling!

I've picked up some walnuts from the ground, but it looks like I missed most of them when they first fell. They're no longer green and ripe, but black. I certainly wouldn't eat the nuts from these - they sat on the ground in the rain for days and started to go a little moldy - but I've been told I can still use the husks for dying, so I picked them up anyhow.

The squirrels got all the good ones, believe me. If it's green and still lying on the ground and the squirrels haven't taken it, it's bad and already has bugs in it. They know these things. They've been kind enough to leave small piles of walnut husks on the stones and chair, so I've collected some of that, too. It's all currently soaking in water to make a brown "tea" for dyeing. I need a little bit of black, so I plan to overdye a handful of the teal.

Every time I go near the walnut tree, a voice above my head starts chattering and cursing at me in ... squirrel. Of course, I could probably score half a ton of good walnuts if I broke into their stash inside my front awning. They should admire my restraint.

Coming in Part 2 this weekend: Walnut experiments and the last cochineal dyebath.


*Bring Your Own Pee

The frog has a point

Since I got a medium blue colour on white wool after a single six-hour dip in the indigo vat, I put in half of the weld-dyed yellow from last September. Six hours later, I had a lovely deep teal. I let the vat rest for a couple days to re-ferment and reduce some more, then I tried a little more of the weld yellow, this time only dipping it for a minute or so. Again, no luck, it came out a light blue. Not even teal, that time.


Left: Weld yellow before going in the vat.
Centre: Weld yellow after six hours in the vat.
Right: Weld yellow after a minute in the vat.
Obviously, not the greens we're looking for.

Between attempts with the weld, I also tried a different approach, carding together some of the dark blue with a tuft of a friend's yellow roving (I think that was also weld), and spinning it. The result was... greenish? Maybe if I squint, it will look more green. Nope, not going to work.

Sigh.


Not the best video quality, but my favourite performance.

It's become clear that it doesn't take much time in the indigo vat to overwhelm my weld-dyed yellow. Re-reading Lilies, he recommends that greens using indigo+yellow be dyed by doing the indigo first, then mordanting the wool and overdyeing with a good yellow dye. I was beginning to fear that I would have to make time for a yellow dyebath before the weather turns, in addition to the final cochineal batch that I need to do sometime this coming week. But did I mention we have to card out all that cochineal red so that another lady can spin it later this month? And once it's spun, it goes on my loom to make a pillow, hopefully woven by November, so that someone else will have time to sew it together and embroider it in December using the blue, green and white that I'm spinning by hand? And everything has to be done in early January?

And, um, let's not forget that I have real work that I'm supposed to eventually be getting back to. Soon.

Right then. I don't exactly have tons of time here to experiment with with yellow overdyes on my blues to get a nice leafy green. A friend has a bagful of onion skins for me, but I've never dyed with them, and if there's one thing about my dye experiments that I do know, it's that they never, ever come out exactly right the first time, especially when I really need it. I expect I'll end up with orange on my first onion skin dyebath.

In a last-minute desperate move, I pulled off a little piece of that stunningly bright (almost heading toward orange) tin-mordanted onion-skin yellow that I bought from Brush Creek Wool Works at Pennsic. Four quick dips, each less than a minute, gently swish it around a little, air it out for 5-10 minutes in between. Quick vinegar rinse. Wash in warm soapy water. And suddenly...


What I started with, and what I ended with.

...the goal no longer seems quite so far away. I separated out half of the roving and went to town. It's now drying in the basement. If I have time later this month in between everything else, I'll try the onion skins with tin myself. I might even get a chance at another weld dyebath in early October, but what I dyed today will be more than enough green. And even though I didn't do the yellow, I know who did and how, and I can live with that.

As a wise frog reminded me today:
I'm green, and it'll do fine. It's beautiful. And I think it's what I want to be.

Never saw the sun shining so bright...

...never saw things going so right.


In front, single dip, six hours in the indigo vat. Behind it, three minute-long dips.


And this is the rest of the six hour batch after 12 more hours in the vat

The vat is now resting in order to ferment a little more and re-reduce, in preparation for its weekend date with some weld-dyed yellow.

On to the green.

Partaking of the Bruised Plums of Paradise*

This is a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

Elisem, who is not only a jewelry maker and artist of immense talent but who also shares my birthday, is having a birthday sale. Not only that, but she's once again offering a draw for a gift certificate to those who spread the word and let her know about it (see that post for the details).

This time around, my pocketbook and I would like to thank the person with exceptional taste who bought Going Under the Hill. My credit card company and bank, on the other hand, are surely disappointed that I won't be going into further debt with them.

A few other things I'm coveting to an almost alarming level: Knock Three Times and Say Athena Sent You, Rose of the Vineyards, and (a little smaller, but shockingly adorable) Treasure Box.

Someday, I will end up with one of her very long linked necklaces, and a necklace-crown. Not today, though.

Another person whose jewelry I like very much, and who would probably appreciate the traffic, is Katie, aka Dragon's Den Jewelry.

Go on. Covet. Buy if you are so inclined and can. Elise's sale goes until September 1.

This has been a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

************************************

In other news, we definitely have a plum tree.


This is after Saturday's good-sized harvest

A very full plum tree.


Yum.

We harvested three bags of mostly-ripe plums on Saturday and dropped them off with my mother-in-law to take along for her Sunday family visits. I'll get more today. They're a little tart, and absolutely yummy.

The over-growing nature and layout of the backyard - in particular the outrageous recent growth of the magnolia - means that our plum tree, unlike our neighbour's, is mostly in shade. Thanks to this year's record-breaking rainfalls**, we have an amazing bounty of plums, and thanks to the shade, ours aren't ripening quickly on the branch, while the neighbour's are very ripe. She doesn't seem to be interested in picking them, which means the local critters aren't eating ours.

That, and the squirrels are far more enamored with the black walnut tree (aka "The Stinky Nut Tree") hanging over the back of the yard from another neighbour. If I get it together enough, I'll collect some black walnut shells for dyeing.


Low-hanging black walnuts. They smell. The less ripe they are, the more potent the smell. Also, they are sticky.

But the moral here is: the more plums I pick now, the fewer will be squished into the ground in a couple weeks.

I took the loppers to the plum and magnolia on Saturday and almost immediately regretted it. I only took off a branch or two on each, and only new growth branches that I felt were seriously heading in the wrong direction, but I seem to have re-emphasized the lopsided nature of both trees. Both have already been pruned heavily in certain areas, and I think I just added to the weirdness. I'm hoping they both figure it out and send out slightly more well-behaved branches back into those areas next year, but somehow I doubt I'll be that lucky. Nature is nothing if not persistent, but it also never quite does what I want or expect.

*Title from "The Bruised Plums of Paradise," earrings by Elise Matthesen, currently living with me. The earrings, not Elise.

**Seriously, five times more rain than Vancouver? Hell's bells, man, that's just wrong.

I love it when a plan comes together

The super-secret joint knitting project that I last blogged about here was finished and delivered shortly before I went on vacation. All parties involved are (pick one or more:) pleased, surprised, happy, relieved, in recovery, totally into the bright colours.

A group of four knitters (me, Sarah, Lydia, Tanya) and a crocheter (Liisa) in my graduate department pooled our collective string-wrangling prowess together and made an afghan for another grad student (Christine), herself a knitter, who was having a baby. Er, make that had a baby, a few months ago, and a very cute one at that. I don't make a habit of putting pictures of other people's kids up on my blog, especially without explicit permission, so you'll just have to trust me.

I can, however, post some pictures of the finished blanket. Well, mostly finished. I think this was before the crochet ends were woven in. The "finished" pictures all feature a very cute infant, whose mother I will have to speak to in-person before I go posting his adorable mug willy-nilly all over the innernets.


Yarn: New Bernat Satin. Very light and soft, 100% Acrylic, 100% (the most important thing!) puke-washable

Each colour of square contains a different pattern. The patterns for the squares are from this book of knitted baby washcloths. We used six red rocking horses, ten orange butterflies, eight yellow duckies, six green bunnies, four blue sailboats, and two purple baby carriages.

Each of the knitters took a colour and pattern, according to how fast we thought we could knit and how much time we had over the next several weeks. I'm always looking for a good cause for procrastination, so I jumped on the ten orange butterflies that evening, while Lydia took the yellow duckies. Tanya took the red (and eventually also the blue), and Sarah took the green. I finished relatively quickly (yay, procrastination!) so later on I also did the 2 purple squares. For those who are interested in such things, we got almost exactly four squares out of a ball of yarn.

For yuks, here is the "napkin layout": After Liisa proposed the project and we all signed on, Lydia, Liisa and I made the initial covert field trip to Mary Maxim in late February to pick out yarn, look for some patterns, and then sit down somewhere with food and figure out the logistics. Finding the washcloth pattern book* was an inspirational lucky turn, and "somewhere with food" ended up being the foodcourt of the mall, so between bites of my A&W rootbeer and burger, I sketched out the general game plan and layout on a food court napkin.


All the best plans are drawn on a napkin.

We were, of course, hoping the squares would all turn out the same size... but realistically, four different knitters all getting exactly the same size squares? Not likely. Lydia did some blocking, which helped, but Liisa was the star who took all the squares and made them fit together using the wonderous power of crochet. She even managed to do it while keeping our original layout intact. Here's a closeup of her excellent crochet border.


All hail the magic of crochet!


*I'm not usually one for the simple washcloth patterns, but I think I might have to get this other booklet by the same designer.

The grass and sunlight are woven in for free

I'm home from Pennsic. This year I camped in a new location with a different group. (I-79 side of the Serengetti rather than on Runestone Hill). Being with a small group was quite a bit different compared to the 40+ people in my encampment last year, but I did miss the other group a little. Our encampment was so quiet. Well, OK, quiet in some ways. I haven't completely passed judgement on the location, but I could definitely have done without the almost constant air horns and jack brakes from the highway.

However, it was nicely flat (a bonus, seriously), shockingly convenient to the merchants, main food court and A&S tents, and I did not miss climbing the steep part of the hill every day. I did miss the sound of drums coming up from the lake all night long, though, and the feeling of being more at the centre of things. I'll have to wait a couple months until it's in long-term memory before I decide if I liked the good parts of it enough to camp over there again.


This was taken shortly before tear-down, so the camp fence and lanterns are already gone.

I played in a very excellent pickup dance band from Sunday through Tuesday. I'm still not a spectacular recorder player, but I'm starting to be able to hold my own on melody and play most things up to speed, which makes me happy. I still need a lot of work on recorder, though.

At heart, I suspect I'll always be a brass player. I believe I want need a sackbut. Possibly before the natural horn. Some day.

I was pretty good about not buying too much. I did have to pick up the obligatory spindle:


Yes, it's a heart. Yes, the pink felt baggie came with it. It would make me sick if it weren't so darn pretty.

...and the traditional couple of bags of naturally-dyed roving from Brush Creek Wool Works.



I had to get the red. Their cochineal red with tin mordant is almost exactly the colour we got. In fact, these were the reddest bags of the batch - the rest of her selection were noticeably lighter. I suspect the evenness of her colour compared to ours is because she dyes rovings, not raw fleece of questionable cleanliness. Her cochineal with alum mordant roving was close to our raspberry batch. It makes me feel considerably better to know we got what the pros get with our cochineal dyebaths. Oh, and that yellow? Onion skins with tin. Really, how awesome is that? Onions are the new neon.

I also picked up a pretty thing for my hair, a tiny hard leather pouch, two small handbound leather journals (with handmade paper! and refillable! one for me and one for Daniel to use as a sketchbook), some herbs for a friend and tea and honey - nothing to break the bank. No looms this year, thanks, and I even passed up on the expensive but lovely closed-toe shoes. I walked past the harps and sighed.

Once again, Dread Viscountess Seelie offered rigid heddle weaving classes, so a lot of my second week was spent weaving and generally playing with string. This year we were re-creating several specific archaeological textiles on the rigid heddle loom, using the multiple-heddle technique she taught last year. A few of us offered up our looms as teaching looms, so in all we had five looms going with different warps. We all wove a few inches on each pattern. All designs were woven on standard 20" Beka SG-20 rigid heddle looms, using either two or three heddles as required (3 or 4-shaft patterns), and no pickup sticks.

First a 1-2 Rippenkoper. This is a three-shaft design, requiring only two heddles. Basically, it switches between a 2-1 twill and a 1-2 twill, weft-faced to warp-faced, and also reverses.



Next, a rosette twill. This is 4-shaft design, done using three heddles.


I think this might actually be the back, but I like this side better.

And finally, my absolute favourite, the Jorvik 1336 (i.e. "Coppergate") textile. A honeycomb, or wabengawebe with a twill. I messed up the pattern more than once, being highly distractible on a good day, even more so there. A couple times I only did one repeat of the pattern, and once I did three. But I definitely want to make some long pieces of this one and do something with them.


Front of an apron dress, perhaps? Hmmm.

There was also a loom with a standard 4-harness twill warp, but since I did the twills and double-weaves last year, I didn't do more of those. One of the looms had to go back with its person early and we ran out of time, and since I was planning to put that very warp onto my loom at home, I was asked if I could weave up 5-6 samples to send off to the instructor and others in the class. It's definitely no hardship! I'm learning a lot, and getting the warping experience I was looking for.

So, now on my loom and weaving up nicely, a 2-1 Lozenge. This one is another three-shaft pattern, so it only requires two heddles.


Sample one of five. Or maybe six.

There really is something to be said for sitting under a sun shade, warping looms with a group of women, chatting with the person across from you, muttering the count of the warp thread quietly between sentences... "Here's the three. So, did you guys get wet last night? No, I was very dry - two fours coming through - but it was freaking cold when I woke up at three in the morning. Is that sixteen? OK, tie that off."

Someone might have caught a video of Seelie weaving in one of the classes, in which case I'll definitely post a link. Most of the drafts for these patterns can be found at the complex weavers medieval textiles study group, in the section on the textiles discussed in Lise Bender Jorgensen's book. The Coppergate textile draft is from Thora Sharptooth's site.

Aside from the RH weaving, I didn't take too many classes - one exception being a viking wire weaving class. I got to make a necklace, and wire-wrap a bead. I need to finish it with a hook for it to be completely done - but the part where you pull it through the drawplate is so much fun. It's like magic.



What do mean you don't go to Pennsic to weave?

I leave you with this. It was visible from Currie Road, near the west gate.


Everyone goes to Pennsic, didn't you know?

Post-Pennsic Weaving Post coming...

... as soon as I get home this afternoon. While I begin to tackle the mounds of laundry.

My God. The laundry.

hides under the blanket again

Things I Can't Get at Home

I am in PA. One would think I would be at Pennsic, since it is well underway, I have a medallion, and my Very Medieval Tent is set up in our campsite over there, looking very medieval indeed.

One would be wrong.

I'm at my parents house, the house I grew up in, sitting at the kitchen table. The kitchen has been redone recently, but the table looks exactly the same. For some reason, when Mom, Dad and I sit at it to play cards, we sit around it in exactly the way we always did: Me with my back to the door and fridge, Mom to my right, Dad to my left (or directly across the table).

It's very strange, these long-term habits.

What is even stranger is that I'm sitting at this table, in this chair, and I have internet access. There is an unexplained, open wi-fi connection that my laptop picked up automatically without asking - suddenly it was downloading email. There's really only one neighbouring house physically close enough to account for it, so my suspicion lies there. I try not to make a habit of borrowing wi-fi connections, except under dire circumstances, so I'm trying not to use it too much or even think about it, lest it disappear suddenly. But I'm also a little delighted that I won't have to pay for internet access over at Pennsic while I'm here just to do an email check every couple days, or run the 5 miles into Butler to a cafe for free access.

The connection is much stronger if I park myself between the grand piano and the Hammond B3 in the sunroom, which I like to think is due to the overwhelming power of such an awesome confluence of keyboards.

I'm also avoiding the work that I'm supposed to be getting done, which is why I'm at the house and not in the tent. So, here is a montage of a few things I can't get at home. From L to R: Frosted Chocolate Vanilla Creme Pop-Tarts, a Butterfinger bar, (American) Mountain Dew, Strawberry Quick powder, Pepperidge Farms Mint Milano Cookies, and handwritten notes from my Mom, with hearts and smiley faces.


Sugar overload

Don't worry, I won't eat it all in one sitting. The cookies are to share with Mom, and the Strawberry Quick is entirely for Daniel. To be fair, I could probably find Butterfinger at home if I knew where to look, but lately, even the places that sell Nestle chocolate bars haven't had them. This flavour of pop-tarts, my only pop-tart weakness, are sometimes even hard to find here. I haven't seen them the last few times I've been down, and the last time a friend offered to bring some back with her for me, I got S'Mores (nope, not even close). The Mountain Dew is just one of those goofy things. I always loved Mountain Dew. Canadian Dew did not, until quite recently, contain caffeine, and the version with caffeine at home has a special name and still doesn't taste the same. I don't drink it, ever. This is probably related to the general cross-border Coke/Pepsi thing. American Coke is made with high-fructose corn syrup. I've never liked it - I grew up drinking Pepsi. Canadian Coke is made with real cane sugar and is wonderful and amazing, but Canadian Pepsi is icky.

And because I'm more than a little homesick, and I miss my Daniel and my fuzzy boys, here are a couple shots I took while playing with the silly features on my old digital camera a couple weeks ago. They were still on the camera when I emptied it just now.




Everything looks better with the polarizing filter!

Okay, enough dawdling. Back to work. I want to be at Pennsic tomorrow!

It's official: We have a zombie plan. Thanks, JoCo.

It's only official when the folder is in the household business filing cabinet.

What do you mean you don't have a zombie plan? That's just crazy talk. Every family should have one.

I'm sorry, I can't divulge the contents of our household plan to survive a potential zombie apocalypse. Secrecy is key.

We were reminded of the need to formalize our zombie plan after last Wednesday's Jonathon Coulton show, with Paul and Storm, at Lula Lounge:


Will you be a fast zombie or a lethargic zombie?

We had a dinner reservation - our table was very close to the stage, which delighted us. The food at Lula, btw, is stunning. Amazing. Excellent. Also: the mojito menu is longer than the regular menu, and the food is so good, you won't notice. How can you argue with that?

The show was magnificent, with much audience participation. There were water jokes, zombies, fuzzy lobsters and lots of piratical "arrr". The digital video cameras were out in force - those kind souls who shot and posted footage have accumulated some good citizen karma for helping make the rest of my week that much more bearable. There were so many wonderful moments of the evening, I couldn't possibly list them all. There were a lot of favourites, but this serene cover, with Paul and Storm, of Birdhouse in Your Soul stands out.

And speaking of Paul and Storm, their opening set was a blast of awesome to set up the evening. I would go see them again in a heartbeat. Among the highlights was a new song, "Live" (high-tense-front-vowel-i) for the first time live (high-lax-front-vowel-i).


Such a tender ballad, it brings a tear to the eye

At least when I skip band practice, it's for a good reason.

Seeing red. Finally.

Some friends and I are seeing red. We have been dyeing with cochineal, repeatedly, and with mixed success. I don't think we quite have this cochineal thing down yet, but we're getting better. Um, maybe.

The goal: Enough red wool to spin 1400 yards of singles in a good, strong scarlet, to then ply into 700 yards of 8-12 wpi yarn for the weft thread of a not-really-super-secret-anymore-but-I'm-still-not-advertising project that will be woven on my rigid heddle loom later this year. Since we can get a good 500 yards of singles out of a pound of raw fleece, that's 3 pounds of wool to be dyed. We have to do it in 1-pound batches, which has advantages and disadvantages.

We've done four, yes four, batches of cochineal since last October. Below, from L to R, are batch 2, 3 and 4 drying in my friend's pine trees. I don't have a picture of the first pound, which we did last fall, but for that first attempt we used alum-mordanted wool and a dash of tin added mid-dye to the cochineal bath. Half of that batch had previously been dyed slightly yellow with spinach, the rest not. The spinach portion is a little nicer, but both came out a beautiful scarlet, nicer than even the rightmost (closest) batch here.


Christmas in July? The colours are a little more neon pink here than in-person

As you can see, our dye batches are varying in colour dramatically. We won't be using batch 2, the furthest left, because, ugh. It was our first attempt at tin-mordanted cochineal, which is supposed to give the best scarlets. We tried a version of Lilies cochineal scarlet #1 recipe (Lilies 1990: 131-2), and it was going flame orange. When we added the recommended alum, perhaps not as "carefully" as recommended, the dyebath turned a mucky brown, and the wool a dirty, blue-red.

That experience scared us off the tin a little, so we returned to the alum mordanting for batch three. That's middle batch, above, which came out more raspberry than scarlet. The right batch, dyebath #4, is scarlet (despite this picture showing as bright pink), but lighter than we want, because the dye didn't take to parts of the fleece (perhaps it wasn't scoured enough? Hmmm.).

I pulled a couple sample tufts out of batch 3 and 4 to try a test spin after they dried.


L (batch 3) alum-mordanted cochineal, with 1/2 oz. tin and a dash of tumeric (for yellow) added late in the bath. R (batch 4): Tin and cochineal, one-pot method (Lilies 1990: 132-33), with probably a touch of alum from the previous dyebath still hanging around on the pot and stir-stick

In total, we have a pound of deep raspberry and two pounds of light-mid scarlet that are usable. The plan is to blend together the different dye batches when carding it to get a colour something between both. The two test tufts above give this:


Still not quite the red we're looking for, but this is a 50-50 blend of raspberry and scarlet, and I think we'll be blending it more 33-67% in the end

We'll also need warp thread. I've made the decision, after much deliberation and agonizing, that our handspun DorsetX is simply not going to be suitable to use as warp thread for this project - at least, not the way we'll be spinning it. It will mostly be prepped using cards, not combs (necessary because several people are involved, and handcards are the more common item amongst them), giving a woollen, not worsted yarn. This will make a fuzzy, sticky warp. I also can't confirm that the 2-ply will be strong enough for warp, even on a rigid heddle loom. The test singles definitely weren't.

So in late August, we'll be dyeing another 900 yards of white commercial yarn with cochineal for the warp. It might or might not work: varying colour is one thing when we'll be carding together the different dye batches. But when we dye the skeins, they have to be the colour we want, the first time. Precedent says that we simply don't have that kind of control over the cochineal. So, we'll try it, and if it doesn't work, we'll buy a cone of scarlet warp thread.

In preparation for a weaving frenzy this fall, I've warped up the loom to get some badly needed weaving practice. It seemed a good way to use up the Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece that's been in my stash for years:


The necessities for warping a loom: loom, yarn, coffee, chocolate and yarn tangling wrangling assisstant.

Finally, an indigo vat update. Throughout the unseasonably cool and wet Southern Ontario June, no fermentation has been detected in my vat, although it's still mighty stinky. After consulting with an experienced vat-maker, our guess is that although we had a couple weeks of toasty warm temps in early-mid June, the evening temps around here still go down to 14-17C (in the 50s-60sF), which is causing the vat to cool off too much in the evening and is preventing fermentation. The recommended solution (since I lack a 24/7 firepit):



A double-boiler setup using a fishtank heater. Interesting note: fishtank heaters, even saltwater ones, are not rated for urine, and putting the heater directly into the vat would kill it in short order. Hence the double-boiler. Thank you SharonAnn for that hard-won bit of wisdom, and for being a great indigo vat consultant.

After a couple weeks of this, and several consistent warm and sunny days out of the last seven lacking light rain, thunderstorms and hail, I am starting to smell the unmistakable - and surprisingly pleasant - barnyard-like smell of fermentation under the ever-present stench of stale urine. It's still far from ready, and I'm not entirely convinced that the heater, which has a max temp of 85F (something about not wanting to cook fish?), is warming up the water as much as it needs to be to really encourage things to grow. But it is encouraging. I stir it gently every day or two to get the indigo powder off the bottom of the vat and encourage the chemistry to start. If nothing happens after a week of it staying warm 24/7, then I'll feed it a couple dates.


I still want to believe

I'm not certain how long I can hold on the illusion that I am not really a dyer. I still maintain that this is all about the educational experience, and a single goal. Let's forget about the fact that I'm still contemplating collecting chicory from the roadside, I have weld seeds about to be planted, and that failed attempt to get green from carrot tops a couple months ago... stop laughing. I'm not a dyer. I'm a spinner and weaver who dyes out of necessity. And I am learning quite a lot.

I mean, seriously - did you know that saltwater fishtank heaters weren't rated for urine?

The Power of Dad

Things have been surprisingly busy around here. Mom and Dad visited last weekend. It's always great to see them of course, but even more so when they come here, because Dad comes bearing power tools, years of building fixit experience, and a burning desire to Not Sit Still. In this case, he also brought us the second half of our housewarming gift: a 16-17 ft. telescoping stepladder (the cordless drill was Part One).

A ladder is absolutely essential around here with our high ceilings. Even with a stepstool, DH can barely change a lightbulb without risking serious injury. For me there's no chance. Heaven help us if the smoke alarm had gone off in the last six months. I was considering a nerf crossbow.

Come to think of it, that's probably still not a bad idea. scribbles a note

Dad is the type of guy who has to be kept busy. He loves puttering around drilling and fixing things and generally being extremely helpful. It's his idea of a vacation, if you can believe it. So, to encourage him to visit (we do also enjoy his company, after all) and lest he end up knocking down and putting up walls (it's been known to happen - not here, though... yet), I keep a small list of short-term projects he can play with when he visits.

Within two hours of their arrival, before DH got home from work, Dad had the bathroom fan out of the ceiling, cleaned and back in, purring nicely, a far cry from its previous wake-the-dead-rattle. When DH got home, we unloaded and moved a piano.

The next morning, Dad assembled six drawers for our Ikea wardrobes. We saved those for him (Ikea = DadLego: last time he spent a morning happily assembling our cheap Ikea shelving in the basement). After that, he and DH tackled the air-conditioner, which wasn't running since over the winter something chewed through the wires outside that connected it to the thermostat. It was a 2-person job to run the new wire, so it went onto the DadFunList. I now have air-conditioning again (they both received many hugs and kisses for that, in addition to a fresh round of iced tea).

Then Dad found the loppers and cultivator, and he and DH (bearing the weed-whacker and push-mower) went to town on the jungle growing in our backyard and started plotting the demise of some excess foilage. As the day wound down, he was devising ways of helping me keep up the heat on my indigo vat.

It's OK, he left us a few things to do - the smoke alarms need to be replaced (and now can be, thanks to The Ladder), and we need to get up into the crawlspace and put down some insulation before the fall. Of course, once DH showed him Google Sketch-up, they started excitedly brainstorming ways to tear apart and redo our kitchen. The two of them together are... scary.

I am the luckiest girl ever. I know this. I supply building materials, food, and a constant flow of iced tea, and things happen around me. It's like magic. It's the Power of Dad.

And did I mention I now have my piano?


1978 Baldwin Acrosonic spinet, French provincial style

This is the piano I learned on, ca. 1978. My sister has the piano she learned on (from my grandmother's house). Not to be outdone or without keys, Mom has her "pet rock": a Petrov grand (early on, Dad heard and parsed "Petrov" as "pet rock" and the name stuck). They were so pleased at the notion of recovering some floor space that they loaded the spinet into the trailer and delivered it personally. They've been waiting for me to have a place for it for nearly 15 years. It went into the house much easier than expected, and without serious injury to any person or property.

Now if only I could find all my sheet music. I am missing Chopin, and yet I have two copies of the Bach. It's inexplicable.

In spinning news, I recently scored some lovely new spindles from Butterfly Girl Designs. They are, from L-R, a pair of interchangable carnelian stone whorls on straight shafts, a murano foil whorl on a dark wood shaft, and a black lip mother-of-pearl whorl on an asymetrically carved shaft.



I made a special request for these spindles: shafts without hooks. I've discovered that I prefer using a half-hitch to secure my yarn to the spindle rather than a hook, and BFG was more than happy to help me out. At some point, I would love to get one of her openwork Italian resin spindles, and another multi-whorl set in a nice stone.


The carnelian whorls being used together. Wool is DorsetX, as thin as I can spin it.

I love these paired sets - the whorls are interchangable. Each one can be used separately or together, anywhere on the shaft (high, mid, low), and they would make great supported spindles. No sooner had I bought the carnelian pair than she listed a stunning blue goldstone pair. In the past, she's also had paired sets of rose quartz and hematite. But more spindles will have to wait for a while, I think.

Finally, the first full skein, 135-ish yards, of plied worsted-to-bulky "Berry Berry Nice" yarn: my earliest spinning (the pink tin-mordanted/brazilwood-dyed wool) plied with DorsetX. There's still an equal amount of pink singles left, and I'm spinning more DorsetX to probably make another skein of this.



Whew, that was a lot. I say naps all around are in order:


VAMPIRE CAT SLEEPS DURING DAY

Sale on shiny things! Sale on shiny things!

This is a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

Elisem, who is a jewelry maker and artist of immense talent, is having a sale. I have accumulated my share of Eliseian shinies over the last while, and I love them all. I highly recommend checking out her stuff. And buying some, if you're able and interested.

Some lucky bugger wise person with great taste bought a necklace that I've been coveting recently, called Odd Dinosaur Out. In all seriousness, whoever you are, my pocketbook thanks you. Profusely. I really couldn't afford it right now, and you saved me considerable agony over that fact. It's too awesome a necklace not to be out there being worn.

Of course, then there's the marvelous sculptural necklace Bordertown Runway Queen, which is even more outside my budgetary constraints. But, damn. I mean, wow.

Seriously, go forth and oooh and ahhh.

Right then, my work here is done.

This has been a special bulletin of the Magpie Telegraph Alert System.

The wildlife needs a nap, too

The backyard is teeming with life. The magnolia tree has lost all its flowers and is now green and leafy. The grass, in the patches where there is grass, is growing. The wildlife is... napping?


Springtime is hard work

I watched this squirrel for nearly half an hour, while it dozed lightly on the fence in the shade of our downspout. When it finally woke up, it made its way down the fence into the shade of a pinetree and posed for a few minutes. I particularly like this one:


This is my better side

I love how its paws are crossed in front.

With the unseasonably cool month of May and first week of June, my indigo vat has not yet started to ferment and reduce, and so it remains stubbornly blue. I've been reassured by people with experience that this is okay, as long as it isn't so cold that things frost. Nothing will happen until the weather warms up - the temperatures need to stay up for several days in a row, and the jar needs to feel as warm to the touch as a heated baby bottle. It finally got there a couple days ago, sitting in the direct sunlight in 26C (that's 79F). That level of warmth lasted a day, and now we're back to room temperature or below, and more rain. But I am patient. The sun will prevail.


I want to believe

I'm still spinning the black superwash/tussah silk batts. I recently figured out that my niddy-noddy is not only designed to skein yarn, but also measure length. If I use the short centre-stick, a full wrap is exactly one yard. Talk about a lightbulb moment. (I think the long centre-stick makes a three yard wrap, but I'll have to check, it might be two.) So now I know exactly what my yardage is. So far I have 220 yds. in singles, and an little more left from the first 38g. bag.


Niddy-noddy: Best non-essential tool ever

I guesstimate I'll get 300 yds. total from the first bag, and then I have another bag of the same amount. Since I want a 2-ply yarn to make a lacey shrug or shawl, that gives me 300 yds. total, which isn't quite enough for what I want to do. 600 yds. should do the trick.

One option is to either make a trip to Purple Purl or call Black Lamb and see if they have more of this colourway (Purple Purl is where I bought it originally, but Black Lamb had several bags of it at the Knitter's Frolic and might still have some). Or I could just go with my original plan of mixing up this black baby alpaca and more of the silk colourway myself to ply it with. I'll probably try a little of the alpaca and silk, ply a small skein and see how it goes before I start scouring the city for more baggies of Pat's Colours batts.

The last week has been, in a word, brutal. I've been trying to make progress on my proposal, and I am failing spectacularly. Things came to a head with me canceling a Very Important Meeting with Lady S. and the committee yesterday. I've never been in this situation before. I'm sure this will have administrative repercussions. It would be so easy if I didn't care. But I do care. I care very much, in fact, and I want to do this so badly - but I want to do it well, I want to do the topic justice, and I can't do that in my current state.

I've come to the realization that I need to see to certain long-term health issues, and that they can simply no longer be put off. They are affecting my every moment, waking or sleeping. Everything in my life - work, hobbies, family - is suffering for it. So, I have temporarily put my committee, my work and several other things, excepting a few small obligations, on hold. The initial appointment has been made and will happen this afternoon. It's the best I can do. It's the only thing I can do, and it has been a long time coming.

It can only get better. It will be better.

Why I Spin, or, The Smell of Home

I used to card wool when I was, like, 8-12 at the home of a family friend. She had a spinning wheel and they raised sheep and angora rabbits. She would sometimes set the kids to carding, if we were willing, to give us something to do while the adults played bridge. Their family did the local 4-H stuff and several fairs each summer, and sometimes my family went along for a nice, wholesome, inexpensive day out. I also washed my first fleece with them - although, it was still on a live sheep that was being prepped for show (For the record: The sheep did not take to it kindly, which was why it was “the kids’ job”). My mother’s favourite mittens came off her spinning wheel and needles.

My childhood was, in retrospect, mostly idyllic.

Naturally, I got older, and forgot everything I knew. I moved away to a large city for university and an even larger city after that. I remember asking my grandmother to teach me to knit when I was in high school or college, to which she replied, “Oh, honey, you can learn that from a book a lot faster than from me.” A few years ago, still mourning her and using her old needles, I did just that. Grandma Helen was a gem, but not really one for the patient teaching. It was probably for the best.

Not quite two years ago while I was visiting my parents, I spent a couple days at a medieval event that is held very nearby. I was pleased to have a chance to spend some time with my then 19-year old niece. I also wanted to experience this large event that seemed to have grown up with me. I had watched - from the road - as it expanded over the years. I crashed in my niece's teeny-tiny trailer, which she graciously shared, and she served as my guide for part of a day.

We split up in the afternoon, and I wandered around for several hours, in and out of merchant booths, people watching. My old memories of sheep, wool, fairs, farm shows and pioneer festivals (especially if it had a blacksmithing demo - Dad was all over that) began to work their way up to the surface as I walked. Some of the smells were there: grass, dirt, sweat. Fried foods from the food tents, complete with the teenagers who made spare summer cash working them. I had friends who did that every summer in high school. I spent one memorable summer week volunteering for charity at a dunk tank at the county fair, myself.

There was something missing. A smell common to all of those summer events, modern or historical. The smell of the animals. Something clicked in my brain. Yes.

I turned around, walked determinedly back into a merchant booth and left with a drop spindle and some roving. This seemed a good compromise; I had been thinking about it for a couple weeks. I had never spun before, but I knew I didn’t have room for a wheel and couldn’t, at that moment, do what I did remember (washing and prepping fleece). Worst case it would make a nice display piece. I netted another bag of roving, a book, and a second spindle from another merchant a few minutes later because I didn't know if I would be able to handle the fancy low-whorl one I bought originally. Tired of walking, I bought some iced tea and plopped myself down under a shady tree overlooking a sea of tents. With the ever-present sound of drums and laughter as a soundtrack, I had at it for a while.

My niece found me there a little later, in our pre-arranged meeting spot, trying to practice joining, a few feet of impossibly overspun yet still lumpy yarn on the spindle. I must have had the most content look on my face ever.

"I didn't know you knew how to do that," she said.

"I don't. Er, I didn't. Well, not for a long time, anyhow, since I was, like, 10 or 11. And then I never learned how to spin, just card wool."

"Oh. Well, it suits you. Like you've been doing it forever."

"Thanks, hon."

24 hours later, my spindle, iced tea and I were sitting under the same tree, joined by a pound of lovely RomniX fleece. Earlier in the day, I had found myself sitting in a tent with a handful of ice, chatting with a lady and admiring the piles of lovely fleece surrounding her, wrapped up in sheets and peeking out in bursts of browns, cremes, whites and greys. My new fleece was washed, but it still smelled a little sheepy. I didn’t have carders or combs, so I spun a little straight from the locks. And quite suddenly, with all those smells together (sheep, grass, earth, iced tea), all was right with the world.

Sheepy Goodness is not a common smell in a large city, unless you know where to look. It had never occurred to me to try. But it's a smell I've known since childhood. My niece and I woke the next morning in our cramped accommodations to the sound of a cannon shot (ooops, missed the opening ceremonies of war week, I guess). I rolled over in my sleeping bag, and came face-to-face with the fleece. Again, there was the smell of grass, and earth, and sheep.

I knew I had finally come home.

And so that's why I spin. Because when I spin, no matter where I am, I am home. My drink of choice while spinning is still iced tea, and I’ve determined that I prefer sharp, pointy combs to carders. I’m in no hurry to get a wheel. I have processed a fleece straight off the sheep. I continue to acquire more drop spindles at an alarming rate.

It feels like I've been doing it forever.

The only knitting request he's ever made...

...is finished. Here's the completed Season 12 Dr. Who scarf. I wove in the last few ends and put on the tassels Tuesday evening. It has already been slept on by the cats, so I guess it's officially done.


Total unblocked knitted length without the tassels and not under tension: 15' 6"

The tassels add about 4" on each end, and when worn, its own weight will always cause it to stretch some. On DH, it's wearable by looping twice, unless he wants to trip over it:


He really prefers to be behind the camera, but he's a good sport

I've requested that he not wear it dragging on the ground, as is traditional. This is not about it getting dirty or damaged, because that's going to happen no matter what, and patches on a Dr. Who scarf are traditional. However, he does take a bus, subway, several escalators and an elevator to work. Under those conditions, a dragging scarf could be... unfortunate. I don't think I'll block it. It doesn't need any help to stretch, and it looks more authentic like this.

I continue to spin the black superwash merino/golden-brown tussah silk batts into laceweight singles. I tried out my new tulipwood nostepinne to wind the first spindle-load into a centre pull-ball.



At least I finished something, even if it wasn't my Big D proposal revisions, which were "due" a week ago. I vaguely remember a time when deadlines meant something...

My laptop, iced tea, and a bucket of pee...

Why does seem that I get the most poetical when it involves pee?

I am enjoying having a table outside, although I really do need some kind of a shade, so that I can work out here. A laptop in direct sunlight is next to useless. A black laptop in direct sunlight is just begging to be allowed to overheat. But even a few minutes out here with lunch and a drink is better than sitting in the house on the couch all day!


Ford is more annoyed that I'm not inside feeding him than he is wanting to be outside

The black rubbermaid container, with its well-fitting lid, contains the 2-gallon glass jar (with - you guessed it - a lid), which is serving as the indigo vat. The temps have warmed up slightly over the last few days, and it's sunnier, so I'm hoping to encourage fermentation and try to get the indigo to reduce even though we won't be up to daily warm summer temps for a while yet. The black bin retains heat much better than the white bucket, particularly in direct sunlight, even when the outside air is cool overall.

In fact, I removed the jar from the white plastic bucket entirely, because it seemed to be working overtime at keeping the jar cool, even when the whole contraption was inside the black container. The air inside there is toasty-warm when I open it, but the white container and the liquid was still very cool to the touch. No chance of fermentation like that - let's hope this move does the trick and that we get some critters to be fruitful and multiply in there soon. Grow, little friends, grow. I'll continue to monitor it daily - if the jar warms up over the next few days but I don't see any sign of fermentation by next week, maybe I'll add a couple chopped dates.

The lilacs are just about ready to go crazy. Sigh. Why do lilacs have to be so pretty and enticing, and yet make me so miserable?


Hello, allergies. As if you weren't bad enough already.

I am trying, and failing spectacularly, to get my Big D proposal revisions done. They were expected today, which is obviously not happening. I'm crossing my fingers, because no one has come looking for them yet. The committee meeting is on June 3, which means even if I give it to them next Tuesday that still gives everyone their two weeks to read it - but that's not the point. I was given today as a deadline, and I agreed, and I didn't get it done.

I hate this part so, so much - the part where I have to work myself into a frothing frenzy of self-loathing to get anything done. Every time, I swear to myself that it won't happen again. Never again. I'll work on it every day for an hour, maybe two, and before I know it, it will be done, all with less stress and none of this insanity of late-nighters and mental meltdowns. And yet here I am again.

Dammit.

Our weekend anthem

...just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen...*

So, we made an IKEA run this weekend, and finally picked up some patio furniture. Nothing fancy, but within our price range, and I like it better than the crap that we found in every single box store from Home Depot down. I might also get a small parasol that clips onto the table so that I can sit out there with the laptop and still have a hope of seeing the screen. Or something.

Which brings me to work. I'm on a deadline this week. I turned in a substantial draft of my Big D proposal to Lady S. in mid-February and received extensive comments from her on it in early March. It would have been nice to have done those revisions in March, or even April, but a conspiracy of family obligations and other work has kept it off the table until now. I finished the piles of grading last week, took a couple days to get myself in order, and now I have several days of straight writing and revisions to do.

This means, naturally, that I'm writing a blog post, making a latte, finding reasons to poke the cats - who are miraculously leaving me alone right now when I should be working - and looking wistfully outside at the indigo vat, hoping that it is starting to ferment.

Okay, okay, I'm going...

*Here's the studio recording, but I do so love watching Jonathon Coulton's** live performances. Of course, if he did a concert in Toronto, I wouldn't have to be content with YouTube, would I? Go on, click that link and add to the demand. Toronto is only 6th on the list right now.

**Who is this guy? Go here. Listen to The Future Soon, Tom Cruise Crazy, Chiron Beta Prime and Code Monkey. If you're liking it, listen to Re: Your Brains, Skullcrusher Mountain, and (if you're OK with NSFW and a lot of cussin') The First of May. He also wrote the closing credit song for the video game Portal. If you're still really into it, go to Eventful and Demand him. Then come back here, because I like you.

Not so much with the May flowers here...

This was the backyard in on April 26, before last week's cold snap encouraged the magnolia flowers to begin turning brown and start dropping petals.



The buds on the unknown tree opened and became this:


Perhaps a wild cherry? Still not sure.

The little white petals are now peppering the ground after Saturday's torrential downpours, and all the flowering trees will soon be going green. Also, the yellow tulips had some company. Several reds opened a few days later, and a pot of purples came from my mother-in-law. I transplanted them, but I'm not certain they'll survive.


Yellow and purple are bare stems now, but the red are still going strong

The lilacs aren't open yet. I'm actually thankful for that. But we are enjoying the magnolia tree.



And what is this innocent-looking white container?


Not kitty litter

In all honesty, I wouldn't open that if I were you. Not without a mask, gloves and a strong stomach. I'm still in shock that I'm willing to open the damn thing. We'll see how long my will holds out. About as long as I can hold my breath, I suspect.

That's right, I officially started the indigo vat on Monday when I added the indigo to 2 gallons of increasingly stale urine and left it well-covered in a sunny spot. Inside that innocuous white bucket is a 2-gallon glass jar with a plastic bag tucked around the lid. Twice a day, with well-gloved hands, I am supposed to reach in there to swish and rub the nylon stocking containing the 3/4 oz. of unreduced indigo powder that is dangling inside it. This encourages it to dissolve and reduce in the urine. Other than that, I let it sit in the sun and hope it starts to ferment.

I'm hoping that with slightly warmer temps this week, it will soon begin fermenting, but realistically, it's probably still a little too cool outside to get it warm enough, so we're looking more like weeks instead. Unfortunately, the sunny parts of the yard are the closest to the house and neighbours. The area where I envisioned the vat residing (i.e. far away from civilization) is in cool shade much of the day.

We'll see how it goes. For now, all I'm willing to say is that it is certainly... pungent.