On Thursday last week I went down to Deep Color to hold a weaving studio. Claudia is currently offering a weaving class on rigid hettle looms and we decided to offer a studio for any one who wanted a little extra help or to just come in and weave for a couple hours. This is a shot of what I am working on for this class. The warp is wool from Henry's Attic that I dyed in a class last year. The weft is superwash that I also dyed at some other dye class last year. The colors are a bit more pastel than I like but the warp was something I had on hand so I went with it. I am spinning the weft rather fine and not worrying about evenness too much. I am not packing the weft very tightly so that the hand will be soft when I take it off the loom and to preserve the colors in the warp.
On Friday I drove back down to Deep Color to assist with a natural dyes class that went all weekend long. This class went really well as the group of students we had were great. I also got a chance to teach more this class which was a great opportunity for me that I really appreciated. Here is my stuff hanging on the drying line at Deep Color.
Here is a clearer shot of the rovings and yarn that were not dyed with indigo. The rovings that were dyed with indigo are marinating in a plastic bag to let the dye set even better. I will rinse it and re=acidify it tomorrow or Friday. In this picture on starting on the right you have 2 rovings dyed in an open pot of cochineal, next cochineal with a little madder and logwood gray, next half cochineal and half madder, the next 2 rovings are madder in a long simmer, the next 2 lighter ones are madder in a short simmer, the last roving is osage orange and logwood gray. The two skeins on the far left were in the cochineal open pot. The one on the left that is more orange red is Targee and the one on the right that is more blue red is Cormo. I love the fact that different breeds take up dye differently. So cool.
The other rovings that are missing from the above picture, besides the indigo dyed ones, are three multi-color rovings that I painted. On Sunday I was so jazzed from the class that I sat down and spun the two rovings that were superwash in fine singles. Since I took this picture I Navajo plyed what I had. I'll show the picture tomorrow. There is one other painted roving that is on Blue Faced Leicester that I haven't spun up yet.
On Monday I went over to my guildmate Kate's house to use her knitting machine. She and I had seen the items that Nancy Roberts has been doing and we were curious to try it out ourselves. Nancy recently had a class that I was unable to attend but you can see pictures on Janine's blog if you are interested. So on Monday we knit up a few blanks and I mordanted them last night. On Saturday we are going to paint them using natural dyes rather than the synthetic dyes that Nancy uses. I will take pictures and show you the results of our playing.
Needless to say by Tuesday I was a bit tired but today I am feel more energized and have just about finished the child's sweater that I showed a while back. I have a few more things to show but I will save them for the next post. Tomorrow night I am going back down to Deep Color for the intermediate spinning class. The topic is sequins. The results should be flashy is nothing else!
P.S. - I am not ignoring the request for pictures of our "mountains" but with the rain we have had lots of fog and mist which hide all views of the hills. Maybe tomorrow?
"Natural dyes are hard to use and the colors are boring..." Well, your post certainly kicks that myth right in the fork.
I love the colors of madder.
Posted by: spaazlicious (wendy) | January 19, 2006 at 09:59 AM