On the one wheel I have this gorgeous stuff. It’s the laceweight silk I promised my sister a year ago.

And on the other I have this. Cinnamon alpaca laceweight that will probably wind up in Filigree Willow Laceweights. (Sorry about the nasty photo. I have concluded that TV rooms are out to sabotage photography everywhere.)

The only problem with this new obsession is that I have multiple spinning projects calling out in their plaintive, soft voices for me to come console them after their long imprisonment in my closet. Stuff like this unfinished indigo and cochineal dyed sock yarn.

And this.

And my soysilk. And those batts I’ve been hoarding. And some of the black llama.

And you get the idea.

Here’s hoping I’m able to spin a lot these next couple of weeks!

And if there’s anything scarier than doing a natural dyeing pot, it’s doing it for the second time. Because things can go differently. And this second pot of indigo decided to change whatever could be changed. The indigo didn’t dissolve as nicely, the bloom took longer in forming, and the actual vat decided to get oxygen in it a couple times. I tell you. It was crazy.

Well, it still behaved fairly well. Although it seemed a lot stronger than I’d planned. I wound up with a nice medium chunk of fleece.

And then I pushed the vat to see how dark I could actually get. This wool was . . . I think six or seven dunks. I could have gone longer, but I was worn out. You wouldn’t think standing in the kitchen could get so old after awhile.

Anyway, I also over-dyed some leftover yarn from my raspberry sweater. This yarn was originally mordanted with alum and dyed with cochineal. You can see its color and the color of a darker, non-mordanted, vinegar-enhanced cochineal skein in this picture. Here they are pre-soaking.

I dunked them into the indigo and got these lovely purples. Over-dyeing is quite fun! I’d love to try for some greens once I get a chance to dye some things with my goldenrod. (Which I wish I’d bought more of.) The picture shows them a bit darker then they actually are.

Then I also did a little sample of merino roving to take to a friend so she could see the range of colors. Dip-dyeing is quite easy in the indigo vat because you only have to hold the fiber up for a minute at a time.

My friend did come and bring her drum carder, and I have some nice pictures of the batts we made. I’ll be getting those up pretty soon.

And, for MaidenYarn news, my blog is now moved to maidenyarn.com. (I have my own domain!) If you type in the old address it will still redirect to the new location.

I’m also getting another Beginner Series ready to go. This one will focus on fleece!

Every single scrap of Iowa fleece I have left (except for one chunk that had lots of VM) has been pre-soaked twice. All of it. Excuse me while I go collapse.

I spent I don’t know how long outside in the backyard hauling pots of water, wrestling fleece, spinning out the excess water, and shooing away any curious insects. It wiped me out. I have this feeling that the neighbors think I’m some sort of odd person — constantly lugging pots out there, whirling around spraying water in every direction — yeah. Well, if they want some wool they can have it. I just want to get it all washed by the second of August.

Why the reason for this sudden haste? A certain special friend is coming to visit next month, and she’s bringing a toy with her. Something very beneficial for those who have lots of fiber to process. Any guesses?

A drum carder.

Ta-da! Cymbal crash. Wild applause.

And, on the knitting front, (while it’s not quite as exciting as a drum carder) I threw the potential sock pattern out the window and started spinning the indigo yarn the way I wanted to spin it. If I really want to use that pattern once the yarn is done I’ll go dig around in the roses until I find it, but in the meantime I’m having fun.

I took it along to work, and the best part was a small friend’s conversation with me while babysitting.

Sam: “Why does that have so many needles?”
Me: “That’s just the way they need to be to help me knit this sock.”
Sam: “Whoa, that’s a sock?”
Me: “Yes. Wait just a minute (the row needed to be finished) and I’ll show you.”
*time lapse while row is finished and sock wriggled on*
Sam: “Whoaaaaa, that’s cool. If I’d known you made socks I’d have had a pair by now.”
(I don’t know what he was implying by that statement. Just because I made that red scarf for him earlier.)

Anyway, it’s currently giving a great impression of a hobo’s sock, and if I can just figure out where the pattern went I can finish it up and knit the second one. It’s been long enough since I started the first one that I’m not worried about the second being the same old same old. Definitely a bonus.

I have been slowly but steadily turning my elbows and wrists into aching, tender remnants of themselves while transforming the indigo dyed fleece into these lovely balls of roving. These are going to be spun into a variegated sock yarn and knit by yours truly into a recently discovered sock pattern on Knitting Daily.

Assuming I can get the gauge figured out. It’s supposed to be six stitches an inch on size five needles. And the pattern calls for a heavy worsted yarn. Figure that one out.

I plan to spin it on the Walking Wheel. Hopefully it will be a reprise of the great success of the Gawain batt. That yarn made the nicest pair of socks I’ve ever worn. (I’m sure pride in my work has tainted my view of them, but they are very comfy.)

I cleaned my fiber and yarn stash and reorganized it, thus foiling its attempts to take over my closet and dominate the earth. In the process I came to the conclusion that I have way too much yarn. I need to destash! Now, some of you may have just passed out at the suggestion of having too much yarn, but I only have so much space to store it in. If it’s not going to be used and isn’t extra special, out it goes.

And another thing, I’m getting a little tired of knitting things and crocheting things just for the fun of doing them. I want the fruit of my hands to be useful! At some point I need to stop impulse making and work toward filling needs. Maybe I should look around for charity stuff, but I’d really like it to be more personal than dropping something off at a donation box. I want these projects to be made for specific people and go to them with love. But then, can I find enough needs to support my insatiable crafting appetite? I don’t want to just start flinging scarves at everyone I know.

This is the skein of heavy worsted I spun on the drop spindle. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, which is unfortunate because I love the color. I dunked it in the dye only once, so it’s relatively light in color and actually has a little variegation going on.

So far the indigo doesn’t appear to be crocking. Hooray hooray. Dye leaks are something that occurred with dismal regularity during the cochineal dyeing. Which reminds me, yet another reason to like indigo dyeing is that it doesn’t smell bad like cochineal. It does have a strongish smell, but nothing like dead beetles with vinegar in them. (How’s that for ruining your yarn appetite? )

Here is another skein that I dunked three or four times. I think three. It’s one of the three Iowa fleece skeins I spun on the Walking Wheel.

And here is its sibling. This one went in only twice. The third skein of this kind was occupied with some other stuff I’ll show you anon. Let me just say that I knew I would have a longish wait for the indigo to simmer, so I planned on pulling out some Jacquard dyes.

Once I dyed those three skeins, I was still itching to use up any particles of blue that might be floating around in the dye water, so I pulled out my big basket of washed fleece and stuffed some into a presoak. Then I had a brainwave. I had cochineal dyed fleece lurking in the bottom of the basket. Red plus blue equals . . . get that stuff in the dye bath now!

I wound up with these lovely colors. The dark purple and light purple, and two shades of plain blue. (Of course, when you’re dealing with indigo, “just plain blue” can still knock your socks off.)

The only trouble I had with the whole affair was when I put the darker red into the dye bath. I hadn’t done a very good job of rinsing it out after the initial dye all those months ago. The indigo water went orangey. But it didn’t seem to affect the actual indigo at all! Amazing.

I can hardly wait to do this dye again. It was so easy, and now that I know I can get shades from denim to the palest blue, I think I’ll have to make a skirt and dip dye it in a light-to-dark pattern.

I actually got a pretty fair amount of this carded, but the carded got used in another project before I took any pictures of it and is now hanging out to dry. I did decide to break out of my usual “rolag” carding method and turn the carded fluff into these nice little balls of homemade roving. Not quite as smooth and buttery as store bought, but it’s fun to use and spins nicely.

The pink and purple are from cochineal dyed fleece. Yes, I still have that fleece laying around. Two nice chunks of it.

Anyone remember the New Zealand wool I aspired to spin on the drop spindle? The one I was going to spin for an entire sweater’s worth? Well, that kind of fell flat. So I took the singles and plyed them together.
The only kicker was I hadn’t been all that careful with twist amounts, so I wound up with my first ever five ply yarn trying to make it come out even and non-splitty. It’s a heavy worsted and there are three and three quarter ounces of it. I haven’t measured the yardage yet. I think it’s in the fifty to sixty yard range. It’s very soft and strong. I have some special plans for this skein. Something to do with a blue test run.

The Final Assortment

I’d say it was almost worth all the effort. I say “almost” because I’m still sick, and there’s a long rinse job ahead of me. Supposedly, if you let the newly dyed yarn sit for a day or two before rinsing, it helps solidify the color. It also lets a lot of color stay there, waiting for the innocent dyer to come by and try rinsing it. One skein of the Rebecca wool dunked into a pot of water twice. Water went red. Sigh.

But, on a good note, with all the dye flinging about all day, the only known casualty was my sock.

One Little Spot

Oh, and as a warning, adding vinegar to the bath makes great colors, but it adds a very unpleasant odor to the beetles, which were on the edge already. In short, it stunk up the kitchen. We had windows open and fans running for the last hour or so.

Everything is now in the “let dry” stage, waiting for me to pluck up the courage to get back to work. It shouldn’t take too long. The yarn calls.

Wow

The first batch of wool came out a sort of mauve color. And the bag seemed to have worked!

Darker Fleece

Pink Fleece

Because the pink color was so light (and it cooked for the full forty minutes!) I was sure it had practically exhausted, and I still had some yarn I wanted to dye. It’s the last of the Daisy fleece, spun into a two ply on the Walking Wheel. Actually, it’s almost the last. I had only plied two of the four skeins before I started dyeing, so in-between switching out yarns I plied for my life . . . but only got three of the four done.

Anyhow, I didn’t want them to turn into an even paler shade of pink, so I did some poking around and found out that you can mess with the color of the dye by adding vinegar. So I did. Look what I got!

Plum Colored

Cranberry Laceweight

And the water was still red. In went some random roving with more vinegar. Out came a . . . I’m not really sure what to call this color.

Romney Mix Roving

Everything was going well. The yarn was in, it had already turned pinkish, then I decided to give it a gentle stir to make sure it was getting evenly soaked. Up comes a section of yarn mingled with beetle parts! There was nothing for it but to keep going and plan on rinsing and picking them out later. Ugh. But, on a brighter note, after a good forty minutes of simmering—possibly an hour, I don’t remember exactly—look what came out of the pot!

Red Red Red

While this had been cooking I pre-soaked a batch of clean fleece to pop in afterward. There was quite a bit of red left in the water and I wanted to use it up. I was a little leery about just chucking the fiber in and trying to get it back out of the pot without felting it, so I grabbed some old tulle and whipped up a little mini-mesh bag that I could pitch later if it got stained.

Instant Bag

Off to a rip-snorting start.

So, after some thought and trying to decide whether I really wanted to do this, I plunged ahead. (Now, you have to understand, I literally had a bad dream about doing this a couple nights ago, and a wonderful sinus infection to deal with.)

I started with the cochineal. You can either use them whole, grind them up, crush them slightly, or convert them into powder. My method? Stick the little beetles into a ziploc inside a bigger ziploc, set on the concrete outside and dance. Actually, it was more like a controlled kicking and grinding than dancing, but it crushed them up a bit. They were a lot harder than I imagined, and rather small. It would take three to be the size of a Tic-Tac.

Then I put them in a jar with boiling water to sit and soak until I was ready for them. This (and the crushing) supposedly helps you get as much color as you possibly can. They didn’t smell too bad; rather like fish food. This picture is from a later step, but you can see the wonderful color the water turned.

Soaking Beetles

While they were steeping I hauled the mordanted yarn down to the woods and commenced triple-rinsing, just to make sure all the extra chemicals were off. Assuming there were extra chemicals. This lowered the temperature of the yarn, so I had to try and bring it back up to at least room temperature before it went into the simmering dye water.

And, speaking of dye water, it turned a lovely red, but remind me never to just dump in the ground beetles again. The recipe said you could swirl a piece of fleece around in there and it would catch all the little bits. Well, I went through three handfuls of wool (see above photo) and there were still some beetles doing the backstroke through my liquid. (That last bit was what you call “poetic license.” They were not swimming around.) This was after simmering the beetles for twenty minutes.

Dye Froth