September 2004 – Page 3

We were over at my Mom’s over the weekend. Martin helped her prune her apple tree, and this is what I got out of the deal:

Two batches of natural dye material! The left is what I got after simmering the crumbled leaves (it’s been HOT! and dry around here, and the leaves dried to a crisp in less than 24 hours) and twigs for a couple of hours. The right is a bucket of cool water with peeled bark from limbs. I left most of the pruning behind, because I just wanted a little batch.

All the instructions I had on extracting dye from apple leaves and bark say to leave it soaking for several days/weeks. Simmering at the end is optional. Well, I couldn’t wait, so I simmered the leaves/twigs batch. I’ll let the bark soak for as long as I can stand it. The same instructions also state that mordants are not necessary for protein fibers. Does anyone have experience with apple dye extract out there?

Here’s a vest that I’ve been wrestling with.

vest

I mentioned earlier that I didn’t like the way the shoulders turned out, so I took paper and pencil and calculated what I really wanted in the armhole and neck shaping, triple and quadruple checked my math, and did it all again. I think it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, I’m not thrilled with my cast on (not stretchy enough). So, I may take a pair of scissors and snip off the ribbing at the waist and do something different.

So much work for for such a simple vest. But I’m loving the result thus far! Unfortunately, I could only leave it on for less than 30 seconds when I tried it on last night. It’s been hitting the 100 mark for the past several days, and we have another day of it before the heat breaks.

Shameless plug: Tomorrow is the first meeting of the year for Black Sheep Handweavers’ Guild. This year the meetings will be held at Woodside Village Church. It’s on the second Thursday of the month, starting at 7:30 PM. Our speaker this month is Ana Lisa Hedstrom.

Here are a couple of lovelies that I bought at the Monterey Wool Auction a few weeks back. On the left is a kid mohair, and on the right is a 3/4 blood fleece from Janet Heppler.

Both washed out to a silvery taupe color. Both absolutely beautiful. We were driving down the road today, and we saw a Jag in what the marketing folks would call “champagne” and I realized that’s exactly the color of my mohair. Absolutely sumptuous. The wool is a bit more grey than taupe.

Sorry, there are no before pictures of the mohair, but the difference is very dramatic. I had not realized this before, but goats are filthy animals. And just try and imagine being a a little car, on a 90 degree day, with raw goat (and sheep) wool in the back. We have a little hatch back, and there was no where to hide from the stench. As soon as we got home, I pulled the buckets out. It took 5 baths in hot soapy water before I deemed it clean enough for rinsing. Yuck. But it sure turned out pretty though. The locks are baby hair soft.

Just for comparison sake, the wool only had one hot soap bath and came clean. I carded the batt for the sample skein on my drum carder. Unfortunately, I mangled it badly and it had lots of neps. Although the spun yarn didn’t show the neps too much. I’ll see what the knitted fabric looks like. I’m pretty sure that it will hide a lot of sins. Kathy gave me some suggestions on carding the next batch, before I resort to combing all 5+ pounds of it. I’ll give it a try with the remainder of the sample. Stay tuned.

If you’ve never been to the Monterey Wool Auction, it’s a must go event. What a blast! It’s always on the last day of the Monterey County Fair. As I looked around the bidding area, I recognized quite a few people from the local spinning and weaving guilds, or just “around” — as in at our various local fiber dealers. The action is fast and fun. I have to admit that the mohair was a desperate buy. It was way above what I really wanted to pay per pound, but it was the last of the kid mohair, and I really, really, did I say really? really wanted to go home with some mohair. I was outbid on all the earlier ones. With Martin egging me on from the left, and the woman I just met at the fair on the right, I ended up waving my card at a price point that made me gasp. The reasoning from the lady on my right? Well, it’s only 2 pounds. So, you really aren’t spending that much money. If I recall, she ended up paying more than my $/lb on another kid mohair.

Advice that was given to me, that I did not take to heart as much as I should, was, get there early to look through all the fleeces and decide ahead of time how much you are willing to pay for each fleece and how much you are willing to spend in total. It’s too easy to get carried away.

Boy! And how!

Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast - mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Month: September 2004

Apples

Monterey Wool Auction