Shibori again, more lavender than chocolate...

Well I finally got around to my second dye day, which was supposed to be chocolate brown procion dyes. I prepped everything, through it all together, added the soda ash solution and let it sit for an hour while I tried my hand at stenciling.

Stencils are harder to cut out that you would think, especially if you're using an exacto knife that's not exactly sharp. I finally ended up using the double bladed quilt stencil knife I have which was not ideal but at least it cut. I used tape and some quail images I cut out of freezer paper and masked them off, then daubed procion dyes thickened with sodium alginate where I wanted it (mostly). DISCLAIMER: I didn't draw these.  Don't ask. But this is so darn cute I could giggle. The dye didn't migrate much; when I do it again, I'll keep the stencil cleaner and use a small stick to hold it down better. And remember to use masking tape everywhere I want to, not just on N-1 straight lines... And see? Chocolate Brown, right?

Then why is my shibori lavender? It's like ALL the dye washed out.

Retracing my steps, I realized I never added the soda ash to the soda ash solution. I'm frankly surprised it took any color at all. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, or if the color is permanent or not.

A good lesson...

V-Day Feast! Stitches! and what's on my looms!

Food!!!

February's cookbook, as I mentioned, was Commander's Kitchen, and our Valentine's Day treat. Dinner was:

• Pork loin over roasted winter root vegetables: damn tasty. I made 1/2 the recipe and it could have fed us for a week; I think their serving size is too big.
• Corn cakes: I'll make this one again!
• Onion marmelade: really, really good, especially with the corn cakes and the au-jus from the pork.
• Pots de Creme (Martha Stewart's recipe)
• And a nice bottle of red wine... Sorry, I didn't grab info from the label other recognizing "Oh! that's French!" and I took no pictures of the food.

Stitches, a knitting show and yarn extravaganza

Stitches was last weekend and I took a techniques class from Anna Zilboorg and from Candace Eisner Stick. I can listen to either of them for hours... Both educated, intelligent, articulate and fascinating women. Candace has a book out about skirts; I purchased the book and some appropriate yarn and you'll be seeing a knitted skirt on me in the near future.

I'm struggling with how to "set" the techniques I learned in class into my mind. I think the key will be to practice them all in the near future. We'll see.

Other trends I noticed: the severe over abundance of alpaca has declined, and the current hotness is sock yarn and gradient yarns. I also noticed there was a lack of larger quantities of skeins; so if you wanted a sweater quantity (or skirt quantity), it was not straightforward to find.

I got some yarn and some spinnables. It's logged into Ravelry, but I won't detail it here except to say that when I use it, I'll post it. Oh yeah, and Some Vendor Who Shall Remain Nameless put the hand dyed cashmere roving next to the cash register, which feels a lot like putting the Godiva chocolate next to the check out counter at Macy's. Two ounces of soft and lovely goat fiber came home with me.

Weaving

I learned something very important about warping, specifically, lock the cats out while winding on. Anyways, the Macomber is partly warped, I'm threading the heddles. It'll be a M&W pattern on the plainer sides, and a Z pattern on the hard painted part. Plus there's a surprise color in the border.... Pics to come once I'm weaving on it. I'm using the other 12/2 silk warp we dyed in Kris Abshire's CNCH class. I'm using the hand painted yarn originally designated as weft as more warp, and will use some skinny tencel  in grey blue for weft (it's sitting too far away for me to grab and describe more accurately).  Hoping it looks good; I'm having issues figuring out what colors to use. I

The school loom is mostly warped, I'm sleying the reed. School loom has hand-panted 20/2 cotton warp on it, dyed with procion fiber reactive dyes in burgundy, bronze, and chocolate brown; there's a supplemental 2/18 merino and merino silk in 3 different browns mixed it that will create alternate block floats that I'll clip and felt a bit.  I've also included a pic of the sweatshop we call our classroom. 

Textile Design

I create mood boards based on 4 countries (or regions), along with color palettes and some images that could lead to stencils; one of the ones I picked was the Czech Republic. I figured on using colors from Cesky Krumlov (imperial gold, that pinky color, plus a few others) but instead got sidetracked on the Soviet era concrete prefab housing units. Our historian guide had told us they were painted in bright colors after the fall of the Soviet Union, and I was fascinated to find that imperial gold and pink color, yep, still being used.

I was unable to attend the last class which was on stenciling and masking; I'm going to try it at home tomorrow, with some more shibori I have waiting to do into a dye pot.

Because of several Friday Holidays, we won't be doing Arashi Shibori in class which makes me want to cry. I think I'll be heading out to look for 8" PVC and give it a go at home.

Some of the Shibori techniques in the home environment are daunting. Like those little tiny circles. I happen to have 2 Shibori books and took a short class in Kyoto, so I can say without a shadow of a doubt that having the right equipment helps. Arashi Shibori is one of these techniques. I'll have to give some thought to how I can rig up something to make this easy at home.

Shibori dye day

I folded, stitched, clamped and knotted fabric in the centuries old Japanese tie dye technique called Shibori, working from two books I bought in Tokyo. Here's a sampling of round one, cotton dyed earlier this week with Procion MX fiber reactive dye in "Indigo" (not true indigo, but a synthetic dye in an indigo color).

Here's a few pictures of the mess before it went in the dye bath. These were really time consuming; not sure if I want to do them again.

But there were a couple techniques (not pictured) that yielded fabulous results with very little work; I'd do those again. And the multiple circles? Definitely worth the labor. I have a small collection of folded and clamped ones ready to go into dye later this weekend, in another colorway.

 

Yesterday I picked up my Leclerc Cendrel, which is a combination inkle loom and warping board. I got it for free some someone in the guild, but someone had thrown away all the pegs. I couldn't get my regular loom wrench to whip up some new pegs for me (hey, he refurbed a loom, so I'm not complaining), but Hannalore at Custom Handweavers has a guy who does stuff like this. He did a great job, and he cleans reeds, so I may take him the rust encrusted reed that came with my loom.  So now I have no excuses that include "but I don't have a warping board".

On the food front, we're continuing the cookbook challenge we started a couple of years ago. DH picks a cookbook each month, and I cook something from it. January was the Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook; I made the pinto beans, which were the best pinto beans I have every cooked, then a spice rubbed chicken with a raspberry chili sauce. Tasty food. Tomorrow is a Valentine's Day meal from Commander's Kitchen; I'll post details after. I'll leave off here with a V-Day picture from the macaron class I took today with J at Sur Le Table; this is before they went in the oven, later to be filled with either chocolate ganache and brandied cherries, or maple-bacon-salted-caramel.

The first six weeks of 2016 were very productive...

Spring 2016 semester, I'm taking Weaving 2 and Textile Design at CCSF.

In the textile design class, we've done immerison (low volume and high volume) and painting with thickened dye. We also have done shibori; my homework is in the dyepot right now and will come out later today; expect pics later this week! Meanwhile, I made a Lunar New Years present for my sister to show that I can paint thickened dye with a small brush. I seem to be obsessed with coffee cup cozies.

Our first project in Weaving 2 will be an eyelash weave; I handdyed a 20/2 cotton warp and am in the process of threading all the heddles with that and a supplementary 2/18 merino warp. The cotton is in Procion chocolate brown, bronze, and indigo; the merino is 3 shades of brown.  No pictures yet.

On the wheel, I finished 4 oz of Monster Kettle from Kitty Rabbit Creations; I just spun for the fun of it, and 3-plied without thinking about color combining.  It's roughly fingering weight; it had a lot of white fiber in it, so it's lovely pale hues... I'll post pics of it when it becomes a thing. Not that yarn's not a thing, just trying to not overwhelm with photos.

And the loom is functional!  I did a test piece that'll become a wine bag...  Here's the loom in it's state of disassembly.

What's on the agenda for the 2nd half of February?

• Starting weaving on my school project
• Warp up the other hand dyed silk warp from CNCH last year and get that weaving
• Warp up and weave some washcloths for DH on the rigid heddle loom.
• Maybe start on finishing the quilt that's been languishing in my closet for year
• A lot of Shibori at home
• Classes at Stitches
• Something card woven for the March Card Weaving Study Group Meeting

Well, you get the idea, I'm overcommitted.

What's up? And Fall, 2015

I left tech in September 2015 to pursue things I am more passionate about. This blog, although started 4 months after, is to chronicle the things I've been doing since.

My passions are primarily fiber and food, but you'll likely see some other topics percolating to the topics...

I'm going to publish a few posts in a row to get everything captured but will try to do weekly updates after that.

I'll do a brief summary of what I did in Fall 2015:

I signed up for Weaving 1 at CCSF for Fall 2015. They have a fabulously weaving teacher and I've been working on a Gilmore 4 shaft loom. We made a twill sampler for the first project, and for the second project I choose to weave some hand dyed silk I made at CNCH in a Spring 2014 workshop with Kris Abshire. Here it is still on the loom.  (12/2 silk warp/weft, 20 EPI, 1/3 twill)

The teacher challenged me to try overshot on my rigid heddle loom, using the Handwoven Nov/Dec 2015 Mermaid Scarf pattern. I look so happy to have it off the loom and around my neck! (3/2 cotton warp, 10/2 cotton base weft and Noro Taiyo as the supplemental weft)

I knitted 8 chemo caps in memory of my mother in law who lost her battle with cancer last fall, and finished knitting the Hitofude cardigan.

I also adopted a 41 year old Macomber Baby Mac with a rust problem. My DH has been helping me rehab it. More on that later!