Dyeing with Toyon, a 10 day adventure!

Z is helping

There is a lot of toyon in my yard... it's supposed to be a great natural dye  First step was to cut some! I went to the folly with my helper Ziggy.  I picked 10.5 oz of toyon leaves, stems, and some berries and simmered them for about an hour. The book I have talks about the wonder scent of Toyon simmering... It is lovely, until you read that you need to cook it outside as the fabulous marzipan aroma indicates a low level of cyanide...

Toyon, by the way,  is Heteromeles arbutifolia.

Fresh stems, leaves and berries

On the 2nd day, I simmered it again for about an hour.  Then I let it sit on the deck for two more days, and look at the warm russet color of the water! Then I left it alone for about a week in variable weather, the color deepening daily.

Why a week? I wanted to leave it for several days, then realized I couldn't find my alum, so I had to order some, then I got too busy to wind the yarn... Yep, it was one of those weeks.

Boiled twice, then ignored for two days

Next step, I simmered 100g sock yarn (divided into 2.25 ounce and 1.25 ounce hanks) from my stash in water with alum and Cream of Tartar.  I think the fiber is Merino/Cashmere/Nylon.  I still can't find my last dye box after the move (I'm sure it's here but mislabeled), the one with measuring implements in it (scale and spoons), so I eyeballed a teaspoon of CoT and a couple tablespoons of Alum.  It simmered for about an hour, then cooled in the pot overnight.  Meanwhile, I drained the solids out of the toyon water and discarded the little bit of mold on the top. 

Now for the part where you learn why I'll never be a good dyer. Being a good dyer, who can begin to replicate results, requires that one measure reasonably accurately, and keep track of silly things like time. I suppose for natural dyes, I'd also want to note which bushes I took the cutting from, how small I chopped up the stems, what day I harvested the leaves on, what the weather was like while it "aged" and so on. But precision like that is hard for me, so I'll just detail the omissions and get on towards the photos of what happened when the fiber met the Toyon soup. 

I heated up the dye bath, adding the yarn early as I did not want to shock it. Then I threw the larger hank of yarn in and forgot to note the time. I think it simmered for about 90 minutes, then I turned it off and meant to leave it overnight... but it was looking pretty dark so I pulled it out after some time. Then I decided to throw in the smaller hank to see what would happen (it's the lighter shade), and simmered again for an indeterminate amount of time...While it sat in the dyebath, cooling, I got impatient and rinsed the darker one; I definitely lost some color. But I'm thrilled with the results! 

Next up in the dyepot: mahonia aquifolium!

Madder, Sky Deck, Zucchini pie! Oh My.

Weaving on the sky deck

Finally I'm ready to plant the madder seeds in the Garden. We'll see if they take; if not, a friend from the guild has offered me some roots from her garden, which will certainly take off. We'll see what happens.  I also have wild indigo (aka false indigo) seeds, ready to make cute little wild indigo plants for the garden; these will probably get planted in the spring. It's very exciting.

Meanwhile, there's a toyon plant I'm eyeing for it's natural dye properties...

Hiding from predators

I put the yarn that wouldn't fit in the cabinet on the loom. It will be a poncho or ruana or some such... We'll see when it comes off. I was trying to get a faux ikat effect in some parts... but also wanted to tone down some colors that were not exactly what I was looking for. I used a semi-solid in a fabulous color (Malabrigo Primavera) as the weft: warp is yarn I dyed with K. at a dye workshop in Fresno. Note to self: a busy weft is not the best choice for a busy warp, if you hope to see any pattern coming through. I still like it. Here is is being woven on the sky deck. And here's a photo from last week of Owl helping me with the piece. They've still managed to avoid being eaten, probably because I'm locking them in at night...



I attended the spinning guild meeting today; I was spinning on that semi blue roving I mentioned in my last post. On the food front, I used the surplus of donated zucchini in a pie today. Yum.  Otherwise all the food I've been cooking lately has been lackluster...

I do need to get back to goal setting. Right now the goal is to put the leftover pie in the fridge, and clear the rigid heddle loom as it's needed elsewhere.

The studio is live again!

I finally got enough unpacked to call the studio live! I suspect I'm missing a box... Which is fine... And there are a couple of "I don't know what to do with this boxes". But it's cleared out enough to start working in it. Here's Z doing yoga in the long window!

View from the studio is impeding my progress.

Meanwhile, this is what I've been up to fiber wise; I have used a lot of words to describe what's really very little progress...

• Some spinning on the orange cashmere silk I've named "45"
• Some spinning on this wool fiber with a demin like color; I spun at the Black Sheep Guilds Booth at the Redwood City Jazz Festival. Sadly it's not very even, but that should be okay. The yarn is destined to be a pin woven wrap.
• I got off by one stitch on my Seaside Affair. I took it off the needles to rip out the 12 offending rows and put it around my body just to make sure that the size was right. GOOD THING as it's 10-14 inches too big. I frogged it last night, so now have no easy knitting projects in action.
• I couldn't find a good place for a projects worth of yarn, so I finally put the project on the rigid heddle loom. I picked that loom since it's all springy knitting yarn. Two of the skeins were Dyed In Fresno but not palindrome skeins; I tried to warp them for warp pooling using Syne Mitchell's Painted Skein Bonus method that was in Weavezine; I'll get photos of that once it's going; I'm wound on but have not finished tying everything up yet.
• I started school again. Not sure how I feel about this.
• I pulled out the Green Handmaidens Towel kit I bought a hundred years ago and will decide whether it belongs on the Mac or the New-to-me Gilmore. 
• I've also been eyeing the pile of dyeable yarn in the studio and the toyon bushes in the back yard. Stay tuned on that one.

Moved, partially unpacked, having nightmares.

We moved 3 1/2 weeks ago. So far, I've emptied all the kitchen boxes, all the bedroom boxes except one, and all the living room boxes except one. I've ordered a sofabed for when DH's family visits. I'm getting the cats settled in, and working with the gardeners to put in food crops and dye plants. Today I met with the guy who will get the rats out of crawlspace.

It's been an eventful couple of months.

On the fiber side, I unpacked all the books in the studio today (9 boxes total!) and have already unpacked the spinnables and a lot of the knitables. What I need now is bins to fit in the Ikea furniture (recently built!) so organize things, so I can fit a full cubit of items in the space currently taken up by a cascading triangle of items.  Do I make these? Do I buy ones that aren't quite the right size? So many questions. I am having nightmares about settling another 7 or 9 boxes of "stuff" into the one cabinet unit that is unfilled, and thinking if I put the yarn on the loom, I won't have to store it.

Good thing I bought a new loom! It's a 40" 8 shaft Gilmore, used of course.

Hoping to post photos of something I'm making in the next week or two...

Placemats, and 45

Progress!!! Despite the moving there is progress..

I needed to clear the loom prior to moving; feels easier to move it empty than warped. So I finished the runner that was on there and added one more place mat. It felt like I'd made every mistake a rookie can make... Lack of planning, lack of keeping track of progress, letting enough time go by to forget what the plan was, changing plans mid stream, and so on. And then I made a near fatal flaw of weaving to the last inch; four of the staples holding the apron strings to the warp beam popped as they had pressure in exactly the wrong direction.  Yet I finished them, hemmed them, threw them in the washer and dryer, and ironed them when they came out. They are exactly the size I'd wanted! And nearly straight and flat. I clearly need a lot more weaving practice but am thrilled with the outcome.  Here they are, two from the green side and two from the grey side. The 30+ inch runner has the longer contrasting lines on it.

I spun some 45 tonight. It's a silk and cashmere roving in the color way "Peach Melba" that was one of the prizes from Sheep to Shawl last year. It pleases me to call its orangeness 45.

So I suppose despite everything that's going on, I can still indulge in fiber projects.  I'll name these as the next few:

• Spinning 45 and the blue roving for the pin woven shawl.
• Reengaging on the Melon Shawl.
• Knitting on Seaside Affair.

I also need to make plans for the new Studio, specifically identifying August projects.  I'll do this on paper, then transcribe...

New Studio in planning phases, old Studio in boxes

Yep, we're moving. A large part of my studio is now in this big pile of boxes. I'd brought out some batting to pack, and the beasts claimed it; see white beast just above the green chair?  I can't bring myself to take it away from them.

The new studio has no closets but is roughly 3 times the size of the old studio; it's also located conveniently next to the laundry room aka dye studio. The plan is to put low storage cabinets on two of the walls, and my two bookcases in a little alcove. That should leave the rest of the space for looms and the sewing tables, and a small comfy chair. Right outside the studio space is a lovely comfy sunny patio which I've christened the spinning deck.

So much to do...

Little to no progress...

I have little progress to report since my last Blog entry. My life is roiling with, well, life, and I'm trying to practice some of the skill I'm learning in  watercolor and drawing classes; hoping this will improve future fiber artistic endeavors.

I have been knitting slowly along on my Seaside Endeavor; for some reason it's a very slow knit. Maybe because I'm knitting fronts and backs at the same time? Anyways, I'm bout 5 inches into it, and progressing at a snail's pace.

I also warped up more thrums on my tablets and have been attempting Egyptian Diagonals, which aren't Egyptian but are very old never the less. Out of roughly 18 inches, I have one 3 inch stretch that looks like it should. I believe I'm starting to get the sequence into muscle memory, and learning to read the pattern like I should... I'll keep at it and will take photos when I've woven to the end.

Looks like we're moving, so I'll need to spend some time sorting out what to keep available during the move process; the studio might be in boxes for several months and I don't know what I'll do if I run out of idiot projects for the duration.

Now if I could only find my reading glasses...