Pretending to Farm

How to Dye Wool

      

1. 1.Get some wool.  You can dye it straight off the sheep, washed and carded into roving, or after it is spun into yarn.  I prefer the roving myself, tidy but not too predictable.  Montreal steak seasoning and pepper mill are optional.
2. 2.Totally overestimate your “free” time and energy level. 
3. 3.Stare at the wool.  Yes, you know this wool is brown and doesn’t technically need dyeing but don’t let that stop you.  Of your 12 sheep, one is white, two are black, three are grey, and the rest are brown.  The alpaca and llama are also brown.  Your hair is brown. You like brown; it’s a good thing.  Sometimes, however, you can have too much of a good thing.  Plus, someone once told you about “overdyeing” and how one of the loveliest colored yarns she had ever seen came from overdyeing black wool with red dye.
4. Have a Taos Wool Festival flashback.  Smile as you recall that time in the coffee shop waiting your turn with your fellow workshop participants.  Remember the look of horror on clueless male patron’s face when we all clucked over our excitement to be taking a dyeing class.  Remember man running out the door and driving away at breakneck speed.
5. Listen to the wool.  Wait for it to tell you what it wants to be.  Become frustrated with wool’s indecisiveness and overrule wool (hey that rhymes).
6. Find your enameled wool dyeing pan in the very back of the very back cabinet in the laundry room.  Move two boxes of fabric, three dirty blankets, and two sets of unwashed sheets to get to it.  Say fuck it and leave cabinet door open because you cannot shut it without reverse engineering everything you just did to get it.  Throw soiled comforter over cabinet door as camouflage.
7. Wonder if this is all worth the trouble but remember you are going to a wool festival and you are bringing your spinning wheel and won’t hand-dyed roving draw accolades from the uninitiated.  And you know you need constant reassurance.
8. Put wool in pot.  Add water to cover without letting the water actually run onto the wool because that makes felt.  There is a time and place for felt but this is not it.
9. Glug white vinegar in pot.  Don’t measure anything.  You are not wired that way. 
10. 10.Sprinkle different shades of acid dye onto the wool.  Cock your head and add some more.  Decide pot o’ wool reminds you of the La Brea Tar Pits, only more colorful. 
11. 11.Turn stove to low.  Cover pot.  Simmer for thirty minutes 
12. 12.Question whether getting a pedicure before your trip is worth it because your hiking shoes will probably wear off the polish anyway.  Don’t come to a decision..
13. 13.Let wool cool (hey that rhymes, too! It’s the little things that bring you joy).  Rinse scalding hot wool (because you were too impatient to let it cool so burned your hands instead) until the water runs clear.  Get tired of waiting for the water to run clear and say fuck it again.  You really are getting a mouth on you.
14. Wrap wool in old towel.  Set outside to dry.  Walk outside in 101 degree heat every 7 ½ minutes and rearrange the drying wool.  Remark that it’s pretty.  Make husband walk outside to look at the pretty wool.
15. Repeat steps 1 -14 until all wool has been dyed.  Feel exhausted.  Bitch about feeling exhausted.
16. Drink beer.  Get pissed off because the keg runs out and all you are left with is crappy Coors Light. 
17. 17.On the following day, spend four to six hours braiding wool roving.  Listen to the wool again because it is pretty and you are a sucker for a pretty fiber.  It wants to be a tunic-length cardigan with a sash belt and no buttons.  It needs to think a while on what else it would like to be.  Gaze at it one last time.  Get “Mountain of Love” in your head; substitute “wool” for “love.”
18. 18.Begin to sew new wrap skirt.  Realize you are completely insane and secretly blame the appliances and Dick Cheney.
19. 19.Smile because the husband just called and said, “The eagle has landed,” his secret code for the capture of a fresh keg of Kiltlifter.
20. 20.Drink beer.

Dirty Dyeing (Put Baby in the Corner)

I’m sad. Tony, Ilene, and Cooper (and Ruby and Elsa- yes we had six dogs in the house) just left and I already miss my friends. I laughed; I cried; I ate way too much good food. I feel better than I have in weeks. Laughter is truly the best medicine; a good dose of love doesn’t hurt either.

It’s time to get back to abnormal life, ready the farmyard for Dalai’s arrival Sunday morning, wash laundry, and scour Shetland fleece. And that’s okay; I feel 100% content, something rather rare for this emotionally complex pretend farmer. Obviously, I need to spend more time with good friends and stop stressing about life’s unchangeable speed bumps. Hmmm, I guess the Dalai Llama’s upcoming arrival is getting me on the pursuit-of-happiness trail.

On my last post, I promised to tell you about the most important fiber related thing I learned in Taos. If you remember, the workshops I enrolled in were spinning with beads, steeks, and garbage yarn (which I skipped in my eagerness to return home to hunky husband). It was during the bead class that one of my classmates showed off (we had a lot of show and tell) a prize-winning fleece she had gotten at Estes Park. It had nice staple length, lovely crimp, and a beautiful dye job.

Since there are as many ways to dye fleece as there are to say poo, we asked her how she did it.

“I just put it in the pot, covered it with water, added vinegar, sprinkled the dye powder, and simmered it for 30 minutes.”

After you washed it, right?

“I didn’t wash it; I put it in dirty.”

How many parts water to vinegar?

“I just poured in the vinegar for a few glugs.”

We continued to bug her for the next million minutes. This was way too simple. I have at least three books on dyeing fiber and they all use pre-washed fleece. They use precise measurements and always reconstitute the dye powder into liquid form before adding it to the fleece. This lady’s method cut literally hours off my fiber preparation time. I couldn’t wait to get home and try it.

At the festival itself, I had purchased two pounds of cormo fleece. It was dirty but not lanolin-saturated and I decided to use this wool as my maiden dirty fiber dyeing voyage. Following her coaching, I filled my dye pot with the unwashed wool, covered it carefully with water (running water over the fleece can felt it), and glugged in some white vinegar. I thought about it and glugged a little more. Then, I mixed yellow and blue powder, took half of it away and added a small amount of black to it, did the same with straight blue (I was going for a smoky look), and kept the blue pure. I added no red.

Here is the dye pot after I sprinkled the powder. I did not touch it after this (fear of felt is rampant inside me). As directed, I simmered the pot for the prescribed half hour, then dumped the wool into the sink to cool, and then followed it with two rinsing soaks.

Here is the finished product. I hand spindled a tiny amount to see the kind of yarn it would make. I am ga-ga over this super time-saving method.

A word to the wise, I repeated the process with some very greasy and dirty merino I purchased on Ebay and wasn’t as successful. The uber-lanolin blocked the dye from penetrating and I had to wash it midway through and dye it a second time. Still, because I did not have to reconstitute the dyes, I saved time.

In the end, it was another successful venture.
It reminds me of Monet’s Water Lilies.

Being a somewhat obsessive person (okay a really obsessive person), I’d like to spend my now sadly friend-free days dyeing and spinning up a storm but I have to finish spinning the Shetland yarn for the recreation of David’s favorite sweater sweater since I have already begun knitting it.

I now understand why some people have 10 spinning wheels.

So much fiber, so little equipment.

By the way, Pint enjoyed his third birthday very much, details to follow.

Something in the Air Today, Hold On

The weather is teasing me as of late. On one hand, it has been another record-breaking summer full of broiling heat and very little rain. As of September 1, we had had 31 days over 110 degrees and the highest low in history, 91 wake-up-sunshine degrees. Yet, on the other hand, the morning temperatures are beginning to decline and I can sense just the slightest suggestion that autumn is trying to fight its way through. This morning it was a frigid 77 when I drove the boys to the bus stop. Be still my beating heart!

With the promise of fall comes an awakening of my soul and excitement for the months to come. Soon I will be able to receive as much ruminant therapy as my little heart desires, no matter the time of day. I will be able to give Charlotte her favorite treat of green grapes and gift the goats with a turning apple or ten. I will be able to knit wool items larger than socks or child-sized sweaters without my lap catching on fire. Once again, I will be able to dye roving, and God willing, spin that wool into one-of-a-kind yarn, full of the promise of what it will become. I am getting just a wee bit excited.

Speaking of knitting projects, I have my very first knitting commission, a Tasha Halloween costume! Apparently, we are not the only Backyardigans fans around. I designed the dress myself (after Tasha’s of course), a sleeveless deep orange a-line jumper decorated with pale orange slightly-variegated intarsia flowers. I checked and triple checked my math and agonized over colors, gauge, and needle size until I was as confident as someone of my ilk can be that the dress will not only fit and make a wonderful Halloween costume but also be a garment wearable throughout the fall and winter with the addition of a shirt underneath. As Pint’s Cowboy Tyrone sweater is complete other than a half a sleeve and the normal blocking, seaming, and neckline, I am just about ready to begin. Today will be the day.

Very few things nourish the soul like a sense of accomplishment and today I’ve reached my RDA. It’s a good thing, Martha.

Dye, You Turn Me

My world is upside down and I am questioning my place here. All this time I have been thinking I was the crunchy earth mother type, all-natural, preferring the world as it was originally made rather than how someone has manipulated and manicured it and wham! All of a sudden I want to put chemical dye on everything.

Remember the results of dyeing roving day? Sure, I liked them but the colors were, at first glance, somewhat garish, and I longed to go back to the God-given naturally heathered fleece of my lovely sheep.

Yet once I spun and plied them, they were beautiful. They went from colorways named “Summer of Love” and “Tie Dye” to “Desert Sunset” and “Seaside.” As Pioneer Woman says, I wanted to marry them and have their babies. (“My child, what a hairy back you have.” “The better to supply you with yarn, my mother.”)

I mean look!

And look!

Suddenly, color combinations are going through my head like moving-somewhere-cooler fantasies. I gaze at the landscape, looking for inspiration. I think about other landscapes, flower gardens, rock striations, fabric patterns and I’m once again obsessed.

Our minimum of white sheep (as in a total of one) will keep me in check, I’m afraid, on this one. No grass pasture = all hay trucked in = too much money spent on something definitely unprofitable = no more sheep for ewe. I don’t know how real shepherds do it. Actually, from what I’ve studied, most don’t, they supplement their income with outside jobs. The ones who do make a profit have very selective breeding programs and send the lambs with less than perfect fleece to market (and not to buy a loaf of bread). I can’t even eat a lamb chop much less send a poor wee lamb to slaughter.

So for now, I will fantasize about infinitesimal color combinations and when the desire for color grabs too huge a hold on me, I might accidentally wander over to Ebay and see if someone is selling some Merino or Rambouillet or Corriedale or Blue-Faced Leicester or Cheviot. Any soft, white, dyeable fleece with good crimp will do, thank you.

Dyeing to Do It Again

Yesterday, before the temperatures hit the century mark and while the back patio was still shaded, I attempted a dyeing do-over. I assembled the already reconstituted dyes, measuring and dispensing tools, vinegar, Synthrapol, the really big dim sum steamer my mother gave us when she down-sized to her condo, newspaper, and a bunch of green saran wrap left over from Christmas.

Thinking about how I was going to do this before-hand, I decided the reason the kettle dyeing was unsuccessful was that I carefully measured everything and followed the directions to a “T.” This is a complete contradiction to my personality and, therefore, why it did not work as I anticipated. Moving on to the cold pour dyeing method…

First, I grabbed a bunch of Carmela’s fiber. I did not measure it in any way, only making sure that I left myself enough un-dyed roving to spin for David the Husband’s recreation-of-his-favorite-sweater sweater (more on that later).

Instead of following the Twisted Sisters this time (after all, I hated that rock group and that fugly lead singer), I went straight to the source, the Lanaset/Sabraset web site and loosely followed their lead.

First, I soaked the fiber in warm water and a glug of Synthrapol for about 30 minutes. Synthrapol is a wetting agent and, as wool naturally repels water and is why all those Irish fishermen wear their Aran sweaters, it needs help getting truly soaked through.

Then, I removed it from that solution, dumped it out, and re-soaked the roving in 4 quarts of water, 4 quarts of white vinegar (good thing the stuff is cheap and you can reuse the solution), and another glug of Synthrapol for 15 minutes.
I occasionally stirred lightly with the really big spoon my mother brought me from Africa (if you can’t tell, my mother gives us really big things).

While all this soaking was going on, I had planned on mixing the colors but home and Pint responsibilities interfered so I started off behind. This was not helped by the fact that the humidity level was a moisture-sucking 13% and the wind decided to pick up. To try to counteract this, I filled an empty spray bottle with the second soaking solution and continuously sprayed the fiber to keep it wet. This was also when I got too busy to take photos; I need a documentarian (like I’m that important).

In short, I haphazardly mixed the dye colors with each other and with water and poured and painted them on the darn-it-won’t-stay-wet fiber. In the rush, I did not don the recommended gloves and my fingers are olive green still, not a good look.

Dyeing complete, it was time to steam and, therefore, set the dye. Otherwise, it would just rinse off and all my hard work would be for naught. Here you see the first colorway of roving wrapped in the Christmas green saran wrap and ready for the steamer. Somehow I missed photographing the second. Adding about an inch and a half of water to the bottom of the really big steamer, I stacked on the other two levels and let it slowly come to a simmer and stay that way for 45 minutes.

Let me take a break to tell you the powers-that-be say to never ever no-matter-what dye in a food preparation area BUT seeing as I lost my whole second kitchen/ dyeing laboratory somewhere in the manse, I simmered on the only stove I could find. And yes, David the Husband decided to make breakfast burritos beside the simmering really big steamer but what’s an olive green-fingered girl to do. Back to the dyeing process…

After the timer rang, I let the fiber come to room temperature as abrupt changes in temperature makes wool felt and, although felt is nice when you want it, I didn’t. After about an impatient hour, I decided to help the process along by separating the really big steamer layers and then 15 minutes later removing the Christmas green saran wrap. Finally the fiber was at room temperature. I rinsed it in, you guessed it, room temperature water, wrapped an old towel around the different colorways and draped it across my sweater dryer to, well, dry.

Pretty groovy colors, huh? I named the one on the left “Summer of Love” and the one on the right “Tie Dye.”

Ta Da!
Here they are this morning all dry and wrapped in balls. Although they might look a bit Technicolor Dreamcoat-ish to you, I like them and have seen wilder looking roving spin up into downright lovely yarn. I can’t wait to do a little test spin but Leroy Down-Right-Grey is currently occupying my bobbins.

So, Carrie, your prize is finally ready. You asked for bright and sunny and you got it. Pick which colorway you prefer and I’ll measure off 4 ounces and send them your way. Email me with your choice and your address.

And if you all were wondering what Pint was doing during all this confusion? Besides a little early interference, he lost interest in my hustle and bustle and decided to cool off by removing all his garments and lying on Jessica’s visiting bed to watch “Dumbo” for the forty millionth time. The kid really likes to be naked; it must be nice to feel so uninhibited in one’s birthday suit.

INEBG- Part II, The Wolf-man Cometh, and Lazy Lar

I love being a farmer, albeit a pretend one; I truly do. Some mornings, however, I just want to lie in bed surfing the internet and drinking coffee and this is one of them. It is 6:30am. Although I have been awake for approximately an hour, I am still in bed, only arising for ablutions, med swallowing, and doggy doorman role play. I’ll get up for real soon; I promise. They yell at me and conspire against me if I don’t.

As planned, I over-dyed the Kermit yarn which, by the way, looked much lighter and brighter in real life than it did in the photo. Its colors ranged from chartreuse to Kelly, no Northwest landscape as suggested by dear Michelle. Nancy and Melanie liked it as well. Believe me girls, if you had seen it in person, it would have made you throw up in your mouths a little bit.

So I repeated all the preparation processes mentioned ad nauseam in yesterday’s blog. This time, however, I only added a center section of straight blue and a mixture of one part black and one part water around the edges. Obviously, it’s still green, but now looks like it was portrayed in yesterday's photo (I still can't get the color to match what it looks like in person), ranging from Kelly to Deep Forest. I like it and will use it though, despite appearances, four ounces of roving will only spin up enough for socks or perhaps a tam; it’s a good color for a tam. In honor of Michelle who praised its perceived beauty, I am naming it “Amity,” which is the lovely place she lives at the base of Mt Hood and which also means friendship, something she has given me in droves. Thank you, Michelle.

Carrie, I will get to your bright and sunny roving; I promise. Someday.

On Monday, I, in addition to standing over a stewing pot of wool in 100° heat, sweat dripping down my face, and feeling very Dickenesque, had a visit from the Wolf-man, laden with grocery bags of the brushed undercoats of his TEN rescued wolves. I don’t know about you guys but I’d have a hard time sleeping at night with ten wolves in my house. (He can’t let them stay outdoors at night. Their howling instinct takes over and all the children, and some adults, either have nightmares or start marching toward his home with sharpened pitchforks and flaming torches.)

The fiber is lovely, reminds me of Angora rabbit, but it is very short and I am not sure if it will work or not, but as I am obviously unafraid of failure due to experiencing it on a daily basis, I will give it a go.

After he arrived back home to his den, he and the pack sent some photos.

Now, I truly have to get out of bed and be a good farmer. I heard them drilling a while ago and one of them calling himself Major Major.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

As yesterday afternoon was my first both Pint-free and feeling decent time in a while, I decided to take the plunge and dye Carrie’s roving. Those of you who have been reading my twattle for any period of time might remember I held a when-are-Charlotte’s-lamb(s)-going-to-be-born contest. Carrie won, Easter Sunday, boy/girl twins. When I emailed her with her choices of prize, she chose dyed roving and I agreed.

The only problem (at the time) with that all my white fiber was at two different mills, Wooly Knob and Pufpaff’s Fiber Processing. (As a quick aside, for the wooly among you who are interested in having your fiber washed and carded into roving, here is a quick review of these two mills: Wooly Knob does a better, more thorough, and cleaner job but takes forever, as in mid-November to mid-May forever; Suzanne Pufpaff does a quick and clean job, as in a one month turnaround including shipping time, but she left much of the vegetal matter behind for me to pick out as I spin.) I received both batches within days of each other and was ready to dye.

As each day passed, either my body or my responsibilities to a Pint-sized farmer prevented me from doing so but, as I have already said, yesterday the magic opportunity arrived. Now, being all crunchy Earth mother-like and preferring the wool’s natural colorations, I had only dyed fiber twice, first during a very misguided let’s-dye-fiber-in-the-washing-machine attempt (I used to do this with Rit dye and fabric and it worked just fine) which resulted in a felted flamingo pink yarn which still sits in my stash unused (I was going for deep red) and second while in Taos, NM at their Fiber Festival in a space dyeing workshop. This turned out well. I had a teacher; we painted the dye on cold vinegar water-soaked yarn and steamed it to set the dye. Hey, I can do this!

Yesterday, instead of using the method that I had completed successfully, I had to make things difficult as I am wont to do. Because it was the author’s favorite method of dyeing and promised watercolor-like results, I decided to try the hot pour method featured in the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook. Basically, it involves pre-soaking the roving in room temperature water until it is saturated, adding vinegar water to an enamel pan (no aluminum), adding the roving, and bringing it slowly up to a simmer at 190°. Add the dyes of choice, one at a time from lighter to darker until they exhaust or in other words the water runs clear and then add another. It seemed simple enough.

I weighed the required 4 ounces of Carmela’s roving necessary for knitting a pair of sport-weight socks, soaked it and simultaneously boiled water to reconstitute the powdered dyes. Atypical for me, I used chemical dyes; I don’t have time to research the necessary ingredients, must less gather them to create natural dyes.
Here you see the Lanaset/Sabraset dyes in reused jars (I had to get a little crunch in) plus the first color ready to go into the dye bath. Although it looks orange, it is one part yellow dye and two parts water. I was going for a pale yellow to fit in with my concept of a sunny day at the beach. Carrie wanted something along these lines and I aim to please.

This is when I began to stress out a bit and stopped taking photos due to my massive tendencies toward uncoordination. I like my camera and do not want to drop it into a simmering pot of wool. When the used-to-be-a-candy thermometer hit 190, I added a stripe of pale yellow down the center left. In a very short time, the water looked clear to me; I then mixed and added a slightly less pale blue (1 part water, 1 part blue). This was my first mistake; I’ll tell you later. Things started to look a bit green which I wanted at the transition points but not all around. Maybe that yellow dye hadn’t exhausted after all. Also, I noticed the temperature had fallen to 150°; this is bad; this spreads the color everywhere. I saw less and less yellow. I found a handy dandy clear spoon, which I should have used before adding the blue to check the water to make sure it was clear and not pale yellow, therefore guaranteeing that the dye was completely absorbed by the fiber. Although it is a weak excuse, it’s hard to gauge the color of water in a black pan.

After at least an hour of obsessively checking the dye pot for proper temperature levels and water color, I finally added the third dye, a straight blue mixed with no additional water. I also added more vinegar due to the length of time it was taking for the dye to exhaust. By now, I knew this was not going to be the bright and sunny roving requested by Carrie but I thought it might be a nice blue/green variegation that I could spin lace weight and knit a stole/wrap out of it. After another couple hours and the addition of even more vinegar, I decided enough was enough and turned off the stove, covered the pot, and, per instructions, let it come to room temperature overnight.

This morning, “dying” to know what I had created, I rinsed and washed and rinsed the roving even before downing my first cup of coffee.

Behold the masterpiece; I think a little over-dyeing is in order, don’t you?

Please learn from my mistakes:

1. Use pH strips to avoid haphazardly adding splashes of vinegar to the water, which needs a pH of 4 for ideal dye absorption. I do not own pH strips; I need to buy some.
2. Use a clear spoon to check that the dye bath is clear before adding the next dye. Do not insert knuckles into dye bath. Ask me how I know.
3. Do not start poking the wool with a skewer. Yellow and blue make green; we all learned this is grade school.
4. Do not try to talk yourself into keeping bright green roving that way to make a St Patrick’s Days shawl.

I could give up, chalk it up to inexperience, and have green mulch in the garden, but today I plan on stubbornly repeating the process. I think I’ll add some blue, navy blue (1 part black, 4 parts blue), and possibly grey and try for a smoky blue green. I will not stir; I will not pass Go; I will not collect $200.