So sad to hear Marion Weinstein the N.Y. witch has passed on .  She was the author of the book, Postitive Magic, and several other titles, a practicing Wiccan Witch, as well as a standup comedian.  Her main focus was to help dispell the myths that are attatched to the Wiccan religion.  Hence one of her most famous books, Positive Magic was written.  Here is a link to her obituary http://www.witchvox.com/wren/wn_detaila.html?id=21127 with info about her as well as links with some pics and links her youtube videos.  She was a postive and careing soul that will be missed. 

Here are some more wool dying pics.  The yellow is done with more mushrooms and the brownish is with black walnut hulls.  While visiting R out in NC I saw more of the very same mushrooms I had used before but these were so fresh and loaded with pigment so I waited to pic them till just before I left and then put them in the kettle when I got home.  There was a black walnut tree that R said could be used to dye wool too.  They were green and hard and had to be cut off in bits with a sharp knife.  I really like how the walnut hulls worked out they have a lot of dye pigment in them as well so wear gloves if you decided to give that one a try. 

Here’s the latest spin for Chinny’s challenge.  This skein is 146 yards, single plyed and was spun on one of my favorite Sandy spindles.  The second batch is being spun up on a Peace Fleece Turkish spindle that they sell made for them in Russia.  It spins very nicely and I hope I’m winding this on the way your supposed to.  Apparantly as you wind it on around the cross pieces and after your done spinning you slide off the cross and slide out the arms and then you have a center pull ball, who knew. 

In knitting there’s a lot of bias, a-scew knitting going on.  Ha, this is fun to knit like this.  Ever since I made the knitted bowls and learned how to knit on the bias I’ve been playing around with it.  Then decided to work some different stitches and holes in the sample.  Also practiced some increasing and decreasing by making a little square.  Here’s a hat I decided to make out of the mellow yellow bias knitted sample .

On this hat I picked up on the one long side stitches with a 40″ circular needle and used a 3 stitch decrease and the magic loop method.  I’ve never done the 3 stitch decrease before (slip 2 sts tog, K 1, slip the 2 sts over) and like how it did since it keeps the stiches from spiraling to the left or right.  I read about it in the EZ book, Knitting Workshop.  With 4 decreases it formed a square and the raised stitch in the decrease goes nicely with the texture look of the pattern in the hat itself.  This is the first project I designed on me own .  COOL BEANS!  TTFN

This isn’t the greatest picture.  But gives you an idea of how the mushroom dying went.  After taking the pic I realized, HEY, this looks like an egg .  A sunny side up egg, LOL.  I put the deeper gold colour in the middle of the lighter yellow to make it easier to snap a pic.  The deeper gold bit is from when I just put a bit of wool in the pot while the mushrooms were still in the broth (so to speak) and let it set there for a couple of days.  Then after having had the mushroom swill setting in a pot for about 2 weeks I was about done with it all, that is having to mess with it.  So decided to give it one more try and this time decided to strain the mushrooms out of it, add more water, reboil it and then put in the wool.  Well, mushrooms that have been sitting for a good while and fermenting have the incredible ability to draw flies from out of NO WHERE .  Also, a mental note to self (DO NOT attempt ever again to use large rock to squish the remaining juice out of the mushrooms thru the strainer.  Or else you’ll get the slippery, slimy gunk all over yourself drawing flies in a nanno second from OUT OF NO WHERE  to feast apon you as if you have been on a 40 DAY WALK ABOUT IN THE OUT BACK , GEESHHH!)

All in all, I’m happy with the results but would do things differently next time.  The pic doesn’t show off the lighter colour yellow as well but its nice enough to use.  I wasn’t sure until it dried and now I’m just wishing I was able to get more of the deeper gold colour.  Oh, and here is an upclose pic of the mushroom showing more of its underside so you can see how it doesn’t have the gills but more like verticle type of channels/vents.

Now I’m saving union skins to try that out.  Apparantly you get mostly yellows and gold colours from natural dying.  Now I’ll start a collection of the fibers dyed from my natural dying experiements and blend those in some way and come up with a yarn from that, Muwahahahahahah.

Ah, yes he’s knitting more bowls again, LOL.  I’ve been bit by the bowl bug again and here are two more stylin and profilin with the already felted one made way back when.  The stipped one in greens is made out of me own homespun with wools from Sandy and the gang at www.homesteadwoolandgiftfarm.com I had just enough yarn to make this one which made me VERY HAPPY .  Then the dark green one is made with some left over lambs pride wool.  So there they are stuffed with plastic bags for perspective with the already felted one just waiting to have a go round in the washer .  These are so fun to make and great for left over yarns (wool of course). 

Well, its off to do paper work……..TTFN

While out on my early morning walks you can see all kinds of things.  Like all these potatoes?  At first I thought that someone threw a bag of red russet potatoes out ot the car and they just were strewn all over the ground.  Then as the days went by and I’d walk past the area where they were they started looking like well, heck, mushrooms.  Lots and lots of them all over the place.  Especially under these pine trees that had mulch around them.  So not sure if they like growing under pine trees or were in the mulch or what.  But that is where they were.  So half awake, on my early morning walk my mind got to wandering and thought, Hmmmmm, what about using those to dye some wool with.  So the next time I went out I took a plastic bag with me and gathered some of them.  Not really knowing what type of mushroom they were I used another plastic bag to gather them with so I didn’t have to touch them.  Well, a large plastic grocery bag full of mushrooms is pretty heavy so that added to the early morning walk/workout schlepping them back, LOL. 

Here they are spread out on the porch patio.  Oh, there is also a bracket type of fungus up there in the upper left of the table that is white coloured.  Saw that out there as well and decided to take some of that to try out too.  When gathering things from the wild its a good idea to just take part of it so that it can continue to flourish and you don’t cause it to become endangered.  Apon investigation I found out that these are called Red Crackedcap Bolete.  They don’t have the gills underneath like you might remember seeing on mushrooms they have more like these sort of channels.  There is a name for it and I can’t remember it at the moment but if you do an internet search you can read all about that type of mushroom and you’ll find all kinds of interesting info on mushrooms and fungus.  Now I’ve got something else to keep me intrigued . 

Well, if I can get the pic of an upclose shot  to upload I’ll put that up later but for some reason the pic isn’t co-operating so will try later and will put up the dying results as well.  TTFN

Here’s a pic of the first yarn I ever spun.  I’m posting this again since I’ve been chatting about it with other fiber friends so they can see.  The warm tones are wool that was dyed with kool-aid.  The blue was a small batch of wool from a needle felting kit that I decided to spin up.  Well, this yarn has an interesting story. Spun on my first wheel a Louet S15 that is my FAVORITE  wheel by the way.  I got this wheel from a lady that had it for sale in our local paper and I drove way out (Next town over out in the BOONIES) to her place to see it.  Well it came home with me with some of the wool she was selling too.  At the time she was reducing her stash and wanted to get rid of some of it.  Well I didn’t know any one else that spun so was free wheelin it and wasn’t doing very well and got discusted with it and tryed it a couple of times more and then just stuck the wheel with wool on the bobbin and all.  It sat in there for about 2 years .  So long that when I had this moth infestation in my apt (suspect that the buggers hitched a ride in on some baskets I bought from the pottery) that the moths worms attacked the wool on the bobbin unbeknownst to me, LOL.  So as time passed and the moths lived out their life cycle, GEESH, I started taking sewing/pattern drafting classes up in Maryland and ran into some women that told me about the Maryland Sheep and Wool Fest.  So since it was going on at that time and I was already up there I decided to check it out and met all kinds of fiber people, It was like WOW!!!  There was a lady there that was so nice and she let me watch her as she spun and gave me all kinds of tips and pointers.  So got some more wool and some needlefelting stuff to play with and put the peedle to the medal back home to dust off my wheel.  Once the wheel was out and I dusted it off and being armed with a new attitude and knowledge I proceeded to niddy noddy the yarn off the bobbin and that was when I found out that it had been eaten thru in some places by those moth worms, ARGH!!!  No problems I just tied it together in those places.  I had read in a book and saw at the MSWF how people had dyed stuff with kool-aid so decided to try it out in my micro-wave and thus that is what produced the orangy red warm yarn .  It wasn’t much yarn and being very limited in my knitting knowledge I wasn’t sure what to make with it.  Then there was an issue of Spin-Off (Summer 2004 Issue) that had these knitted/felted bowls that were so cool looking so that’s what it became.  It was neat to see how big and floppy it was when knit but then how it shrunk and firmed up when felted.  Oh, there is also more info about knitting these bowls out of, UNSPUN FIBER , in the Summer 2003 issue of Spin-Off.  Now that I’ve dug this out I’m getting the ithch to make some more

The weather today was awsome so decided to have a fiber day and get some work done on fiber projects.  Got back at carding and blending the Chinny’s Challenge fibers again and think I got them blended how I want them.  Might run some of the batts thru the drum carder again with some more white.  Although the more I worked with them I like some of the bold colours now that they are mixed up with some of the other coloures.  The smaller rovings are the ones done as samples with the handcards and then the larger batts are from off the drum carder.  I’m anxious to get to spin it.  I did do some spinning today and found out something that was pretty cool.  Was spinning up the rest of the Scottish Black Face and have a whole whopping amount spun up .  So was being lazy and didn’t want to take any thing off the other bobbins (that has been sitting on them for we won’t mention how long) and decided to see if one of the bobbins from my other wheel would work and SHAZAM it did.   It’s the Louet 15 that I was using and then the bobbins from my handmade arts and crafts lookin wheel fit on it and so tommorrow I’m going to see if the bobbins for the babe wheel will fit on it.  That would be nice so then I could just have more options for Ah, when I’m like lazy about takin the yarn off the bobbins.  Tommorrow I’ll post pics of the yarns I finished up.  Hope eveyone had a great weekend

I am so close to getting these finished.  Just got to work up the back seem of one.  I think I’ll undo the seam on the other one since I don’t like how I did it.  The first one I seamed it up with a blunt needle and don’t like how that looked.  On the second one I did the 3 needle bind off and really like how that did.  So at some point I’ll take out the sewn seam and do a 3 needle bind off on that one too.  Now that I made a pair I want to make more.  At first when working it up I couldn’t understand what the heck I was doing and then once I made it thru the first one I was like, OH so that’s it .  These would make cool presents.  Thanks again Spinnermom for your help .

I also joined a knitting group/circle and have been twice and really like the gang.  Since I’ve gone its inspired me to get more of the projects I got lying around here done.  So WOO HOO to that. 

Also, got the green spiral ribbed socks done too.  Was so wanting to get those off the needles and they fit me better than R so I’ll have to make another pair for him .  Will take a pic of those later.  Okay, have a great day everyone.  TTFN

Spent some time spinning and carding today.  Here is a not so good pic of the blending going on with adding the white into the various colours.  Can you see how it tones down the bright colours.  It’s not that I don’t like the colours I just want more variety and a softer transition between the colours when they are spun up.  Also, thought it would be fun to cross some of the colours giving even more blending and variation to the mix.  I really like how the orange and the peach tone look mixed together (make mental note to self to do more of those colours and give em a mix).  So there will be more carding to do and this gives you an idea of what is going on. 

Also, started to try and tackle some of the yarns that were in progress before I moved and everything went into storage and put it all to a complete hault.  So started digging out bags of fiber and partial filled bobbins to match, LOL.  Here is a blended batch of bamboo, suri alpaca and glitz.  It is an interesting fiber and none of these show up as nice in a photo as they do in person.  The suri alpaca was an intense blue so I blended it all in different amounts with the white bamboo and added in the glitz along the way.  Here it is on the bobbin of the mini Babe wheel…..

I love this Babe mini wheel.  It wants to walk when I’m spinning on it and I have to put a rock or two at its base to keep it in place but its a great little wheel.  I’m spinning this rather thin.  There is still a good bit to go thru so far there are almost two bobbins full so there will likely be 3 bobbins full.  I’ll probably ply it and not sure how yet, Hmmmmmm. 

Ha, thought I’d throw this pic in for fun.  It’s my favorite spinning/lounging garb.  I got these crocks for Christmas and love them.  It’s the first time I’ve ever worn them and I like wearing them when I’m doing yard work, spinning, lounging.  I have a striped tank top that looks AWSOME with this get up.   It wasn’t available for the photo shoot since it was off hangin out with the rest of the gang in the hamper.  Where’s the What Not To Where Crew   TTFN

How’s about a go round in the washer for some fun guys, WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

All colours present, accounted for and ready for drying duty, SIR!  LOL   Got up at the wee hours of the morning this morning and did a second go round with 4 more colours of the dying.  I think I’ll stop here and leave the rest of the fiber white.  Basically its about half of the fiber dyed and half undyed.  So since there are two pounds and both the coloured and white amounts appear to be similar in size, I can say its about 1 lb dyed and 1 pound not dyed.  So now that I’ve done this I got a system down and it all went even more smoothly the second go round so that will all be noted for another time in the future for when the dying bug comes around.  I’m really happy with how this turned out.  The instructions for the dyes (Landscape dyes ordered from Mandie at Ewe give me the Knits in Austrailia) (Ha, I ordered these dyes like two years ago and just finally getting around to using them) say that 1 heaped tsp will dye about 2 oz. of wool.  So I just put a level tsp. in each jar and put what wool I could fit in there and low and behold it was approx. 2 oz.  IS THAT COOL OR WHAT!  So that is 8 tsps. of dye that did about a lb. of wool 16 oz.  None of this was weighed out and I didn’t even wash the jars before using them.  They were dusty and still had the 45 cent grease pencil marks on them, tee hee.  Can you tell Im not really being too fussy about all this, LOL.  So since I’ve got the lb. or so of white wool as well from Chinny.  Oh, by the way, THANKS CHINNY!  Your wool is so nice and took the dye very well .  What I’ve decided to do is take half of each of the coloured wool with the same amount of white and blend them creating a more pastel shade and then having the more saturated colours as well as the white so that will give me 3 colour groups of colour to play with.  That should be a right good spin, don’t you think.  So this is the 3rd time I’ve dyed wool.  The first time I did it with kool-aid.  I dyed small batches of the wool in the microwave and then spun it and knitted and felted a bowl from a pattern in Spin-Off magazine.   The second time was with chemical dye on some awsome white handspun yarn I did on a handspindle.  I dyed it in a cooking bag in my oven.  It was a multi-coloured red yellow and blue with some of the natural white left for a variegated yarn.  I made cuffs and a hat out of it and sold it out of  my shop that I used to have.  So this is the 3rd time dying and I like the canning jar thing.  It’s an easy way to dye batches of fiber to get a variety of colours that can be used as is or blended to make other colours.  While I was in the storage unit I pulled out a natural dying kit that I had bought way back when and hope to get to try that out before summer is over.  So’s I got lots to do.  As usual its time to get a HITCH IN MY GIT-A-LONG  TTFN 

I’ve been meaning to get to do some dying with the 2 lbs. of wool for the Chinny Challenge at Peace Fleece.  So today I got up way early and just got busy doing the yard work that is an on going project since I’ve decided to redo the flower beds and cut down tree limbs, yada, yada.  Oh, and tore out a whole-lotta poison ivy too.  That stuff is like way invasive.  After I started pulling it up I saw it had vine like tendrills every where.  Just glad there was a whole lot of pine mulch that kept it from rooting down into the dirt.  So it was pretty easy, Woo Hoo, just a whole lotta pulling and tuggin.  Anyway, then I had to take all the railroad ties I cut up to the dumpster near work along with all the poisonivy.  So since the storag unit is near work I thought I’d go by and get some of the dye stuff and take it back home and try out some dying.  I already had a large canning type enamel kettle but wanted to get some strainers and some large canning type jars.  So thought about going by the thrift store first but then decided to go to the dumpster and storage unit first then to the thrift store.  Well, guess what I had found at the storage unit.  A whole freekin box of just what I was looking for.  Large canning jars set out for someone to take off. Sometimes people set out stuff near the dumpster at the storage unit for other people because they don’t want it any more.  Free jars, YEAH!   I was so happy .  Woo Hoo!!!  So got the dye’s and then headed back home and stoped by the thrift store to see what I could find in the way of strainers.  Well, heck it was a good day for pickin up strainers because they had 4 plastic ones with handles on them for just a buck .25 a piece.  How cool is that!    So it looked like everything was falling into place to get some dying done.  Here’s the goodies……

So got the wool out.  Put some water in the big black pot about 3 inches or so in the bottom.  The pot only holds 4 large jars.  So I put hot water in one side of the double sink and put some wool in it to soak in while I put some dye powder in the jars on the other side of the sink.  It helps to pour some hot water in the sink to get the sink at least warm so the jars don’t crack when you pour in the hot water.  My first jar did since I think the side I set the jars in was cold metal and when I poured in the hot water it cracked (so lesson learned).  Anyway, put a teaspoon of dye powder in the jars filled them halfway up with water from a teakettle and stirred them well with cut up dowel pieces.  Then took out some wool and just put it in the jar and kinda packed it in there till the jar was full and the dye came to the top and some over flowed.  I wasn’t too particular about how much wool because I really didn’t care and just wanted to fill the jar.  Then put the jars in the big kettle as if I was doing some canning.  I didn’t cover the jars at all and put the lid on then turned it to med/med high and let it simmer for about 30/40 mins then just turned it off and let it cool down.  Here’s the jars before taking their steam bath…….

I suppose I could have put the lids on but just didn’t want to mess with it and besides I was putting the lid on the kettle anyway.  So when they were ready to take out all the dye was exhausted and it worked really well.  Two of the colours ran more than the others but only required 2 rinses.  Can’t wait to see what they look like when they are dry.  So now I got a system and can dye at least small batches at a time since I like having an assortment of colours to use with the solids I have or for blending with others.  Too Cool!

Here’s a pic of some recrafting/craft-recycling I have been playing around with.  R was throwing away a large dog food bag and I saw it sitting there and thought you know you could make a bag out of that  Shazam.

So I asked for it and gave it a go and here’s what they look like.

So now dear R is saving the bags for me so I can make some more.  Any way, I want to make one for myself.  So far the ones I’ve made have been given away.  I’ve made about 6 already and want one for myself too.  Any way the bag material the bag is made out of is this really sturdy woven plastic so it seemed a shame to throw it out.  I got some plans for some other designs.  Its a bear to work with on the sewing machine but now that I’ve made a few I figured out where to set the tension and what thread works best for it.  Any who, what is your favorie flower?  My favorite flower is WILD  like in WILD FLOWERS .  While at R’s over the 4th of July weekend we did some walking and bird watching and I had to gather these babies.  These are my favorites.

Did you know that queen ann’s lace can be in pink and purple too.  I’ve never seen it in nature but was looking on line to see if you could order queen ann’s lace seeds and there were some available for pink and purple one’s.  We saw a scarlet taninger while I was at R’s.  It gorgeous and it was sitting in the ginko tree and was a nice sight to see the scarlet red with its black wings sitting in the lime green foilage of the tree.  It must be nesting around somewhere since we saw it a couple of days in a row.  There are always hummingbirds to see on the trumpet vine.  Also saw some golden finches picking out the seeds on the thistle plants.  But still have not been able to see the wood pecker, owl or the whipper whil.  Although we have heard them they still remain aloof.  So I got them on my list to try and see next time.  Hope you had a nice weekend.  TTFN