Spinning for leisure, felting for pleasure

This orange flower just had to be made, celebrating the first warm and sunny spring days!

I added a couple of beads and French knots for embellishment and a safety pin on the back - a brooch for a spring jacket or as a closure for a shawl or a wrap. It's a small present for a friend of mine.



I've been spinning a little too - just for the fun of it, no special project in mind. 'Spinning is good for the soul' - Anke at WolleNaturFarben often reminds me of that in her blog postings - and yes, spinning is like meditating, it soothens your mind and calms your thoughts - and at the same time, your hands produce a lovely yarn out of the soft wool on your lap.

I still had a roving left of the New Zealand wool I dyed myself two summers ago - not a very spectacular one, but I did like the red dots in between:



It's funny, how serendipity often decides how a yarn will turn out - sometimes a most beautiful roving turns out to become a quite regular yarn, sometimes it's just the other way round ...

You make your decisions about the wool, the blending, to card or not to card, about the thickness and the whorl when spinning, how and with which material to ply - and still there is a randomness which keeps surprising you until the end.

Even if I have been spinning enthusiastically for a couple of years and know that I can control the handling a lot more now than in the beginning, I still feel there's a lot left to be learned. I remain a seeker and beginner in my experiments.

It seems every new yarn teaches me something I didn't observe before - in this case, it was the colour of the plying. When plying with a thin thread, I usually try 'hiding' it by choosing the dominant colour of the roving - this time, I took a shiny blue silk thread instead and a dark red woolen one, referring to the red spots on the wool -



and in my opinion, this was exactly what made this yarn arise. (Meeting the colours with the camera would need improved skills though, I'm afraid - the first photo above, with the felt flower in the front, shows the 'glow' better ...)

(German summary: Eine gefilzte Blumenbrosche zum Einläuten des Frühlings - und einige Gedanken darüber, wie jedes handgesponnene Garn mir neue Erkenntnisse und Aha-Erlebnisse bringt - diesmal war es die farbliche Akzentuierung beim Verzwirnen.)

Working on faces/Gesichter sticken

'You can never have too many faces', Jude Hill/Spirit Cloth once wrote in her blog - and that's true.

A face gives your (textile) picture a personality - and makes it tell a story. I learned that when I made 'The Goose Maiden' - and I also realized that I need to do my very own faces.

So I've been working on some faces now - using my new sewing machine and a piece of cloth, which I have sun-dyed with the breakfast teabags and dried walnut skins in a jar on the windowsill.

Even if my new sewing machine is a wonderful improvement to the old one (so quiet! so exact! and with an embroidery foot!), it's not easy to make the faces much smaller than this. And of course it's more of an effort than having them printed - but on the other hand, I like the idea that each one of them is unique, and has a character of its own.

(German summary: Ich habe Gesichter gestickt, mit meiner neuen Nähmaschine, auf handgefärbtem Stoff - und auch wenn sie nicht so klein werden können, wie gedruckte, gefällt es mir sehr gut, daß sie alle ein bißchen eine eigene Persönlichkeit haben!)

Embellished Flower Fragments/Blumenfragmente

In the beginning of last summer, I tried some natural dyeing with raspberries and blackberries, freshly picked in my garden - I filled a glass with two handful of berries, put some wool roving, handspun threads and thin cloth in, added some water and let it rest in the sun for almost a week before rinsing.

Here I've used the dyed roving for the flower heads - the background is a piece of white industrial felt, which I've embellished with some extra wool roving to get a softer and more 'natural' feeling. The threads used here are self-dyed too, but not with the berries.



Next time I will try boiling the berries (or other plants) for a stronger colour - if you visit Carolyn Saxby's blog, you'll find her wonderful easy 'recipe' for natural dyeing here.

(German summary: Diese mal gibt's zwei Fragmente mit gepunchten Blumenmotiven aus Wollvlies, das ich mit Himbeeren und Brombeeren gefärbt habe: Zwei handvoll Beeren, Wolle, feinen BW-Stoff, Fäden und Wasser in ein Glas gegeben, eine knappe Woche in die Sonne gestellt, ausgespült, fertig.

Nächstes mal werde ich aber erst einen Sud aus den Beeren kochen, wie im Rezept von Carolyn Saxby beschrieben, um eine intensivere Tönung zu erhalten.)

Another fragment - and a gadget

This is another leaf fragment - this time I've chosen a more closed form for the embellished wool and I've also pointed out the outlines with a stem stitch.

The fine nerves of the leaves were done with a normal sewing thread, in order to get them real fine.

For the background I've used the coffee-tea-walnut dye once more - I find it's being very useful for 'oldening' the fabrics a bit.

Did you know that you can re-use your teabags and coffee filters for dyeing by just drying them after drinking and then using them for dyeing later on? And that all parts of the walnut tree - hulls, nuts, nutshells, leaves, bark, root - contain 'juglon' - the dyeing content of the tree. (I've learned all this in 'Färben mit Pflanzen' by Dorit Berger - and here is another link, where you can read about the herb walnut and its medical use.)



As I'm getting back a bit more into sewing and embroidering again - and finding my eyes are growing older (unfortunately not only the eyes ;-)) - I'm happy to have found a little helper for threading the fine needles.

Even if I'm not so fond of owning a lot of gadgets for every single purpose, this is one that I've really come to cherish - it's a Japanese made (Clover) half-automatic needle threader.

You just insert your needle in the needle slot, lay your thread into another slot, press the lever, pull the needle out again - and voilà! - by magic, your needle is threaded!



It's a mechanical little thing (no batteries!) and I cannot figure out how it functions - but it works! You can however only use quite fine needles for it - on the other hand, those with a big eye I can still manage without the gadget! In Europe, the price seems to be around €15.

(German summary: Noch ein Blatt-Fragment, diesmal eine geschlossene Form mit Stielstich in den Konturen und normales Nähgarn für die feinen Blattnerven. Ich habe auch ein kleines Gerät entdeckt, daß mir das lästige Einfädeln bei sehr feinen Nähnadeln erleichtert. Und dann hab' ich noch gelernt, daß man gebrauchte Tee- und Kaffeefilter für's Färben wiederverwenden kann und daß alle Teile des Walnußbaumes braun färben!)

The treasure of colour/Mein Farbenschatz!

Finally I'm done with the dyeing and rinsing, and most of the yarns and rovings are dry by now - it was quite a bit of work, and now I'm happy being able to sit down in the shadow, enjoying this huge colour treasure, making plans for all new projects I have in mind ...

This is mainly Tussah-silk and bamboo - it's funny how the fibers stick together due to the dyeing process and look dull, like paper - and then again recover and regain their shiny look when being slightly pulled and drafted ...



I love this one! I spun and plied the wool into a soft thick+thin yarn before dyeing, and although it was one of the first tries I had, the autumn colours are just what I was looking for ... I'm only sorry I don't have more of this!



These are some of the cotton threads I dyed for embroidering with - maybe brighter colours would come better for the picture - but believe me, these somewhat faded and blurred colours are just wonderful when you work with them!



Wool-with-silk rovings, providing spinning material for the long winter nights to come ;-) ...



... more spinning material - this is New Zealand-wool (yes, the colours spots are made purposely!):



- and sheep locks, of course! (The colours turned out very bright, but I will soften them down when carding and spinning ...)



And finally, some of the silk yarns - I do look forward to knitting with these!



(German summary: Ich glaube, die Bilder sprechen für sich selbst - Garne, Fäden, Spinnfutter - alles, was mein Herz begehrt - und der Lohn für die Färbemühe!)

First harvest/Die erste Ernte

Look, our first harvest!

These are some of the woolen yarns I dyed with the Ashford dyes - I was surprised that even the mohair wool survived the tough heat in the microwave ...



... some rainbow colours ...



... some more yarns and bright wool rovings for spinning ...



... and when I went out into the garden in the morning, two butterflies had come along to inspect what they must have thought to be flowers!



Our working conditions are hard at the moment - it's so excessively hot even in the shadow - and in the evenings there are so many mosquitos that we just have to quit our work outdoors within minutes! And this afternoon we had a heavy rain with flash and thunder going down on us ...

I do hope that we'll manage to continue with the cotton dyeing tomorrow - that'll be the embroidery threads and some mesh fabric.

(German summary: So, ein paar Bilder der ersten Ernte von unserem Färbevorhaben! Es ist nur so irre heiß, und heute Nachmittag wurden wir von heftigem Regen und Wärmegewittern unterbrochen. Ich hoffe sehr, daß wir morgen die Baumwollfärberei mit den Reaktivfarben schaffen können ...)

It's been a hard day's night .../Uff!

It's been a hard day - real tough, actually.

It's one o'clock in the morning, I'm exhausted - and we only did the wool part and the Ashford dyes today ...

All I can say is that now I'm really impressed by those people who do this kind of dyeing regularly and even sell their wool ... the price isn't exaggerated at all!

Sara 'died' into bed at 10-ish and didn't even want any dinner - I've been doing some more rinsing and tidying up - but the mosquitos almost ate me for supper and I'm happy to crawl into bed now too - hopefully there will be some beautiful results tomorrow!

(German summary: Meine Hochachtung für alle, die das Färben regelmäßig und professionell betreiben ... ich bin fixfoxfertig, und dabei haben wir 'nur' den Woll- und Ashford-anteil bis jetzt gemacht ...!)

D-day for dyeing!/Morgen geht's ans Färben!

Tomorrow is D-day! D for 'dyeing', of course!

Sara is here, and we're busy making preparations for our first dyeing session together. We are both excited and a little nervous, as we have tons of wool and cotton and silk and ramie, as yarn, roving, fabric, threads and locks ...



We'll be dyeing both with Ashford and Procion colours, partly with a microwave - and it is my first experience ever.

Hoping for the weather to be stable - the amounts of colour, vinegar, salt, jars, plastic foil, buckets, beer (oops!) etc being sufficient - our energy and nerves to be on top - we will finally face this challenge!



(German summary: Morgen ist es soweit - nach langem Abwarten und einigen Vorbereitungen werden wir jetzt endlich färben - wir haben Tonnen von Wolle als Garn, Fasern, Fäden und Locken und sind schon etwas nervös, ob wir das alles auch schaffen werden ...)