Sunday, May 3, 2009

Traditional Rug Hooking



This is my Rug Hooking project. It's not really a rug, more like a wall hanging. I drew the picture myself. There is a group of us that meets at the library once a week and we hook together.

More stuff on Dyeing


This was a camping trip I took with my Spinning Buddies. We has some rough weather (we're talking tornado warnings here and enough rain to drown an army). But we had one day of sun so we ran out and started dyeing. We used Cocineal ad got a really great "grape jelly purple". I'm not a big fan of purple, but I have to admit it's a cool color. I ended up putting some of mine in the indigo pot we did later and got a deep deep blue.I tried tie dyeing one of them and I put that one in the indigo. You can see it on the other post hiding in the back of the "group shot"- blue and purple. Should look cool when spun up!

Natural Dye Day with the Spinners






My Spinning group and I got together a few weeks ago and had a wonderful day of natural dying.
We dyed with Cocineal (little dried bugs) for pink, onion for yellow, and Indigo ( yes like your blue jeans!). The green was made by dipping the yellow into the indigo.
Indigo is really fun. The dye bath looks like brown/green bile - yuck! You put in the yarn and when you 1st pull it out, it's still that yucky color. Then right before your eyes it changes to beautiful blue! It's a chemical reaction to Oxygen. The longer you leave in in the bath, the darker the blue. Indigo itself comes from a plant.

My best work yet!


This is a sweater that I made from 100% Mohair (from my goats of course) all hand spun and dyed with Natural Dyes. The pattern started with one from Creative Knitting, but since I knew I wouldn't have enough of any one color to complete it - I had to get creative. Once I got the body done I worked both sleeves at the same time until I ran out of yellow. Then I switched to brown and orange and finished with a bit of green to tie into the shoulders.
It is dyed with Onion for the yellow, Black Walnut for the brown, Madder Root for the orange and the dark green was made by taking a bright almost florescent Mimosa dyed yarn and putting in a bucket with vinegar and an old iron horseshoe (that was my favorite).
The buttons are wood to go with the natural theme.
It's a very warm sweater, but I have already found a few days to wear it. Now it has gone into hiding for the summer...

Glacier Scarf



Tis is a scarf that was publisher in Weaver's magazine some time ago. I knew the minute I saw it that I wanted to make one - and now I have.

Egg Basket




I finally made an Egg Basket to bring the eggs in from the barn. It's quite handy.