I’m afraid they’re only vaguely related to textiles . . . On the way to the big Christmas craft market on Friday I suddenly remembered that I had my camera with me, and could take pictures out the car window. I switched to black-and-white mode (because it’s oh-so-artsy) and went at it. I think I took about a hundred in the 15-minute drive through town; these are some of my favourites.
And for a special bonus, here’s the cat looking almost unbearably cute.
As I sat at the kitchen table working on this odd creation,
I started looking around, and gradually realized that the room I call my studio probably isn’t actually the primary creating centre of my home. That would be the kitchen/living room that is the main area of this tiny apartment. Most of these pictures were taken from the very place I was sitting, in the middle of the room.
The Dye Area, aka the stove and stupidly tiny counter space. I was multitasking and working on my dyeing project at the same time as the other thing. Like I am right now, actually. Type, stir, type, stir . . . The first part is due on Monday (eek!) and I have 5 colours left to match, and tomorrow is a complete write-off.
The Pressing Station, aka the hallway. I could set up the ironing board in the studio, but since I keep the door closed so the cat can’t get in, that’s just one more step that slows things down. You’re getting a preview of the dyeing project there – that’s the logwood and cutch with their acid-dyed counterparts.
The Weaving Nook, aka wherever it fits at the moment, usually the floor under the kitchen table. When not in use, it hangs on the studio wall, but I’ve been teaching DBF how to weave, so it’s been out for a couple of weeks.
The Spinning Hangout, aka in front of the TV. All set up to start plying here, for the Mystery Project. On the right you can see a weaving project from my first schooling days, a nice little rug.
The Carding Spot, aka . . . next to the breadmaker. Ok, maybe not The Carding Spot so much as The Spot The Carding Brushes Fell To After Being Out On The Table Because DBF Thinks They’re Pretty.
The Projects On The Go Depot, aka, um, the random table on a table in the living room. This is my new doublet for SCA purposes, waiting to be embroidered with that silk sitting on top.
The CD Spindle Settlement, aka the couch. Put up there so it doesn’t get stepped on, after taking in in to do a demonstration for my “textile” class. Which, I have learned, means a different thing at art school than it does at textile art school. But that’s another rant.
The Lazy Spindle Harbour, aka on top of the books on the window ledge. You can almost see my support spindle there with the pile of alpaca, it the place of honour within reaching distance of the couch, because I can use it whilst reclining, unlike my other various spinning tools.
The “I’ll Put Them Away Eventually” Repository, aka also on the window ledge. Best not spoken of.
The “I’m Using It, Really!” Camp, aka the other end of the window ledge.
The “I’ll Just Put This Here For A Minute” Terminal, aka the top of the cubby shelf thing by the door. This is a patch I embroidered for my computer geek boyfriend. One of these days one of us will actually sew it onto his netbook case.
The Swords and Drawings Corner, aka the swords and drawings corner. Well, the swords corner anyways. No, really!
The Cotton Hideout, aka the space between the armoire/pantry and the wall, aka the broom closet, aka the place we hang the shopping bags. I’m not sure how that bolt of cotton ended up back there.
The Sample Book Centre, aka the kitchen bookshelf. Those binders contain about half of what I learned at school the first time around. Some day there will be room in the studio for them, but this works for now.
The Hat Shelf, aka the hat shelf. The top hat was my felt project for school, and you can see the corner of my Laminaria shawl poking out of the bottom. There’s a bunch more, but it’s mostly hidden.
The Reference Library, or part of it. Aka the floor in the living room.
The – hey, that’s where my knitting needle gauge went!
The Chair That I Neatly Hung My Apron On. Until it got attacked. Which brings me to . . .
Who, me? Aka General Starkiller Fangzalicious The Third, aka Argh, You Monster, Enough With The CLAWS, aka Sayiidi. I figure there’s enough cat hairs in everything I make he qualifies as an official source of fibre.
. . . but I haven’t been taking pictures, either.
This is the madder, in process. I now have all but the indigo dyed for the original colours, and am done the colour match for the madder, and the logwood match is on the stove as I type this.
It’ll be a few more weeks until I get it all organized, so in the mean time . . . who wants to read my paper on spindles?
I love my dyeing teacher. Since I’ve already taken the second year version of her class (and therefore already know how to use all the dyes she teaches), for the third year version the two of us basically just sat down and invented one big project that will be most of my grade. Want to know what we came up with?
I’m going to make a colour reference book with natural dyes, procion mx (for cellulose fibres) and acid dyes (for protein fibres). There are lots of reasons I can think of that somebody might want to use chemical dyes instead of natural dyes (they were invented for a reason, after all!) but still stick to the natural dye spectrum. So I’m doing natural dye samples with a natural linen, a bleached linen, a wool and a silk fabric, and then colour match with the chemical dye of choice, and put it all together in one big book. And, of course, post it on the blog. I want people to use it!
Volume I (’cause I’ll probably do more) will consist of twelve colours, spread between most of the colour wheel:
I’m mordanting the wool and the silk as I type (gotta love dyeing for multitasking!) and hopefully will dye the first couple of colours this weekend.
Here’s the chopped up pieces:
Top down is wool, silk, natural linen, bleached linen.
Today we went alpaca hunting.
And found some!
Thanks to Alpaca Canada’s Alpaca Farm Days, we took a road trip out to Aldergrove to visit the lovely alpacas at Sterling Farms. They breed maily Suri alpacas (the dreadlock ones), which are even rarer than Huacaya alpacas (the fuzzy ones). We had a fantastic time, there was nobody else there when we arrived so we got all kinds of one-on-one attention from Marilyn, the owner. She was very nice, answered all of our questions, and absolutely made me want to have alpacas of my own. ‘Cause, you know, I needed the encouragement.
The herd was sheared in August, so I didn’t get the full effect of a covered-in-hair-alpaca. I’m afraid they look a bit silly freshly shaved.
That said, the cuteness of the babies (baby alpacas are called cria) totally makes up for it.
Aren’t they adorable?
On top of the piles of alpacas, she also showed us their cashmere goats. These two young ones looked soooo soft, like fluffy little puppies.
I think maybe this one wanted to come home with me. I could pass her off as a dog, right?
Sadly, I had to settle for some fibre that wasn’t attached to an animal. Boo. Oh, well back to the real world now – homework, homework, homework. Which, since I’m in art school, consists mainly of drawing and spinning, which I would probably be doing anyways. So I guess I can’t complain!
But first, one more gratuitous nursing shot:
Awwwwww.
Yay, art school! Hmm, that probably means I need a studio space that’s actually workable, not covered in the leftovers from six months worth of projects . . . Every time I clean my studio, it gets just a bit more organized than the last. By the time I’m completely happy with it, it will probably be time to move.
I live in a two-bedroom garden level suite (I think that sounds much nicer than “basement suite, but it’s above ground and quite nice, really!”) with my boyfriend. Which is much better than a normal roommate because a) he doesn’t get too mad when I get art/fibre-y stuff all over the living room and b) we sleep in the same bedroom, which means there’s an entire room for a shared studio. And c) he does my laundry, but that’s probably TMI.
Anyways, over the past few days I’ve had a great procrastinating from homework cleaning spree, and the studio looks fantastic, if I do say so myself. So while it still looks nice, you get a private tour.
We’ll begin with the wall you see first upon entering the room. This is the only wall that doesn’t have a window or a door or otherwise space-inhibiting thing, so it does most of the storage duty by means of several sets of shelves, plastic drawer-tower-thingys, and hooks.
The empty space in the top left is where the table loom hangs when it’s not in use. Below that is the sewing machine and machine embroidery stuff. The high shelf is most of my knitting yarns and books. I’m sorry, it’s one of the smallest stashes I’ve ever seen a picture of online. Nothing worth bragging about there. In the middle is the bulletin board, which I have finally actually hung instead of having it propped in various corners. In the two white sets of drawers are current projects, sewing supplies, and other random things. On top of them are baskets with current projects that are actually being worked on. To the far right on the metal shelves are the dyeing supplies and equipment. Shoved in the space between the metal shelves and my desk are two hockey tape dummies, one of me and one of Boyfriend.
Moving along clockwise, is the wall that is mostly window. The sun hits at about two in the afternoon, which is awesome in the winter, but deadly hot in summer. The desk is in front because, well, it’s the only thing short enough.
The main occupant of the desk rotates between laptop, sewing machine, and serger.
The serger hides in the cupboard underneath the desk:
The drawers are mostly full of thread:
I love those adjustable drawer organizers, they do an excellent job of keeping the thread from going everywhere.
Next up is the drawing/fabric storage area. The second level with lamp and ferns is a recent addition, after deciding to make the room a cat-free zone. At least until I can trust him to sleep quietly in a corner instead of climbing on everything and wreaking havoc wherever he goes. Two plastic tubs holding spinning fibre hold up the board that my pencils etc. sit on, and most of my fabric lives underneath the drafting table, along with various large flat things that don’t fit anywhere else.
Continuing around, we come upon the bookshelf that until yesterday was crammed full of stuff. It still kind of is, but there is WAY more space than there was.
On top is my home-made swift. The next shelf down is where my other spinning stuff is, along with my camera and tripod. Next is artwork that will eventually go up on the walls, and our growing collection of nifty boxes. Below that is more drawing stuff, magazines, and, um, assorted. Lessee . . . under that is another project box and my new calligraphy stuff. The next one down is actually completely empty, it just doesn’t look like it. And on the bottom shelf is my iron, a box of yarn leftovers, and a box of Fimo.
The next stop on our tour is the door alcove, which turned out to be a horrible picture so I’m not posting it. There’s an ironing board hanging on the back of the door. That’s about all you need to know. Oh, and this picture on the wall next to it leading back around the corner and into the studio:
And now we’ve reached the final wall, which is Boyfriend’s section. Mostly. His workbench sits on our brilliantly improvised floor made out of a piece of plywood covered in stick-on vinyl flooring tiles. My inkle loom and mini tapestry loom do live on top of his workbench.
And, last but not least, I have pictures of some of the silk, cotton, and paper dyed with my woad:
Sorry for making you wait so long, I’ll try not to let it happen again!
Apparently I have to stop announcing my intentions of posting “tomorrow” because it seems to have the terrible result of me ignoring the blog for several weeks. And if you’re wondering, no, I haven’t taken pictures of the woad-dyed silk yet . . .
However, I do have pictures of What I Did on My Weekend, which in this case was going to the Gibsons Landing Fibre Arts Festival. Dad, Sister, Boyfriend and I hopped on the ferry Saturday morning to spend the day immersed in fibre-y goodness. Here’s a view of the harbour, for a taste of our surroundings:
Not a bad place to spend the day, eh?
First we wandered around the town a bit, and the booths that were set up along the main road.
I’m afraid I didn’t take many pictures, but it’s a neat little town. They had musicians rotating all day, most of which were pretty good.
Boyfriend and I had lost Dad and Sister some time in our wanderings, so we decided to walk up to the high school where the classes and Merchant Mall were. There was a shuttle bus, but we’d just missed it and didn’t feel like waiting. I knew approximately where it was because I’d been there two years ago, and it wasn’t too far in my memory. I was . . . kind of right. The actual distance was not far, maybe eight blocks. But the part that you don’t notice when you’re a passenger in somebody else’s car is that the road is basically vertical. I tried to take a picture to convey just how steep it was, but I’m not sure it turned out too well:
This was from about three-quarters of the way up. We walked basically from sea level all the way up, plus another two blocks that I would have considered uphill if we hadn’t just climbed Mount Everest.
Anyways, after a rest and some lunch, reunited with Dad and Sister, it was time to hit the merchant mall. Yay!
This is the booth of the woman that I got my spinning wheel from. She has some great books, and lots of unusual fibres and blends.
I love the take-out containers full of roving!
Mmmmm, silk . . .
The colours! I need to do more weaving.
Some awesome handspun on the right, there. This is the booth that was there two years ago that had a Louet Victoria on display. Without them, I never would have gotten my lovely wheel!
Yeah, there were a couple of good things . . .
What with tuition looming and all, I only bought one package each of three fibres that I hadn’t tried before (cotton, hemp, and silk hankies) and some lace bobbins. The one time I tried doing bobbin lace I liked it, but I was using popsicle sticks weighted down with masking tape. I’m sure you can imagine how easy that was! And I got an early Christmas present, too – The Intentional Spinner, which I have been coveting for months since I first heard about it.
After that, there was nothing else to do but wander back down the hill for ice cream before catching our ride back to the ferry. All in all, it was a lovely day.
So far today I have tried spinning the cotton and the hemp, which I may or may not post more about some time in the future before something cooler comes along and I write about it instead.
First things first, hello SCA people! Thanks for coming by my blog 
I will be going to Tir Righ’s Summer Investiture in the Shire of Danescombe with even more stuff, so if you missed out at Clinton, bring your swatches to colour-match and I’ll see you there!
Back to the business at hand, sorry for the delay in posting – suddenly we were packing and there was no time to write! However, as promised, here are my pictures and method of getting that lovely blue out of my garden. I used kind of a combination of three different methods: Teresinha Roberts’, Cheryl Kolander’s, and Jenny Dean’s from Wild Colour.
It starts off with these beauties (who have, in the two weeks since harvest, almost doubled in size again):
Woad
I took as many of the big, mature leaves as seemed appropriate – the mature leaves apparently have more pigment. It was a pretty small harvest, I got about 250g of leaves. Then I rinsed them to get off any dirt and the associated unwanted pigments, not to mention bugs.
Next, I tore the leaves up into smallish pieces, small enough to get out the maximum amount of pigment, but large enough not to go through my sieve.
I put the torn-up bits into my dyepot and heated it up to almost simmering, and let it steep in the hot (not boiling!) water for ten minutes. Then stuck the whole pot into a sink full of icy cold water, to cool it as quickly as possible. Two of my three sources said that it’s very important to cool it to 50° C in about five minutes.
While it was cooling, I made up a soda ash solution with a very scientific couple of tablespoons dissolved in about a cup of boiling water. The indigo pigment will only dissolve in an alkaline solution. One of my sources says the pH should be 9, the other two say that pH is important, but don’t give a number. I don’t have any pH strips, so I guessed. It seems to have worked. After straining the leaves, I added the cooled soda ash solution to the woaded water, which turned it from green to a pinky-brown kind of colour (which I forgot to take a picture of, sorry!).
Next in the process was the incorporation of air into the dye liquid. I chose to pour it between two buckets instead of using my kitchen mixer. It took about 10 minutes for the foam to turn blue and the water to turn back green.
After that, I added about a cup of liquid from my experimental mother vat a few weeks ago. Did I post about that? I decided to try to do the ginger beer thing and make a tiny woad vat that’s always fermented and then add some of that starter solution to temporary larger ones, instead of having to either maintain a big one or start it from scratch any time I wanted to dye something. I used about the same proportions of madder, wheat bran, and woad powder (purchased) as my indigo vat, but in a 650mL jar. I knew it was ready the day my boyfriend came home from work and went looking for the dead rat under the bookshelf . . . Anyways, I added a cup of that, with the pre-grown yeast, along with some more wheat bran for the yeast to feed on so it could multiply in the larger pot. Then I put it in the bathtub so it would have a good steady temperature, and waited, stirring it once or twice a day.
After about three days it was getting the ‘functional vat’ odour, so I started testing it with bits of paper. Which was frustrating at first because it didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. It looked right, but it just wouldn’t dye the paper. Then I remembered the small amount of pigment I was working with (not to mention the fact that I’m used to working with chemical indigo vats), so I wetted a strip of cotton and left it in the vat for a couple of hours. Ta da! Gorgeous blue. Which, I’m sad to say, I have no pictures of and it’s night-time now, so they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
At least that’s what it looks like right now. Have no fear, though – the world’s favourite Vulcan is alive and well (as far as I know). Nope, the green liquid in my bathtub is (dun dun DUH!) . . . WOAD! That’s right, folks, my lovely little plants have done it. What, you don’t believe me? Here’s proof:
See the blue on that silk? That came out of my very own garden, people. I’ll post some more pictures tomorrow when it’s dry (along with some of the process). It’s a gorgeous colour, a shade greener than indigo. Very nice.
Speaking of colour, check out this sunset:
We had a (very rare) thunderstorm this evening, and this is what the sun did through all the rain and clouds and strange weather. It was incredible.
This is Boots.
He belongs to the two little girls who live upstairs, but he’ll take attention from anyone. In fact, he insists on attention from everyone.
He likes to “help” me in the garden. Generally this involves lying on the plants, trying to snuggle when I’m weeding, and then chasing the droplets from the watering can.
He’s also developing a taste for pretty coloured yarn.
He’s cute, reliable, entertaining company any time I feel like going outside.
Which happens a lot, so it’s a good thing I like him!
