Wednesday, March 28, 2012

update

 Well the end of February and March have been a busy few weeks. Mostly with preparing for teaching workshops on spinning, crochet, natural dyeing and weaving, plus making stock for 'Unwind' knitting retreat in Dunedin and adding stock for Tote too. Phew. I also finished handknitting a man's sweater from my handspun which the recipient had waited nearly a year for. 'Unwind' was organised by Morag from Vintage Purls and it was really enjoyable. A whole variety of short courses from book binding, to spindle spinning as well as a selection of knitting classes. Lots of time to sit, knit and chat.
 I did spend some money too on fibre and lovely hand dyed yarns. Sales were good too.
 So look out for 'Unwind' next year.

This Monday four folks came to my studio for a natural dye day. We dyed mostly wool yarns with cochineal, madder, indigo, pomegranite, onion skins, chaste tree extract and a few others, modifying some skeins with washing soda or citric acid. We used copper sulphate and alum mordants. Everyone went home with a bag of coloured samples. The harcoset wool yarns took the dyes really strongly, really sucking up the colour.
Sorry I didn't get around to taking any photos.
The indigo vat had heaps of colour left after the day so today I warmed it up again and dyed some more yarns. I plan to dye pale ones to overdye in yellows such as fustic and rhubarb root extract to get some greens. The teal shades (which aren't showing up very well in the photo) are copper sulphate mordanted yarns dipped into the indigo vat.