One Worth Telling -- Part IV-The End

This is it the last post in the current four-part series. The fleece we are working on is washed, picked, carded and spun. Here is a photo of how I used some of the yarn in a project I am making.

The first 50 yards or so of white; not my best spinning

And here is what my oldest grand-niece knit with her approximate 160 yards of yarns.

She did such a great job with this hat.

And although it is a lovely white I thought it might be fun to dye a few of those mini hanks being made to see what happens. Again starting a new process took a certain amount of research to learn what items needed to be purchased to dye. And of course a few new words needed to be learned along the way. The first step is to mordant the yarn. This means one adds a naturally occurring metallic salt to a bath of water and plunge the wool in it. The water with the yarn in it is slowly brought to 190 degrees F for 30 minutes and kept there for a additional hour. For protein fibers like wool I used potassium aluminum sulfate or alum for short. And since I was doing such small amounts a large, empty tomato juice can did the trick for the entire dyeing and color setting process.

Yup a tin can and candy thermometer forever destined for this type of work

Once the mordant process was complete the wool was moved off the heat and allowed to cool, the excess mordant water squeezed out and the wool was rinsed in cool water. This wet wool is ready to dye. One can leave it wet for some time in a plastic bag if necessary; I was ready to dye.

I planned to use natural dyes like marigolds, onion peels, and avocado pits, but my first dye process included about 3/4 bottle of red wine. It was one I started, got a nasty headache from after a little over a glass and then promptly forgot about. It would be more like stain than dye, there is a reason why red wine is not mentioned much as a natural dye.

The wine was slowly heated to 200 degree F and then kept there for another hour. The yarn then sat in the wine for an additional 24 hours. The rich merlot color had me excited but then I rinsed it. The color faded to a light salmon color. (There are no photos of the dye bath because both the wine and wool were too dark to get a decent photo.)

Further research indicated a vinegar final rinse would help set the stain, so the wool spent an additional 12 hours in that slurry. The final product was what you saw at the start of this series:

I sent this photo to Susan, my Minneapolis knit buddy, asking for suggestions for a color name. She was the one who suggested Old Wine Cork and it is so appropriate both literally and figuratively. There it is 52 yards of yarn by the manufacturing company of Pergel in the Old Wine Cork colorway. We have come full circle.

There will be more dyeing. Mom has a black walnut tree on her lawn and this fall before the squirrels bury all of them I will steal a few of the husked nuts to make another dye slurry. Onion peels/skins are also being saved for another dye experiment.

What a wonderful project this raw wool thing has been for several members of my family. Mom and I have been able to feel we are doing something productive during these physical distanting times, my grand-nieces have learned what can be done with the wool off their pet sheep. And I have a whole new appreciation for those who take wool from the raw state to dyed yarn. It is a time consuming process when done by hand and explains why these small batch yarns are so expensive. And oh what fun to at least attempt something new! What more can one ask from two sheep´s worth of white wool?

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing. I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away. Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close. Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening. As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend. Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration. I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time. One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock. So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep. Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot. And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms. (BTW

Yarn Barf

It's back to quirkiness and time to step away again from the cuteness for a while. But as you see I'm someone who slips from one to the other without much effort so anticipate this back and forth to be my new normal. A dramatization of me in the midst of my startitist frenzy Yarn barf . I'm willing to bet you hadn't thought of putting those two words together, had you? It just so happens yarn barf can be a reoccurring pain for those of us who use yarns that come in a skein instead of a hank. (No pun intended regarding the current Noro virus, well maybe a little pun.) Skeins of yarn wound by the manufacturer These are hanks which need to be wound into balls If you look closely at the picture on the right you'll see the start on the millet yellow skein at the centre right of the photo. Its start can easily be seen coming from the centre of the skein onto the violet skein to the left. Easy to find, right! Sure but what about the remaining 4

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