Monday update

The slowing economy is definitely hitting Etsy...my sales have dropped off almost completely. When then means, of course, that I have no Paypal dollars to spend in other Etsy shops. I would like to get some more interest in my shops - have you got any ideas? Are you running a raffle or charity project and need donations? Let me know!

This past weekend I spent a lot of time working on my current pair of knitted socks. I've been suffering from second-sock syndrome, and have had only one done for ages! But this weekend I managed to turn the heel and am now decreasing the gusset. Nearly the home stretch! The yarn I am using is Trekking sock yarn, same as always, and it's one of my dye jobs. It was a failed experiment, unfortunately. My idea was to get a variegated yarn by dyeing a skein red, balling it, and then dyeing only the bottom half blue. Unfortunately I think it was balled too tightly, as the dye didn't permeate as far as I had hoped. The result is a red yarn with lots of blue at the start and then less and less as it goes on. I didn't feel that that was good enough to sell, as I will only put my best work on my shops. So it's socks for me! The first sock has a cool blue spiral down the leg, and less and less blue as it progresses to the toe. The second one doesn't have nearly as much blue, but does have the occasional dark blue stitch, which is kind of interesting. I'll certainly never have a problem telling the right and left apart!

DH has asked me for some knitted fingerless mitts! I think he was inspired by the ones I made recently for Lesley (photo shown below) and the fact that it was really cold outwide when he was playing his fiddle on the weekend. So I'm going to make some from brown shetland.



That picture shows Lesley's mitts in handspun BFL and alpaca. The pattern is Waffle Stitch Fingerless Gloves by Jill Toporkiewicz, available free on Ravelry. It's a great pattern - easy to read and really quick to do! The spinning took forever but the knitting was only one night per mitt.

My surprising dye result

I like it!



The extra dye in the bath is being put to use with a second skein, which looks to become a rather shockingly vivid shade of pink.

Don't count (out) your dye job before it's cooled

We've been hit with some heavy snows here in London, so last night was the first chance I have had to mix up my new dyes. I purchased Royal Blue, Pink and Turquoise acid dyes from the Handweaver's Studio via mail-order, so now I have a full range of colours available to me.

By the time I got the dyes mixed (and washed the worst of the pink and blue spots off my hands!) it was getting fairly late, so I skipped the roving plan and instead soaked some pre-skeined sock wool that I had tied some time ago. I wanted to do a turquoise and pink skein, with sections of purple where the two dyes combined.

In the crockpot, I heated the skein to 135F in a thinnish layer of water/vinegar/ecover, then carefully poured pink dye on some sections and turquoise on others. I then covered the pot again and left it for about half an hour, then came back to check on it.

I didn't have pink and blue. I had purple soup. "What happened?" I thought...

Oops. I forgot to dilute the dyes. WAAAY too much dye in the bath.

Disappointed at my seemingly solidly purple bath, I turned off the heat and let it cool overnight. This morning before work I removed the yarn. (I left the extra dye in the pot and will use it to dye another skein.)

Surprisingly, after a rinse I have discovered there's still sections of bright pink and blue amongst the purple. Once it's reskeined it should actually look pretty good! The colours are very vivid, too.

So today's lesson is - even if it looks terrible in the pot, don't give up, as you may be pleasantly surprised by the result.

I won't be home till late tonight but I will try to get a picture of that skein up here in the next few days.

*****

In my previous post I talked about some new rovings that I had dyed and was waiting to get pictures taken of. Here they are!

First, a Texel wool roving in red, grey and purple:



Next, a matched pair of Falkland wool rovings in yellow, green and orange:



Finally, a Romney roving in orange, yellow and black. With this one I was trying to reproduce an "autumn foliage" roving I once saw in a raffle.



All of these are now on the Sheepshape Spinning Etsy shop!

Caution: Dyer at work

A combination of an early spring cleaning and a purchase of some more acid dye powder means I should be able to take pics of some interesting dye jobs soon. I'm getting better at dyeing fibre, which seemed like it'd be really tricky (and in some cases still is) but I'm improving with every try. I've got four braids dyed and waiting to go up on Etsy, just haven't had the space to take the photos. Hopefully tomorrow!

Take note - http://www.worldofwool.co.uk is having a sale on fibre until tomorrow! I bought from them earlier this month and am very happy with the speed of delivery.

Happy 2009!

Hello everyone, and happy new year! I'm sorry it's been so quiet here. The craft fair was a huge success, and afterward I put my remaining stock onto my Etsy shops. Between that, a bout of flu, and then holiday travels it's been hard to find time to make updates!

The first few days of the year have seen me trying to spend more time at the spinning wheel - partly because I don't spend enough time doing it, and partly because it's one of the warmest rooms in the house! London's having quite a cold spell. As a result of this time well spent I have several new skeins of yarn. Some I've yet to take photos of, but here are the ones already on Etsy:


This one is Romney fibre, which I dyed myself. Specs: 9 WPI, 86 grams, 55.7 yards. If you check the photo from the 19th November 2008 entry you can see what it looked like before it was spun.

The next three all glow in the dark! The top two are Alpaca and the bottom one Shetland. If you want to see pics of them glowing, check the Sheepshape Etsy shop.




I've got three more to take pics of...hope to get them up this weekend for you!

Come to We Make Christmas tomorrow!

Come to We Make Christmas tomorrow on Tottenham Court Road to see these little guys and many more gifts made by talented UK crafters! Full details on http://wemakelondon.blogspot.com/

Charity Prize Draw

A prize draw for charity has been started by a fellow blogger, Cherryred, to raise money for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. This draw is in memory of her mum, who sadly passed away in November.

Every £2 donated is worth one prize draw entry. Prizes include handspun yarn, stitch markers, and fibre.

Please visit her blog for full details:

http://woolly-knit-bits.blogspot.com/2008/12/sad-news.html

Two weeks to the craft fair!

My yarn has been measured and the labels are made. My price list is set and a poster for it created. I've started packing my suitcase of stuff to bring with me to the fair, and figured out what types of baskets and other display items to bring - mostly, anyway.

All but two of the bigger stuffed animals are finished, and I still have some mini-sheep faces to make, but other than that all the knitted/crocheted items are done. I still have to put together the sock dyeing kits, though.

Once I get all the yarn labelled I'll take a photo!

Success!

Here's a photo of the finished roving, from the experiment a couple of days ago. I like it!

The promised Workshop photos

Shots from a weekend dyeing workshop at Handweaver's Studio - highly recommended.

The general activity hub:



Very colourful results in wool, hanging to dry:




Now we get messy - this was my favourite part!



Some results of experimentation:



Dry, labelled, and ready to be squished!

My new dyeing training

I spent the past weekend taking the two-day Dyeing workshop at Handweaver's Studio in East London. It was great fun and I'll be posting some photos in the next update - they're uploading right now.

While you're waiting, I can show you what I'm working on right now. During the workshop I wanted to know how I could use my existing equipment to make the dyed rovings that I love so much (and spend so much money on!) One reason I'd like to make my own dyed rovings is because sometimes, after I spin and wash a pre-dyed roving that I buy, the colour washes out. It's incredibly frustrating, and I figure that if I dyed my own rovings then either they wouldn't wash out or I'd have no one to blame but myself!

So - I measured out about 100g of Bluefaced Leicester roving, and put it in a soak of water with a touch of Ecover washing detergent. While it soaked, I prepared three dye stocks from my Kool-aid stash. In each of three canning jars I put two packs of Koolaid (5g each), 10g of white vinegar, 250ml boiling water and 250ml cold water. I chose Lemon Lime, Orange, and Black Cherry for my colours.

Once this was done I laid a strip of cling-film (saran wrap) in the tub - I chose the tub because when I did this in the class I got dye all over the place!) I picked up the roving from the soak and let the extra water drain away, then laid it out on the cling-film. Using a 10ml syringe (without a needle!) I placed dye on the roving like this:



Then I rolled up the cling-film, from one long edge to the other. This sealed all the dye inside. Afterward I rolled it from end to end, and put it in a heatproof baking bag:



Then I placed this package inside the crock pot, which had a few inches of water in it, and semi-sealed the bag with a plastic tie (I want the heat to build up but I don't want anything exploding!). It'll be in the crockpot on high for a few hours, then I'll cool it overnight and take it out in the morning.

Fun times!

Three weeks to the fair!

Less than a month before the We make London craft fair. I've got nearly all of my animals finished (still have to embroider a face on a glow-in-the-dark-sheep) and a large quantity of handspun yarn that needs to be measured and labelled, but a lot of the logistical details of preparing for a craft stall are finished. If you're coming along, be sure to try out my Dark Bag - a little patch of nighttime where you can see the glow in the dark animals working!

In other news, I am currently spinning up this lot, which you might remember from July:



It's Donegal wool, dyed with Koolaid. I've got a full bobbin so far and I'm trying to decide whether to ply it with glow in the dark or to ply it with itself, since I have so much of it. I think I'm leaning toward plying it with itself, and maybe I'll end up with enough yarn to make something bigger than a two-foot-tall teddy bear. I've been carding it on my drum carder which has been remarkably easy to do, a lot easier than when I was carding the Romney wool that I have. But I think I was trying to card too much Romney at a time.

This weekend I'm taking a Dyeing workshop at the Handweaver's Studio in London. I'll bring my camera!