Tulip Festival and Natural Dyeing

All of these photos were taken today at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. Yeah, it was overcast and yeah, it rained, but ya know what? It wasn't crowded! Which is how it usually is if the weather is nice. And our family doesn't do crowds terribly well, so having it basically to ourselves was nice.

Hazel had lots of fun having her picture taken. She especially loved being in the large wooden shoe. She could reach down and pick up the sawdust shavings on the ground and try to put them in her mouth (ugh). It was a little cold for her, so we warmed up in their gift shop. So many cutesy things, but none went home with me. I did buy a couple bunches of cut tulips and a pot of "rip van winkle" narcissus. On the round about way home, we stopped at my mom's so that Hazel could crawl around and I left her a bunch of the tulips I bought. She is flying home tonight from Hawaii and I think she will be delighted that we thought of her. Of course she may be a little annoyed that we stopped by when she wasn't home, but oh well...

Oh, I should talk about yesterday too! I had originally planned to go out to Woodland Woolworks to try out the double treadle Lendrum that I am lusting after, but got a notice on Facebook that Pico Accuardi Dyeworks was having an event this weekend in their workshop. I thought that the natural dyeing lesson sounded cool, so I nixed the WW plan and invited Tami to go with me to PAD instead. We dyed up some mini skeins of sock yarn and a mini skein of Columbia wool from Imperial Stock Ranch. Who would have thought that yellow onion skins would dye wool green, or that a baking soda spritz would turn a burgundy to purple??? I also am intrigued by indigo, when you dip your fiber in, it turns green, but once the chemcial in the indigo hits the oxygen in the air, it turns blue. I had no idea that natural dyeing could be so much fun!

Here's some pictures of what I dyed up:


This one had an unfortunate "spaghetti incident" so I only have pics of it reskeined.
There is cochineal, logwood, logwood spritzed with baking soda, and indigo.




madder/black walnut mix, cochineal, black walnut, and indigo, then the whole thing went into the indigo pot (by accident of course, but I like how it turned out.






Indigo, walnut, madder, yellow onion skin, and again the whole skein went into the indigo pot.

More adventures in dyeing

A few weeks ago I pulled out the old dyepot again to dye some Knit Picks bare laceweight and a skein of white targhee roving.

Something interesting happened with the Targhee. I originally used Royal Blue and Black Wilton dyes, but there was a pink residue left in the pot (it's non-stick, must get a metal one next time I decide to dye). This caused some pink/purple stuff to happen. I am very pleased with how it turned out, and I love these kinds of happy mistakes. I started spinning it and it is very nice and fluffy!


Next I dyed up the lace weight. I mixed up two cups, one with Teal and the other with Kelly Green. I poured at the same time on opposite ends of the pot and got an interesting mix. The first one I did not add enough dye so there is a lot of white and the second one had clumps of undesolved dye in the bottom of the cup. Even though I dyed the skeins in the same manner, the colors are not the same intensity.

Shawl FOs

Well, I thought the new year was going along beautifully, until I got sick again. I went from having a sinus infection that went away and came back again to getting the stomach flu. The flu was awful! And to make it even worse than that, Owen got sick at the same time. Imagine having us both sick and then taking care of Hazel. It's been a few days since the "attack" and I'm still recovering. This really hit us hard! Owen thought it was "romantic" because now we can share our stories of being sick and have someone else understand how gross it all was. Can I get better now? kthxbai!

So, I did manage to get a couple of shawls finished.

I have not decided if I want to keep this for myself yet. I love it, and I love the pattern (even if it was St st and only had 3 rows where action happened) because I could just knit and purl and not have to really pay attention to what I was doing. I guess I'm just not sure about the color on me. I don't have a lot of things that match it.

This was my first attempt at dyeing yarn. I used Wilton's icing dyes and followed these instructions. I started out using the no-taste red and instead of a crimson, it turned a strange pink. So, I added some burgundy and that made it better. I would post pictures of the dyepot, but it looks like I'm cooking intestines, I kid you not! Long story short, I didn't put enough vinegar in the pot and when I rinsed it my hands turned pink, so I cooked the yarn again and it felted a little bit. In hind sight I probably shouldn't have used Malabrigo lace as my first yarn to dye, but oh well, it gave the yarn a fuzzy halo that I kind of like.

Pattern - Citron
Yarn - Malabrigo laceweight



And what would a blog post be without a picture of Hazel???

I never inteded to knit her a shawl when she was this young, but OMG I'm so happy that I did because she looks so cute in it! I used the yarn from a Hazel Knits baby sock kit that I purchased wayyyyy back at Sock Summit. I took the sock with me on TWO vacations and only got to the heel flap of the first sock. Yeah, it took me 5 months and guess what? Hazel grew up too fast and I knew that if I ever finished the socks they would not fit over her toes. After a poll on my facebook I ended up frogging the sock and Tami suggested a few patterns I could use the yarn for. She found a cute bear shawl (rav link) and I would have done that, but the price was 6.00 for a basic mini shawl pattern!!!!!!! So did a search on Ravelry and found this adorable hearts shawl pattern for an American Girl doll. Hazel will soon outgrow this shawl and I"m not even sure if I could keep it on her for very long if I did put it on her, so it will be for her bear.

Pattern - Loving Hearts Shawl
yarn - Hazel Knits sock yarn in Tulip