Playing around

We all know how easy it is to get into a rut, even when doing something that is generally considered a creative endeavor.  I don't know that I've been playing with fabric long enough to have found myself in an official "rut," but I did decide it would be fun to try doing some patchwork squares that consisted of smaller pieces sew together, rather than bigger blocks made of a single fabric like I have been doing.  I found some instructions for making wonky nine-patch blocks (oh, you quilters, with your "wonky" and your "scrappy") and gave it a go.

I wasn't able to master the trick of shuffling the blocks around so that each block has one square of every different fabric, but it was still really fun to end up with pieced blocks.  Wonky pieced blocks.  Wonky AND scrappy pieced blocks.

Trying something different with fabric got me thinking the next time I was dyeing yarn.  I have always loved creating really saturated colorways, but lately I have been seeing a lot of yarns featuring more dappled colors, with more variations in how the colors take and more colors peeking through in layers.  I don't know if I'm being clear -- it's hard to verbalize this kind of thing -- but I figured I would play around with some different techniques and see what happened. The last batch of yarns I did (some Superwash Merino Classic Worsted and Cashmerino Sock) includes some of these skeins:

The top photo shows some of the dappled colors, and the peach one what happened when I played with overlapping colors.

These are two of the CashSock colorways that came out especially striking.  These are all in stock in the Black Bunny Fibers on-line shop.

Don't forget: there are still a few more days to participate in the Go Knit In Your Hat Summer-Search Fundraiser! The prizes are wonderful and we're SO VERY CLOSE to my goal of raising a thousand dollars for Summer Search:

See the list of fabulous prizes here..... -- including knitting books! yarn! roving! and other goodies!!!

No-Bull Book Review: Wild Color by Jenny Dean

In the past twenty years or so, interest in dyeing yarn has skyrocketed. And at the same time, environmental concerns have led more and more dyers to think about using natural substances instead of man-made chemicals to dye their textiles. Way back in 1999, Jenny Dean wrote a book called Wild Color, a very useful and thorough handbook for those interested in using dyes derived from plants.

Things have changed a lot in the years since that book was published, and so Dean's publisher decided it was time for a revised second edition. Although not a knitting book, the topic of dyeing is so closely intertwined with yarn that it makes sense for a knitting blog to take a look at the new and improved Wild Color, Revised and Updated Edition: The Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes (Watson-Guptill 2010).




Wild Color is a paperback, approximately 144 pages long, and it's full to bursting with swatches and photographs of the plants and other ingredients used to make the dyes. It also contains photographs showing the equipment used for dyeing, textiles dyed with natural dyes, and yarn. (As noted above, this is a dyeing guide, and not a knitting book, so there are no knitting patterns or knitting techniques covered in it.)

The book begins with a lengthy introduction, then the remainder is divided into two sections: "Dyeing Techniques" walks the reader through the process of gathering the ingredients, making the dyebaths and specific techniques for dyeing, while"The Dye Plants" is a visual index to the plants and other substances that are used as sources for the dyes.

Dean's introductory material is really an historical overview. Dean notes that the use of man-made dyestuffs is a relatively recent development, beginning in the mid-19th century. For thousands of years before that, humans used plants and other substances found in nature as the source of their dyes. Dean goes on to discuss how techniques of dyeing developed, and then divides natural dyes into three categories. "Substantive" dyes are those which bond by themselves to fiber and do not need a mordant to fix them permanently to the fiber. "Vat dyes" also do not need the assistance of a mordant to attach to the fiber, but they are tricky because the dyestuffs aren't soluble in water. They depend on a process like oxidization to develop their full color and become permanent. The third category of dyes are called "adjective dyes," because they need a mordant in order to get the full effect of the color and for the color to be fixed permanently to the fiber. Dean next discusses some non-plant based dyes, including a purple dye that comes from a kind of shellfish; dyes derived from insects, like cochineal; and then covers plant-derived dyes, organizing them by color. She finishes by discussing methods of applying dye, such as block printing and ikat techniques. There are photographs of various historical textiles interspersed in the text.

Would-be dyers will want to jump right into the "Dyeing Techniques" section. In this section, Dean gives an overview of how to use natural dyes on cloth and fiber. She reviews the necessary equipment; discusses the composition of the fibers and textiles that will be dyed; tells how to prepare the fibers, test the pH value of the water, and use mordants*; she discusses several methods of applying the dye; covers special types of dye, like indigo and woad; and discusses colorfastness. She also includes tips on how to modify dye colors (along with a chart); a chart showing the best dyeing methods for specific natural dyes; and ideas for recording one's dyeing results.

The heart of the book for the fiberista who wishes to use natural dyes, however, is the second section. Beginning with Acacia catechu (a plant called cutch) and finishing with Urtica dioica (nettle), she covers over 60 plants and trees that can be used as sources of dye. Some are common garden plants (like the daffodil or dahlia) and trees (oak, birch), and some are food plants (blackberry, elderberry), while others are what some call weeds (dandelions). Each one-page entry includes a photograph of the plant to aid in identification; color swatches showing approximate shades that can be obtained (and where necessary, there are different swatches for different part of the plant, so that if the leaves give one color and the bark gives another, two sets of swatches are included); growing tips; and hints on how to dye with it.

The book ends with a bibliography and index.

This book review is a bit shorter and different from my usual ones, because Wild Color isn't a knitting pattern book or even a knitting book at all. What it is, however, is a very thorough guide to growing and using natural sources, mainly plants, to dye textiles. It's a wonderful resource full of information for the dyer wishing to try plant-based dyes, and I think it's even an interesting read for gardeners and/or herbalists who are interested in the uses of various common plants and trees. Kudos to Dean for providing dyers with a thorough look at the most frequently-used plants for dyeing, along with helpful instructions to get the dyer started.



*Dean discusses the use of aluminum (some aluminum-containing substances are known as "alum," copper, and iron (chemical mordants) as well as staghorn sumac leaves, oak galls and rhubarb leaves (plant-derived mordants).

Please, no peeps, peeps

Each year, around this time, I like to help spread the word that although bunnies are truly wonderful pets -- affectionate, and smart, and fun, and interactive, and God, they wrote the book on Teh Cute -- they are NOT wonderful gifts to be given to other people. Now, I suspect that most of my readers do not need to be reminded how bad an idea it is to give baby bunnies or chicks to children at Easter, but in case you were thinking about it: DON'T. Tons of bunnies and chicks end up in animal shelters each year around this time when chuckleheads present them to people who aren't ready or willing to take proper care of them. If you're thinking about adopting a bun, wait until after Easter, and make sure you check out the links at Make Mine Chocolate. They will give you the practical information you need to decide if a bunny will make a good addition to your family.

Linking to Make Mine Chocolate seems to go hand-in-hand with egg-dyeing. Today, the three kids, home from school all week (thwacks head against table)



produced these:



(Well, they dyed them; they didn't lay them.)

There's a road trip in our near future, so my next report will be (internet connection willing) from somewhere else. And upon my return? A brand-new No-Bull Book Review.

Qiviut is coming...

While the weather is doing this:



I've been skeining yarns for tomorrow's update. I've spent the past week dyeing up some of the limited-edition qiviut blend -- 1/3 alpaca, 1/3 merino and 1/3 qiviut. It's been an interesting experience, as the base yarn is dark: much more of a deep taupe, rather than the ivory yarns I've generally been using. As a result, the colors I've been getting are more muted and subtle.




I quite like them -- but don't look for the brights or pastels in this batch. The finished skeins will be listed tomorrow at my Etsy update, along with some more sock yarns, like these wool/nylon babies:






The update after that will include laceweight yarns, and after Christmas, when all that holiday cash is burning a hole in your pocket, we will see at least one new yarn at BBF . . .

One thing I've noticed since I started dyeing yarns is that I seem to have a limited amount of creative mojo. When I spend a lot of time hunched over the dyepots, I knit less, and when I knit a lot, I tend to have less to give to the dye pots. It's not just a matter of limited time, either; there definitely seems to be a finite amount of creativity that gets "used up" on one or the other. Since I've been focusing on the qiviut, my knitting this week has been rather utilitarian: I've been finishing up a baby blanket for Knittah, who is gathering up some items for an orphanage in Botswana, and am sewing together a baby sweater for a new arrival named after a Pac-Man ghost and a modern French playwright, and have been playing around with a quickie sweater for Her Nibs, who complains frequently of being cold.


And then, this Christmas-present-to-myself arrived:



Noro sock yarn.

I want all the colors.

Seriously.

Happy birthday, Bun!

Hard to believe, but another year has flown by and Charcoal turned two on Saturday. (He's a Libra, in case you were wondering.*) What does the spoiled bun-bun get for his birthday?



A hula girl (left) and beach basket (right), made in bunny-friendly, edible, chewable materials, from the fine folks at Bunny Bytes (where the urban rabbit shops). Charcoal was a gentleman, though: he bought the hula girl dinner before ripping her skirt off.

Of course, there was cake (or at least cupcakes):



In knitting news, I finished the Kaffe socks for N.,


and started the next pair, for G. It's "Chewy Spaghetti" sock yarn in the colorway Sporty. G. chose it because pink is her first favorite color and blue is her second favorite color.



With Stitches and Rhinebeck coming up, I'll need lots of mindless sockknitting to carry along.

Dyeing News

I've been busily dyeing, and I'll have a Black Bunny Fibers update on Wednesday, around noon-ish. In addition to sock and laceweight yarns, I've got three batches of pure silk DK (which I did once before) and a couple of skeins of worsted-weight Columbia yarn from a Michigan farm (it's nice and soft).

I've been trying out some new yarns, including some 50% tencel/50% merino wool sock yarn. I was pleased with the way the dye took so I'm hoping to have some skeins of the merino/tencel in the update after this next one. (Believe it or not, I'm still waiting for a backorder of the half wool, half silk that Liz so charmingly used for her Clapotis,** I'm waiting on a delivery of roving, I'm waiting on a backorder of superwash merino, AND I'm waiting on a backorder of merino/silk. Feh.)



*According to a pet astrology website found on the prestigious Internet, "Libra pets are easy-going and like lots of attention. These pets divide their attention equally among all members of the family. They make wonderful companions and hate to be left alone. These pets love good food and soft music. They can be stubborn at times, and may disappear to sulk."

**I got together for a quick cup of tea and some knitting with Liz last week. You should see her phat ride...

February Book Report (slim pickins)

I only got through one book in February -- and I just squeaked it in, finishing it last night. (When my Lyme acts up and I go to sleep at 9 p.m. every night, it's hard to get a lot of reading done. And let's not even talk about knitting.)

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, which was very kindly sent to me by a faithful reader and test knitter (thanks, Carol!) was heartbreaking, fascinating and infuriating. The subject of the book, David Reimer, suffered a horrible accident as a baby that resulted in a penisectomy. Under the guidance of a Svengali-like psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins, his well-meaning parents had doctors perform a rudimentary sex-change operation and raised him as a girl. David's childhood was every bit as miserable as you might expect, and at age 14, when he learned for the first time what had happened to him, he resolved to switch back and live the remainder of his life as a boy. What is particularly infuriating is that the doctor who spearheaded the course of treatment apparently did not communicate to the parents that this was basically an experimental course of treatment and that the doctor's own scientific "methods" left a whole lot to be desired. In fact, even though Reimer's case could not be considered a success by any standard, the doctor continued to portray it as such, likely leading to more ill-fated surgeries on babies with damaged or ambiguous genitals.

Black Bunny preview

Here's a sneak peek at tomorrow's Etsy update. I've got some rovings and a lot of superwash merino sock yarn, as well as a couple of wool/nylon sock yarns.



I'm updating in the morning, so get ready to hit that refresh button.

About colorways

At Stitches East last year, I helped a customer who was looking for Koigu. She was a very nice woman and she came clutching a Vogue Knitting in her hand, one that featured a beautiful multi-colored garment designed by one of the Koigu ladies. She also had a handwritten list of the color numbers and quantities used in the sample shown in the magazine. She handed me the list and asked which of these colors we had.

The simple answer was that I had no idea, nor did anyone in the booth (except maybe Lisa, whose steel-trap mind can recognize some colorways of Koigu; you’ve haven’t lived until you’ve trawled a yarn festival with Lisa, only to have her stop mid-sentence and dash over to a nearby booth, saying over her shoulder “I think they’ve got 107B!”)

But we generally don’t pay much attention to color numbers or dyelots with Koigu because it’s a handpainted yarn created by artists. Even skeins from the same dye lot can look drastically different, and skeins from different dye lots in the same (alleged) colorway often look very different too. I tried to explain this to the customer, but she just couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She settled for searching through each bin of Koigu, examining the tags carefully for color numbers. She found maybe three of the ones she was looking for. We offered to help her find alternatives that would look good, but she refused. She went on to the next booth, after carefully crossing off the ones she had purchased, confident that she could replicate the list by the end of the weekend.

I haven’t seen this customer again, so I don’t know whether she found all the ones on her list. But I would bet serious money on the fact that when her Holy Grail of Koigu quest is done, and the garment is complete, it isn’t going to look exactly like the one in the magazine.

When you’re a new knitter, you invariably discover the importance of dye lots when it comes to commercially-dyed yarns. Sadly, this often happens when you start a project, run out of the yarn you originally bought, and get more. Happily you knit along until you notice that the last part of the sweater is a noticeably different shade than the first part. Then some kind soul takes pity on you and explains why it’s best to purchase all yarn for a single project dyed in the same batch, or dye lot. Why? Because variations in the dyeing process – even when commercial mills do it – can make the same shade of the same yarn look like a different color if the dye lots are different.*

This is particularly true of hand-painted yarns. Even if I take careful notes of the exact process I used – dye colors and proportions, the way I apply the dye, and so forth – I still can end up with two strikingly different batches of yarn that are supposed to be the same “colorway.” There are just too many variables, many of them intangible (perhaps different skeins of the same yarn were made from the wool of different sheep, or maybe one batch soaked longer, or maybe the strength of the dye varies slightly from container to container. I could think of a dozen more variables like that.).**

For this reason, when I do stuff for Black Bunny Fibers, I don’t profess to have a set of regular “colorways” nor do I profess to be able to exactly repeat any given set of colors. I can take a shot at it, and I might produce something that looks pretty close, but I can’t guarantee it. There are certain batches that I know beyond the shadow of a doubt I can’t replicate, because I sometimes mix all sorts of dyes together and it would be impossible to ever mix the same batches in the same ways again without taking painful copious notes – and at the risk of sounding like a smacked ass, part of the fun for me is playing around and seeing what I come up with. You know, following my muse and all that.

Still, I do struggle with the issue of replication. I frequently get emails from people saying “Hey, are you going to dye up any more of that [fill in the blank] colorway?” And I’d like to accommodate them, and I try, but it doesn’t always work out. Part of what makes my stuff unique (I hope) is the way I do it and becoming too anal about that would, I think, make my stuff more generic. This is not meant as an apology but simply an explanation.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that when it comes to handpainted yarns, particularly from small producers like me, try to ease up on the expectations. Sure, it may be comfortable and predictable to believe that your garment will look exactly like the one you saw, or that your skein will look exactly like the one on etsy. But isn’t it also kind of cool knowing that you have a skein that, by definition, is unique in all the world? Isn’t there something exciting about diving into the color and putting aside your -- or someone else's -- preconceived notions about it? Is making a mistake or getting something different than you anticipated such a horrible thing, or is it an inevitable byproduct of using unique yarns and fibers?

That was what I tried to explain to the Stitches customer. She’s probably still going from yarn shop to yarn shop, though, desperately trying to score 3 skeins of color 375 rather than trusting her own instincts about what she likes and what she thinks looks good.

*I learned this while knitting a baby blanket for my oldest kid. I ran out of cream cotton yarn and was stuck taking a different dye lot. When some friends came over and were admiring the blanket, my husband’s asshole observant friend said “Oh, look at the stripe in the blanket!” Yep, it was where the two dye lots diverged.

**In fact, even two skeins which are dyed together as part of the same dye lot, exactly alike in every controllable way, may look different – startlingly so – when you knit them up. This freaks a lot of people out, but it’s inevitable when it comes to yarns that are individually dyed.