ATFARAOSWL

The ladies down here get together each month for a fiber group they call Dye'n to Ply, though it could also be called All Things Fiber Arts Related And Other Stuff We Like - which includes beadwork, videos, and of course, lunch menus that would impress even Ina Garten!

Projects on the calendar for this year include sheep shearing, dyeing spun yarn, beading, learning mitten patterns, button project and Christmas Party. Cheers!

My own fiber arts projects have been in full swing in preparation for the Caid A&S Pentathalon. I'm going to enter two fiber arts projects: The first is a recreation of the Coppergate sock(s). I ordered some raw Romney fleece from a nice lady in Michigan (www.willowfarmwool.com) for the project. I used synthetic urea mixed at 3 grams for each 1.5 quart of filtered water (18g and 10qt total). After heating the water till steaming, I mixed in the urea and let it cool till I could stand to hold my hand against the side of the pot. The wool went in at this point and sat for about 5 hours (till it cooled to almost room temp). I dipped and gently swished it several times to rinse it without felting. Then I combed the still intact locks with my Indigo Hound Viking single-row combs. Shaun was nice enough to buy me clamps, as holding one comb down with my boot up on the table while drawing the rest off through my seashell diz wasn't very economical time-wise...

Then I spun it all up fine as a semi-worsted yarn and plied it on my soapstone whirl dropspindle (S-spun and Z-plied). I can't find the guage of the yarn in the original sock, but I do have a guage for the naalbinding: about 3.6 rows per cm. My two test pieces done in Hald type I (same as the Coopergate sock, with each loop connecting with 1 overlap across the row) and Hald type II (each loop connecting with 2 overlaps across the row) are about 2 rows per cm.

Hald I: (both sides the same)

  

Hald II: (front and reverse)

My other other project is tablet weaving. I bought a 610yd skein of 2/12 weaver's silk from Halcyon. Although cochineal wasn't available in period (other scale insects in Europe and Western Asia produced the same carminic acid or a lac dye, such as kermes), the chemical dye compound is the same as the traditional insect dyestuffs so I used it anyways. I used J.N. Lile's recipe for "crimson" on silk. I made up an alum mordant bath - which was mixed warm and allowed to cool to room temp. The silk went in and sat 6 hours (instead of the 2 dippings at 3 hours each which he suggests). The alum mix was: 3 oz alum sulfate in 2 gallons of filtered water. After this, the skein was rinsed, rung out, and 'wuzzed' till no more water could be extracted. I put it in a ziplock overnight while preparing the dye. To make the cochineal dyebath, 1 oz of cochineal was ground to dust and steeped in a gallon ziplock in 2 quarts of filtered water overnight. The next afternoon, I poured it out of the bag (careful not to pour in the slurry) into 2 gallons warm filtered water. I worked in the still damp skein till it was completely colored in the bath and slowly brought up the temp to 160F over half an hour. I held it at this temp for 1 hour, then turned off the heat and let it cool just till I could pull out the skein. This got rinsed and a light wash in Eucalan, then rung out and wuzzed. It was an amazing wine-dark puple when wet and a lovely plum purple when dry. Liles made his cochineal silk crimson by using a post-mordant dip in tin. I like the purple color and don't want to fuss with tin, so I'm calling it good here. 

I will post more on these projects as they progress.