Spinning up Himmel Blå

This is the third and final fibre that I brought from The Fluffy Viking seven years ago.  This one is a slightly different blend to the other two as it is 80% Merino, 20% Bamboo but it feels the same to me, so soft and beautiful.

As always, split down the length, spun from the end, made a 2ply yarn but this time it is fingering weight and 105g/402m. That's all three of them spun and all three spun to different weights.

R.I.P. Star

After we lost Ginger, one of our chickens, we noticed that one of our other chickens, Star, was not herself.  A few weeks after Ginger passed away we noticed that her droppings weren't normal and she was not herself.  We sought Veterinary help and he thought it might be Cancer and he gave her some medication to ease her suffering and she did perk up a bit but she had lost a lot of weight and I think it been too much for her and I found her this morning in one of the nests in the hen house.

This now means that Annie, our last chicken and the dark grey one in the first photo, is all alone and we need to consider what we are going to do as its unfair to keep a solitary chicken.

September's Fibre has arrived - Humboldt plus more Peak District

I've been looking forward to receiving this one since the letter arrived telling me that its based on the colouration of the Humboldt Penguin.  Just gotta love the funny penguins and a little bit of Happy Feet.  Its nice, I like it, and its soft too.  45% South American Wool, 25% Merino, 25% Llama, 5% Viscose Tweed Nepps.  This will be interesting when its spun up and I think the little bits of colour will be very subtle.

I also had the chance to buy some more fibre from past months so I bought an additional 300g of Peak District from back in April bringing my total of that fibre to a whopping 400g but it is suggested that it might be best spun around aran weight so I would need a good amount to be able to make a decent sized shawl.  I'll just pop a reminder of that fibre here.

September's Fibre Club Letter

September's fibre club letter has arrived and from this the yarn sounds very interesting.

The letter reads:

Alexander von Humboldt was born 250 years ago on September 14th. He was an incredible man, who travelled the world as a naturalist. He made a huge number of discoveries, a quick glance at the disambiguation page on Wikipedia reveals an astounding number of things that are named after him, more species use his name than any other scientist. Probably most notable of all was that he was the first scientist to raise the issue of climate change. As far back as 1800 he warned that humans were destroying our environment. Charles Darwin wrote that without Humboldt he would never have set foot on the Beagle. 

He was the son of Prussian aristocrats, he was able to self-finance trips to the Americas, and became one of the first scientists to decide and explore the continents. Over his lifetime he travelled 24,000 miles, including the entire length of the Orinoco River in Venezuela (1700 miles). It’s really hard to describe just how many things he discovered, how much data he collected, and how many theories he developed and proved. He was the first to recognise that Africa and South America would have once been a single land mass, long before the discovery of tectonic plates and the theory of continental drift. 

If you’ve looked at a weather forecast recently, then you will have seen the work of Humboldt. He was the first to collect temperatures at different geographical locations, and then draw lines connecting places of the same temperature, creating what’s known as an isobar. The modern maps we see with pretty coloured blobs showing how temperature fluctuates are the direct descendant of his way of presenting data. 

In addition to being a scientist Humboldt was also a humanist. He argued that all the people of the world were a single species, and that no culture had any “god-given” right to dominance over the rest, or any sort of biological advantage. He opposed slavery, imperialism and colonialism. Dyeing his lifetime slavery came to dominate the economy of the Americas, and empire building was at its peak. It’s hard to over state just how much his publicly stated opinions and beliefs set him apart from so many other public figures of the time. 

For your colour inspiration this month I’ve taken inspiration from one of the species named after Humboldt, Spheniscus humboldti, otherwise known as the Humboldt penguin. This species lived on islands off the coast of Chile, right in the path of the Humboldt current, the Pacific ocean current that brings cold water to the South American coast, which was also discovered by Humboldt.

So I can expect something penguin coloured, most likely black and white with maybe a few other bits of colour like yellow or blue.  I'm trying to remember exactly what a Humboldt penguin looks like, I may be getting the yellow and blue idea from another species of penguin, I'll have to have a look online.

From the spoilers chat she has revealed that it is a tweed blend with little bumps and it will be impossible to spin this perfectly smooth. She also says it contains Llama and South American wool, which are smooth with a long staple.  I can't wait to see this one!

The Harvest, 2019

With the back garden renovations that have taken place this year and us going away on holiday I was a little late this year in planting up the raised vegetable bed.  Following some problems in previous years with the carrots I decided to try growing them from seed rather than seedlings and so I decided to do this with all of the vegetables. 

I bought carrot seeds, beetroot seeds and runner bean seeds.  I didn't plant up until the first week of June and following the instructions on the packets I planted carrots and beetroot outdoors and within 24 hours of planting the seeds we had nothing but rain for a couple of weeks, a lot heavy rain.  The runner beans had to be sowed indoors and they were growing quickly.  I transported them outdoors and planted them in their growing place.

Some of the carrots started to sprout, but not many and the beetroot were a total no show.  I left it a few weeks but still nothing so I planted more seeds, thinking that maybe the first lot had been washed away with the sheer amount of rain we had had.  I kept looking in hope and eventually we had a few little leaves appear in a few places and out of about 300 seeds planted I counted about 40 tiny seedlings.  They were doing OK for about a week and then all of a sudden they just disappeared and not a single beetroot was grown and harvested this year.  I love fresh beetroot and I was devastated, given the glut of beetroot harvest we've had the past two years.

We didn't fair too well with the carrots either this year, I had to plant additional carrot seeds where there were large gaps where they just didn't germinate but we've not exactly had brilliant weather this year, its been quite wet, or at least that's what it seems to have been.  One thing we did do with the carrots this year though, and that was to get nice straight carrots!  I did make more carrot top dye again this year and I used it to dye some Jacobs fleece.

As for the beans, they went totally mad and I was harvesting huge amounts of beans every couple of days.  I'm not kidding, take a look at the photos, that is the same pile of beans from two different angles and that was the biggest single harvest but every couple of days I was harvesting half to thirds of that amount each time.  The freezer was full of bags of sliced, blanched runner beans.

Spinning up Tante Violett

This is another spinning fibre that I brought from The Fluffy Viking seven years ago and this also spun like a dream with no issues.  This one is also 60% Merino, 20% Polwarth, 20% Bleached Tussah Silk.

Its gorgeous, spun from the end and made a 2ply yarn that is sport weight and 103g/353m

Trying more plant based dyes

After harvesting the homegrown carrots, I have once again made some dye using the carrot tops but this time I am not waiting to use it at a later date, I am using it straight away.  I am also going to try a couple of dried goods for dyeing that I bought from a supplier, marigolds and logwood.

I mordanted the entirety of the white parts of a Jacob fleece in Bichromate of Potash first.  Its not a safe chemical and certainly not eco-friendly, which is a shame as by using plant material for dyes you would think that the whole process would be more eco-friendly than other dyes, but sadly not.  For plant dyes to take effectively you need to mordant the fibre and it is the various mordants that are not eco-friendly.

The fleece came from a friend of an ex-work colleague, you can read about that here.  This one was fleece No.5.

The first thing I dyed with was the carrot top dye that I had just made.  The tops had been chopped and soaked for 3 days, boiled up and simmered for about an hour.  I strained the greenery from the dye, which went into our compost bin, and put the dye liquid back into the dye pot and added 160g of mordanted fleece into it.  I don't think this is as vibrant as last time I used carrot top dyes but I am using a different fibre as well as maybe different strength of plant material relative to the amount of water.  I don't know, its often guesswork with me.

The next thing to go in the dye pot was some dried logwood which had been soaked in a little container of water for 12 hours.  This then had to be simmered for about an hour to obtain the dye.  Logwood produces dark grey dye but interestingly the water turned red when it was simmering.  I had read that if you add about a tablespoon of powdered chalk to the prepared logwood dye before you add the fibre then this produces blue fibres, rather than dark grey.  I gave this a go and put 247g of mordanted fleece into the dye pot.

I'm happy with the results of this one, I have a wonderful mix of dark blue and blue-grey fibres, this will be interesting once its combed.

Logwood can also be used on non-mordanted fibres and it is supposed to take.  The dye bath was clearly not exhausted so I ran and fetched some mohair fleece that I had had sitting around for some time.  I didn't dye all of the mohair but I did grab and good amount, 184g actually, and dumped it into the dye pot.  It didn't seem to be taking any of the dye at all until I added a good glug of citric acid to the dye pot, where it suddenly turned a mushroom kind of colour.  Not the best but not really nasty, I can use this, but I was hoping for some kind of blue-grey like the Jacob wool produced.

The final batch of dye was made using dried marigold flowers, which I followed the instructions for and soaked them for about an hour before simmering them for an hour.  I put 64g of mordanted fleece into the dye pot and hoped that it turned out the colour I had read about and that I hoped for.  No such luck.  Its quite boring to be honest and certainly does not have any orange colouration to it that my natural dye book said it produces with this mordant, as different mordants can affect the final colour produced and this is why I chose to mordant with Bichromate of Potash.