Advent Calendar 2024 Day 22 - Mrs Claus

I have seen a few variations of a "Mrs Claus" character over the years and she is usually portrayed as being dressed very similar to her husband "Santa Claus".  My favourite one is from Santa Claus The Movie and she is played by Judy Cornwell and John Huddleston played Santa and Dudley Moore played Patch, the elf.  All the information can be found in the first photo and if you click on the photo you can zoom in if you need to.

I guess this pattern could feature on her costume if she is wearing something knitted or maybe an apron with stitching on.

I have undone the tightly wrapped little bundles and made them into braids to take any pressures off the fibres and also so that I can see the colours properly and feel the texture too.  This one is really soft and smooth and is so lovely.  I definitely want some more of this one.

Advent Calendar 2024 Day 18 - Shoemaker

I am very familiar with the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker, it was one my favourite stories to read when I was little along with The Emperor's New Clothes and others that I had in a set of "Read It Yourself" books published by Ladybird in the late 1970's.  The front covers were mostly black with large rounded typeface in bright colours for the "Read it Yourself" and a small illustration at the bottom.  Happy memories from an innocent time of life.

All the information can be found in the first photo and if you click on the photo you can zoom in if you need to.

This is another one where the design on the packet is just a nice Christmassy type of design, although it does have a kind of Scandinavian type feel about it.

I have undone the tightly wrapped little bundles and made them into braids to take any pressures off the fibres and also so that I can see the colours properly and feel the texture too.  This one feels just nasty.  I don't want to touch it if I can help it.  I don't mind the colours so I am wondering if I could pull out most of the nasty rough Faroe Island wool and replace it with something else and add more similar fibres and colours to bring the total up to around 100g.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 3

The Cycling: Stage 3 is 230.8km of a flat route that starts in Plaisance and ends in Turin.

The Daily Challenge: Beneath Turin there are supposedly three alchemical caves, one of which may hide the elusive Philosopher's Stone.  You can't visit these caves as their location is only ever known by three people at a time - and these people don't know each other so they can't share it!  Turin is shrouded in a lot of magical myth and mystery; we fell down the rabbit hold and had to be forcibly dragged out!  Our first non-spinning challenge of this tour!  Share your favourite myth/legend - it could be something local to your area, lesser-known, or just something that you like!

Suggested Fibre: Myth, a lightly textured amber-coloured blend of 33.3% Merino, 33.3% Tweed and 33.3% Bamboo (the remaining 0.01% is a mystery)

What I did

Well, the fibre I chose to start spinning yesterday was picked to fit in with today's challenge and Rudolph is certainly both a myth and a legend. I plied the two singles that I spun yesterday of Rudolph's Nose from the 2021 Advent Calendar.  The finished yarn is wonderfully soft and I have 101g/363m of sport weight yarn.  It is 25% Shetland Wool, 25% Tussah Silk, 25% Bamboo, 25% Bio-Nylon.  

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 2

The Cycling: Stage 2 is 199.2km of a hilly route that starts in Cesenatico and ends in Bologne.

The Daily Challenge: Bologne is home to one of the oldest universities in the world. Alma Mater Studiorum was founded in 1088 making it 936 years old!  In the spirit of learning new things today's challenge is to use a new technique.  This could be for spinning, plying or drafting - it could even be something you've recently learnt and want to practice.

Suggested Fibre: Dusty Brick - a warm orange blend of 75% Shetland and 25% Bio-nylon.

What I did

I'm not doing today's challenge but I made a start on spinning a 100g braid of fibre called Rudolph's Nose, which was the Day 16 fibre in the first fibre Advent Calendar that World of Wool produced in 2021, and you can read about the fibre by clicking on the highlighted link.  The reason that I have picked this fibre is because it fits in perfect with tomorrow's challenge about myth's and legends, and of course Rudoph is a both a myth and a legend. The different fibres are very subtly slightly different shades, not massively noticeably, but probably just the difference on how the same dye looks different on different fibres types. Two of the fibres in the blend actually fit with today's suggested fibre of Shetland and Bio-Nylon and Rudolph's nose also has Tussah Silk and Bamboo.

I managed to spin two singles today and this will be ready to ply tomorrow.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 13

The Tradition

Day 13 is called Sinterklaas and the tradition comes from The Netherlands. Based on Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, who was a Greek bishop in Turkey.  He is depicted as an elderly, stately man with white hair and a long white beard and wears a traditional white bishops alb with a long red cape over the top and a red mitre on his head. When he died stories of the goodness he did were told and eventually these became celebrated in the middle ages. Sinterklaas carries a big red book which records whether each child has been good or naughty in the past year. The feast of Sinterklaas is celebrated in the Netherlands on St Nicholas' Eve, 5th December, with the giving of gifts. The feast is also celebrated in other nearby countries on 6th December.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 60% Bio-Nylon (Rosso), 24% South American Wool, 7% Merino, 6% Viscose, 3% Stellina (Gold). Saint Nicholas has been dressed in red and white and that is what this blend is focussing on.  A blend of bio-nylon, wool, viscose and Stellina,  The red in this is the bio-nylon, chosen because it is biodegradable and even though Sinterklaas is dressed in red we really wanted to focus on the glitteryness and also on some of the textures that you see like ruffles around his hood and his collar and cuffs.  We have the lovely red and the glittery Stellina and you can see the really nice nepps running through this.  The great thing about this, it's got a very very large amount of Stellina in it, more than we normally put in which means it will show throughout all of the work you're doing but because this Stellina is quite soft it's not going to give you an itchy or scratchy feel. If you're spinning with it you probably want to draft it out in advance of spinning so that you can make sure you get a bit of everything in every ply and this really is quite a fun blend, there is a lot going on.

My Thoughts

I took a sharp in-take of breath when I opened this one and then squealed excitedly.  It's gorgeous! I can't wait to spin this one and I might spin it along with a white blend from last year's advent calendar that was pure white but very much similar to the white parts of this blend.  I'm not sure yet but that might be what I do with it.

The information that has been printed on the bags is not always correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards.  The percentages that they gave on the chat boards were not correct.  What they originally gave us was 60% Bio Nylon (Rosso), 30% Natural Tweed,  10% Glitter White/Gold.  They state that it is a high Stellina content blend, and it does look like there is a lot of it.  After discussion, the Natural Tweed is actually 80% South American Wool, 20% Viscose and the Glitter White/Gold is 70% Merino, 30% Stellina so this means that the final fibre content is actually 60% Bio Nylon, 24% South American Wool, 7% Merino, 6% Viscose and 3% Gold Stellina.  I can't believe that there is only 3% Stellina in the blend, it certainly looks like there is far more than that in the blend! 

What I have done with my bags is to write the actual fibre content on the bag using a gold gel pen in the gap immediately below the printed details, pretty much the only thing that will show up on black are the metallic gel pens.  This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 11

The Tradition

Day 11 is called Black Cake and the tradition comes from Barbados. A lot like our traditional Christmas cake but made with browning, which is a caramel-like syrup made from sugar and water which darkens as the cake is cooked, giving it a deeper colour and a distinctive flavour.  While our cakes can be soaked in whiskey, brandy or rum, the Black Cake is traditionally soaked in rum. 

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 40% Jacob (Black), 40% Shetland (Woodpecker and Tropic), 20% Bio-nylon (Bluebell). We have some beautiful blues because you can't think of Barbados without the blues but we also have some natural blacks in here.  The natural black is brought to us by the Jacob and Shetland. Jacob has patches of black and white with grey in between. Shetlands come in a massive variety of colours but they do come in black so you get these lovely darker shades.  We've popped some bio-nylon in which means that it has this lovely blue shade running through it and the great thing about the bio-nylon is it acts just like a wool, you don't get any squeak or sheen or anything like that, it looks matte, like a Merino blend would.  This isn't a super soft blend, its got a nice handle to it which means it will behave itself when you're spinning, it won't try and run away with you.  This is a really really versatile blend and it does have nice bit of bulk and squish to it so just like Barbados black cake I reckon this blend is going to be a bit moreish as well.

My Thoughts

I love the colour of this one.  It's not as soft as I would expect from Jacob and Shetland and I know that bio-nylon is not a harsh fibre either, its really soft.  I have found this though, that Jacob, especially, from suppliers is never as soft as what I get from raw fleece, and I think it might be because I comb all of the fleece that I get in and so all the coarsest fibres are removed to leave just the nicest, finest, softest fibres whilst fleece prepared for spinning by mills probably leave a lot of that in as they will want to get as much from a fleece as possible but my preference is always quality over quantity. With the bio-nylon in this one the yarn should be quite hardwearing.  This one is so different to how the camera on my phone captured the colours and at the time I couldn't get it to show all the variation of colours and it came out quite bright and vivid but in reality it is much duller and it is even a little darker than what my Canon camera captured.

The information that has been printed on the bags is not always correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards.  The percentages that they gave on the chat boards seem to be correct.  

What I have done with my bags is to write the actual fibre content on the bag using a gold gel pen in the gap immediately below the printed details, pretty much the only thing that will show up on black are the metallic gel pens.  This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags.

Dyeing all kinds of plant based fibres using Dylon cold water dyes

I've had a full day in the kitchen playing with a variety of plant and cellulose fibres and some cold water dyes.  My usual Greener Shades Dyes are not suitable for this kind of fibre and I now have quite a lot of it thanks to the two years of Advent Calendars and the occasional purchase by me, like the lap waste bags and a sample pack. 

I've bought some small packs of cold water hand-wash dyes by Dylon, they also do dyes you can use in the washing machine, I don't want those.  It doesn't say on the packets but working things out logically you can actually just use the amount of dye you need to use for the amount of fibre and keep the rest for later, you just need to be able to seal the packets up in between uses.  I have some food packet clips from Ikea which are really good and provide a nice tight seal.  You can also mix the dye colours to make new colours and shades, like my usual dyes, again it doesn't mention this on the packets but it does work. 

Each 50g packet dyes up to 250g of fabric or fibre.  The instructions say to weigh and then soak the fabric or fibre and to dissolve the whole pack of dye in 500ml of warm water.  Weighing the fabric seems like a daft instruction amongst the rest of the instructions to me, other than to make sure that what you are dyeing is less than 250g, because you would only weigh the fibre if you are weighing out the dye to achieve a specific depth of colour and these instructions are assuming you don't care about the finished shade or depth of colour, just shove all of the dye in and hope for the best.  It then says to fill a bucket or sink with 6 litres of warm water.  Next you have to add 250g of salt followed by the dye and then the fabric or fibre.  Stir for constantly for 15 minutes followed by regularly stirring for 45 minutes.  Rinse in cold water and its done.

My revised instructions for enabling these dyes to be used in smaller amounts is as follows: 

• use 1g of dye for every 5g of fibre
• Dissolve the required amount of dye in 10ml of warm water for every 1g of dye
• use 5g of salt for every 1g of dye
• add the dissolved dye to a further 120ml of warm water for every 1g of dye
• add the fibre and stir
• rinse in cold water after being in the dye for about an hour

So, the fibres that I have dyed are:

I also planned to dye a 10g sample of Egyptian Cotton, which I don't have a before photograph of and I have over-dyed two pink fibres that I have in my stash, 11g of pink Bamboo and 75g of Pink Soybean/Soysilk.  The pink soybean isn't too bad a shade of pink but I do have quite a lot so I have split it into 3 lots, keep one in the original pink and dyed the other two lots.

My "dye pots" are re-cycled plastic take-away tubs and these hold enough dye to dye roughly 30g-35g of fibre.  The dye colours that I have used are Vintage Blue, Deep Violet, Tropical Green and Sunshine Yellow.  The results are not always what I expected but I am dying this fibre purely to put into my "ingredients cupboard" in a variety of colours.  The fibre base colour will have an affect on the final result, especially the Soybean.  The Mint fibre is a kind of pale mushroom colour in real life so that is likely to have a bit of an affect on the results too.

There were 16 "dye pots" throughout the course of the day and most of them had 3 different types of fibre in them.  All of the fibres were soaked in warm water with the addition of a small amount of Synthropol prior to being put in the dye to remove any finishes that may have been on the surface of the fibre. 

The Soybean, Trilobal Nylon, Hemp and Faux Cashmere/Bio-Nylon are larger amounts and have been pulled into lumps of about 10g each.  The other fibres that I am dying from scratch are 25g samples htat have been split roughly in half to be dyed two different colours.  I will let the following photos tell you all need to know.  Where there is no percentage figures on the dye photos means that it was 100% of that colour.  I have only put percentage figures where I mixed the colours in those proportions.

I'm pretty happy with my dyed fibre.  The Soybean/SoySilk fibres didn't take the dye too well on the first attempt and I went back through and re-dyed them in the same colours as the first time around but this time it was on its own in the dyepot.  I also over-dyed the Trilobal Nylon and the Faux Cashmere/Bio-Nylon blend that had turned out bright pink from the Deep Violet dye.

I will write a separate post to discuss the results, as this one is long enough already.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 14

Wow, this one is proper proper pure brilliant white.  This one has given me a hard time trying to photograph it and its a fibre that will most likely go into my "ingredients cupboard".  It is called Faux, Faux, Faux and is 50% Faux Cashmere (made from nylon), 50% Bio-nylon so you could technically say that this is 100% nylon.

Advent Calendar Day 16

Ooooh it's red and Christmassy and called "Rudolph's Nose" and is another Advent Calendar Exclusive fibre.  It's a blend of 25% Shetland, 25% Bamboo, 25% Tussah Silk and 25% BioNylon.  Today's festive saying is "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus", sing it Michael, sing it MJ.