Advent Calendar 2024 Day 13 - Lutzelfrau

I'm not German so I haven't heard of today's character but she sounds interesting. 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.

The design on this little packet is pretty, but again doesn't seem to match the character, which is absolutely fine as that is not expected but wouldn't it be nice if they all did.

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.  I love this one. It is so fine and soft and the colours are so rich but also softened by the creaminess of the both the Soy Bean and the Tussah Silk.  I would love to get some more of this.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 9

The Tradition

Day 9 is called Julebord and the tradition comes from Norway and translates as "Christmas Table", also called Julefrokost in Denmark, Julbord in Sweden.  This tradition is about feasting and drinking with friends and family.  People gather and enjoy all of their favourite sweet and savoury traditional Christmas food.  This can include lamb, spiced sausages, rice pudding, jam and mulled wine and also Akevitt, which is a distilled Scandinavian spirit that has been made since the 15th century and is distilled from grain or potatoes and flavoured with a variety of herbs.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 50% Superwash Merino (Syrup), 20% Soybean, 20% Milk Protein, 10% Tussah Silk (Kale). With this blend we have been very careful with what we've put in it because we wanted to mimic the sort of foods that you might have at a Juleboard so specifically we have a Superwash Merino which is named Syrup and we've got Soybean and, Milk fibre and then we have Tussah Silk in the colour of Kale.  We wouldn't recommend eating all of these together by the way as it probably wouldn't taste very nice.  We have a lovely bright yellow blend and this is immensely soft and the kale in this is very very pale blue green colour coming through it, which adds a nice bit of depth to this blend.  This is very soft but unfortunately this will not work for felting.  If you spin, crochet or weave this will work very well in everything that you do and you can also put it through the washing machine but only on a gentle wash.  You can see the white of the Milk fibre and the Soybean in it.  The Soybean is slightly more creamy and the Milk is a bright white.  Merino in Syrup is the yellow and the Tussah Silk in kale is the green and that is a lovely blend and it really is so soft without being overly drapey.  You find that sometimes if you put too much of a fibre, such as a Mulberry Silk into it the drape is so heavy it pulls the blend apart but the Merino does a really good job of holding everything together and giving it a really great handle.

My Thoughts

This is a really fine fly-away blend, there is Milk fibre and Soybean in this, which are cellulose based fibres and these are very much like the Tussah Silk, which is also in this and these fibres make up 50% of the blend with the other 50% being the Superwash Merino. This one is a lot brighter/bolder than how the camera on my phone captured the colours, which looked quite washed out. I think I will need to spin this quite slowly and carefully so that it doesn't clump up.

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 for this one.  

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 17

"Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie....", no that's not it "star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright..." no, that's not it either.  This one is called Star of Bethlehem and is 50% Polwarth, 25% Camel, 25% Soybean and is really soft and fluffy and I love it.

After Christmas, in the New Year, WoW made additional 100g braids of fibre of all of the Advent Calendar Fibres available to purchase to those who had purchased the Advent Calendar.  There were limited stocks of each one available, it was on a first-come-first served basis and there was a short time frame of priority before the remaining stock was made available to general purchase.  This was one of 7 fibres that I bought an extra 100g of.

Peppermint Sparkles

Back in September I had a play with my new blending hackle and I made this beautiful fibre and I have now had chance to sit and spin it.  I am in love.  This one is very delicately coloured and so sparkly.

The final fibre count is 89% Merino Wool, 5% Angelina, 3% BFL, 1.5% Shetland Wool, 1.5% Soy Bean Silk.  This is sport weight and 109g/320m.  I am very happy with how this turned out.

Pink Fizzy Sparkles

Last month I had a play with my new blending hackle and one of the fibres I blended was some pink and white plant based fibres.  I wasn't happy with the result but is that because of the disappointment with the fibres or more to do with my dislike of the colour pink.  Hmmmm, maybe both.

I have finally spun up the fibre that I made, not happy with this either but its done now.

I've called it Pink Fizzy Sparkles, its very heavy and dense, definitely not something I would do again.  I worked out the final fibre content, based on what I put in to begin with and its 45% Egyptian Cotton, 22% Bamboo, 22% Soy Bean Silk, 7% Linen, 4% Angelina.  Its a sport weight at 90g/182m.

Parcel of Fibre from World of Wool

I have treated myself to a range of commercial ready-to-spin fibres from World of Wool.

I've bought a couple with the intention of spinning these as they are, a sample pack of British Breeds because I've heard a lot about some of those included in this pack but not sure if they're right for me and my needs and I don't want to fork out on buying a whole or part fleece only to discover its not for me, and the rest I've bought with the intention of using as ingredients with other fibres to create my own blends, although this means that I will have to look at buying dyes specifically for plant based fibres because I only have dyes for animal protein fibres.

The first one is 100g of 50% Polwarth, 25% Alpaca, 25% Silk and the last one is 100g of Zwartbles combed top as I wanted to try Zwartbles again following the poor quality fleece I had the unfortunate opportunity of processing previously.  The samples of British Breeds contain 25g each of Dorset Horn, Whitefaced Woodland, Moorit Shetland, Brown Bluefaced Leicester, Light Grey Herdwick, Light Grey Swaledale, Black Welsh and Black Jacob.

Dorset Horn I have only tried previously as a cross breed fleece I had.  Shetland I have had a few times but never in the Moorit colour.  Bluefaced Leicester I have spun once before, back in my early days of spinning and Black Jacob, well, I've spun lots of Jacob fleece, I've probably spun more Jacob than anything else.  The other breeds, Whitefaced Woodland, Herdwck, Swaledale and Black Welsh I have never spun before so it will be interesting to see how they handle.

The Merino/Suri Alpaca blend I might spin that and then dye it afterwards, not sure yet exactly what I will do with that.  The other fibres are all plant fibres and can be used blended with each other or I can blend them with any of the fleece as I process them.  These will become part of an "ingredients box" along with the various colours of Angelina that I have.

Good Old Fashioned Cape - Design D194

Staying with my own handspun yarn, this time I have opted for some lovely Falkand/Soy Silk that I spun back in 2012 and put that with a fairly simple little cape that just has lace along the bottom edge.  If you would like to know more about the yarn here is a post I wrote at the time of spinning.

I'm grateful to be knitting this right now as its really cold and with this lot sat on my lap as I work its keeping me warm.  Its got a good weight to it too.  Still needs to be washed, shaped and dried.

I decided that a vintage style cape needs vintage style buttons and these were only one of a couple of types that I have that actually 'worked' with the design and the colours of the yarn.

Yes, I think another one of these would be great in the shop, in a different colour of course!

Falkland Wool and Soy Bean Top

I bought some more pre-dyed spinning fibre to try, different to anything I have tried so far.  These are Falkland Wool Top from Dunnose Head Farm in the Falkland Islands, and Soy Bean Silk Top both bought from MandaCrafts, who dyed them.

The Falkland Wool Top is produced organically and on the Dunnose Head Farm website, it says this about their wool. "Naturally pure, naturally beautiful, and grown without the use of any artificial fertilisers, dips, injections or other chemicals, our wool is as unspoilt as you will find anywhere on this planet.  Hence the DHF green sheep logo - your guarantee of purity."

The Soy Bean Silk Top is the vegetable alternative to Silk and has been spaced dyed.  There is 150g of each fibre.

I spun both fibres individually and then plied them together.  I made two skeins of yarn, one is 148g/193m and the other is 138g/198m and both are Double Knit weight but because of the slight difference in measurements it will be best to use these working from both skeins, alternating every 2 rows to even the yarn out.