Dyeing – Page 20 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Yarn. Yarn for Sale.

Posted on September 21, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’ve been a bad blogger this week, but it has been quite a week. I’ve been working away from home, which always gets me a little out of kilter. I did manage to hear the Yarn Harlot speak Wednesday night in Atlanta. I even got one of my books signed. I was at the tail-end of the autograph line (you can imagine how exhausted she was after speaking and signing books for 700 people), and although Stephanie was clearly showing signs of being a famous author on a multi-city trip, she was still nice and funny.

Pictures should be forthcoming shortly, since Elizabeth was smart enough to bring along her camera. The speech was great. The amazing thing was running into SO many people from Birmingham, including a whole crewe from my local yarn shop and a really great woman who lives around the corner (lunch date. she’s going to help me with spinning, too). It was a fun night in the middle of a hectic work week!

This weekend I’ll be off at the Serenbe art retreat. We’re leaving late afternoon. While I’m gone, please visit my shop and buy some yarn. It will give me no end of happiness to boss around the Judge, who is going to be shipping your yarn while I’m gone, so he can see just how much detail and attention is required to make a pretty package, do labels, and get the right yarn in the mail. (Hmmmm….on second thought, you may want to wait until I get home on Monday.)

Seriously, there are some nice skeins of silk and cashmere and some very pretty blue faced leicester over-dyes in the Elliebelly at Hyena Cart shoppe this week, with more on the main site. So please do drop by.

Sock Progress, Dyed Yarn, & Art

Posted on September 13, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’m very linear today. I have to stay focused because the soon to be 17 year old (he who got on the school bus with my car keys in his pocket this morning) has given me a birthday dinner menu that starts with oysters for appetizers, moves on to lamb roast and baked potatoes, with a greek salad, and finishes up with a chocolate mousse cake. This will require huge organizational skills from a working mom on a Friday, so I’m focused and linear today.

(1) Sock progress:

I’m going to break down here and confess to being in love with this socks. I’m sorry that they’re running dead on gauge, which means they will fit Miss Ellie, but not me. Just a simple little basic stockinette sock, but oh so pleasing in this yarn!

(2) Dyed Yarn

I think I have neglected to do more than mention in passing that I’m having a special fairytale-inspired yarn week at Elliebelly. Please come by and take a look! There are some gorgeous silk and cashmere colorways, along with blue faced leicester, Merino, and Peace Fleece. I’m particularly fond of the sock yarns in Baba Yaga and Princess and the Pea.

There are lots of yarns to choose from, with more being stocked today and tomorrow. I would love any input you have on which of these colorways you would like to see incorporated into my fall line.

(3) Art. I am so excited! The weekend after this, I’m taking classes from Catherine Moore with my art-sistahs. We’re making a fatbook for the retreat weekend. I decided to do the background for my pages from one large sheet of watercolor paper. I’ve been layering on it all week and it’s just about done. Here is a picture of it in progress, and I hope to have the finished pages to share by the end of the week.

Success!

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Third time was the charm. I remembered the button holes. I remembered the extra rows. And, armed with experience, I did a picot edge castoff. Here is the cuff for the first of my Rock and Weave socks, and just a wee start on the second one.

The yarn, in case you haven’t seem me rave about it, is Colinette’s Jitterbug sock yarn in Popsicle. I adore this yarn. I want it in EVERY colorway. It’s genius. Mine came from one of my favorite local yarn stores, In the Making. Donna, the owner, is really nice and has started mail ordering yarn, if you want some and have any trouble finding it. With cooler weather hopefully coming soon, I’m hoping to make these socks a priority so I can wear them when I’m in Connecticut in early October to visit my #2 son, who starts school up there today!

I’ve also been on a dyeing spree. Starting on September 10 (next Monday), I’ll be having a week long stocking of fairytale-inspired yarns at my HC shop. Different yarns every day, including cashmere, silk and several luxury sock yarns, in addition to some great Blue Faced Leicester and Merino yarns. I have several colorways that will be available this Thursday, as well, including some of the Eire cashmere I showed you earlier this week, the new Mordechai colorway,

Painter’s Pallet,

and more yarn in the Retro Kitchen, Orchard, and Girl Power colorways, to keep all the nice peeps who asked for more of them happy. Please come and shop with me on noon Thursday when all the new yarn stocks.

Hodgepodge

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’m having one of those ADD kind of days, flitting from one thing to the next. I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea about the next things I wanted to do with my collage for Lesley’s Pock-et-ful book. So at 0’dark thirty, I found myself cutting and sewing. I did some more work on my background, then I put together a little pocket, layering a Paper Whimsy transparency image over an old telegram, and sewed it to the page.

Then I prepared some tags — aging them and giving them some paint. The larger ones on the left are new, the two smaller ones on the right that are more difficult to see are actually vintage tags that I used some Moonshadow Inks on. I’m going to journal about inspiration on the tags, and include them inside the pocket. Look at how cool it is that the words "next time" from the telegraph are highlighted underneath the transparency at the bottom of the girl’s skirt. So much of collage art is serendipity and drawing inspiration from what develops if you just let go.

While my tags were drying, I examined my find from yesterday’s thrifting trip after the farmer’s market. Ellie found some adorable miniature nutcrackers, which I neglected to photograph, but really beautiful ones, that she got for .50 each. And I scored this strange little light fixture for .50.

The metal box closes with a little latch and seemed to be begging me to alter it. I’m torn between that and turning it into a vase for the little posies the children like to bring me from the garden. I’ll detach the cord and the light attachment and see what it seems to be wanting to turn into.

After that, I got a little help from my oldest son winding yarn. He is a wonderful skein winder (if you buy yarn from me, he is probably the one who rewinds your skeins for you) and seems to like it because it keeps him in Starbucks money and he gets first shot at naming the colorways (hence blocking his younger sister’s increasing requests to dye "I live in New York, my brother’s a dork"). I’ve been dyeing cashmere this week and we decided to reskein it.

This first one is Wicked.

And this is Eire.

I love cashmere. I’m dreaming about a Mobius wrap. And maybe a pair of gloves. It feels so good. If I ever leave the judge, it will be for some cashmere.

I liked Eire so much I repeated it on Blue Faced Leicester sock yarn. It will go first to Elliebelly Club Sock members, and if there is any left, I’ll offer it at my Hyena Cart store. This colorway is definitely a keeper.

The last thing I did this morning was getting birthday presents ready. We’re having a nine-year old birthday tomorrow, but are celebrating today as one of her brothers is leaving for school in the morning. I hope she’s going to have as much fun with them as we had getting them!

Do over. And then, do over again.

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

The title says it all. *Sigh* Do over. And then do over again.

This is what happens when you don’t read the pattern. Yes, I do have an excuse, several in fact, for being distracted right now, but really. Not just once, but twice.

I tempted to skip straight to my artwork, but I’ll dish the knitting trauma first. This is the first cuff for my Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rock and Weave Socks. Lots of linen stitch, and very enjoyable it is to knit. The colors are much prettier than the picture shows — the yarn is Colinette’s Jitterbug Sock Yarn in Popsicle. The first mistake was understandable. In my excitement to be at the end of the cuff, I cast off. I was excited about trying the picot edge cast off for the first time. I did it, only realizing after the fact that I was supposed to do the buttonholes first.

So, this morning, I frogged out my pretty picot edge, knit buttonholes and cast off again. Oops! Really. Don’t you think I would have read the pattern better the second time through? i’ve got to frog again, redo the buttonholes and continue in linen stitch for a bit before I get to cast off. Oh the agony of it. I resolve to be a better pattern reader in the future!

Work in my studio is going much better than the knitting right now! I’m in the thick of my current book in the Pock-et-ful Round Robin. I’m working in Lesley Wood’s Inspirations Book. The minute I saw this book, I had two related ideas. I scribbled them down right away.

The first is suggestion — I draw a great deal of inspiration from things that remotely suggest at something else. Outlines. Ideas. Subconscious images that emerge. All of these things call to me. When I got down to work, one of the first things I did was to transfer an outline from a picture I took of a building when I was going to school in Germany over some text.

Suggestion. I like that it’s unclear. I draw inspiration from things that are less than black and white in their meaning.

The second idea that hit me immediately was the interplay between the words muse and amuse. All of us who make art have muses. I’m most often inspired by my daughter. I won’t bore you. Let’s just leave it at the fact that she is a creative genius at the age of nine. And amuse. I like to laugh. Even at dark things. And I’ve been in a dark mood, at least in terms of color, lately. This is the background I have begun.

I’m hoping that somewhere in between muse and amuse, I’ll find the inspiration for this piece. My table, like always, is a disaster area. No matter how big of a space I start out with, it gets filled up with flotsam until I’m working in about 5 inches at the very edge of the table.

I have some images and leftover bits I’m playing with.

I also have this: The Culpeppers — a treasured book from my childhood. It has been eviscerated by Trouble, the stray dog I took in last fall. In addition to lavishing the entire family with attention, she has chewed up all kinds of things, large and small, including three pounds of filet steak and a futon. She is part German Shorthaired Pointer, so she likes to carry things around in her mouth. Unlike a good bird dog, though, she likes to chew them up as well. And so, this book, which was being read by Ellie, met it’s sad fate.

I love this book, though. I rescued it. Its sweet little line drawings have a very retro-feel, and I love the text. I’m planning on dyeing a yarn colorway in these simple, sweet colors. And I have a feeling that somewhere inside this book, I’ll find the inspiration I need to pull together all of my ideas into just the right artwork for Lesley’s book.

Silk & Rayon

Posted on August 23, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have pictures of silk and rayon to show you today! The silk is the results of the dyeing process I showed y’all in my last post. The rayon is my painstakingly slow finishing work on the Giotto tank. I’ve been knitting it forever, so I suppose it makes sense I would stretch out finishing it over multiple days.

This is the silk I solar dyed over the weekend. It turned out beautifully and was an energy efficient process, too!

This is a close up, to give you a little bit better idea of how the crackle looks. I like the scattered dots with the coronas. This silk has a very peaceful feeling to it — I’m very tempted to do some yardage and turn it into a duvet cover.

I’ve knit the straps for the Ophelia.

I stuck with the three rows called for in the pattern, but am thinking they might need to be a bit wider, which is why I’m dragging my feet on sewing up the side seams.

I’m also not totally sure I like this colorway knit up like this, and have been toying with the idea of overdyeing the entire tank once it is finished. It may be that I started it in winter, thinking it would be great for spring. Now, I’m dreaming of a more fallish colorway.

I’m hoping to finish it up in the next day or two, and be ready to model it in my newly ~~less post-fourth baby enlarged~~ svelte body over the weekend.

I’ve got new yarn for sale at Elliebelly today. Please take a look! Here’s a little sneak peak of one of the colorways.

Dyeing Silk

Posted on August 19, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Did I mention that it’s hot here? Horribly hot. Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk, so, I decided to dye silk on the sidewalk. Or at least to dye it in some of my long pans outside on the front porch.

Armed with a little plastic tub and some dyes in squirt top bottles (Procion H for silk), along with brushes and gloves, I went to work.

I uniformly scrunched the silk — sort of a lazy man’s version of even pleating — and put it into the tray. The first dye bath was blues and purples. Actually, I need to back up and tell you that after soaking the silk in vinegar, I put it into a very pale blue dye bath, and put down that first layer evenly over the silk in an extra large pot. So outdoors was the first varigated layer. I did the first side and then gently lifted the silk and turned it over, maintaining the "scrunch" and repeated the colors on the back side.

I let this heat up and then covered it in plastic, followed by aluminum foil, which quickly caused the temperature to soar. I let it sit for close to 24 hours.

This was followed with a second layer of color, which will hopefully produce highlights.

This second bath will sit, again covered, for another 24 to 48 hours, or as long as I can stand it because I’m dying to see the results. After rinsing, the silk is reconditioned (sort of like conditioning your hair) and voila, hopefully, beautiful hand-dyed silk.

If you’re interested in seeing more detail about this method, I have a full tutorial on Paula Burch’s fabulous dyeing website. There is a link in the upper right hand corner of this page.

As if all that fabulous silk wasn’t reward enough, the children were playing outside in our very parched yard while I was working. I was finishing up when I heard Ellie say "a butterfly!" It was an amazing butterfly, only the second one we’ve seen this week. Isn’t it beautiful?