Hey! It's Wednesday! Sometimes I do what I like to call 'Wool On The Wheel' on Wednesdays. Pretty much I share with you a yarn that I've spun up recently. Sometimes it's actually 'on the wheel' when I photograph it, and sometimes I share the end result. This week I want to wet your appetite a little bit for a shop update that's in the works.
This yarn was my first real experiment that turned into a new Collection called 'Medieval'. It's a sock weight 2ply yarn and completely natural! Dyed BFL fleece with natural dyes (here, Logwood, the purple!) is mixed with natural brown and grey BFL to create a more 'earthy' and 'old world' colour and texture.Originally I was inspired by the elaborate garments shown in paintings of Royalty at the National Portrait Gallery- but I also wanted it to be a bit more down to earth, so I started watching programs set in that era (and also fantasy like King Arthur and Game Of Thrones) and found that there were a lot more knitted and handmade looking garments in the lower classes. I love the big stitching on jackets especially.
Anyway, I digress. This yarn brings back all those feels. It's an absolute pleasure to spin, although because it is so skinny, it takes me AGES to get through one batt of fleece and even longer to fill up one bobbin. I like to imagine a slower pace of life and the spinning for a need (i.e. a family member needs a pair of socks because they got eaten by a dragon or something... haha) rather than a want. I usually listen to Shakespeare radio plays or watch Merlin while I'm spinning this.
Pictured above is the skein tied with some White fleece. I washed and fixed it with this in place so I could see if the dye ran. It didn't!
There will be four colourways of this wool up for sale in the Shop soon. Are you excited? I'm excited!Above is a close up of the yarn, with a little cheeky bit of turquoise that weasled it's way in to this particular skein. Naughty!Lots of Love, Kimxo
Mmm. Delicious Madder Reds. Mmm. Bright Buckthorn Yellows. Let's put the second exhausts together and see what we get... ... some Pale Peachy Oranges:
I love it that Natural Dyeing is always surprising me with it's colour combos. Always blow away that these colours come from nature and plants. The earth really does provide enough. Some more yummy eye candy & experiements:
For those of you that have never done any dying before. The general procedure is to make a dyebath and put the wool in it. Then you wait for a while, take it out and it's dyed! It's kind of hard to go wrong, really.
With Indigo, it's a slightly different process. You make the dyebath through a bunch of science like mixtures, and 'oxidize' the water (which sounded really high-tech to me). You don't need to pre-treat the wool at all, except wet it. The tricky part comes when you actually get down to the dyeing part. You can't leave the wool in too long or it will 'contaminate' the rest of the dyebath. And, get this- although you're dying it blue the dyebath is yellow. YES YELLOW. When you lift the wool out of the dyebath it changes magically before your eyes. MAGIC.
I nearly squealed in delight at my potion brilliance. (Slughorn would be proud.) You can only use the dyebath once because as soon as it gets oxygen in it- it turns blue and you can't reuse it. You can, however, re-dunk wool to create darker shades.
This is a sample of my first Indigo experiments (done in Nov 2012).
(From right to left: Once in Indigo. Several times in Indigo. Grey fleece several times in Indigo.) Also, because I'm an overachiever (Not really, I just get excited) I tried overdying with some wool that had previously been naturally dyed Yellow.Yellow + Blue = Green!Because it was my first time, I only tried little bits and played around with times. The darker blue I 'dunked' several times. I even tried leaving some bits in the remainer of the dyebath once I was done (for like an hour) but it didn't look much darker.You like? Kimxo
Around christmas, a lovely neighbour friend of my Mum's (and mine!) commissioned some beautiful handspun from me. She saw something I'd made for Mum and wanted something similar. So we got together and chose colours. I'm pretty proud of this, cause it's mostly naturally dyed colours! But the really cool thing about it, is that it's spun in a gradient so when she knits it up, it will go from those dark blues through to the magical purples and into that bouncy pink. There's just enough for making 1 cowl, so it's really unique! You can see that I've plied it with a thin sewing cotton, to give it strength. :] It's also nice and thick'n'thin so it's fun to knit with!
During one of her visits, I also gave her a refresher course in spinning and here are her results:Pretty good, eh? :] Kimxo
When I'm dying fleece in my kitchen, it's usually an all-day event, and I don't get to the exciting colour-on-fleece part till 3/4 the way through. There's a lot of prep and post things to be done. Soaking the fleece, getting the mordant ready, cooling the mordant, transferring the fleece to the mordant...It's a labour of love, but that's why I like it so much. It's magical. And time is a crucial part of it. Time and chemistry. And searching dusty old volumes in the library- looking for the perfect way to fix dye.Finally found it this weekend! Victory! And you know what that means... no running dye. Which means... I can sell Naturally Hand Dyed Wool in the shop soon!!!!!! I've been holding out because I wanted to be confident that it was going to stay. And now it does! I'm so happy. :] Kimxo
Here is another batch of fleece that I dyed because I couldn't throw away the dyebath without exhausting it completely. Such beautiful pale colours.Due to my (most probably late night) neglect, you can see bits of white where I didn't prep the fleece properly and dye didn't get. Nevermind. Good thing I'm a fan of loving and embracing all mistakes!There's enough here to make a nice shawl I think. Or matching jumpers for twin babies maybe? Or some mittens and a hat for a cold spring day. We shall just have to wait and see what it wants to become. kxo
Whilst filming for my Channel project- Ame (a fellow Illustration student) came and helped out with some of the more 'close up' shots of the Natural Dyeing process. Ame did a beautiful job- and also snapped these amazing film photos during the day.I love the overexposed, dreamy quality to these photos & check out this drawing Ame did too! Magic.Of course- Negs was no help at all- the lazy little kitty cat. hehe. But she does like it when Ame comes round and brings treats! :]
STREAMING LIVE HERE at 13:30 (Not in London? See what time it is here.)
Spend 20 min with me today, and learn how to Tie & Dye your clothes the natural way- using dyes that can be found in nature & your kitchen!! If you learn best by getting all the facts and having a friend explain it to you then the first 10 min is for you. I talk about loads of important things (like mordanting and making your own rubber bands and how not to achieve zombie hands!) in a vlog format. If you learn best by just watching someone do it- then the last 10 is for you! A really pretty and detailed step-by-step video for the visual learners out there. All set to some beautiful music by Sam and Jack.STREAMING LIVE HERE at 13:30 (Not in London? See what time it is here.)
This has been my baby for the last 3 months. Endless dye experiments and hours of planning and tests and sleepless nights of editing. I REALLY hope you enjoy it. It's silly and fun and hopefully you'll learn something new. [: I don't want to give too much away yet, you just gotta watch it! But besides leaving with a nice little bit of knowledge on Natural Dying, you'll also know 3 different techniques of tie dye! See you there!
Want to know more about Channel? Find all the info here.
Our big day is tomorrow! The fun starts at 9am Thursday the 10th of May! If you're local, you can come get involved or watch online here. Below is the full Channel schedule:
As you can see- I'm on at 13:30! Make sure you tune in- Here's a little peek & I'll be posting some more sneaks right before I go live!If you're curious as to what it's about- I can say it's a D.I.Y. type show where I share how to do Tie-Dye the natural way! And it's sort of a mix of vlog and pretty visual explanations. I think you're really going to like it- It's affectionately named: Craft-Time with Kim. haha. MAKE SURE YOU TUNE IN!
There are loads of fun programs going on throughout the day. I'll be giving little shoutouts in real-time tomorrow, and of course Instagramming! Seriously, you don't want to miss this! Kimxo
I've got a dear friend, Emma, who is on the photography course at Camberwell- and who comes to 'craft club' every wednesday. The last few days I've been helping her sort out logistics for a final piece she's putting together for an exhibition. It's been really wonderful being with her from start to finish (we spend a lot of time talking about work over tea and knitting!) and what she's come up with is a really cracking set of work! She's managed to combine photography and natural dyeing so well. Her work is, in a nutshell, about protected landscapes in London. She visited each site, drew, photographed, collected, explored and took rubbings- to try and capture the essence of the place. Alongside a set of prints, she will be exhibiting a rug (hand woven!) where the wool has been dyed by plants from each site.Today, she started in on making the rug- so much fun! I probably did not do her project justice with my words, but I just wanted to share with you how much natural dyeing and crafts has influenced the lives of my friends too! <3 Emma- you're awesome!
