Warm Juju

It’s been cold for weeks. We’re through the election, the holidays and the Inaugural celebration and there is nothing to do now except get over our colds.

The temperatures here are so low that I am wearing three hats, two neck warmers and an old stand-by scarf that I made when I was 17. It’s funny for all of the zillion of things I’ve made that this scarf has stayed with me. I bought the yarn in Australia on my one and only visit there and the only time in my life I ever saw my Granddad Powell. That was 33 years ago.

A good piece of knitting is like a talisman. Energy is knit into each piece and you can feel the comfort of patient attention when you wrap something hand made around you. It protects you.

Great yarns also lend their magic. My yarns are a little like vintage wine, the wool comes from the same stock, yet each season is slightly different. After the death of Mother Trucker, I was happy that I had enough of her vintage left over to knit my grandson a sweater. Yarn of a good era, a grandmother’s love – all I needed was the right pattern.

My grandson is a growing beanstalk so I chose Trellis to sustain him as he gets up off the ground. The pattern is free and if you’re on Ravelry you can see over 600 versions of this pattern. (If you’re not yet on Ravelry and you are knitter, you’re really missing out.) I meandered through the photos to study color finally deciding on red tones, but hadn’t landed on an exact shade. So I left Ravelry and went to my dye books where Karen Kahle’s Vintage Dyes brought me to an old color, Vermont Barn Red. I loved its rich subtlety and with my son-in-law from Maine, I was happy to find a color representing his region.

So there it is. Mother Trucker and her sisters gave the wool, the color pours in from the baby’s father’s side, and I knit while wearing a scarf that brings me the protection of my own granddad. Chains of family spirit linked together in a very simple and meditative craft. Good Juju and something only love and time can purchase.

Dyeing with Black Walnuts

My neighbor has a stand of Black Walnut trees in her yard and was sweet enough to gather up a bushel and drop them off in my greenhouse.

It’s a clear case of one woman’s junk is another woman’s treasure. While they litter her roadway, for me they’re a favorite choice to dye wool. I love the creamy coffee color, it’s lightfast and no mordant is necessary. This very natural shade is a great choice when knitting for men. And I understand they are also good in cooking.

And it’s so simple: 1. Soak the hulls for

 a couple of days.
2. Pour the black water in a large part of water and simmer for an hour or so.
3. Toss a few skeins into the pot, cover and simmer until you reach the desired shade – about ½ an hour to an hour.
4. Turn off the heat and let it all sit in the pot overnight
5. Next morning fill sink with water, add a glug of Dawn and toss in the wool. Gently swish the wool through the water to remove any hull pieces and rinse out excess dye bath
6. Rinse until clear.
7. Squeeze out excess water, roll in towel and then hang to dry.
You can freeze the husks for later use or reuse the dye bath, although you will get lighter shades.
If you don’t have a generous neighbor you can always mail order.

I am in love with Nuno!

I took a nuno-felting workshop this weekend with Swedish felt artist Yvonne Bävman and I may never get my hands out of the soapy water. Her exhibits are mostly needle felted but this weekend was a playful excursion into Nuno.
We made scarves, table runners and handwarmers. We played with silks, cottons and merino in all forms.

Here are some pieces I made inspired by Valentine's Day. A set of handwarmers and a felt heart.




These handwarmers are apparently all the rage in Denmark! They are made of dyed Merino top layered with snippets of silk and lace with more wool on top. They are felted 'in the round' so they have no seam.


This scarf used the ballet Swan Lake as its muse. In this peice I did a more controlled layout using the top to draw swans on the chiffon water. The swans held their shape beautifully across the scarf. When laid flat you see swans floating on blue water.


This next piece was a gift for my mother and she was married in a peach gown so I darkened the color to recognize her 30 years of marriage! It was burgandy, orange and green merino top on silk chiffon. You can see the effect that the wool has - creating bubbles on the silk.

This last piece was made from old scarves that were cut in half and then slit every two inches. Rambouillet roving was woven into the slits and fleece was added on the edges for effect. The roving created an excellent shirred effect. It is very interesting to experiment with top, roving, fleece, silk bits, etc and see the different effects that occur! I hope you all enjoy your nuno play as much as I have!

Nuno Felting

This is my biggest experiment to date with Nuno.

I have an abundance of wool and also a seemingly endless supply of scarves. The two I used today I have owned for almost 30 years and while they are full of precious memories, I wanted to bring them into my future too.

This blog will be more pictures then words because I know the pictures will be what you study.

If I had one small piece of advice, it would be to repeat what you already hear every day - "experiment!" Each scarf I used behaved differently with the batting. The one shown was able to receive the wool fibers easily, while the other one (not shown) with a tighter weave, required some additional fiber on top and on the edge to finally bind the scarf with the wool. However, I loved the way my other scarf crinkled in response to the felting process.

For fiber I decided to go with batting. Yes, the books say to use roving (although I think they mean top and you could certainly use both as long as the wool is fine)but that nice roll of batting was calling out to me, so I hand painted it using the scarf as my muse.
I knew the color would morph dramatically from the original design, but that is half of the fun!. And it gave me a starting point and confidence in my color lay down - plus I love to paint wool. I only mention this because many of you may do your Nuno with roving you have purchased and you may not monkey around with all this dyeing alchemy. But if you do, it's lots of fun. It just takes a little more time. In fact, I allow one day for dyeing and then rest for a day while the wool dries before coming back to the actual felting.

You can see how the colors blended and ran and held their own at the same time. It's one of the things I love about blended color. This batting has not been felted at all, it has just been gently put through a heat-set dye. I wrapped it in a towel, put it in a lingerie bag and spun it in the washer before laying it flat to dry.

After a goods night rest and many repetitions of examining and re-examining my roving stash I was finally ready to commit to felt.
I lay down the bubble wrap (bubbles down! - if you don't you will get tell-tale bubble marks in your felting.) I have to admit that I gently s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the batting out until it was even and almost one-third larger then my scarf. Then I put the batting down on the bubble wrap, the scarf on top of the batting and finally I arranged some leftover robin's egg blue and turquoise roving on top of the scarf, again using the original scarf pattern as my inspiration. One other thing I learned while doing this is that I could have thinned the roving even more. I had done a great job with the batting, but I feel that if I had to do it over again, I would have thinned the roving even more.

This is the part where you get so excited you can't stand it. It's like looking at a bowl of cookie dough and wondering who invented baking? Why not just enjoy it as is?

Now lay an old sheer curtain on top of your fiber sandwich to hold the fibers in place. Then take some mild soap and cold water and sprinkle it over your sandwich. I wore rubber gloves because my hands get so dry and then just massaged the entire scarf for about 20 - 30 minutes. I kept peeling the curtain off to make sure it didn't bond with the scarf and it worked out fine.
Once you've massaged the fibers in the cool soapy water enough to see they are grabbing the silk, you roll them in bamboo and hard felt as you normally would, just forget about the hot water. I did this for quite a while - well over an hour and were my arms sore the next day! I just kept thinking about the Tibetan video from my earlier post and decided I could just get over it and keep rollin'!

Once the felting was done, I rolled it in a light cloth, put it through the spin cycle and then hung it to dry.

I can't wait to share the pictures!! they will be inserted here soon!

Transformation is a great exercise and it was so much fun to see the color, the scarf, and the wool combine and change and blend into something new.