It's really, really cold outside.

Really, really cold.

It was -44 degrees Celsius when we walked to work this morning.

I need a warmer hat.

I bought some wool from Erin on Saturday. One hundred grams of beautiful snowy white South African wool (which falls somewhere between Merino and Blue Faced Leicester on the fine wool scale).

I've been wanting to try oven dyeing so last night I got it all wet and put it in a casserole dish (that will never, ever be used for food) and poured blue and yellow and green dye over it and stuck it in the oven for half an hour.

After cooling off and rinsing and drying over night it looked like this:

It makes me think of spring - sky blues, cloud whites, daffodil yellows, leaf greens and a bit of earthy green-brown. The colours are much more apparent as I am spinning and I enjoy every one of them.

I'm spinning lumpy-bumpy style. Partly because I'm still getting used to the wheel and drafting and partly because I want a nice squashy warm hat. It works out well.

I'm half way done the spinning now. My yarn is hanging up to dry as I type. Thirty-eight metres of squashy hat wool.

We got married on Saturday, July 14th at 3:00 pm. It was a lovely sunny day and we were surrounded by friends and family. The ceremony was short and had everything important and meaningful without being flowery or wordy. This was very good since I was impatient to see Rob; Saturday morning wasincredibly long from my point of view (I’m sure the people setting things up will say differently). Right after the ceremony we went and got slushies (it was hot) and then drove back for pictures with family.
 
The reception was great. Rob had set up all the music and we had lots of fun things to dance to, including a few tangos. The food was delicious and the wines were the perfect compliment. Our cake decorator did a fantastic job and everyone enjoyed eating the cake after it had been cut.
 
Our goal was to have a wedding where everything was enjoyable and comfortable with a bit of a family barbeque atmosphere and I think we managed it. Very special thanks need to go to our parents and attendants for taking care of all the details and miscellaneous things that came up. I’ll put some pictures up here as soon as I’ve got some.
 
The picture above shows my shawl and purse. The are both patterns from Romantic Style by Jennie Atkinson. The Lace Shawl was made with two skeins of Rowan: Kid Silk Haze and 7.00 mm needles. The Buttoned Bag used about one and a half skeins of Rowan: Pure Wool DK and 3.75 mm needles (3.25 mm for the handles); the bag is decorated with mother-of-pearl buttons and glass beads and lined with fabric left over from my mother’s wedding dress.

So... Once you start spinning you develop this need for fibre. And when you look around a little bit on the web you discover all sorts of people dyeing all sorts of fibres in all sorts of beautiful colours. And if you keep looking you find people selling the plain undyedfibre and even the dyes and you think to yourself “I should give this try” and “It can’t be that hard.”


I got some merino roving and Gaywool dyes from The Black Lamb in Ontario. I picked these dyes because they are all ready to go with no measuring or mixing of substances and because the instruction were available from Louet’s web-site and were very simple and straight forward: Measure the appropriate amount of powder (half a cap in my case), add the power to the dye bath (in a pot you will never use for food), bring to a boil, add fibre, poke around a bit and let it boil for about half an hour.

It was very exciting to think I was going to turn fluffy whiteness (see the picture above) into fluffy greeness.

As it turned out, the instructions, while clear and simple, were not actually all that complete: Did they mean a rolling boil or a simmer? How long should I poke it around for? How would I tell when it was done?

I had the dye bath at a slow boil to start. There was steam rising from the surface and a few bubbles but they calmed down when I added the wool. The instructions had said that most of the dying happens in the first four minutes and it was very important to turn the wool over to expose it to fresh dye to get an even colour. I think I probably stirred my wool around for about 10 minutes because I couldn’t see my timer. I poked it every once in a while after that too: it seemed to all be on the surface and standing around staring at it was not very interesting.

After about fifteen minutes the bath started to boil more. I wasn’t sure if this was good or not. The instructions said boil: maybe bubbles were a good thing. I poked the wool under the water a bit more. It wasn’t sticking to the spoon as much as it had been.

At about twenty-five minutes something when click in my head:

Wool + Heat + Water + Agitation = Felt!

I poked my wool... it didn’t stick to the spool like it had as undyed fibre... I let it boil a little longer as I wondered how felted it might be and filled up a sink to rinse it.

So...

How do you like my new felt scarf?

It may be possible to salvage some of this wool for a felting project but part of me really wants to sew little white flowers into it and wear it with a nice earthy blouse. I have more wool so if I’m a little more careful next time I probably could.