Spring Again! With time on my hands I’m back online :-)

‘Tis the time of Covid-19 isolation, staying at home to protect our health services so those who will need help can get it. So, I am working on a bamboo wrap – in blues and purple. The first sampling looks like this:

These patterns are from Strickler’s 8-shaft pattern book – numbers #319-6 and #318-6 (bottom to top)

It was a lovely warp.

The warp is 8/2 bamboo from Brassard and purchased from Knotty By Nature

The finished piece was lovely – silky with a wonderful shine that is captured somewhat in this photo.

Another project that is ready to go will be some cushion covers I will make from my handspun and home-dyed cotswold top. All the colours are produced from natural dyes. Alum is used as a mordant for all of the colours. I collected the walnut hulls and arbutus bark locally last summer. The extracts are all from Maiwa Supply.

Starting at the bottom centre then working clockwise:
Arbutus Bark plus Madder extract exhaust; Madder extract; Arbutus Bark; Walnut Husks; Cutch Extract (2 skeins); Chesnut Extract; and in the middle Madder Extract plus Walnut Husks

This was probably the first time I actually picked a colour palette and then intentionally chose the colours to use in a project. I am pleased with the resulting colours. There was one surprise when the arbutus bark produced a golden yellow instead of the rosy brown that I got the previous time I used it. The difference? Perhaps the growing conditions of the arbutus. This batch was collected on a parking lot at UVic last summer – the previous batch came from a friend on Lasqueti Island several years ago. No matter, the golden colour is a nice bright accent in the browns.

I’m not quite so organized as to have nailed down a weaving pattern, but it will be a weft-faced boundweave in some yet to be determined design. Slowly, slowly, this will move forward!

Not long ago I got together with some friends to dye some cotton/linen blend yarn with Procion dyes.

Cotton/linen blend yarn “painted” with dark blue, turquoise and green Procion dye.

After leaving the dye to set for a day, then washing the excess dye out.

So with the dye pots still out … I put on some logwood shavings to soak and added it to the pretty much exhausted chesnut dyebath with a few drops of iron extract. A couple more skeins of the cotton/linen blend were mordanted with tanin (Gallnut) and Alum then dropped into the dyebath. Wow! I also then put a skein that was already dyed with indigo, but not a very deep colour. I am most pleased with the results!