black walnut

     I've got things in the works. Namely, a dye class in the first week of December and a craft show during the second, plus stocking up for Christmas Market in Georgetown. Which also means I have a whole lot of spinning and knitting and dyeing ahead of me.  Adding NaNiWriMo to all that was an awesome idea, too, right? It hasn't been all that difficult actually. It helps that I've been doing research for it for years now. And 1,700 words per day is not as impossible to get through as it seemed. My main concern is what happens when I run out of things to write about. Hopeful that won't happen before I get to 50,000.

     In between all the hands one stuff I have to get done I've added a few vats to work themselves out in the background. Here's a shot of the black walnut. It's as smelly as it looks. All those bubbles mean its fermenting which hopefully means its releasing a lot of dye compounds, too. Although with black walnut, I hear, a little goes a long way.

Plants and post-apocalyptica

This is that time of year when I'm so unbusy it starts to stress me out as much as when I am trying to get ten things done at once. Its also the time of year for snow, that fluffy blanket of oppression, both metaphorical and not. So much of it that I'd give in to my hermetical tendencies and stick to the indoors rather than buck up, bundle the kids up and get our butts outdoors. Last year this was a (literally) depressing combination that I mistakenly tried to remedy with tons of books on growing things. The result was that by the time spring rolled in I was on the verge.

When I was little I thought I'd grow up and live in a mountain town. I loved visiting my aunt and uncle in Breckenridge and it all seemed so cozy and fun and interesting. Living in one now...I miss my city anonymity and having more that three places to go besides the apartment. There are awesome bits like hiking in the woods, meeting people who've known Gerry since he was a kid or feeling comfortable letting Anais semi-free-range around town. But there just isn't enough awesome to outweigh or even balance out that resigned feeling of ick I get when I think about being here for another year. Where to go from here has become one the the chief occupations of my brain in the past few months. Because beggars can't be choosers. Not even this one. What I thought was a serendipitous solution turned out to be not so much. I'm back at square one with more ideas than ever, but no real plan or means for actualizing them.

And yet, I'm not nearly as close to circling the drain as I was this time last year. I think part of that has to do with me being more focused on self-care (st. john's wort and immunity boosting blends of spices in my coffee, etc.) and not caring if its a placebo or really working. My mom and rest of my family have been extra supportive lately, too. That and for as much as I've done less this year, in some ways I've accomplished more. I didn't get back to Austin for the Renegade Craft Fair, but I did have a art batt included for a display at the Denver Art Museum, which led to getting a consignment deal with the gift shop there over the summer. And I may have done fewer shows overall, but I seem to have made more at each than I would have otherwise. I'm slowly adding more stockists to the fold and the whole Eat Agar thing is more cohesive product and brand-wise. My ethos and my output have become conjoined twins. Little bits of the over-arching plan I came up with three years ago are coming together. I'm even back to researching what would've been my thesis. Because who needs the approval of a committee to put a book together, anyway? Pfftt!

A litany of this week's accomplishments

Finished spinning up the Spaulding Pink batch for my sweater.

Started and almost completed a child sized sweater for the shop.

Knit up one out of a family pack of four hats for the White Buffalo Farm fundraiser.

And mailed out two custom orders I picked up at craft markets last month.

Sold my last skein of Summer People: May to a wonderful traveling couple I met while working at the shop in Georgetown this weekend.

Updated Anais' unschooling Tumblr.

Roasted coffee in my popcorn popper. Got my oven back and made some pizza, too. Tomorrow begins a week of dyeing and some last foraging before winter and generally gearing up for restocking for the holidays.

Walks in the woods

I don't have a lot of words right now, so here's a photo essay. We've been going on walks into the woods lately. There are tiny wild raspberries and scads of different kinds of mushrooms to try and identify. Toby loves shaking the aspens to make it rain and Anais is always on the lookout for the next pear-shaped puffball.

 

 

Bad wolf

Here's a quick glimpse of what I'm up to these days. Mostly spinning, with some scant knitting and kit-making thrown in for spice. I'm also perfecting the art of reproducing Sukoshi batches from the past. Its all for an order due at the end of the month so if you hear crickets in my general direction, that's why-for. The yarn in the photo is a repeat of a regular colorway that hasn't made it to the Etsy shop, yet. Although you could find a skein or three at Parlor Car, the shop in Georgetown. I sort of named this run after a pair of fingerless gloves, though the fact that the base wool came from a sheep named Rose may have nudged me, too. See the bright blips of pinkness? The oceany blues? I couldn't help naming this Sukoshi Bad Wolf Bay.

 

Foraging for color

I have a new hero, her name is India Flint. Between her and Rebecca Burgess I am feeling pretty excited about this dyeing fluff with plant stuffs business. When I went back home this summer to visit family I came back with all kinds of roots and flowers and leaves to try out. My grandparents helped me pick tickseed coreopsis along the roadside and after going through Harvesting Color with me my Grandpa John pointed out that he had several sorts of pants from the book right in his yard. In Georgetown I discovered wild hops and pokeberry, possibly leftover a time when folks still ate poke sallet and homebrewing was less a hobby than what you did if you wanted some beer in the house. So, between all those foraged bags of plant matter I've built up quite the stash of yellowy, purple-grey, earthy and acid green fiber. With winter coming on I'm wishing I got out there more, stashed and dried some rabbitbrush and sage at least. But that's what winter is for-planning and scheming for the things I'll do come spring.

I'll leave you with this mini-photo essay. It documents the process I meandered through from foraging to dyeing with aspen leaves, the last plant I gathered before the cold really set in here. In between the steps I was reading India Flint's amazing book, Eco Colour and getting lots of ideas to augment what I had already learned and put into practice with Rebecca Burgess' book. I highly recommend reading both if this is a subject that catches you, too.

 

I gathered most of the leaves from the old Georgetown Cemetery. It's part Royal Tenenbaums and part The Graveyard Book. I noticed that the place is also a bit of a botanic garden, so I'm sure to go back soon.

I left the leaves in my kitchen for a bit, too long I thought when I went check them again. So I added some fresher leaves from my yard and used an India Flint trick...I let them hang out in one of my pots for a few days. I giggled a bit when I stirred them one morning and they started talking to me with fermentation bubbles.

 

I know, I know. Pee in a bottle, right? But this is the color I got after a few days of cold, fermenting extraction. The next step was putting the pot and some fiber of various mordants over low heat and repeating that cycle a few times.

Which got me this handful of fluff, dyed a deep, earthy yellowy-green. I noticed that the color of the dye bath had deepened to an orange color and now I'm repeating the cold/hot cycle with some unmordanted fiber.

 

One thing that caught my attention in the cemetary was the abundance of lichens. Normally it's an ecological taboo to go scrapping this slow-moving, low-yielding symbiosis all helter-skelter. But cleaning it off of old gravestones is one of the exceptions.

 

 

 

 

Hometown Horseshoe

Where I'll be tomorrow:

In theory

Newsletters are supposed to be one of those essential things that artisan folks should have. But you have to have a list of email addresses for that and I don't really, yet. Salesmanship is not my long suit. So to that end I have a bribe for you. Actually it's a bribe and a request. Because I'm also beginning a transition in my dye process that I've been looking forward to for a while now. I'm starting to incorporate natural dye stuffs with my usual low-impact method. I need to test out how colorfast these new dyed fibers are. I could just do that myself; knit up a swatch and wash and otherwise abuse it. But I'd much rather hear from more than just myself on the subject. Here's the deal: I'll be giving a first round of mini skeins away at the Georgetown Horseshoe Market next weekend. The catch is that you have to sign up for the mailing list and you have to promise (cross your heart and kiss your elbow) to give me feedback on how the colors hold up. Any constructive critique would be welcome, really, but what I am especially interested in how the red fiber does. Its "beet" red! You can email me, tweet me, you could even leave it in the comments of this blog. It's feedback I'm after. To make it even more interesting I'll send a discount code your way when you do. Free and discounted yarn for you, feedback and the start of a newsletter list for me-if that sounds like a fair trade I hope I see you in Georgetown!