catkins, cat eggs, averting catastrophe

I can see signs of things waking up, even up here at 9000'. The aspens are spreading out their catkins, robins are starting to give the jays hell. We experimented with plant dyes on easter eggs this year. The kids especially loved how bright pink cabbage juice makes for blue and green. I wondered how much better they'd absorb dye if you hollowed them out and soaked them in vinegar or alum first.

Sometimes I take the scenic route when working with dyestuff. A while back my aunt and uncle
obliged my request for a few boxes of pruning leavings from the fruit trees in their orchard. After soaking this pot-full of the fruit wood twigs for a week I set them on the stove to steam one day and added yarn to the pot the next.  After a cold soak over another day or two I put it back on the stove and repeated the steaming. What had been a decent pale yellow deepened into an almost rusty ochre.

 And then I thought about adding iron water. So I did. Looking back now I wish I had left this first batch alone. But the resulting cool medium gray that developed on those middle skeins of silk is a color I've never gotten before. I keep thinking of things I'd like to knit them up as. With the weather warming I keep thinking of camping, fishing in the early morning hours and the perfect hiking hat. Maybe this one, or this?

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.

Some more wirecore

Here's one more wirecore. I made a super fancy batt too large, so I used the extra for this skein. I'm thinking I'll use it to make some bracelets for the Renegade show. It has silk and bamboo, mohair and angora and paco-vicuna cocoons. The main, not wirecored skein has big, puffy cocoons, but these ones are more like those beads you make out of magazines at summer camp. Only instead of being made out of old issues of Golfer Weekly, these are made of the softest fiber this side of South America. Mmmm...

The name of this skein, Oxygen, goes with one of the biggest series of done so far. I have about 14 skeins lined up, all named after elements from the periodic table. I got the cues for color, texture and such from this guy. Oxygen is really, really blue if it's really, really chilly, but most of the elements, in their pure form are one form or another of silvery in color, so I had to cheat a little here and there.

Bubie yarny

Anais, my daughter, just finished spinning her first yarn today. I found some bright, adorable art batts on etsy when I was looking for feathers a few weeks ago. Not only were the feathers from farm-raised fowl, but the batts had been carded up by the shop owner's own daughter. How could I resist? We tried the drop spindle first, but that was sort of meh. Using the wheel seemed to make more sense for her. I had to do most of the treadling, but other than that she did all the yarn making. No sooner had I set the twist than I was assigned a pattern, which naturally involved flowers.