T Stands for Spinning and Fibers

  We are approaching our last T for Tuesday in the month of February. I am ready for March-as Spring will be arriving. I am so ready, although here in this area it can bring allot of strong winds with tornadoes.  I am writing this post early Sunday evening and we are all bracing for very high winds coming in tonight.

  To join in for T just share a drink related post, visit with friends--find link in my sidebar-hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth.

  If interested, in my previous post I shared photos of the fibers I got in the mail for spinning-they are all soft and wonderful.

  I have been spinning most every day this past week. It has been too chilly or raining to work outdoors.

   I have spun up quite a lot of this lovely tweed. I have enough on my spindle to fill up this niddy noddy and then spin almost another full spindle. I had just a little bit of that pretty brown, so added this merino-bamboo green tweed to the same niddy noddy. My spinning is finally improving-although I don't get those very fine spun yarns-however I do like this size of yarn to use as the weft in my weaving so I can really see the yarns. (the weft is the one you wind on to a shuttle and hand weave with that) I feel I have finally progressed to an advanced beginner spinner. My yarn is still not totally the same through out-but that's ok for my weaving now.

I also spun up allot of this very nice white wool 

      I have a full niddy noddy  now These need to get sprayed down with water-let dry and then I repeat the process. This will set the twist 

    information here about a niddy noddy 

 I will dye this white with my left over black walnuts that I dried a couple years ago when I  made the ink. Should give me a lovely brown.

It was a bit late in the day today, but I wanted to play with my blending board. I have not done that since my last trip to Fiber U.  I will need to watch some you tube videos this week as I wasn't able to get the roving off all in one piece. I think I added a bit too much fibers.

Below are tools to make the roving-you choose the size hole and pull the fibers through to make a roving that you spin into yarn. Of course I couldn't buy just one smiles-These are called Ditz All handmade by craftsman that I bought at different times at Fiber U The bear and the buffalo are by the same artisan

I bought this buffalo first I love it-but this has a couple very sharp points on it so I don't use this one often

I thought I would look for a video now to share with you too, on how to do this-ahhh I see what I was doing wrong now She is calling this Dizz and from the video I did not have too many fibers down I just wasn't doing it right.

I ended up with short pieces but that's ok-anxious to see how the colors spin up

 You can see my Yellowstone cup with green tea, and and my Ice drink-which is carbonated water no sugars with flavors

  This is a ranch oak coffee table that was my parents. Two sides pull up to make larger-this sits in front of the couch and then also in front of the tv-I have books piled up on this table along with what ever craft I am working on.

My husband has been asking for homemade pancakes for breakfast. I add fresh blueberries, and we still have maple syrup from Pennsylvania that a friend gifted us years ago. From the gift of a gallon we are now down to less that a quart My coffee in the back, as this plate is my gluten free version-they turned out sooo good no wonder he has been requesting these pancakes-I forgot how good these are. smiles

I bought this book back when it came out in 1970. This is my all time favorite bread book. I used to make all of our breads before I found out I had celiac. This has the pancake recipe in it

And my coffee was made in my French press I figured out a really easy way to clean out the loose grounds-fill up with water and pour through a fine strainer-so much easier and faster this way

That's it from me this week. Stay warm and safe 

  We have a dove pair enjoying the seeds now-perhaps they remember from last year

Happy T and New Week

Happy Friday and Fun Mail

   I have been spinning every day this week so far, enjoying the process-especially being back to spinning wool. I grabbed a big bag of white roving that was USA mixed long breeds, at the time (2016) I bought 2 pounds of it. The plan all along was to dye after spinning, now I am thinking of checking how many dried black walnuts I still have and dye this yarn out on the fire pit. Should give me a lovely brown.

  Big surprise in the mailbox today-all three packages arrived in the mail and they came in from all different areas of our country.

  This one is even prettier in person-I really love it Will start spinning this one first.

and came with a surprise  Sorry photo came out a bit blurry but too cute

This pretty darker green came in a long plastic tube

This is the package with the two bags of fibers to blend together on my blending board and make roving to spin-that is always so much fun to do  Such a lovely package-there was actually two different tea bags included-thoughtful as these were herbal with no caffeine.

and photo of the back of package-I love sheep so this sheep tissue paper had me smiling.  This is a high quality ribbon, so it is now in my ribbons stash,

Inside this package  

 I have been away from fiber too long, my first love really.  

    I am also excited that I have found a couple more patterns for the rauna  and maybe a poncho too. Will see how far the yarns go in this project. When I get closer to the weave I will sew up a mock pattern to make sure I like the fit.

  If you remember,  I also have a long warp on the loom waiting for me to weave that I need to get to soon. The room that my loom is in has no heat or a/c vents so this winter it was just too cold to work. I did buy a small heater the winter before, but with the higher price of electric, I decided not to use it.

This morning I dug out my blending board so I can start "playing" with those fibers soon.

   

  Happy Friday and Weekend

  

Found a Weaving-Knitting Blog & My Spinning & Weaving Project

   I have been on the hunt for a how to pattern for a ruana garment, perhaps a poncho.  Spent most of the morning hunting online yesterday-with so so results. Last night I went through my stack of old Handwoven weaving magazines that went back to their first issue. I pulled several for ideas. I also found a vintage weaving pattern but I didn't care for how she treated the neckline at all-cutting a curve and then binding the handwoven fabric-not good.

  So waking up early this morning I did more online searching-and finally found it! It was an older post that I ran into over on Word Press. She knits, spins, and weaves and makes lovely garments Here is her post I found.  Love the look of her results, don't have to figure out how to double weave, no cutting involved I love it! Will use the second diagram but will weave a bit wider-I have a 30 inch loom.  She also has a part 1 post for ponchos.

  Those of you that knit she knits lovely shawls, cowls and more. I ran into a couple of dye posts-but for me I would never dye with kool-aid, although I know many do this.

  We have rain coming in today. I ended up with around 23 bottles of the ground cover seeds-creeping thyme-all set up now. I have probably 6-8 more bottles to finish up the seeds.  The goal is to get rid of the grass here. These will go down by the water's edge.

  I am bad, I am missing a few Yellowstone colors-greens and the vibrant blues from the grand prismatic spring.  So I shopped on Etsy and found the greens in roving to spin, and found the perfect fibers to blend together on my blending board to make into rovings. I had never seen a seller put together odds for this and at a good price too.

 I bought these two fiber packages different but similiar-perfect for Yellowstone Photo taken from the Etsy shop   These really look Yellowstone to me.

I fell in love with this one-merino wool and bamboo There are allot of aspens in the park so I wanted some yellows From this Etsy shop

and this green is a  Shetland From this Etsy shop  This one I may add some of it to the blending board

I like to support the Etsy shops and I always find lovely fibers there.  

   For a bit of a break, I grabbed a bag of white roving to spin, which is made up of several long wool breeds from the USA.  I love spinning wool-it is going pretty well so far. I may need to natural dye this in the future.  I brought along some dried mimosa leaves which dyes a lovely yellow.

  Enjoy your day as you can tell I am back in fiber mode-haha Well until I find another botanical to turn into ink or paint-smiles

  Note:  I just changed the title of this blog post a bit-I weave but I do not knit-My Mom had tried to teach me knitting as she knit all of us lots of sweaters and such while growing up, but I never did get the hang of it. I do love to weave though

T Stands for Spinning Yellowstone & Sailboat

 T Stands for Tuesday, where we gather over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's to share our "doings" with a drink related photo. Find link in sidebar. 

  I am writing this post early afternoon on Sunday where the weather is glorious!  I still don't have a working car as of yet, so Larry drove me for a few groceries early morning. By mid day we had full sunshine,  light wind, and warmth-up in the 60's F  Loving it!! Tomorrow more of the same.

 I had a pretty thick layer of fall leaves on top of the creeping thyme ground cover that I planted last year-and that needed to come off so it would not kill these plants. I ended up with a huge black trash bag full of leaves. I hope to be able to get allot of leaf burning accomplished on Monday as we will have the same weather pattern.

  I have dug out my folding table that I use for allot of projects like soap making, and planting seeds in my gallon "greenhouse" bottles-I have a huge bag of bottles ready to use for planting.

 Larry caught a sailboat out on the lake Sunday-perfect day for it-very few boaters on the lake, and the perfect wind too.

This photo below is a bit blurry as I had to really zoom in to enlarge. This is to the left of us looking out the wall of windows.

  Friday I grabbed my spinning project-which I have not gotten back to since last year fall. These are the spinning fibers I picked up back in 2018 that reminded me of Yellowstone Park.

The sunshine was really pouring through the window here-this is the coffee table in front of the couch. Behind you will see  my drink share-a cup of green tea and lemon balm

  I had bought a big bag of small amounts of different rovings at one of the last Fiber U events I attended before we moved to the lake. I am down now to a couple more colors to get spun-then to decide want I want to weave with these handspuns-thinking of some sort of wrap for me. I will add in the buffalo yarn I have spun too.

  This one  below I just started today.  I still don't make "perfect" yarn, but for weaving I don't mind the thick and thin yarns I am ending up with. This one below is mostly wool and I am having an easier time making nicer yarn. Mine are usually singles. and some of these I will ply together with a fine angora yarn.

  I am really  loving the colors of this one too

 I also have the pretty one below to spin up next. I have a bit more of this color to spin than I had of the others, I also have a light grey to spin-time is passing by too fast-My goal now is to get all of these rovings spun up and ready to weave by end of this year.

This past week I made us biscuits and gravy-yum, and a rice dish also made in cast iron with poblano peppers, onion, and beef chorizo to go with the boiled shrimp that I found in the freezer. These are a couple of our favorite dishes.

   Amazing-haha the biscuits on the right are gluten free and they gave me a nicer rise than the wheat ones to the left-I used a King Arthur white whole wheat for the biscuits on the left.

  I have one more drink share-in the back of our frig-I keep a few ciders, I haven't had one in months-so grabbed this Pineapple cider to go with our left over lunch today.

  Happy T and an awesome new week

T Stands for More Botanicals & Pizza

   Hi Everyone, and Happy T Stands for Tuesday hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth, just share a drink related photo, find the link up in sidebar

   How about those Chiefffffs as coach Andy Reid always says haha  I had a feeling this game would go down to the last second which it did. Was surprised all the sports casters chose the Eagles to win.  I had a feeling KC would win since they are a very united team and really wanted this one.

  I did make more botanical inks last week, which I enjoy using like watercolor paints too. If interested here is a link for the orange peel ink a link for my art practice piece using only the botanicals-my favorite piece so far and the link to my ink day making hibiscus ink and matcha ink. The matcha gave me a pretty green and the hibiscus is so much nicer than the berry ink.

   Waiting for the big game yesterday, I did another art practice  I am in love with the softness and the earthiness of these botanicals. The green is the matcha, the purple flower is the hibiscus, the other flowers are the orange peel, and the brown is explained in the links.

  I have a question and hoping you artists may know.  Allot of these botanicals are light sensitive and will also fade over time. Is there a spray or sealant of some sort that would work with these water based botanicals?  thank you

  I decided to make us pizzas on Sunday. I grabbed a pizza stone for mine and the large cast iron pan for Larry's pizza-sooo good.

Pizza is so good baked in cast iron

The gluten free version-of course there is no rise but this was a good tasting crust

For my drink this week, I brewed up some of my dried pineapple sage and bee balm flowers together-made a good tasting cup of tea

Happy T 

Saturday's Ink Making Hibiscus and Matcha

   Going through a box of dye materials, I found a bag of hibiscus tea bags and also a pouch of matcha tea. I have been wanting a green ink so thought I would use this matcha and see what happens. I had bought this to drink but then discovered it was high in caffeine which I can not have so just added it to the dye box.

  The best photo of the results is this page in my art journal-which is now in my ink journal with my notes and recipes. If you enlarge this photo further you should be able to read the penciled in notes.

To the left-the leaf is matcha. Below it is the hibiscus ink brought to a simmer and held for just 5 minutes. I let the tea bags soak while it cooled down.  To the right is the flower that I followed a recipe where the author simmered the hibiscus for 30 minutes. I don't see much difference so will use the shorter simmering time next time I make this ink-I really like this one.  

  My opinion now after making this hibiscus ink, is not to waste good tasting berries for ink but use hibiscus instead.  I want to experiment with this one to see if I can shift some of it to a blue.

   The brown stem was a surprise. The recipe I followed for the hibiscus, said one could get a lovely orange by adding turmeric. I divided what I had which ended up being 1/4 cup bottle of  plain and the other 1/4 cup for adding in the turmeric. The recipe called for allot of turmeric-I added 8 teaspoons and still no orange, so I added in a tablespoon of soda ash-which instantly turned the mixture very dark.  Figured this would end up as a black ink-surprise that pretty brown stem

The macha tea I used 2 ounces and added it to 2 cups of water. Brought it to a simmer and held for 10 minutes. I decided-not sure why-to add 2 teaspoons of vinegar after it was strained. There was allot of waste to this matcha as most of it did not totally dissolve-so the coffee filter captured allot of it. There was no color to the coffee filter

Here are a few of the journal notes

   This one is the hibiscus with 5 minute simmer

Hibiscus with 30 minute simmer- and this was interesting to me-how this wax paper that held my spoon kept the red color

 Below is the coffee filter still wet-but dried this color, did not turn purple-wondering why is that??

Tea bags in the pot-the red comes out immediately before a simmer

and the matcha-I was tired by the time I did two batches of the hibiscus so forgot about taking photos of the matcha in the pan 

  After the inks are strained into bottles I add one clove to each, more if a larger size and drops of wintergreen essential oil depending on amount of ink. I also stir in liquid gum arabic before filling the bottles (a binder)

This was a good ink making day.  If you missed it the post before this one is a painting in my art journal with only botanical inks-one of my favorites so far

Happy Weekend! 

 Go Chiefs-sorry had to say it haha

Art Practice-Botanical Inks

   I wanted to share my latest art practice, and I am quite pleased with this one-used all botanical inks for this piece in my art journal.

  I started out wanting to see the orange peel ink after a couple days that it was made, and then added black walnut ink-which as soon as it hit the page-oops I should have watered it down a bit as it is a rich dark brown right out of the ink bottle. I grabbed a few other inks-added a fine salt for textures while still wet.

Below is after I added the salt to the top of the orange peel ink and also to the top of the black walnut ink.  I sorta see a mountain scene now-so I divided my blackberry ink into 3 small bottles. first one left alone, second one added baking soda, and third one a little vinegar.

   The one with baking soda gave me that pretty blue below the black walnut ink, so I thought if I added a little more baking soda it might give me a deeper blue-Wrong-went grey. I used the now light grey for highlights in the water-and lightly used it for the sky. Decided this needed a red sun-but now I have decided this is the red blood moon-smiles-from the avocado ink. Perfect for Erika's theme Red for AJJ

After looking at this the next day,  I did not like the lighter grey "mist" I had brushed over this piece especially over the orange peel ink.

   Sooo, I added in more of that orange ink-liking it much better, and grabbed the iron gall ink and glass dip pen to add in a few bushes-felt it needed a little something to tie it together.

Close up of the textures created from the fine salt -- once dry I brushed it off-although a little stuck to the ink which ended up ok

In the past I have always loved the "earthiness" from botanical dyeing on cottons or wool. Now I am really enjoying this journey with botanical inks, also used like watercolor paints for their earthy color hues.

Since I have a blood red moon will share on AJJ

  Next up will be my post of my ink making today-pleased with the two I made and I have a green now-smiles.