T Stands for Tuesday & Fiber U Loaded with Photos-Long

Happy T Stands for Tuesday!
  This is where we share a drink related post-just show a photo of your water bottle or what ever you are drinking. Join us with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth-link in my right hand column.

  My weekend was full of classes at Fiber U this year. I took two classes on Saturday and an all day class 8-3 on Sunday.
  I was determined not to shop this year, except perhaps for some natural dyes-which I did end up bringing home a couple hard to find dyes-but nothing else-so I was good-no spontaneous purchasing which I love to do with fibers and beautiful handmade tools-but I did not even look at them. Actually there was time to shop-a good thing ha ha

      (Note: I set up links to explain weaving and spinning terminology)

  My first class was using a blending board to make rolags for spinning. 
   You may remember last year I shared a few posts and photos about me making rolags with my blending board.
  I decided to take this class for a hands on experience as I was having a little trouble getting my rolags off the board-and this turned out to be a very fun class where the time really flew by fast. She had one full table packed with all sorts of fibers to try-including fibers made from milk, banana, mint, soy, all sorts of things. I had also tried making roving from a you tube video, so I brought along my ditz. This was the teacher's first time making roving this way-but I learned tips how to do this better as well.

I remembered to bring my camera along this weekend too-all photos will enlarge to full size just click on them


This event was held at the local civic center in my nearby city

Sorry this was a bit blurry but the only photo I took of the table of fibers-and much of the table is not showing here

The class was worth taking for me to learn of this technique-using a brush to push down some of the more difficult fibers-and then using the carder afterwards

This was my blending board-and you can see my bottle of coconut water to back left

The finished rolags-ready for spinning at end of class

After lunch, my next class was Dyeing with Woods, the class I looked forward to the most and did not disappoint.

  The teacher was a biologist, a bit of a chemist, and a natural dye historian. She has taught in colleges and universities, and at many events like this one.  She was extremely organized and could answer any question we asked. I learned so much. I had discovered some things on my own and when she mentioned a couple it let me know my thinking was correct.
   I was upset that my pokeberry dye on rug yarn that I did several years ago had lost it's color after 4 years and stored away. She reassured me it's a berry so in the end is a stain not a dye, and I had concluded that as well but wasn't sure.
  Another thing I had never read about was to add a wetting agent to the skeins of wool. I knew they needed to either come right out of the mordant bath or to soak over night so the fibers are very wet and will open up to accept the dye. The teacher adds a couple drops of pure no scented ivory dish soap.

Here are a few photos-there were 4 of these pots going at one time, and we filled them three times plus one more. We each ended up with 13 samples, a booklet of information, a ring and tags for our samples.

These bags are filled with our samples of each of the 13 different wood extracted dye pots we did

Below are close ups of some of the bags with our samples-we got purple, browns, yellows, red, a black and one was grey-green

Logwood
   I had bought some of this a couple years ago from her booth-not knowing at the time she also taught. She says now the wood chips are very very difficult to find so one needs to buy the extract right now  I am glad I waited as I now know how to dye with it 

Brazilwood-gorgeous  I bought some of this to dye with

I was very impressed with this gorgeous yellow from the black oak-but you use only a very very small layer just inside the bark-so this is more expensive and harder to find. I bought a small bag She says it will give gorgeous greens over dyed with indigo.

Depending on the wood-some of these are soaked in a water solution, but most in an alcohol solution for a week or more to extract the dye.

She also added the mordant right to the dye pot which I have not done before-I have always mordanted the fibers first and then dyed. this was definately easier especially for yarns

Sunday was my all day Scandinavian weaving class.

   This class did not go well for me at all. I was tired to begin with and then the instructions were very unclear. I felt pretty stupid as I know how to thread a 4 harness floor loom.  geesh 

   The instructor was very knowledgeable, a weaving historian and also a reenacter  She went to allot of work setting up our kits with everything we needed, but she was very poor in explaining things and she mentioned in conversation she was in her mid 80s-so I do applaud her for still teaching--but
    The lighting was also bad in the room and very difficult to see white on white.  There was one student that was worse than me-she said she was a weaver too but did not take the threads off the cross properly so she really messed things up and the teacher gave her another warp-which she also messed up.
    I managed to finally get it threaded properly with an hour left in the class. I just asked the teacher to show me how to set the end up for weaving and I would figure it all out later--probably Not though ha ha
   This is similar to a back strap loom where you tie the warp on to something stable and then you tie the other end to your waist-and then weave. This little loom has a shed though like a floor loom or rigid heddle loom, I took a few photos of the student's set ups

There was only one student that was weaving right away-she ended up with allot more than this finished. She was nice and offered for me to weave on hers so I would know what it was like-as she was going to take most of it apart and weave over again with better tension and edges-I said thanks but I think I am brain dead right now-5 hours to thread mine several times ugh Well in the 5 hours I was also looking at samples, and listening to the teacher about different things

In the 1700 and 1800's these little looms were beautifully handmade and carved
 This is a modern one that was laser cut

She had several samples woven up

This is mine finally threaded-these are plastic they have long slits-tiny holes-and half long slits to thread into. 

      I also wanted to share my swap-I got Elizabeth's big envelope in the mail on Saturday. (Mine will get mailed out on Monday)
   She sent the atc, handmade paper, and butcher papers-oops it was deli papers- for me to see-for eco dyeing and other crafts Thanks again

I decided I needed a bit of wine this evening-lol

   
Happy T Stands for Tuesday