Kitsched Out for the Holidaze!

I'd like to post a short, but heartfelt THANK YOU to all patrons of the last 2008 Stitch'n'Kitsch yesterday. What a great crowd to brave the freezing rain and pelting... slush? Ice pellets? Whatever that was - I think it depended on what moment you stuck your nose out as to what was flinging down from the sky.

Special thanks of course to those who checked out Lofty Fibres' tiny little table, bought yarn, and even tried out my handspun or the Learn To Knit kits! (New knitters - email me to let me know how it's going, loftyfibres AT gmail DOT... you know the rest.)

As a token of some ongoing thanks, and to give all my knittin' pals a holiday break, stay tuned to the Etsy shop (Over there --> on the right....) for the next couple of days. All 2008 yarns remaining are being reduced!

My reasoning is two-fold: 1) It's the holidays, we all need a break! and 2) Etsy is great. It's a superb, economical, pay-as-you-go venue for the small crafter. BUT, for us Canadians, they don't yet have a Canadian currency option, which means with today's economy and exchange, it's harder for Canadians to buy on line. It's great if my US friends do because I win on that exchange but not so much for us in the Great Wet North (yes, still raining today).

So! All in-stock yarn will be reduced so I can make room for more! And the Canadian Economy bonus is, $1 per item shipping anywhere in Canada! US shipping is still a reasonable $5 on the first, $1 for subsequent, items, but the price reductions apply regardless.

Happy Holiday yarning, everyone.

Lofty Fibres, Live! Episode 2

Please come out an join us at the Holiday Stitch'n'Kitsch! I'll be there with (of course!) yarn, but a couple dozen more local artisans will be showing off their best, just in time for Holidaze shopping!

It's Almost Spinning Itself....

I'm in the midst of a bit of angst and tedium. Angst: OHS Level 1 project 2 is to first of all mount up all our dye work from the summer school week - and I'm sorting the dye-class box but still only have vague ideas about a good way to mount. Part 2 of project 2 is a dye gradation exercise - 11 steps from "undyed" to "full strength" at 0.1 increments. Not in itself a daunting task for me, I can do it all in one pot with a handfull of baggies. BUT - our instructor said that while she wasn't grading our spinning, she expected our dyeing to be on our own handspun. The Tedium, thus: Monique is engaged with a half-pound pile of plain old white Corriedale, which is a basic and sturdy wool, good for practice, but not particularly thrilling or motivating to spin for me just now.

So, of course, having developed some sort of attention-deficit problem due to extreme creative multitasking, I got into other things to take the edge off. I've declared this to be my Rhinebeck project:



It is the over 200 grams of Ocean fibre (seawool) dyed by the uber-colour-savvy Dianne of Creatively Dyed, and which you met a couple of posts back It is being spun on one of my family of 5 Bosworth spindles, this one the 39 gram Purpleheart I special-ordered, and picked up at Rhinebeck. Hence, the Rhinebeck project.

While I'm here, a quick pre-reminder: I'll be selling my handpaints at the last 2008 Stitch and Kitsch show in another month, on December 13th. If I do any more dyeing before then it will be very little. A few samples are up in the Etsy shop (see the right panel) and there are actually lots more, I just don't want to pay to list them yet if I'll be trucking them all out to a show. They'll go up after the 13th, though, and can ship for Christmas if ordered quickly.

Handspinner's Toolbox

Just a little photo exercise I had to share.

Post-Rhinebeck Spin

As you can see on the right, I did get a few new uploads to the shop. Life has been busy with spinning, knitting, finishing a quilt top, succumbing to the lure of new fabrics when I dropped the quilt off for quilting, and photographing the recent few months of stash.

My first Rhinebeck was a whirlwind, lots of fun, some confusion, and just an overwhelming amount of fibre fumes. I spent probably more than I should have on a beautiful Romney Hogget fleece - it was $55 for just over 2lbs, however, it had already been washed, skirted, and was very very clean. She's a beautiful pale gray and I've sampled a bit by just spinning a few locks right out o the bag on my new spindles.

Unfortunately, I somehow did something boneheaded and lost yesterday afternoon's hour of work photographing my spindles.

Here are shots of the very few - well, the only two, really - fibre and yarn purchases.

First, I had to go by The Fold's booth and check out the BMFA goods live. This one followed me home:



I am NOT really in need of more yarn, given the stash has long since escaped its closet, however, it will be a long time before I can spin silk this well, and BMFA's colour sense is something any dyer should aspire to. I love the way a brown/orange dye looks metallic on silk, and Amber comes out a gorgeous copper colour here. I could see this being a wedding shawl. The hunt for the perfect stole pattern begins!

This second purchase goes with the recounting of the repeated and slightly bizarre experience of walking around Rhinebeck with a Ravelry button on, and having "strangers" run up and greet me like they knew me - and I guess we were all doing it! One who did so was Dianne, "Creative" on Ravelry, the mastermind behind Creatively Dyed Yarns. Dianne is a really prolific dyer and I've not seen one single colourway of the hundreds she has posted in our dye group that I wouldn't love to have. I didn't make it to her tent with the cash until Sunday, when much was gone already, but it was still nearly impossible to choose amongst the glamour of what was left! I narrowed it down to a range of fibre braids that were really grabbing me and just closed my eyes and reached in that general area of the rack and grabbed one.



This is her "Ocean" fibre (wool/Seacell) and I love the way the different dye takeup makes it look like seafoam.

I have a feeling you may see this again once Monique the JourneyWheel and I are finished with it.

Not Dead, Been Dyeing! (and spinning)

Check it out on the right! I've started loading the latest into Etsy. Sorry for the wait. Right after a moderately-successful Stitch'n'Kitsch, I dove headfirst into my spinning assignments for the OHS class, so the lag has just been in getting time at the keyboard to reload the online shop!

Here are a couple of my other ventures, not quite ready for sales yet:

Lofty Fibres, Live!

Despite being a neglectful blogger, your humble yarnie has been busy, to the point where the loft is increasingly infested with yarn skeins - they have long escaped the stash closet and are starting to drape the railings. Because we need inventory, inventry, inventory in support of real-world ventures!

The Etsy shop will not go away, but there will be a slight delay in loading new listings, as I get ready for a couple of new in-person venues.

First, my thanks to Karen of Shall We Knit for her enthusiastic continuing support of the yarn and fibre communities in this area. Karen will be carrying a small selection of Lofty Fibres sock yarns, among other local specialty offerings, at the St. Jacob's Market shop which just opened this past week.

Second, I've been accepted into the next two 2008 Stitch and Kitsch sales at First United Church in Waterloo!




I've been a fan of Stitch and Kitsch for a while. It's an urban, young, fun twist on the ladies auxiliary "church bazaar" concept. Fun clothes and accessories, crafts, gifts, woodwork, textiles, and now, my yarn!

Now that a couple of my fall commitments are over, I'm going to be up to my elbows in the dye pots for the next week, getting set for October 4th. Look for new Etsy inventory after that time.

Off to Spinning School

Lofty Fibres is off to a working vacation, in lovely Haliburton, Ontario. Yours truly will be taking Level 1 of the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners' Guild's Spinning Certificate.

I have no idea what I'm in for. Fellow Ravellers who are going have next to no experience, and years of experience.

Here's my latest, half-done project. I'm taking these along for some plyng practice.

A little gift for my hardworking wheel

Was playing around at being crafty the last couple of days. My JourneyWheel, Lapis Monique, is the beneficiary of a crafty little brainfart, so she can now accessorize with whatever she is spinning.

Back At It.

This roving makes me think of Cirque du Soleil's big tent.


The Lofty blog is not abandoned, but the blogger has been busy with life. Not much is moving on the Etsy store front so there's been no urgency about dyeing. Meanwhile, I did get Monique (the Journeywheel) out from where she'd been hiding from the painters for a couple of weeks, and we've made a start on Kit 2A of the Bellwether's Fab Fibre Clu

Made a small start on it, about 1/4 or a bit more.

Spinning Makes a Bad Week Better

This past week included a birthday, but sadly, the loss of a much loved, if insane and very sick, kitty from our little crew at the Loft.

Spinning is soothing, though. LoftyFibres may eventually list some handspuns for sale, but these are still some learning projects.

First - the SW Merino from The Black Lamb that I started, oh, weeks ago, not too long after getting the JourneyWheel. I was going for sock-ish weight, but got waaaayyyy too thin. I'm going to Navajo ply this, and it *might* be lace weight then.




After 6 weeks on that one very full bobbin, my first two installments (first project) from The Bellwether's Fiber Club went zoomin' by. I think these are a bit thinner than called for, as I had a heck of alot of trouble not over-drafting after all that merino thread I made. They're also uneven, but I'll see it through and knit the socks eventually.



I don't know what it is with purple lately. It's not something I'd have said is my fave, but it's been stalking me. I finished scarf with alot of purple, the fibre kit was purple, my Ravelry Sockdown for may had some purple, and for June is primarily purple. Then the STR May kit showed up - very purple... AND on a whim, I picked up two skeins of complimentary purple colourways for the Goddess Mystery Shawl.

First Sale!

My thanks to fellow Raveller Jerry, who spotted one of my yarns, wandered to the Etsy shop and bought it! Something of a rite of passage for me to make a sale online - so far, they've just been hand-offs at Guild meetings.

So, yay! Pelagic, or half of it, as it was a half-pound dye lot, is off to a new home in California. How neat, because the experience that inspired this colourway was actually my all-too-brief visit to the Monterey Aquarium last year. I was just entranced by the "Pelagic Zone" tank with the sharks and mola-mola. The deep, darkening cast of blue-green on everything gives that exhibit the most tranquil aura.



I am debating as yet whether to list the skein's mate on Etsy. I do quite love it - but realistically, if I want to make a go of being a marketable dyer, keeping even half of what I dye is not the best plan.

Fibre Fun

Below, for your review, is roughly 2 pounds of superwash merino/nylon mill ends, dyed in various accidents and experiments over the course of this month.

From the Wellington workshop, May 10:

Garnet - dyed in a kettle in an onion bag!


Faded Jeans - ditto.



Switcharoo Blues - what happened when a classmate and I confused our fibres (so, this one wasn't really my dye job).



May 11th, I mucked about in the kitchen with some leftover Wilton's solutions:

Amethyst and Rose happened when a mix of Violet and Cornflower (I think) blue broke up.


Mossy Agate was a couple of different green solutions.



I finally broke out my Jacquard dyes, or at least half of them, and mixed stock on May 18.

Every Greens 1 is a handpaint, in a green-tinged black, teal-green, emerald, and chartreuse.



Every Greens 2 is a kettle job that occurred when the remains of all the greens in Every Greens 1 were mixed in a single pot:



Finally, I was so happy with one of my handpaint yarns from the Shelridge Farm workshop on the 25th, that I ran home to play in a pot again with the last yoink of the fibre I had left. The result was Sleet:



I'll show you Sleet the Yarn and its inspiration later. All these fibres are destined, eventually, for carding, blending, and spinning practice, possibly along with some mohair locks I have.

Been Too Busy to Blog

A few new things have been cooked up in the last week-or-so. May 10 was spent out at Wellington Fibres,, getting a look at how proprietor and professional dyer Donna gets things done. While one can get the basics of dyeing out of books, Donna's scientific approach was incredibly informative, and you can't beat learning from the benefit of another's experience.




I'm not sure if I can let the blue one into the shop, but the mixed-berries colour will be (there are two).

I also learned some common sense about dyeing fibre - namely, onion bags. Keeps it from floating all apart. This roving was handpainted, but rinsed in the bag. Since I never eat enough onions to buy a whole bag, I discovered dollar-store zippered lingerie wash bags do the same job.



No, I didn't mangle a roving, by the way. Some of what I took to experiment on was some $5/lb superwash/nylon blend mill ends, which will eventually be for my carding, blending, and spinning experiments.

Yesterday and today were spent replicating the work in the kitchen. Today's results are still drying, but yesterday's were alright. One of two fibre one-offs obtained by dumping the unused Wilton's mixes from a couple weeks ago into a pot:



and this, done with the potentially messy technique of sprinkling dye powder onto wet yarn:



I could only do that with Gaywool, really, which is constituted more like salt crystals as the acid is in the mix. Do NOT try any such thing with Jacquard unless you have lab-grade containement for that flyaway powder.

We'll leave the spinning for another day, but I had to show this off, too. My dye studio.


Yep, after a few go-rounds of making a mess, shoving all the clutter into a corner of my room, then making more mess, I dug this tower of rolling file boxes out of storage. Everything but my big roasting pan fits in. 2 canning pots, 24 mason jars, 12 turkey basters, assorted spoons and syringes. The reason the lid is a bit elevated is inside the top bin is another bin I've made into an ersatz "glove box" in which dye powder can be mixed up (while I still wear gloves and a mask) with very minimal risk of mess or transfer or inhalation. I love that I can now put the whole kit back in storage, and roll it out when I need to.

Open for Business

Here's my fave of last weekend's dye lots:



And while this isn't the most attention-getting colourway ever, it was a neat colour chemistry experiment - this yarn is dyed with black dye.



Only black. Two different blacks.

If you're interested, or just want to see more, check out the links over there on the right ---> . The Etsy store is now open, and the gallery is updated.

Coming soon: Result of dye workshops at Wellington (May 10) and Shelridge (May 25) - if I can bear to part with them!

Out of the Dye Pot, May

Welcome! Pictures are still to come, but May has gotten started with another day of smelling up the loft with the aroma of pickled sheep - all for the greater good of Socks.

A starting point: Corrie 100

As I begin this adventure, I appoint this my Mascot: Corrie 100, the culmination of my introduction to The Spinning Wheel (and some food-safe dyes).