SAFF 2016 part two

Here are a few  more  photos from my SAFF journey this year. First, one of my favorite views every autumn

This little black lamb's ewe rejected him, he was being bottle fed by the owner and got lots of attention

My friend the amazingly talented Milissa Dewey working  on a loom from the 1850's from Kentucky which had not been used for 100 years 

And here is Alan Dewey and his bowler hat behind a lovely old walking wheel and another barn loom, this one from Ashe County NC dated 1830. The original owner wove her son's confederate uniform on this loom...

and here is my new loom,  hand created for me by an old friend. It is a 7 foot triloom but adjustable. I'm having great fun with it!

And here are some animal photos

The horns on this ram were impressive,  we actually did see one back up and "ram" another cage, quite scary (see the next photo down)

The sign below reads "stay  back please"

I did a class on knitting from silk hankies, here are some coccoons

Here is a large mound of silk caps from China

I stayed with my brother who lives in Campobello "Beautiful Field" South Carolina

Part of my brother's "Stable" of Corvairs

Dinner

 Max loves to chew socks but the ones made of rabbit fur are particularly enticing...

Madder workshop at SAFF

I went to SAFF, the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fest, at the end of October. It was Hallowe'en weekend, well timed. There were some costumes on view.

A highlight of the weekend was a madder workshop put on by Jackie of Forage Color.

The process was outlined in this book, and actually is illustrated on the cover:

We each had 20 samples, a generous 90 yards each. We used a superwash merino. Apparently the superwash takes dye well. Jackie dyed them all together, with us helping and a couple of guys serving as "water bearers." 

There were four pre dyeing options: no mordant, alum, copper, and iron.  Jackie had done the mordanting ahead of time. 

We used a different madder dyepot, heated to 160 then left to cool,  for each pre dyeing option so as not to "muddy" the results. 

Skeins soaked for an hour and then were removed. At this point there was lots of labelling going on to identify which treatment each skein got.

Skeins were then looking lovely but there was another step: an afterbath:  each of the four predyed options was then "separated" into another five options:  no after bath, an alkaline afterbath, an acidic afterbath, or another dip in alum or iron.  

Here Jackie tests the acidity and alkalinity of those two afterbath options

They were left to soak for an hour. 

There was then a really good rinse, and thus, we had 20 different shades.   

 Jackie had some dyekits for sale and I took advantage!

 Lovely Hallowe'eny colors!

Some scarves and a bit on Nuno'ing my knitting

I have finished some neckwear...

I learned nuno felting a couple of years ago. At some point I said to myself...couldn't I "nuno" a hand knit lace scarf ? About 2 years ago my friend J was trying to knit herself some window treatments, and she had found a nice openwork lace pattern from Barbara Walker. I knit up a scarf and tried it out. Pictured below is NOT the first one. It is a kid silk haze knockoff yarn nuno'd together with that wonderful  Merino Silk Sliver, the latter purchased from Dharma

I love this  colorway which I think is "pomegranite." The white is the silky bits.

The next one was done as a part of a trade, more on that in another post. It was done for a friend's wife who loves purple. Again, the same sliver only in purple blend, this time the knitting bit is white Kid Silk Haze together with a purple strand of Habu Silk Wrapped Stainless. I love in this one the way the white silk echoes the white KidSilk Haze on the opposite side. I do have the tendency to use too much roving so I will need to work on this to get a more drape-y garment in the future.

I Really like the way the knitting pulls in and wriggles as the roving felts to it...

The last creation was done via an impulse purchase. I was at Frayed Knot; my friend picked up a magazine showing an artist who used Noro Pencil Roving to make a scarf. I purchased some and got to work. So this was wet felting and not nuno.