Goodbye Handweaver's Studio & Gallery

It's been a while, I have had an awful kidney infection and still recovering from me, it hit me last Friday and the pain has been excruciating!  On top of that I had an appointment about the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in my wrists and the consultant thinks that I may have a problem with my thyroid!  So waiting for blood test results...

I have left the Handweaver's Studio & Gallery and I am now concentrating on making Christmas presents and doing some work with a lovely lady via my Etsy store she makes handmade wedding invitations, very exciting!

So, before I left Handweaver's I washed those Fox Fibre woven samples and the result is amazing!

 The colour changes dramatically when washed with washing soda as it changes the PH levels.  I'd also like to share some knitted samples with you aswell:

I decided to knit some samples using the wool roving I dyed and if I do say so myself  I LOVE THEM!  the wool roving is so nice to knit with! 

Naturally dyed wool roving ready for sale :)

So, here they are all ready for sale :) wound nicely into balls ready for use!  I had so much fun dyeing them!  what do you think of the colours?

Apart from that I have been helping the Handweavers Studio and Gallery get ready for the Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally which was last Thursday-Sunday.  It seemed to go very well!  I havent got many photos yet but hopeing to get some soon!

Hope you all have a lovely week :)

Keeping me busy...

So, my wrists are still really bad, however, I have been back at my placement for a week and a half now and working on some dyed yarns to sell.  I have been continuing to use the Pure Tinctoria dyes and now have a collection of some beautiful yarns. 

Red Lac in the dye pot.

 Madder Root.

Some yarns drying in the sun.

Little rays of sunshine, I love the colour you can achieve with Anatto, don't you think?

And finally, I thought I would share with you some of the hanks wounded into balls, almost ready for sale at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery.  I am so excited to be selling them there!  Do you know how hard it is to do all this and then not pick them up and start knitting!  Hopefully I will get the brighter colours wound into balls either Friday or next week :)  Have a lovely day!

Bixa Orellana and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome...

Ok, so Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is taking over my life at the minute, I had surgery exactly a year ago yesterday and since about March/April this year, the pain keeps getting worse and worse, I also have a lump on the back of my hand which is worrying me, although it was diagnosed as a Ganglion Cyst two years ago, it doesn't feel like a cyst but a lump of bone?  Hopefully the orthopedic will be able to put my mind to rest when I finally get my referral, in the mean time I have had to take time off from my internship, which means not much dyeing going on at the minute!  However, I realised I did some dyeing in between weaving with fox fibre and dyeing with the tinctoria dyes and stupidly forgot to blog about them!

I have dyed with Bixa orellana aka Annatto seeds before but got a really muggy dull pinky/red colour and this time I wanted some astonishing oranges/terricotta colours.  So, I decided to give it another go and hurrah! it worked!! :)

What do you think of the results?  Hopefully my wrists will be fixed soon so I can get some more dyeing and knitting done!!

Pure-Tinctoria Dyes

Today at work I tried out some powdered natural dyes called 'Pure-Tinctoria', these are dyes we sell at the Handweaver's Studio & Gallery, I wanted to dye with them because the samples we have on display in the shop are really dull.  This is also the first time I have used a mordant when dyeing, the samples produced for each dye bath are one mordanted with alum and one pre-soaked in salt.  I have used Red Lac, Purple Lac, Madder root, Rhubarb root (no mordant used) and Acacida Gum and 100% Wool.

Purple lac

Red Lac

Red Lac

Left to right - Purple Lac pre-soaked with salt, purple lac pre-mordanted with alum, Red Lac pre-soaked with salt, Red Lac pre-mordanted with alum.

Same as above with Madder on the end.

Closer look at Madder Root dyed yarn.

Left to right, Rhubarb root and washing soda, Acacia Gum pre-mordanted with alum, Acacia Gum pre-soaked in salt.

Weaving with love...

So, a couple of months ago I started my work placement at the Handweavers Studio & Gallery, Seven Sister's Road, London.  So far I have been doing all sorts, working with so many different types of yarn and dealing with various customers.  So, for my first post I just wanted to share my first piece of weaving for the company, it's not great!  I specialise in dyeing and knitting, so my weaving isnt spot on but hopefully this is something I can work on throughout the time I am with the company!  I made the warp myself with a yarn called Foxfibre cotton:

So, at this point I started to realise why weavers get so stressed out! haha...

Just a quick practice run, doesn't look perfect but this was because my tension on my warp was wrong, so I had a bit of help fixing that before I continued...

The sample here is going to be for the shop floor.  The yarn is very interesting, as when washed the colour changes.  So when the PH level becomes more alkaline the yarn becomes greener! I am hopeing to knit up some samples in this yarn soon, I am on the hunt for a decent knitting machine! More photos of how this is progressing soon!!

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