Indigo Workshop

Jane Deane is running an Indigo Dye Workshop at the Duchy Centre for Creativity in Princetown, Devon on Saturday 8 August from 10am to 4pm.

Jane's a great teacher and this will be a great day. So if you live in the area or are on holiday and can spare that Saturday you will be in for a treat for just £35 for the day., which is tremendous value. See the Duchy Website for details. Just go to events and scroll down to the Indigo Dye Workshop link and you will be able to send for all the information you need to enroll on the course.

Pure Tinctoria Summer Competition

Hi all

We are running a competition at Pure Tinctoria, this summer. Alison has spun some Shetland tops, she dyed earlier this year, and can't decide what to make from the yarn she has produced and is asking for your help. In return you can win one of two packs of dyes - a Mini Starter Kit or a Spring 4 Kit.

Alison dyed one 50g lot of Shetland tops with Myrobalan, Madder and Acacia Gum and the other 50gs was dyed with Red Lac and Annatto. She pulled staple lengths of fibre from each top and spun these in turn. The resulting singles yarn was then Navajo plyed (3 ply), to keep the lovely colours separate. There are approximately 8 - 9 wraps to an inch (Double Double/Chunky Yarn!) and approx. 250 yards in all.

Alison is looking for a suitable knitting or crochet pattern or whatever you can come up with that stylish and bang on trend!

For your chance to win one of the two dye kits you will need to visit the Pure Tinctoria website and either place an order and leave your idea in the comment section or click on Contact Us at the top right hand side of the website and leave your email address, name and message. The item that is produced from the winning idea will be featured on the Pure Tinctoria website and on this blog. We are looking forward to your ideas.

Good luck

Jenny Dean's Red & Purple Lac Experiments

I've just been trying to catch up with blog posts that I've been following. Rather late, I know, but I came across this blog post by Jenny Dean.
As you may know, Jenny Dean is a wonderfully experienced dyer and I have all of her books! She is the one person who has inspired me to keep dyeing naturally over the years.
Well, to the point, Jenny did some lovely dyeing experiments with red and purple lac way back in December and I wanted to draw your attention to her results. If you follow the following link you will see the results of modification on the lac which are truly wonderful: http://www.jennydean.co.uk/wordpress/?p=214
Many thanks Jenny!

Woolfest 09

This is my 3rd year at Woolfest and to say thank you to all my customers I'm offering a discount this year. Please take a look at the website to see what you have to do the get the discount and while your there make a list of what you think you might want!

Looking forward to seeing you all again on stand D89.

Alison

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I've not had much time to post just recently, I've been busy at the week-ends for the last month and preparing for them during the week.

At the end of May I was invited by the York and District Guild to tutor a "Backstrap Weaving Workshop" at Coberhill just north of Scarborough. I had a lovely time, the weather was perfect, although we spent it in doors most of the time, the accommodation and food at Coberhill was good and the people on the course were a delight! When I find my camera I'll post some images!

The following Saturday I was in Amersham talking to the Berkshire Guild about "Creative Spinning". After a terribly rainy start to the journey it ended in sunshine and a rewarding talk to the guild. Another lovely group of people.

Last week-end was our Guild Open Day. Beautiful weather brought out a lot of people and we all had a great time, not least because two of the husbands served the tea and coffee and the wonderful lunch we had all contributed to, leaving us plenty of time to spin, natter and shop with Vicky Smedley of MoBears, Janet Phillips of The Threashing Barn and Michael Williams with his wonderful drop spindles and spinning, weaving and lace making tools, amongst others.

This coming Saturday, I'm off to talk to the Oxford Guild on the Saturday afternoon and tutor a workshop on the Sunday. The talk is about how Jane Deane and I approached the Book and the workshop is "Creative Spinning". I really love what I do and enjoy passing on skills, ideas and encouraging creativity.

Then it's Woolfest! Woo Hoo! It's hard work, but so, so enjoyable and give everyone a great chance to catch up with old and new friends in the spinning, weaving and dyeing world. I for one am looking forward to the buzz of the two days and the Tatty Pot supper and Spin In.

See you there!

Mordanting Cellulose Fibres

I was reading Deb Bamfords blog, A History of Colour, today and her post was about mordanting cellulose fibres. This prompted me write about some mordanting I did earlier this year with my friend Lorraine.

Those of you who visit Pure Tinctoria at Woolfest and Wonderwool Wales will know Lorraine as my very able helper. I wanted to reward Lorraine for all the help she gives me at these events and won't take a penny in recompense. Knowing she likes makeing quilts, last year I gave her a dyeing kit and cotton fabric for her birthday, and we got together to do the mordanting.

Now, I'm a passionate advocate for wool, British in particular, so I had to get out all my books to check how to do the mordanting properly! I knew I could do it in a one stage process, using aluminium acetate, but Lorraine wanted to do it "traditionally" with the everything in her "kit". So we opted to follow the alum, tannin, alum process. The tannin component was Amber-M (Oak Gall).

I was really impressed with the fabulous colours we got. They are so rich.

This image is of the colours before Lorraine pressed the fabric, but even then they are really beautiful. From Left to Right they are:
Ganges (Dhak), Amazon (Annatto), Rhine-M (Red Lac) and Rhine-S (Purple Lac).

Rhubarb and Custard Update!

Well I've finally managed to take a photograph of my Rhubarb and Custard scarf and here it is.
I can't give you the pattern for this one as it's copyright, but it's knitted on the diagonal.

I spun the Shetland fibres by taking alternate staple lengths of each colour, red lac and marigold. I didn't want precise staples so that I got a good mix of red lac with red lac and marigold with marigold and red lac with marigold when I plied the two singles.