FWA!! Fiber Whores Anonymous

Clockwise from top left:  grey Coopworth fleece, burgundy Coopworth roving, white Coopworth fleece, "Tuni-dale" fleece

I am a fiber whore.  I freely admit that I am obsessed with, and possessed by, a love of fiber that, to some (well, maybe lots of) people, would border on excess.  I am absolutely incapable of resisting the lure of good fiber.  One can never have enough.  She who dyes with the most fiber wins, and, besides, if the apocalypse comes, I'll be able to spin and knit sweaters for everybody in town and insulate the house.  To make matters worse, I have no intention of changing.  I do, however, recruit others to share my passion with all things fiber.  I do not pray that my Higher Power will lead me from temptation; I pray it will allow me to ignore the fact that I have more than enough fiber already and really should be able to resist just one more fleece (or roving, or wheel, or spindle).

 To further my evil agenda, I attempt recruit as many people as possible to share my "addiction."  I have demonstrated and taught spinning, I travel to farms to evaluate fleeces for breeders, I have raised and sheared my own sheep, I am the co-coordinator of the fleece show at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, and I have inflicted my enthusiasm to such a degree on my dear wife, Harvest, that she has at last become a real, live weaver, which delights me to no end (more about this in a future post.) 

Fiber whores are known for being willing to travel ridiculously long distances in all kinds of weather to obtain a "fix" of fiber, yarn, or fiber-related tools.   I have purchased English Leicester fleece while staying at Colonial Williamsburg. Colonial Williamsburg is one of the few places in the U.S. where this rare breed is being raised, so it seemed only natural to "buy local."  One of my Great Wheels was purchased while on a trip to the Amish area of Ohio.  I had no intention of buying a Great Wheel, but I did have a feeling I might find one and warned Harvest that if I did find one, I was going to buy it.  Mind you, I already had a Great Wheel, but I wanted a better one.  On that same trip, we travelled all over Central Ohio finding fiber and yarn.  It was by chance that I found one of my two Great Wheels, Sophie, in an antique shop.  Harvest made no objection to the price, and we shuffled the luggage in the van to make room for her.

We fiber whores hoard yarn, fleece, spinning wheels, knitting needles, dye, looms, winders, noddy-noddies, and fiber-related tools of all kinds.  We plant dyer's gardens.  I have a stash of fleeces to spin that would probably take me five years to finish if I didn't buy another fleece (which is as unlikely to happen as it is for Hades to freeze over).  My friend and knitting teacher, Mildred, though she has been spinning only a year, is catching up quickly on her own stash of fiber, and Harvest and I are completely rearranging the downstairs of our home to make it more accessible for looms, spinning wheels, and yarns in the hope of opening a small shop.

Given our mutual attraction to fiber, Mildred, Harvest, and I have dubbed ourselves the founding members of Fiber Whores Anonymous - FWA, for short.   We know we are not alone, and we encourage others to come out of the fiber closet, loud and proud, with the cry of, "FWA for all, and all for FWA!"  Fiber whores come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, men, women, and young folk.  Once addicted, there is no cure, only the satisfaction of getting more fiber.  Thank goodness our addiction produces useful things like hats, mittens, and woven textiles. 

Thus it was that The Un-holey (yes, I did spell that correctly) Fiber Trinity of Harvest, Mildred, and I headed down a series of winding country roads in Northern Illinois on a Saturday to the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair for a FWA Adventure.

Mildred and I were immediately halted in our tracks by a fleece show in progress, judged by my good friend and mentor, Neil Kentner.  

The Grand Champion fleece was a stunning grey Coopworth (not for sale, alas), but Mildred and I snapped up a stunning, white, First Place Coopworth fleece before anybody could even get near the thing.  The sheep had been raised by Carol Wagner, and Carol's Coopworth fleeces are in a class by themselves.  This fleece will make beautiful weaving yarn.  That shine on the fleece you see isn't from the bag, it's the fiber.  YUM!  

Of course, since we were talking with Neil, he showed us a "happy accident" fleece from his own farm.  One of his Wensleydale rams had gotten in with two of his Tunis ewes, and the result was what Neil calls a "Tuni-dale."  It was wonderful.  Oh, dear!  Mildred and I bought this one, too.

All this shopping had worked up a real hunger, so we decided to take lunch and take stock.  We headed out to the parking lot to where our meal awaited us.

Harvest had prepared a lunch in true FWA style.  Wine in real glasses with cloth napkins and vintage linens, sourdough bread, grapes, cherries, several local cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, and chocolate biscuits.  FWA folks know how throw a proper tailgate party!

Refreshed and none the worse for the wine, we headed back inside to explore and shop some more.  Harvest snapped up several skeins of yarn to use for weaving.  Back at Carol Wagner's booth, Mildred spotted a grey Coopworth fleece that she couldn't resist, and we both two large balls of dyed roving.  

The alpaca fleeces had been judged earlier, so I snapped a photo of the winning fleece.  Note that it is two colors which can be spun separately or blended together.

The alpaca folks had a very nice display of yarns, and I was able to take a photo of one of their majestic animals.  

Not only were there alpacas at the festival, but there were angora rabbits, too.  The little fellow on the left is called a "Lion Head," and he's not much bigger than a kitten.  The rabbits on the bottom right are angora rabbits which shed their warm fur which is then gathered up and spun to make very soft, very warm yarns.  The rabbits were quite friendly and seemed to enjoy being held by people much of the day.  As you can see, one of them wants to get out of his cage and be held again!

It took several days to wash all the fleeces - a total of almost 18 pounds of wool, but we have some gorgeous fiber to show for it  and great memories of a trip worthy of a true FWA Adventure.  

A Sow's Ear, A Silk Purse, and a Bowl of Soup

Skeins of yarn waiting to be dyed.  L to R - Tunis, Romney, Shetland, and Wensleydale

In the world of fiber and yarn, sometimes things simply refuse to go as planned.  Mildred and I had been planning for months to experiment with dyeing yarn with black turtle beans.  I had read every blog on it, every Ravelry post, and we had viewed photos of yarns in various shades from gray to greenish to turquoise to indigo blue.  It appeared that black turtle beans produced the most reliable color, so we bought beans from the local co-op.  We had spun up two pounds of yarn to dye.  We thought we had it nailed.  We were wrong.

Using alum and cream of tartar as a mordant (a dye fixative), we carefully weighed the skeins and measured the correct amount of alum and cream of tartar into my large dye kettle, then gently put in the skeins, which had been soaking in water.  We heated the water slowly and simmered the skeins for an hour to bind the mordant to the yarn.  I rinsed the skeins the following day and hung them to dry.  So far, so good.

The black turtle beans (7 pounds of them!) were soaked for 48 hours in a food-safe kettle, and on Friday night, we re-wet the skeins and carefully - oh, so carefully - skimmed off the soaking water with a ladle, pouring the liquid through a sieve into the clean dye pot so that no bean particles or sludge would contact the yarn, which we had read would cause the yarn to turn grayish,rather than the blue we were hoping for.  We then lowered the skeins into the dye pot and left the pot on the floor to soak.  The beans were put into containers, and we froze them for use in soups later since they were just soaked and not spoiled or fermented.

I checked the skeins periodically.  The yarn turned from a pinkish color to a grayish color to a bluish-green, but the skeins didn't seem to be absorbing the color well.  I gently stirred the skeins from time to time, hoping that all would be well.

On Sunday morning, we took the skeins out of the depot and rinsed them to see what the results were.  It was not a pretty sight.

A dyer's disaster - (clockwise from top left - Tunis, Wensleydale, Romney, Shetland)

The yarn was bluish-grey with greenish-brown splotches.  f you can imagine a Confederate army uniform that has been buried in a horse stall (with the horse) for a week, you'll have an idea of what we had.  This was a dyer's disaster.  While parts of some of the skeins were sort of an interesting aqua color, the brownish splotches spoiled them completely.  The Wensleydale skein was beyond ugly.  It looked like part of a costume piece from a zombie movie.  This was particularly unfortunate as it had been spun for my friend, Leah, who had been given the wool by Neil Kentner, a notable Wensleydale breeder and wool judge.  

Clearly, an overdye was needed, so out came the big dye pot again, and we filled it with water.  I added about a cup of white vinegar and then combined about a tablespoon each of two Jacquard acid dyes - turquoise and brilliant blue - and stirred them into the dye pot along with a fervent hope that all would be well.  

We slowly brought the yarn up to a simmer, left it simmering gently for an hour, then let it cool for a few hours before taking the yarn out.

To our immense relief and pleasure, the results were better than we could have hoped.  The black bean disaster had created a lovely base for the blue overdye, and the hideous brownish blotches had absorbed the dye in a slightly different way, mellowing into subtle, slightly deeper blue shades which added depth to the yarn.  It would have been impossible to create this color without the prior disaster.  The skeins from each breed of wool are just a little bit different than the others, and all of them are stunning and rich.

The re-dyed skeins - Wensleydale, Shetland, Tunis, and Romney

I can't explain why the original dyeing went so wrong, resulting in such muddy colors.  I suspect it may be because we have hard water in our area and have to use water softener salt, but the next time I want to do a natural dye lot for blue, I'll be using tried and tested indigo or woad.

A happy ending:  Since the beans that we had soaked for dyeing had been frozen, I took some out and Mildred and I decided to celebrate our (eventual) success by making bean soup and home baked bread.

Note to self: There is a reason why black beans are not included as a reliable dye source in books on natural dyeing.  The results can be appalling.

Note to self #2:  When in doubt, prepare to overdye.