Continuing progress in my growing flax for linen experiment

My flax-to-linen experiment continues. A few posts ago, I wrote about pulling the flax I grew this summer in a 5x10 ft. plot. I let the bundles dry for about two weeks:

 

 

When they were dry, I combed the seed pods off with combs I bought at the pet store which are really for dogs. Once the pods were off, over a few days, I mashed them up to release the seeds and winnowed the mess on windy days to come up with about two ounces of flax seeds.

 

It's probably a poor haul, but I think the drought affected productivity. I won't plant these next year, I'll order more for that purpose. These I'll sprinkle in muffins, etc. It's enough for a few batches of muffins, at least:



 

 

After removing the seed pods, I put the bundles of flax in a large plastic container, weighted them down with old paving bricks, and added water. I let them stew like this for just over a week. This is called retting the flax, which basically means getting the outer parts of the plant into a nice, rotted condition so that you can access the stronger flax fibers:



 

 



After the retting was done, I dumped the water out. Wow! What a smell!!

 

I rinsed each bundle with the hose, hoping against hope to rinse away some of that stench, and I now have all of the bundles laid out to dry:

 

 

Once they're dry, I can move on to breaking (breaking away the dried, rotted parts), scutching (swiping away the dried rotted parts that are still clinging to the flax fibers), and combing (with a flax hackle) the flax fibers so that they can be spun. More on all of this in future flax-to-linen posts!

Dyeing with tickseed flowers and marigolds

Dyeing with tickseed flowers today. The flowers are yellow, but they make a pretty orange dye:

 

 

Here is some superwash merino roving in the dye pot:

 

Here is the roving out of the dye pot and hung up to dry, I can't get over that shade of orange:

Below is a wider shot of everything that's hanging to dry. The greens are from yesterday's dyeing.

 

The dark green on the right is superwash Bluefaced Leicester wool that had been dyed blue with Japanese indigo about a month or so ago, and then overdyed yesterday with a yellow dye made from marigolds.

 

The two olive greens are two sections of polwarth roving which I had wanted to dye yellow in the marigold dye pot. However, I wasn't thinking and put them in with the blue roving when dyeing. Apparently some of the indigo must have bled off of the BFL roving and got picked up by the polwarth in the yellow dye bath. The result is the olive green you see. Not my favorite, and not the beautiful yellow I was hoping for, but I will find a use for it: 

 

 

And here is a picture of Japanese indigo blooming in my garden, such a pretty color!: 

 

Pulling flax

I pulled my modest 4x10 foot plot of flax today. I bundled it as I pulled it and then put it in the yard to dry out a bit before further processing. Here I am with my flax before I pulled it =>

 

Here is the flax:

 



 

Here's the plot after pulling the flax:

 



 

 

All the bundles in the wheelbarrow, ready to take home:

 

 

Here are the bundles in my yard. I'll let them dry out a bit before moving on to the retting stage:



 

Little pants!

I just finished a pair of little knitted pants for my grand-niece, who is a few months old. The yarn is hand-spun superwash Bluefaced Leicester, and hand-dyed with Japanese indigo from my garden.

Don't look too closely at the ribbed band at the top, it's not quite the same width on each side ( hard as I try, there are ALWAYS mistakes in my knitting).

Porcupines and a Great Lake

A week ago, my husband and I spent a few days in Michigan on the shore of Lake Huron. Lake Huron is a beautiful, clear lake - in places almost a Caribbean blue.

We went on some hikes and found things like this porcupine up a tree (click the picture to see him bigger):

And we swam and walked along the lakeshore:

I live close to Cleveland and Lake Erie. It may be because we're by a major city, but Lake Erie is not as pretty as the other Great Lakes that I've seen - Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior. I guess I've caught a glimpse of Lake Ontario, too, but not a good look.

It was nice to get away for a few days, and it was hard to remember that we weren't next to an ocean, but a freshwater lake. The beach was sandy and beautiful, and the water was gorgeous.

Booksigning Saturday!

I'll be signing books at the Howe Meadow farmer's market in Cuyahoga Valley National Park tomorrow, Saturday, August 18th! I'll be there from 9-12.

If you're in the area, stop by - the market is terrific! I'll be stocking up on buffalo meat, honey, free-range chicken patties, and yummy baked goods : ) Oh, and signing books, too - I'll have all three of my books on hand to sign.

I'll also bring my drop spindles and some of my Japanese indigo-dyed fiber to spin while not swamped with people buying books ; )

Hope to see you there!

The first of the potatoes are in!

Yum!

The first of the flax is in

I pulled a bit of my flax today. This is one of the two bundles I pulled:

The two bundles represent about 1/8 of what I have growing. Keep in mind that only about 10% of the flax plant produces flax fiber, and only 3% of that is the nice, long stuff that can be used to make linen. The other 7% is tow, which is short fibers which can be used to make more utilitarian things (like rope, I think, and probably rough cloth).

I'll be pulling the rest of the flax later this week. I'm just nervous that I'm doing it too soon, so I only pulled these two bundles today. Traditionally, the pulled flax is set in upright stacks which are left to dry in the field for about a week before the retting process begins. I'll let my bundles dry out in my warm, dry garage before heading into the retting stage.

I found a very helpful group of videos about the stages of flax processing, the first of which, about pulling flax, can be found here.

My flax isn't as tall as it could be. Gardening in general has been a bit of a challenge for me this year. The weather has been very hot, and I don't like heat. Keeping everything watered under drought conditions has been a big challenge, and our dog became ill with lymphoma. I spent a lot of time with him and less in the garden. We had to put him down three weeks ago, and I can tell you that it's been really hard. I'm just now beginning to care about the garden again and get back into the swing of things. He was always with me, either helping me outside, or sleeping nearby while I spun or did other wool or fiber work, so everything that I do reminds me that he's not there. Time heals all wounds, they say, so we'll just let time do its thing while I get back into the rhythm of the rest of the world.

On a happier note, my birthday is this month. My husband asked me yesterday what I want, so I'm trying to think of something really good to ask for : )

Growing flax for fiber

I've posted about my Japanese indigo experiment - growing and dyeing with Japanese indigo for the first time. Now I'll begin posting about my flax experiment.

Ever since reading Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's, A Midwife's Tale, I've secretly wanted to grow flax, process it, spin it, and weave it into linen cloth. This year, along with my indigo experiment, I decided to finally see if I could grow flax.

I ordered seeds from the Hermitage, a monastery in Pennsylvania that grows flax for linen. I planted my quarter-pound of seeds on one half of my 10x10 plot. The Japanese indigo plants took up the other half. In the picture below, you can see my husband helping me with my second indigo-leaf harvest on the right, and the flax is in the middle of the picture:

My flax is almost ready to harvest, I think I'll be harvesting this week. It's not as tall as it could be - the soil in these plots isn't the best, although I did add manure and lime and alfalfa to it, and the drought hasn't been helpful. But I think it will do just fine for my first foray into the world of flax production.

Processing flax takes time. After harvesting, I'll let it dry out. Then comes the retting; then the breaking, scutching, and combing; and finally the spinning and either knitting or weaving. But I'll get into all of that in future posts if all goes well.

This much flax will not produce very much at all for the purposes of either weaving or knitting, but this time is just for experimenting, to see if I can actually do everything it takes to make linen. If I get encouraging results, I'll plant more in the future. Also, I don't have a loom yet : )

More on the flax experiment in future posts!

Dyeing with Japanese indigo

I've been growing Japanese indigo plants in my garden this year. This is the first time and I've been very nervous about it. We've had drought conditions here, like much of the U.S., and these plants like to be kept moist. I ordered my seeds here, and started them indoors about six weeks before planting them outside in the spring. They've been doing relatively well and it was finally time for my first leaf harvest.

I have about fourteen plants. You can harvest about 1/3 of the leaves from a plant every couple of weeks once they're ready (around midsummer). My husband helped me and between us we gathered right around 16 ounces of leaves.

I rinsed them and put them in my smaller dye pot:

I covered them with hot tap water and them placed the smaller pot inside my larger pot, which had water in it, so that the smaller pot was in a water bath. I slowly heated the leaf/water mix up to around 160 degrees F and kept it there for about two hours:

After straining the leaves out, I added about 1 1/2 tbs. baking soda and then poured the dye bath back and forth for about five minutes. It turned a nice, deep blue color:

But it wasn't ready to dye with yet! Now I added a reducing agent, which takes the oxygen out of the dyebath. I had one ounce of thiourea dioxide on hand for the occasion. I added about 1 1/2 tbs to the dyebath and waited for about 15 minutes. The deep blue is supposed to become light yellowish, but nothing happened. I added the rest of my reducing agent (about the same amount as before), waited, and still nothing happened. I remembered that I had a package of color run remover with my laundry stuff. That's also a reducing agent, so I added about half to my dyebath and presto! It began to change color!

While this was happening, I had been soaking my handspun yarn in hot water, waiting for the dyebath to be ready to take it. The yarn needs no mordant for indigo, but it should be wet. Here are some of the skeins I had on hand to dye. On the left is polwarth wool, the middle is superwash Bluefaced Leicester, and on the right is a BFL/silk blend. The roving at the top is babydoll southdown, but it didn't go into the dyepot this time:

I forgot to take a picture of the dyebath after the reducing agent was added, but you can see the color of the dyebath in the liquid at the bottom of the bowl in the picture below. These are the three skeins from the picture above right after being plucked out of the dyebath after a 20 minute soak. They are light, yellowish-green at first, but when they hit the air, they start to turn blue right before your eyes:

I squeezed the excess liquid out and laid them out to air and watched them turn darker blue. I ended up dyeing a few more skeins and some roving before the dye started to become exhausted. In all I dyed 8 ounces of polwarth yarn, 8 ounces of superwash BFL yarn, 4 ounces of BFL/silk yarn along with 4 ounces of BFL/silk roving, and one 4-ounce ball of baby alpaca yarn - all with my 16 ounces of Japanese indigo leaves:

I'm so happy that my Japanese indigo was a success! And I can repeat the whole process every two weeks until the growing season is over!

Now I have my fingers crossed that my flax experiment will also meet with similar success- more on that at a later date...

The sweater project: step three, knitting

I spent a couple of weeks on the knitting, and here is the finished product. It's the first sweater I've ever knitted ( if you don't count a sweater for a small Teddy bear). My daughter dyed the fiber, I spun it and knitted it, and now she has a sweater.

Discounted books in July!

Smashwords is having its sitewide discountpalooza in July and I've signed up with two of my ebooks - Rose of Par Kluhnd and The Witch of Starmont will be half-price for all of July with the coupon code that will be provided on the books' pages.

"What is Smashwords," you say?  It's a place where you can buy ebooks, all of them conveniently downloadable in any format you need for any and all of your ereading devices.

Here are the links to my books on Smashwords - My Twelfth Christmas will remain at its regular price (which is already very low at just 99 cents).

Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale

The Witch of Starmont

My Twelfth Christmas

The discount starts in July - be sure to enter the coupon code at checkout. The code will be provided on the book's page near the price starting July 1st and ending at the close of the day on July 31st.

The sweater project: step two, spinning the wool

The sweater project continues. When spinning, my default yarn seems to be a two-ply with a gauge from fingering weight to sport weight. However, I want to follow the sweater pattern as written and not do a lot of calculations. Since the pattern calls for a gauge of 4 1/2 stitches per inch on size 7 to 8 needles (which is more like a worsted weight - thicker than fingering and sport weights), I'll need to change my default ways to spin a different weight of yarn.

Now, there are a lot of ways to spin yarn. Some of the basic ways are spinning it woolen or worsted, but then you can also ply it. Will it be a two ply, three ply, four ply? Or maybe not ply it at all and leave it a singles?

Also, what ratio will the yarn be spun with? I have three whorls for my wheel and they each have two different ratios, together they range from five twists per inch all the way up to 20 twists per inch.

After a lot of experimenting, spinning up different small samples and knitting gauge swatches, I decided upon a single ply, spun worsted at a ratio of five twists per inch. At the gauge I need, this seemed to give me the softness and amount of drape I wanted in the knitted samples.

And so the spinning commenced, and as of today, all two pounds of the dyed, superwash BFL has been spun into eight skeins of worsted weight singles yarn. I'm hoping the gauge is consistent enough throughout all of the skeins so that the knitting proceeds without hiccups. Fingers crossed! As I've said before, this is all a learning process.

Next step; begin knitting!

The sweater project: step one, dyeing the wool

I have finally begun a project which I have been looking forward to for some months. I found a really cute sweater pattern in this book (which I found in my library), and have been itching to make it for my daughter. The other day everything was in place: 2 lbs. superwash Bluefaced Leicester wool roving, check; dyes, check; daughter, check; time, check. So we began.

First phase: Dyeing the wool.

We set up the tables outside and got the dyes ready. We are using weak acid dyes, which are set with vinegar and heat. The heat can be supplied in many ways, but we used the oven and the microwave. Here is our setup (click on any of the pictures to see them larger):

I left the mixing of the colors to my daughter so that she could get the colors she wants for the sweater:

Here is the first batch of wool getting its color. This batch is all one color, so it was dyed all together in an aluminum roaster:

Ready for the oven! This batch will go into the oven at 400 degrees F for about 40 minutes:

What a gorgeous color!

Now, on to the next batch, four 4-ounce lengths of roving which need to be handpainted in mutliple colors:

My daughter had lots of help:

Some of which took breaks in the shade or sun, according to species:

A length of colors:

Ready for the microwave! The roving is encased in cellophane, rolled up, and microwaved for about 4 minutes to set the colors:

Here is the dyed roving, after heating and setting the color, laid out to dry in the sun:

And here is the dried roving, it's so soft!:

Next phase: Spinning the wool into yarn.

I will have to spin it all a consistent gauge, hopefully at 4.5 stitches per inch on size 7 or 8 needles (US). That's the tricky part. Wish me luck!

Here is a picture from the Yarnplay book of the sweater we are aiming for (but ours will be in my daughter's colors).

My knitting skills are only so-so. I'm hoping that I'm up to the task, but I've been wanting to delve into this project for a very long time and I'm excited about it. It's all a learning process!

Hanging herbs to dry

I have lavender, lemon balm, yarrow, hyssop, and calendula hanging to dry now on my drying rack. The first batch of many, I hope!

This is where cranberries come from!

At a recent trip to Triangle Bog in Kent, Ohio, I snapped a picture of a cranberry blossom. They're pretty small (click on the picture to see a larger version). If you want to see a picture of cranberries in the same bog, click here.

Dyeing with red cabbage

I decided to try dyeing with red cabbage. It's one of those dyes that may not be particularly light-fast, and different colors can be achieved by raising or lowering the pH of the dyebath. I'm a little leery of those types of dyes, but I was curious to see if I could get  nice blue out of the process, so I proceeded.

I bought a nice, red cabbage from the grocery store, cut it up and put it in a pot with water to make the dyebath (click on any of the pictures to see them bigger):

While the cabbage was simmering away, I mordanted the fiber, which consisted of 4 ounces of superwash BFL wool, and about 4 ounces of white, handspun, baby alpaca yarn. The mordant I used was alum and cream of tartar:

Here is a picture of the cabbage starting to give its color to the dyebath:

When the dyebath was ready, I strained the cabbage leaves out and separated the liquid into two pots. One pot I left with its nice, blue color, and the other pot I added vinegar to until it was a pink-purple color. I put the alpaca yarn in the blue pot, and the roving in the pink-purple pot.

Here is the handspun baby alpaca singles yarn in the dyebath:

And here is the superwash BFL roving in the dyebath:

After dyeing for about an hour, I covered the pots and took them off of the heat. I let them sit overnight, and in the morning, both pots had changed to a green color. Here is the color that I got on both the roving and the yarn - the yarn is in rinse water after being taken out of the pot:

And here are the results after drying and spinning - the alpaca is the green, center-pull ball, and the superwash BFL is the green skein. This picture was taken with a flash, but the following picture is without a flash:

The other yarns in the picture have also been dyed with natural dyes, pokeberry, marigold and cleavers root (from left to right), with the soft greens from the red cabbage. Again, this picture is without a flash:

I actually really like the green that I got from the red cabbage, but I'm not sure how light-fast it will be. It may fade to gray over time, which will be sad.