a joining of two lands

portland and shetland that is!

(oh i crack myself up sometimes. no, really, i do).

this is my first project using the portland that i washed the other week and it was a joy to work with!  the fibres have a lovely springy quality to them (not sure what the technical term is, possibly crimp?), a beautiful sheen and they are so soft.

i always forget to take photos of the process but here are a few i remembered to take along the way.

first, carding the portland

the resist, covered with grey shetland and white portland

after felting, now ready to remove the resist

and after a bit of rolling, and manipulating, the finished piece ... a vase wrapper

i think the sheltand and the portland have worked quite well together. they've felted in well, the portland was a little slower to felt and had a slightly smaller shrink rate than the shetland but not enough that it was a problem.  the surface of the portland is as 'fuzzy' (again lack of technical terms is letting me down!) as the shetland but much softer, in fact i can't help touching it every time i walk past!

perfect for displaying some dried grasses

fun with fleece!

i was really lucky to receive a bag of portland fleece to experiment with, from angela recently.

as i've never washed raw fleece before, i thought i would do a little research first to try and avoid any unnecessary disasters!

the british sheep and wool book from the british wool marketing board says of portland that it is a rare breed, established in the uk in the thirteenth century. the fleece has a staple length of five to nine cm and the micron range is thirty one to thirty five.

thanks to:
running moon farm
angela
fuzzy galore
twin willows farm

for their advice, which i kind of cobbled together and tweaked to come up with something i thought would work for me.

after waiting for m to go away for the weekend - don't think he would have been too comfortable with raw fleece soaking in our lovely, clean bath for hours (plus he's already expressed his distate of the smell - is it just me, i quite like the smell of raw wool?!), i set about the huge sack of wool!

rather than diving in and biting off more than i can chew as is usually my want - i must be getting older and wiser (now there's an odd thought!) i decided to only wash enough to fill three of my net wash bags so that i didn't overload the bath.

here's a few details/pics of my process ...

some music to keep me entertained while i worked away

and a little sustenance in the shape of home-made banana mini-cupcakes

raw fleece straight out of the bag

and then popped into net wash bags to avoid too much handling and accidental felting while washing

i then filled the bath with hot water only, added a few generous squirts of washing up liquid and gently dispersed it through the water (so as not to create bubbles) before gently placing each bag of fleece flat on top of the water, whilst resisting the urge to stick my hands in and swish it all about!

after walking away (to avoid the temptation of swishing and agitating!) for fifteen to twenty minutes, i came back and gently removed the bags from the water, drained the bath, and refilled with hot water and washing up liquid before gently placing the bags of fleece back into the bath

i did a total of four washes until (i got too impatient!) there were visible bubbles left in the bath - which means it's ready for rinsing. the bath was then filled with hot water only, the fleece (still in bags) was placed into the water and left for ... well, by now it was about half an hour at a time because i was distracted with making my pom-pom sheep for 'flock'!

i did a couple of rinses, adding vinegar to the final rinse to restore the ph of the fleece. the bags were then left to drip over the bath during the evening before i placed the fleece on the radiators to finish drying the next day - this last bit might be a no-no but i was impatient to get it dry so i could start work!

and now i have the most beautifully soft, creamy wool with a stunning sheen to it (the photo really doesn't do it justice!)

i can't wait to start making with it - more pics and chat to follow :)

beetroot dye bath

digging in the front patch to pop in some new plants the other day, i discovered a few beetroots from last year! we did try cooking with them but they were very tough and didn't taste too nice either.

so, as i'm having a bit of a dyeing experiment phase, into the dye bath they went. i've read conflicting reports about success with dyeing using beets but it looked quite promising given the colour it turned the water.

and, did it work ... ? you'll have to wait to find out, i'm off to find some nettles for the next dye bath :)

dandelion dyepot, tea, coffee

the day after we got back from hols was a bit dreich and i was feeling quite fed up with myself to be honest.

i really loved being back under the big skies, being at the coast and being outside for the whole day. i always feel a little twitchy and claustrophobic when i come back!

so i decided i should get out in the garden and pick some of the hundreds of dandelion flowers we returned to, and experiment with some natural dyeing - it's been on my to-do list for waaaaaaaaaay too long.

i'm sure the neighbours thought i was daft - out in the rain, picking the flower-heads off the dandelions! as well as being able to experiment with dyeing, it means the dandelions won't go to seed, so i'll hopefully have less weeds to deal with later on in the year.

here's the dandelion heads in the dye pot. it took a wee while to get to this stage - the flower heads had mostly closed over because of the weather, so i wanted to open out each one to make sure i wasn't committing any wee critters to a boiling pot of water.

just as well i was so careful, look at this wee fella ...

while i was online reading up on using dandelions for the dye bath, i read about dandelion tea. i kept a few flowers back, gave them a good rinse, covered them with water and simmered them for a while (i think it's supposed to be five minutes but i was so occupied with the dye bath, i forgot to check the clock).

it's hard to describe the flavour to be honest! i tried it both with and without honey and i think i preferred it without, it wasn't quite as bitter as i expected it to be. while i don't think i would drink it every day, i did enjoy it and would think about using it as a base for blending other infusions.


i also read about dandelion 'coffee' so a few days later, when the garden had dried out, i went back out to dig up the dandelions to get to the roots. the trick is to rinse, and rinse, and rinse until all the dirt is removed but it's taken me so long to get them to this stage, i'm not sure i can stand much more rinsing! i think i may stick to my jar of barley coffee in the cupboard.


progress report on the dyeing to follow!