Stripes

I was always that kid with a pocket of pebbles, and rock drawer in my desk…..I still pick up interesting specimens! The natural brown-grey of the fiber and yarn for May lent itself well to this scene of Pebbles, I simply added a wash over with the shades of maroon, pink, blue, green, and tan. I applied the colors randomly to replicate this jumble of granite.

Our yarn is Tiger Tweed, a 2 ply superwash Merino with bits of Donegal tweed blended in to lend tufts of neutral colors that don’t take the dye. This one isn’t my favorite for socks (knit tightly if you do), but it makes a very nice effect in large projects such as shawls and cowls and such.

Our fiber is New England Fine Grey Combed Sliver. Definitely something completely different to the combed top prep most of us are used to. This wool pool fiber is indeed from smaller New England farms, and has simply been scoured (washed of dirt and lanolin), then sent through the first bit or two of carding to make sliver. If continuing the process to combed top, several of these are drawn into the combs together, and then a thick combed top ready for mechanical spinners is the result. As you can see from the 4 oz sample above, this sliver is not as thick, and thus longer. It does make it much easier to handle, and you don’t need to worry about ripping it down thinner to make it more manageable. This has also not been carbonized, a chemical process that burns off the vegetable matter and dust. I washed a lot of the dust off for you through the dyeing process, but there is still a good amount on there, and plenty of hay….so you may prefer spinning outside, or with a dropcloth. I find the effort is worth it, it’s a very fun and easy spin, and most of the hay just falls out on its own. This is a good fiber to try your hand at long draw if you haven’t ventured there yet. Let go of making a perfectly even yarn with this one, and just have fun with it. We’ll be returning to our usually combed top in June.

Thanks for being a part of Tiger Club for June! My apologies for a late reveal, it has been a busy couple of weeks and this was pushed to the back burner. I don’t currently have any openings in Tiger Club, but to jet me an email if you are interested, you can be at the top of the waitlist!

I’m always looking for quirky sources for seasonal colors, and I loved this stack of vintage bowls, with their robin’s egg blues and new-shoots chartreuse greens. Throw in a little storm cloud grey, and we have a winning spring colorway.

This month I dyed some fabulous Rambouillet combed top. Rambouillet sheep are descended from the best of a small flock of Merino sheep from Spain in 1786 and the breed takes it’s name from the town of the national sheepfold where it was developed. The breed came to the USA in 1840, and this offering of wool is indeed from United States sheep. You can learn more and see pictures of the sheep here.

I dyed the wool in a graduated gradient…..cream, light green, light blue….grey, dark green, dark blue. The wool itself formed a nice resist and broke the grey, leading to a bit of pink, and other areas of dark and light. Spun into a straight 2 ply, this would make a great shawl, or mix it up by making a fractal, or combining it with other top (Spin Off had a nice article in their spring issue about this). Or tear it up and do a combo spin. Rambo is a nice soft fiber like the Merino it descended from, but I feel it has more bounce. Perfect for next-to-the-skin projects. It is happy to be spun worsted or woolen.

I enjoy throwing a striping yarn into the Club mix from time to time, and I took inspiration from the bowl rims, and the alternating of cream and green with blue. I made a stripe of lighter blue and green in the middle of the darker stripes, it came out a little more subtle than I anticipated, but I still like the effect. For the cream, I decided to throw in the grey as the stripe. It turned out nicely, and will be great colors for spring and summer. Start about a foot in from the green end for the beginning of the pattern if you care about matching socks. Shown is a 64 stitch tube, at 8 1/2 stitches per inch, 10 1/2 rows per inch. I could go a bit tighter, but this would work fine for socks, too. The wool in this yarn is Targhee, which is a breed developed especially for the western United States. The development of the breed is a little complicated, so I’ll let you read about it here. The yarn is nice and soft like Merino, but more durable, and it quite bouncy with more memory than Merino. I really like it in this sock yarn.

Interested in joining us? I have a few sock and fiber spots open for May’s Tiger Club. If you’d like a combo (double fiber or double sock, or sock and fiber), drop me a line and I’ll rearrange the button inventory for you.

Each year, I do take a look at the Pantone Colors and try to do at least one Club offering that is ‘on trend’. This year, the Colors of the Year are ‘Ultimate Gray’ and ‘Illuminating’. What better mascot of these colors than our Iowa state bird, the Goldfinch. In recent years, I’ve been delighted by these birds descending upon our hill of purple coneflower to enjoy the seeds. Then I would see a few in the spring, and not again until fall. I assumed they were just migrating through our city area on their way to a more suitable habitat.

And then I tried a different kind of bird feeder. Our urban, yet wooded, environment is perfect for raccoons, and I battle them every year. I’ve pretty much given up on the regular type of bird feeder, but have had ok luck with suet (which may or may not have added pepper/hot sauce!), and even enjoyed a variety of woodpeckers this year. Wanting to expand our feeding options to see more of the chickadees and other smaller birds, I picked up a Finch Sock on a whim. It went over really great, all kinds of birds came out of the woodwork. The sock developed a hole, so I picked up a more permanent option….

Unfortunately, I’ve not had any luck getting a decent photo of actual Goldfinches on this feeder. Literally, we will have 10 or so on here, and as soon as I make any type of movement around the window, they are gone in a flash. It’s a mission to photograph them, now.

Anyway, I brought this color inspiration to the club this month. I try to vary the dyeing methods, and we hadn’t had a random style in a while. I also try to vary the colors, and I know that a lot of yellow can be overwhelming, so this was a good opportunity to minimalize and go with a speckle. I chose Panda 2 as the base, it’s a nice blend of SW Merino and rayon of Bamboo. The bamboo doesn’t take the dye, and lends a very nice sheen to the yarn, reminding me of the sparkle of snow. I got a welcome sauna treatment of heat and steam (it was below zero all that week!) as I sprinkled dyestock and acid over the yarn as it was up to temperature, ensuring a quick strike to keep the areas of color smaller. The yarn was repositioned 3 times and re-sprinkled to keep the colors random and to reach all areas of the skein. However, there may be variation in the amount of sprinkles from one end to the other, and definitely between skeins, so alternating skeins (or even both ends of the same skein) can help ensure things stay more random.

Our fiber of the month is Merino Tencel, 50/50. Tencel is a fiber derived from wood, and like the Bamboo rayon of our yarn, it is not dyed by acid dyes. This particular blend had fewer passes through the mill, and has ribbons of the tencel throughout, as you can see glinting in the picture. I actually didn’t anticipate this, as I’ve purchased this blend before, and it had always been well blended in the past. However, it worked out well, since despite not being dyeable by the acid dyed, the tencel did act as a wick and pulled the dye along the fiber, creating streaks. I decided to make a gradient with the fiber, starting with few speckles of yellow and black (which I knew would break to grey), and adding more as I went. I knew yellow + black = green, and in fact was counting on it, as I thought it lent a great depth to the braid. Blends like this that have ribbons of different fibers can be difficult to spin evenly, I do suggest spinning from the fold to keep your proportions more even, or be careful to keep moving if you are spinning across the top.

I’m thankful all the club packages have arrived, I was tremendously dismayed when I saw all of them stuck at the first stop after our local post office. Fortunately, the delay was resolved and everyone has their club.

Tiger Club is currently full for March. If you wish to be on the waitlist, please feel free to contact me through the website.