Just a heads up that The Painted Tiger will be on vacation from July 20 through August 3rd. If you have a fiber emergency, please order by Noon Central on Friday, July 19. Otherwise, I will be sending orders on Monday, August 5th. I look forward to being back all refreshed and filled with new color inspiration!
![C3-class Solar Flare Erupts on Sept. 8, 2010 [Detail]](https://i0.wp.com/farm5.staticflickr.com/4153/4974263471_4dbfd9f78b_z.jpg?resize=512%2C419)
Yup, I’m a science geek, and solar flares….well, they are cool! So this photo by NASA was the inspiration for June’s Tiger Club
Our yarn is Tiger Twist II, which is pretty similar to the original Tiger Twist, but contains nylon for a longer lasting sock. I dyed it kettle style, which is sorta random, so minimal pooling, or at least pooling that doesn’t have a consistent recurring pattern. It all depends, of course, and each skein is different. Can’t wait to see these knit up!
The wool for June is an old favorite in a new version. We’ve had Romney before, but as combed top. This time, I had the Michigan grown wool processed as true roving instead. I was nervous about dyeing it, as it isn’t as organized a preparation, but I needn’t have worried….it was lovely to work with, and hope you will find it equally lovely to spin. And it is just plain fun to say ‘Romney Roving’!
July Club is coming up really quick, we will be on vacation during my usual shipping week, so I will be shipping it early. It will be a completely new yarn AND fiber for the club. Unfortunately the sock club options are full, but you are welcome to join us for Fiber Club, available in single and double. Hope your 4th was a blast, and stay cool in July!
May’s Tiger Club took a trip to the Tuscany region of Italy…..here are some ‘snapshots’ of our trip…..
You can see the recurring colors of blue, gold, rusty orange, green, and a bit of grey. I captured and interpreted those in wool.
Our yarn is a return of an old favorite…Bengal. It is 100% Superwash BFL, and is 4 ply for a nice round yarn, yet thin for socks that have a chance of fitting in regular shoes. I dyed variegated in the round, so the yarn will spiral and make mini stripes.
Our wool is Falkland combed top. Falkland is a location as opposed to most wools which are named after their breed. Sheep on the Falkland Islands are breed for fine and very white fiber. Due to the isolated location, the sheep do not need the pesticides many other sheep need, making Falkland an more natural choice.
I hope you enjoyed our trip! For June and July, we will be exploring Hot and Cold. You can still sign up, new subscriptions to Tiger Club are open through Saturday, June 15th.
Spring has been so long in coming that I decided to stick with a seasonal theme for another month, but this time do a more traditional take on it. I love the forest, and in the spring the most beautiful and delicate flowers appear before the trees leaf out.
Inspired by these beauties, I blended up some soft blue and pink, a sharp leafy green, a warm tan, and a cool brown. Thus….Woodland Wildflowers!
This month, the fiber is Falkland. In this case, the name does not refer to a particular breed, but to an area. The sheep on the Falkland Islands are various crosses of Merino….Polwarth, Corriedale, etc, and are selected for whiteness. There are few pests in this location, so the wool is chemical free, without the expense of ‘organic’. I love this wool…it has a nice heft, but still soft which makes it very versatile, and the whiteness is fantastic for bringing out subtle colors.
Our yarn this month is Safari, which is a blend of 75% Corriedale Wool and 25% Nylon. It is good and strong, yet soft and makes cozy socks. I decided to stripe the colors this month, and went with wide stripes of the brown and tan, and narrower stripes of the pink, blue, and green. The tube shown is 64 stitches at about 6-7 stitches per inch.
Want in on the fun? Tiger Club is open for May until the 15th. We’d love to have you!
I have a little shop update for you. I’ve been working on not so fun stuff like taxes and fun stuff like custom orders and other fun stuff like ordering 22 pound bumps of wool. In the meantime, I squeezed in a few things.
There are some new batches of Tropical Rainbow Stripe sock yarn, and one batch is a bit of an oops, so you can get a discount on those. Hey, no one’s perfect.
Cute all wrapped up like that, huh? That particular one is going to Stringtopia as a door prize. Yours will look like a regular skein, but will knit up like this:
And I have some Falkland for you. I ordered a new bump, so the last pound or two that was in the Fiber Closet o’ Fun was free to jump in the pot and get some color. I went with some old and new favorites.
Dove:
and last, but certainly not least, Tropical Rainbow:
Thanks for stopping by, and just a reminder that Tiger Club is open only until April 15th, so if you’d like in, don’t delay!
I enjoy following the rhythm of the seasons with my dyeing, but I also enjoy being a bit unexpected. This picture of a Black Tulip was my inspiration for March’s Tiger Club. 
For our final month of the overdyed non-white fiber theme, I wanted to do something special. This fiber is 60% Merino, 20% Tibetan Yak, and 20% Silk. My kiddo said it was so soft he couldn’t feel it. 🙂 A bit of sampling, and I easily had beautiful rich shades of purple and blue. 
Now my challenge was to create something similar in yarn. I wanted to retain the shine, so I chose Panda (superwash Merino, Bamboo, Nylon). I also wanted to get the feel of an over dye, which gives rich tweedy colors. So I gambled (well, ok, make a big sample!). I used the exact same colors as the fiber, arranged the yarn, and painted myself a flower: 
Wow. That is PINK! So after setting this layer of dye, I took the skeins and dipped them in a dilute bath of greyish brown….a shade similar to the Merino/Yak/Silk fiber. You can see the before on the left, and the after on the right. (It’s more purple, really….lousy lighting, and my camera hates purple unless I have the special light on.)
Ah, much better. And here they are all dried and prettied up: 
If you aren’t in Club yet and like what you see, I invite you to join us. There are spots open in fiber and sock clubs until April 15th. Treat yourself for getting those taxes finished? Yeah.
A little eye candy for you….a fiber friend of mine was destashing, and it just happened to be the spindle I was looking to add to my collection….a little 2″ Golding in Ebony. Isn’t she a beauty?!
And of course, I had to try it out. This is a bit of a sample I made for Stringtopia last year, Falkland (or Corrie, I disremember) in Tropical Rainbow.
Thanks for rehoming your spindle, Jane. We will be fast friends!
The color of spring 2013 has been declared to be ‘Emerald’ by Pantone. I don’t often follow trends or trend makers, but when the color is green, I’m happy to oblige!
This is month two of my mini-theme for the fiber. I’m over-dying fibers that are a natural color (not white). Last month was Mixed BFL, and this month is Masham. The original color of the wool is a lovely light brownish grey. And then I added color……
Wow. I don’t say that to brag, because the awesomeness of this was a surprise to me, too. But really….wow. I’m going to have a lot of fun trying this with other colors. Anyway, Masham, or Massam (pronounced Mass ham), is a longwool breed, a cross of Teeswater and Dalesbred or Swaledale. The staple is about 6 inches, and the micron is 31-36. It is recommended for outer garments or felting (although I think it may take a bit of effort to felt it). I think it would be fine for a shawl you plan to wear over something, or a vest. Spin it with low twist to keep it soft.
Oh, you suppose I should post the inspiration photo?
Our yarn this month is a new one, I’m looking for a replacement for Tiger Twist. I like TT, but I think it could be improved a little. Tiger Twist II? is an 80/20 superwash Merino and Nylon blend with the same great two ply construction, but even more twist. (Tiger Twistier….or Tiger Twistiest??!!) It is 400 yards per 100 grams. I love how it took these colors brightly and clearly, and I look forward to your reports on how it knits up and wears.
Want to join us for March Club? There are opening in all combinations, please check them out in the shop.
Hey, look at that…..a shop update actually on Friday!
A customer made a request, and so I have a new recipe (thanks, Victoria!!). Please welcome Pastel Rainbow to TPT. It is currently on Targhee and Superwash Merino, it will come out on other fibers as I cycle through them.
The rest of the update is restocking…..I’m on a gradient kick, I hope you like them. What do you do with hand dyed gradient wool? They are so versatile….you can spin straight and chain ply or ply with a solid or split in as many pieces as you want plies and get some blending. You can split in half, then one half in parts and make a fractal. You can split it down many times and make something more stripy. Lots of fun and possibilities in each braid.
Peacock Superwash Merino:
Tropical Rainbow Targhee:
Autumn Splendor Targhee:
Forest Targhee (I’m spinning this right now!):
And finally a new batch of Grand Old Flag self-striping sock yarn.
Hope you are keeping warm….turns out that the groundhog wasn’t quite right. I’m off to spin, have an enjoyable weekend! (And clubbers, have fun stalking your mailbox!)
A couple of weeks ago, I felt the need for a quick project, so I pulled out some skeins of Tiger Cub I set back for myself, and worked toward making a ‘thing’.
These skeins are kettle dyed, which means fairly random. I didn’t want to fight with the patterning, so decided a simple plain weave would be fine. Plain weave is your basic alternating of threads, over and under. Next came deciding how close I should put each thread….my loom has a 10 dents per inch reed, but measuring the wraps per inch of the yarn suggested I might like 12 ends per inch. Since I wanted to make a large scarf/small shawl (hence ‘Sharf’) with some drape, I decided to go the easy route and go with 10 epi. Then came some serious calculation of how wide and long I could make it with the yarn I had. I decided I could make it 16 inches in the reed, expecting it to shrink in width. I measured out 3 yards (108″) of warp, using all of one skein, and some of the other to get 160 ends. I tried warping back to front, using the built in raddle…..this was a disaster….again. This time, the fuzzy yarn would catch together and get stuck in the raddle. I guess I’ll be a front to back girl!
Here it is in progress. One goal of this sharf is to continue to get better at selvedges (I’ve discovered that for me, on this loom (a Louet Kombo), my selvedges are better if I beat with the shed open, then change the shed before I let the beater go. Another note….as this was patterned yarn, I didn’t want the pattern to change every time my bobbin did (yes, there is pattern even within random!). So I took an extra step with my bobbins, winding one, then re-winding it so the yarn was always going in the direction it came off the skein.
Another goal is to learn to pay attention to how hard I’m beating in the weft, trying to get 10 picks per every inch and 3/8ths, to give me an even and square cloth when finished. I measured how much the yarn stretches under tension to get an idea of how long I needed to stretch my picks over…..if I had gone with 10 per inch, my fabric would be a little weft faced when finished, and I would have run out of yarn before the length I wanted. See how open the above picture is. It looks too open, doesn’t it?
Everything went great until the last 18 inches or so, then the effects of the disastrous warping became very obvious, and the shed was lousy. No problem, though. I did some needle weaving while this was still on the loom and corrected the mistakes. Just weave a new piece of yarn several inches before and after the mistake, then cut the mistake yarn out, leaving overlap.
Lookit, better selvedges! And the sett looks better now that it is off the loom, although it is still really floppy, or that fun weaving term: ‘sleazy’.
And, rather longer than I expected. It was 78 x 15″ off the loom, fringe not included. And this is where I stalled. I haven’t purchased a fringe twister yet, so I’m doing this by hand. Well, sort of. I set up my bobbin winder, measured 6 inches on my fringe, then used a clothespin to attach two strands to the bobbin winder….2 turns. Hold those two, add two turns to the next pair, then knot those two sets together and allow the twist to settle. It worked pretty well, if fiddly.
And then came the time of reckoning….time to wash. Since this yarn is superwash, I used my machine set on delicate, cold water, and some Ecos detergent (which is pH neutral and safe for hand dyed wool). Then I tumbled it in the dryer for a bit. It fluffed out marvelously, so 10 epi was the right call. I did have some of the fringe pull…so I’ll consider that for my next project. The sharf is now more scarf like, at 75 x 14″.
I wore it to church this Sunday. Yay!
