Busy, Busy, Busy!

Ages since I've had time to write anything - well not be too tired at the end of the day, to be honest! Obviously the biggest issue has been getting things ready for Woolfest, which I sadly will not be attending - but John will, so don't think The Mulberry Dyer isn't turning up! Our stall number is A6-7.



Everything seems to happen at once round here, Nick has his graduation on Thursday (which is setting up day) - he has a 2:1 in Medieval History, well done Nick!- then on the Saturday and Sunday we have a booking to demonstrate dyeing in the cathedral gardens at Peterborough, so it seemed logical that I go up to St Andrews and then down the A1 to Peterborough and John goes to Cumbria. I'm hoping that lots of people will go and talk to him and feed and water him regularly - it's very hard doing a big show like that all on your own - and he's demonstrating the extract dyes as well, I should say letting people have a play with them really!



I guess the other news I have is my day out last Thursday - I was asked to go and dye Christmas ribbons with Ruth Goodman for the Victorian Farm programme, there are going to be some Christmas Specials, so I'm going to be on the tele!!! I really don't like having cameras around me, hate the sound of my own voice and was VERY nervous beforehand, but the crew were lovely and made it all very easy, at one point John said there were 3 cameras all pointing at me - and I carried on talking! I just hope I said things right! One of the most exciting things about the day was talking about the advent of the chemical dyes - a subject I had to gen up on beforehand as I really know nothing about it - I was very honoured to have a sample of Mauvein, dyed by Mr Perkins himself, sent to me by the Society of Dyers and Colourists for use in the filming, I would just like to express my appreciation here for their support in letting us have this precious item (I did wonder if it would arrive handcuffed to the Curators arm, but no, it was all mine for the duration!) it was definitely the star feature, not me! I must confess that the colour is really quite stunning, it's obvious why it caused such a sensation when you see it "in the flesh"



There is a distinct lack of photos with this post - John has a new camera, really super duper, stuff (way beyond my ken!) as yet we haven't worked out how to download the photos for me to use, so my apologies, I'll try and do better tomorrow!

Back to work

The holiday was lovely, I had such a relaxing time, the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful and I was allowed to just read my book without interuption of any kind (an absolute luxury these days!) I understand that we were very lucky with the weather - it seems to have rained almost continuously for the past 9 months, if the locals are to be believed - it was glorious sunshine for the whole time I was there!




However that was then and now we are back - I came back early to attend the Ravelry Day in Coventry, which was great fun, but very wet! So nice to meet lots of Ravellers, many I knew and many more I met for the first time, I ran a workshop for 2 hours - not really enough time to get anything constructive done, but we had fun playing with extract dyes, next year there will be 4 days in Stirling so we can be much more thorough!

Woolfest is now very close on the horizon, so I have a couple of weeks of frantic dyeing and hanking etc, I know the time will fly by, I hope to do some more experimenting as I'm going along and I'll let you have previews of the colours as they're ready!

Only a short update today, but lots on the horizon!

Holiday

I should already be in bed - have to get up at 4.45 to catch the ferry to Ireland- but didn't want to go without saying tara rwan!

I'll leave you with some photos of indigo dyeing I've been doing this week - I had a really good bath going and the colour is really rich!

On the far left is my Welsh sock wool, I've already hanked that into individual 50g's (it come in 500g hanks) then there's the embroidery wool - lovely and fine and finally some beautiful lace weight alpaca silk. I will have some of it at the Ravelry Day in Coventry next weekend.

Following on from an earlier post - having dyed the blues and then hanked up the Welsh I thought I'd better take a photo of my hand - just to see how much rub off there is - so here you are:

I can't say my hand is spotless, but I can say that the colour is ingrained, not just come off the hank! I always run the thread through my left hand whilst winding off - so that's 500g - there would be a stripe of blue across the fingers and palm if there had been any problems!

The method I use when dyeing indigotin blues is my own combination of various people's - principally J Liles and M Whipplinger, with a little help from Ethel Mairet. I make a concentrate and then make up the dyebath, I do lots of blue from 1 bath - keep it going all day and do blues first and then overdyeing afterwards (greens and purples). The main dyebath has probably been on the go for about 12 months and just gets topped up with concentrate as and when I feel it needs it. I can't bear to throw any away, so I even save drips and pour them back after I've finished for the day. I only ever use natural indigo - there is no synthetic in my house, I will sometimes make up a woad bath if there is a specific reason to do so, but generally I use indigo.

I'm now going to head for bed - I'll tell you what I think of cruising on the Shannon - Erne waterways when I get back!