This and that.........

 Yesterday I had enough ice to ice-dye 4 silk & rayon devore shawls.  I love how they turned out. They're now up for sale in my etsy shop and can be found in the Hand-dyed Silk Shawl section of the shop.

I finished plying the handspun I was spinning at the fair. It's a bit thinner than fingering weight. I love how it turned out. Not sure what it will grow up to be yet - I haven't counted how many yards are here yet.

Fire season is getting scarier here.  New fires are sprouting up each and every day, luckily we have enough resources to jump on them quickly. I heard a copter fly low over the house 2 nights ago at 10pm but discounted it being a fire as they stop flying at dark - I figured it was a medical copter. Found out the next morning it was for a fire a few miles up the road from us - luckily it was snuffed out quickly. As I type there's a fast moving fire south of us - not dangerous for us at all unless it really blew up, like some of those fires in CA. The road is closed between here and there as the fire is on both sides of it - this is very close to a fire from a few weeks ago where 3 homes and a few outbuildings were lost. There are level 3 evacuations which means get out, don't stop to gather anything, just get out........the road where my relatives used to live is in that evacuation zone, they're living in MT now. These fires have to be human caused as there's been no lightening here all summer. I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time.........it's tough to live under constant stress of possible forest fires........I don't sleep well, I think about fire all the time. The fall rains can't come soon enough for me but we've still got a month or more to go..........a month is a long time during fire season.........

More ice dyeing.....

Just a bit more ice-dyeing - love the hot pink in this.......

.....love the subtle lavenders and blues in this one......

.......and this one with the lavenders and grey blues has really caught my eye......I've listed it in my shop but am still giving thought to keeping it..........if it sells soon then it wasn't meant to be but if it sticks around it's definitely mine.......or may end up being mine anyhow........

So I decided to try out ice-dyeing on a warp (for you non-weavers, a warp is the lengthwise threads that go on a loom for weaving). Usually I paint (dye with brushes) warps for weaving but thought I'd see what happens with ice-dyeing. It's not what I expected. I guess I thought it might be more mottled like ice-dyeing fabric. There are some color differences but not much. This warp is just for one scarf as it was an experiment. The fiber is a blend of cotton and rayon. So, I'll put it on the loom soon and weave it off and see how I like the effect - will it have a watercolor effect? or just look almost a solid shade of green? How it turns out will determine if I ice dye a warp again.

I have more silk/rayon shawls to dye - some ice-dyed, some with ombre effects but I need to set those aside until sometime next week as I've got other things that need attention first.

I'm coming down the homestretch on the gingko shawl. I took it to work on at my spinning group yesterday - big mistake as I'm down to the lace rows which include a gingko leaf. I ended up backing out two rows, last night here at home I reknit those and knit one more row so not much to show for my day.

More scarves and shawls....

More hand-dyed scarves and shawls finally up for sale in my etsy shop. It certainly is a time sucker taking photos, editing them, tagging with inventory numbers and listing in my etsy shop.....but all a part of the job. I did put aside 2 ice dyed scarves for some surface design/stenciling - I deliberately dyed those two very pale colors. I'm drawn to so many of the colors but only set aside one for myself out of the batch of 20 - I didn't take a picture of that one, maybe I'll get to it. There are at least 5 scarves I'd love to keep but being realistic I wouldn't wear them all so I settled for one. The shawls are lovely and there's one I have my eye on but need to think on if I'll really wear it - hopefully that one doesn't sell before I make up my mind.........I won't tell which one as having done that in the past someone I know then bought it immediately.

More ice-dyed scarves

 

Hand-dyed Devore Rayon and Silk Shawls

Dyeing.........

I decided to do a little dyeing. here's where I've got some ice dyeing going - there are silk scarves (first soaked in soda ash) hidden under those piles of ice, then fiber reactive dye powder sprinkled over top the ice, then they sit there overnight to batch. I bought some frames at the Salvation Army, took the glass out and had Sam staple some leftover screen from another project in them.

 I love the designs created with the dye as the ice melts

 Look at these squiggly designs

 

 Here are the 4 scarves rinsed out this morning hanging to dry - they take no time to rinse and dry

 Here's a close up - I find the designs created with the ice dyeing fascinating

 And here they are dried and ironed

And here are the silk/rayon devore shawls I dyed yesterday - these took forever to rinse the leftover/excess dye out of.

 This little lizard came to watch me today - good thing he was up on the fence rail out of Bailey's range who loves to chase the lizards - never caught one but it's a great activity.

 And this dragonfly kept lighting on my drying rack and let me get really close

Here's a beauty head shot. This one had a buddy that looked to be blue and grey but it would never stop so I could get a picture of it.

I've got some more scarves sitting under the ice and dye - the great reveal tomorrow after they're washed out. After that I've got 12 more scarves to ice dye but alas I've only got 4 frames at the moment so it will take a few days to finish up.

New shawl in the shop.......

I had put this shawl aside in the studio last fall after dyeing some silk/rayon devore shawls and scarves.......maybe I thought I'd use it, maybe I would but I haven't yet so up in the etsy shop it goes. I'll be dyeing more of them this summer so there's many more opportunities to dye one for myself. I just love the colors in this one.

This afternoon I spent some time twisting fringe on the rayon/cotton huck lace shawls that just came off the loom. Crisis when my battery fringe twister (Conair hair twister) stopped working and it wasn't low batteries. It's working intermittently now, hopefully Sam can fix it. In the meantime I did have a back-up so I finished the fringes. Maybe tomorrow I'll get the photography work done so they can be listed in the etsy shop and I'll put photos up here on the blog at that time too.

Silk Scarves

The silk scarves and shawls all had their photos taken yesterday and are now listed in my etsy shop in the silk scarf/shawl section. Phew, what a job to get a handful of somewhat decent photos of each scarf/shawl.....not my strong suit. Kept a couple out for myself so numerous less photos to deal with.

Silk Shawls/Scarves.....

Here are a few of the dyed silk/rayon shawls/scarves from the other day.......

Silk shawl

Here's a pic of one of the silk shawls I dyed on Sunday. The shawls & scarves I dyed are commercially made, bought from Dharma Trading Co. and then I dye them using fiber reactive dyes. Very fun project but a pain to keep rinsing, soaking and rinsing out the dyes. This is one of the eight I dyed. It's always nice to have shawls & scarves that are priced a bit lower than my handwovens. Last year at the Pacifica Winter Arts Festival (coming up Dec 4th & 5th) I sold many more of these than ever. My thought is folks still wanted something handmade for gifts but with the economy these were a better alternative to the handwovens. I still sell alot of handwovens but last year many more of these than usual.