Twisp of Fate

I spent last week up on Orcas Island at “spinning camp” with Judith MacKenzie – my 4th time at this event (I missed 2009).  This year’s theme was “Bringing Color into Your Spinning”.  They were set up to do a lot of dyeing outdoors (always a bit iffy in February in NW Washington).  Then it snowed.  And got really cold.  But our organizers managed to score an indoor space in an adjacent cabin to the meeting room, swathed it in tarps to protect the furnishings, and we pressed on!

The first day Judith entertained us with stories of her trip to Peru in November 2010.  She was one of the speakers at Tinkuy de Tejedores (A Gathering of Weavers) near Cusco.  She brought back some beautiful textiles, all nature dyed handspun and woven on primitive backstrap looms.  She also shared a portion of her collection of Peruvian “burial dolls” – many of them very, very old.  They are not really dolls, but religious or ceremonial objects.  The clothes they wear are made from fragments of cloth that were originally on mummies, so in some cases the textile fragments could be thousands of years old.

Judith with burial dolls

The first class project was to spin a boucle yarn using a rayon core and kid mohair locks that Judith had dyed.  I skipped this one, as I have tried it before, am really bad at it, and know I won’t be pursuing this one any time soon.

Next she had us spin up some Corriedale rovings in white and black (natural colors) and make a series of 3-ply yarns: 3 white plies, 1 white/2 black, 2 white/1 black, 3 black.  Then we overdyed the final skein(s) with a color of our choice to see how the color interacts with the underlying makeup of the yarn.  Or this would be a way to make a graduated color yarn as you transition from white to black.  Mine came out sort of “sea lettuce green”:

After they got the dye area set up, we were able to dye solid colors in big dye pots on the cabin front porch, or go inside where they had 4 electric roasters set up to dye variegated color rovings or yarn with a direct pour application.  Each of us were given 4 oz of Corriedale roving, chose a colorway, then Judith dyed it for us while we observed the technique.  After everyone had done one roving this way, we were able to do more on our own (with her help with the colors, “if needed” – ha ha, always needed…)

my first dyed roving

Another spinning exercise: we were given 4 oz of Corriedale roving that Judith had already dyed (variegated in color like the one above).  Then we were encouraged to “share and share alike” by getting small amounts of other colors from other folks in the room.  The idea was to introduce other colors into the spun singles, in either a random or semi-methodical way, to obtain a final plied yarn that is more complex in color than if you had spun up just the single colorway represented by your roving.  This was a lot of fun and I like the idea a lot.  I finished plying mine when I got back home but I don’t have a picture of the final yarn yet and here it is:

The basic roving was quite muted, cream through shades of greyish purple, but I introduced short sections from another roving from time to time: dark royal blue through purple, and a brighter turquoise color.  I spun all the singles, divided it into thirds by weight, and made a 3-ply yarn where all the colors just come and go randomly.  I am pleased with the result and will probably use this idea again.

I also spun up some Polwarth roving that I bought from Maxine of Island Fibers on Lopez Island, at the event.  I made about 150 yds of 3-ply and it is wonderful, springy and soft yarn.  I will definitely be spinning more of this fiber.  I dyed it in one of the roasters along with some merino/tencel roving I also bought from Maxine.  Can you say RED?

Here are two more batches of dyed merino/tencel roving:

The one on the left was supposed to have more purple tones in it, but as it turns out this was superwash merino and it takes up dye very quickly.  It all just sort of blended together.  But I can put it back in a dye bath at home and try to modify it some, and I will.