Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Custom production Knitting
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Ironweed as a Dye Plant
You may have seen tall purple flowers waving in the breeze along the highway. It is a plant called Giant Ironweed (Vernonia Gigantea).
For natural dyeing purpose, there is a large range of colors available from this plant with various mordants and modifiers.
I was surprised by the results.
The first time I dyed with this plant, I used alum mordant and added an iron modifier. After the first skein resulted in a deep charcoal color, I removed the skein, and saw that there was a great deal of pigment left in the dyepot. So I dyed three additional skeins, each resulting in a lighter variation of grey. I used rhubarb leaves (oxalic acid) as a mordant for a couple of skeins.
The second time I dyed with this plant, I used an alum mordant. I cut the flowers off the stems and prepared two dye baths, one with only the purple flowers, and one with the deep green leaves and reddish stems.
But the yarn did not take the red dye (stain?). It looked like spaghetti, with a yellowish cast. I didn't particularly like the color. But I left the yarn in to simmer for an hour.
After an hour, the yarn had taken on a rich, grey-green color.
I wanted to know what would happen with an acidic or basic modifier, so I split the exhaut pot into two and added baking soda to one and vinegar to the other.
When I added the baking soda to the exhaust liquid, the dyebath foamed up and almost overflowed the small pot I had it in. It was a bright green. But the result ended up being a light yellow.
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Polygonum persicarium as a dye plant
The tomatoes in the bottom of the screen will draw your eye, but the plant I am asking you to look at is in front of the tomatoes. I'm showing you the whole photo so that you can see the scale of the whole plant.
It is Polygonum persicarium, also known as Lady's Finger or Lady's Thumb - or Redshank, or Smartweed.
Here's a zoom into the flower.
And here's a zoom into the leaf and stem nodes. You can see why it is called "Redshank."
Fiberarts Guild at Malabar Farm Dye Workshop with alk&me
Kris Jenkins was the instructor for a great full-day workshop at her studio, alk&me, in Northfield Ohio on August 31.
We had six participants scheduled, but unfortunately, two of them cancelled at the very last minute. So we went ahead and dyed their yarn for them.
This was an acid-dye workshop. The skeins we dyed were all sock yarn, 75% wool and 25% nylon from the Knomad yarn company. They only sell wholesale, so you may not have seen their label at your local yarn store, but you may have seen their yarn with labels from indie dyers.
Kris had three pets that were quite at home in the studio.
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Ready to Dye
Thursday, August 24, 2023
Michigan Fiber Festival
Last week was the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, Michigan. I have attended this for several years as a volunteer, demonstrating my circular sock knitting machine. This year, I only signed up for Sunday.
We got to the farm on Thursday night. I drove to the festival Friday, and stopped by and chatted with Clara at the Heritage Spinning and Weaving booth. She pointed out the Knit Michigan booth in the next building. Knit Michigan is a charity to offer comfort items like quilts to persons who are fighting cancer. They had a bunch of bins of donated yarn, and they were giving it away to those who made a donation to Knit Michigan. I found some Paton's Classic Wool in a brown color, as well as a cone of turquoise acrylic. I stopped and took a photo of these lovely black-eyed Susans. Are they Rudbeckia, or some other yellow flower?
I stopped by to chat with my fellow MICHIGAN GEARS friends. They are makers of Georgeous, Easy Amazing Rapid Socks, with their circular sock machines.
On the way, I stopped by Carol Leigh's booth. She had a display of naturally dyed sock looper kits. The sock loopers are the loops that children use to weave potholders on small looms. I was awestruck by the way she included colors showing the different hues attained by one dye bath, but by using different mordants and modifiers to vary the colors. It wasn't really in my budget, so I passed it by, although I relented on Saturday and purchased a few kits anyway.
I did find some bargain yarn to purchase, in the Dances with Wool co-op's booth. Skeins of handspun, including alpaca and mohair blends, for only $5 each! Since I got home I am knitting a shawl with my purchases.
The yarns range from worsted to bulky and I am using a size 9 circular needle. I've had to change needles twice, as the shawl gets larger. I'm currently using my old Boye interchangeable needle set with all the cords linked together.
On Sunday, I joined the GEARS demonstrators with my Home Profit Master Machine.
I learned a couple of new things. I have been hearing Jamie Mayfield talk about the faux Russian join several times, so Nancy was good enough to demonstrate it for me. Also, she had a child's hat hanging from her stand, it was made on a 72 cylinder by knitting at half-pitch (leaving all the cylinder needles plus the ribber needles in work), then dropping every other cylinder needle stitch to get a much larger stitch size. The adjacent stitches take up the slack when the extra stitches are dropped. I was able to do a ribbed edge, then change to half pitch and knit a cylinder.
All-in-all, a very good trip.
While we were at the farm, I rode my Gator around the trails and filled up some bushel baskets with sumac bracts and goldenrod, which was surprisingly blooming earlier in Michigan than in Ohio. The flower heads had not yet started to open when we left for Michigan, although I am seeing some now on our return. I hope to do some natural dyeing when back in Ohio.
Thursday, July 27, 2023
Katy Kelly Research
Kate Kelly was from North Robinson, Ohio, just west of Crestline. She moved to Heyworth, Illinois as a teenager, with her family, including her older sister Mary. She and her sister were demonstrators/trainers of circular sock knitting machines with Franz and Pope Company in Bucyrus, Ohio for many years and presumably travelled by train.
It was Sunday. I had been attending COWS (Crankers of Wonderful Socks) in Monticello, Illinois. The event was over and most everyone had said goodbye. There was no UCC church in Monticello. So I visited the local Presbyterian church in honor of Katy Kelly, as her lifelong membership was mentioned in her obituary. Surprisingly, the liturgy followed the format almost word for word, that was traditional (not to mention repetitive) in the 1960's-1970's UCC church I attended in Crestline as a child.
I visited the railroad museum after church. You can see Bucyrus Ohio, where Franz and Pope was located, on the far east side of the 1890's railroad map I found in the museum. I tried to trace a direct line from Bucyrus to Heyworth on the map. A straight line west from Bucyrus, roughly paralleling the route I took on the Lincoln Highway, would have put them at Gilman. To get to Heyworth by train, they would have had to go further west on the train they were on to maybe El Paso, then head south. This map dates from the 1910, though, so it is possible that these rail lines did not exist when Stephen Kelly migrated west in 1881.
Article from Mar 4, 1881 Bucyrus Journal (Bucyrus, Ohio)
The article states that the entire town of North Robinson gathered at the depot, despite the cold rain, so I am assuming they travelled by railroad.
Katy's husband was a farmer, and her sister married a state senator. I had no trouble finding the cemetery in Heyworth and no trouble finding their stones.
I also found the stone for Stephen Kelly, their father. It was on the other side of my car seen in the background above, about four rows in.
I also noticed a very large memorial stone with "Rutledge" name on it. I assumed that the size meant they were promiment members of the community.
It's maybe the same size town as Crestline. I ate a very reasonably-priced and delicious hamburger in Heyworth at one of the two restaurants.
Yesterday I visited the historical museum in Bloomington, Illinois. The area where I am staying in Bloomington is quite a contrast to the small towns of Monticello and Heyworth. It is more like Hall Road in Macomb, Michigan. In contrast, the Bloomington home of Katy Kelly, where she spent her last years, was a quiet residential street next to the Grove Street Historic District where many Victorian mansions have been preserved. Katy's spacious home appears to have been converted into apartments.
Katy Kelly McComb's home |
Mansion next door to McComb home. |
I spent several hours at the historical museum. I probably exceeded the 90-minute parking limit, but since I was legally parked in a handicapped space, the signage did not indicate a time limit. Luckily I did not get a ticket.
When the Kellys first moved to McLean county in 1881, Stephen Kelly landed in Randolph Township. Unfortunately the available atlases were published in 1875 and 1894. He passed away in 1889. So if he did own land, it would not have been shown on the plat maps for either of those years. He could have also been a tenant farmer, or even lived in town. If I want to dig further I will have to visit the government offices.
"Prairie madness was caused by the isolation and tough living conditions on the prairie. The level of isolation depended on the topography and geography of the region. Most examples of prairie madness come from the Great Plains region. One explanation for these high levels of isolation was the Homestead Act of 1862. This act stipulated that a person would be given a tract of 160 acres if they were able to live on it and make something out of it in a five-year period. The farms of the Homestead Act were at least half a mile apart, but usually much more. Although there were thriving Indigenous nations and communities, there was little settlement of Europeans on the Plains and settlers had to be almost completely self-sufficient.The lack of quick and easily available transportation was also a cause of prairie madness; settlers were far apart from one another and they could not see their neighbors or get to town easily. (In many areas, towns were usually located along the railroads and 10–20 miles (16–32 km) apart—close enough for people to bring their goods to market within a day's travel, but not close enough for most people to see town on more than an infrequent basis. This particularly applied to women who were often left behind to tend to family and farm while the men went to town.) Those who had family back on the East coast could not visit their families without embarking on a long journey. Settlers were very alone. This isolation also caused problems with medical care; it took such a long time to get to the farms that when children fell sick they frequently died. This caused a lot of trauma for the parents, and contributed to prairie madness. " Wikipedia, downloaded 7/30/2023 1:22 pm.