JUNE 1997 FIBER NEWS - SAMPLE

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FIBER NEWS

---the newest fiber magazine---

JUNE 1997
Volume #1

(Note: All materials within are covered by USA and International
copyright law. Any use without author's written permission is
prohibited by law.)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. EDITOR'S NOTE
II. HUMOR
The Flaxseed Disaster By Mary Frost
III. DYEING
Space-Dyeing Roving in a Crockpot By Glenna Stansifer
Natural Dye with Oxalis Flowers on Cotton Lint By Janis
Saunders
IV. SPINNING
The Fiber Sample Sweater by Lili Pintea-Reed
Carding Without Handcards by Jenny Swift
V. WEAVING
Get Started in Weaving -- CHEAP! By Anne Mode
The Looper Frame Dishtowel By Lili Pintea-Reed
VII. FIBER
The Great Nettle Experiment by Lili Pintea-Reed
VIII. HELPFUL HINTS
IX. ADVERTISING
X. NOTICES
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EDITOR'S NOTE:

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to FIBER NEWS an email monthly fiber magazine! I'm
Lili Pintea-Reed the owner/editor. I'm married and the mother of
an active five year old, who loves to play "throw the fleece."
Its a great way to get straw out of them!!! I've always been
interested in fiber and needle arts from a very young age. When I
was a pre-schooler my mother taught me embroidery and a neighbor
lady taught me to knit. Later I made my first frame loom and
backstrap looms in 4-H Club. Many years later as an adult, I
taught myself to spin, and wove on a LeClerc 4 harness
counterbalance loom. I've demonstrated weaving at the Erie Summer
Festival of the Arts and had a number of my tapestries hung in
jured art shows... However, if I had to describe myself I'd say I
was a handspinner who did the other fiber arts to use up my yarn.
I have a strong interest in old fashioned or ethnic methods of
fiber and cloth production. Some of that interest will show up in
FIBER NEWS.

I'd like to present a forum for fiber artists to tell each
other in a friendly way how their work is going. We will feature
first person articles when ever possible to share with our
readers. Additionally, I hope to have one more scholarly article
from serious fiber artists on methods or research to add to our
fund of fiber knowledge. So share your knowledge with others and
send those articles on, so I don't have to write so much!!!


Hope to email you all soon!!! ---- Lili
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HUMOR

The Flaxseed Disaster
By Mary Frost

Hi all,

Ok, I did it! I made the linen seed dressing for my warp threads.
I learned *alot*.....

I put *1 cup* of seeds to a big pot of water. Not having any
instructions I was guessing here....Brought it to a boil and than
turned it off and strained the seeds....all going pretty well I
thought.........then.....

It thickened really fast.....

I mean *thickened* into this massive blob of(let's just say it
was like egg whites if you get my drift). It had this weird
looking part in it so I thought "ok I'll just strain it again,no
biggy"... hee heee....I put the strainer over a bowl on the stove
and started to pour the dressing in the strainer but....this huge
BLOB of slimmy stuff lept from the pan, overflowed the strainer
and SLITHERED down and away into my stove top,which doesn't open
because it's from the 1950's!!!!!!!!!

I started laughing so hard I can't see or talk to tell my husband
or my mom (who just arrived from Oregon) what my problem was.

I peek through the burner and can see "the blob" (which has now
covered most of the inside of my stove top) and I start to mop it
up with paper towels....NOT.... paper towels have no absorbing
effect.... I'm laughing again.

Then I called my husband, Jack, to come help and even he is
grossed out at the thick egg white appearance of the dressing. He
gets the shop vac deposits it at my feet and ...disappears!

I can't describe the sound the blob made as it was sucked up into
that vac without really grossing you all out. But alas it is now
a blob in the yard, having been plopped out onto the ground.

With the stove cleaned (somewhat) and after getting up off the
living room floor where I landed while laughing my heart out I
tackled what was left in the pan.

I added alot of water and tried to use a whisk, and ended up
mixing with my hand. Had to transfer the mixture to a bucket
because it was still so thick. Finally, I triumphed with the
right consistency!!!!

Put my linen warp chains in, soaked for a few minutes and than
hung them up to dry. This morning they are perfectly coated and
ready for warping!

Lesson #1 Always keep a sense of humor when trying something new.

Lesson #2 You probably only need 1/4 of seeds to 4 quarts of
water!

Lesson #3 Paper towels are absolutely *no* help in cleaning up
flaxseed warp dressing.

Lesson #4 Always mix with your hand, gross but easier to tell
when you have the right consistency.

Lesson #5 Always keep a shop vac handy.....

Have a great day and remember to always try new things even if
you've been told not to....
Fondly,
Mary Frost
wevrmary@svn.net
Bio:
This insanity,this glorious obsession is due to my wonderful mother
Marcella Castro Laughlin who taught me to weave *and* bought me my first
loom in 1984!As I know how to spin I choose to weave and dye. I'll weave
just about anything but a rug or a tapestry (love to look at them though).
I used to hate warping when I first started...now I love warping and
designing and after weaving enough to see that my design worked I'm ready
to move onto my next design (fickle?)
I love making handtowels and guest towels and adore working with linen. My
current work is very focused and I'm in the early stages of exploring the
Shuttle Craft Guild original Monographs.
(editors note: Mary originally wrote this story as a note to the
weaving mailing list. She kindly re-wrote the story to share with
you all...:-)))
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DYEING

Space-Dyeing Roving in a Crock-Pot
By Glenna Stansifer

Shortly after I learned to spin, I also discovered the excitement
of dyeing my own fiber. I've learned to dye fiber in a pot prior
to carding or combing for spinning, and have even taken a stab at
dyeing yarn which was already spun. Of all the techniques I've
tried, I like to dye prepared roving best. I think this is
because I can get right to spinning it after it dries, and the
spinning is still my favorite part of this whole yarn-processing
business.

The little booklet called I'D RATHER DYE LAUGHING by Jean M.
Neel, and put out by Unicorn Books, is a great incentive to just
leap right in and experiment without being afraid of doing
something wrong. I've experimented with casserole-dyeing, and
that's also an exciting way to go, but for the most bang for the
buck” fun, I use a 5 1/2-qt crock-pot, four pint-size mayonnaise
jars, and either unsweetened KoolAid, or my favorite, Easter egg
dye (the kind you dissolve, not the paint-on kind). I hasten to
add that if you decide to use any of the conventional chemical
dyes, such as Gaywool, Jacquard, or others, DO NOT use the
crock-pot for cooking food any more. Since KoolAid and Easter
egg dyes are meant to be used as food, they are safe to use in a
crock-pot in which you cook.

By space-dyeing, I mean taking a length of roving and dyeing it
in such a way that there are bands of different colors along the
length of it. To accomplish this in your crock-pot, dissolve a
color in each of the four jars. Follow the directions on the
package of your particular egg dye. Some require dissolving in
vinegar, and some in water. If you haven't used vinegar, then
add about 3 tablespoons of white vinegar to the solution, and
fill to where the neck narrows in each jar with tap water. For
KoolAid, I dissolve in water and add the vinegar later.

Arrange the jars in the crock-pot and fill the pot with water
almost to the top of the solution in the jars. Take a length of
dry roving and divide it evenly along its length into four parts.
Stuff each part into a jar, leaving as much or as little undyed
between the jars as you wish. I use about 4 ounces of roving,
stuffing about an ounce into each jar. Less roving will give
more brilliant colors. A bit more will make the colors dimmer.
It's been my experience that the wool will take all the dye, no
matter how much or how little you use.

Cover the crock-pot, turn it to Low and cook for about 3 hours.
This is enough to steam-set the colors and exhaust the dye bath.
Turn off the crock-pot and let the jars sit in there until they
are cool enough to handle. Take the roving out of the jars and
rinse it in water the same temperature as that in the jars. Spin
dry in the washing machine, or squeeze (don't wring) as much
water as you can from the roving and let it dry on a sweater
dryer.

Those are the basic directions. You can use four different
colors, varying the color scheme as your fancy takes you. I've
done many different combinations: blues and greens; blues and
purples; a pastel mix of blue, pink, green and violet; and a
psychedelic-sixties orange and pink combo. The different flavors
of KoolAid yield slightly different shades of red or pink, and
the Easter egg dyes from different companies give different tints
of pink, blue, violet, and green. It's a lot of fun to
experiment because you never know what you'll come up with.
To spin this roving, you could use a Navajo-plying technique,
which would keep the colors in solid bands. I haven't mastered
this yet, so I just spin a singles and ply it, taking the color
variations as they come. That's part of the charm of this dyeing
technique. Depending upon the thickness of the roving I've used,
I'll split it lengthwise, spinning each half on a separate
bobbin, and plying from the two bobbins. This will give more
solid areas of color as the two singles of the same color are
plied together.
Plying from two ends of a wound ball of singles will give many
more ragg combinations, as two singles of different colors are
plied together. I must confess that I haven't made anything from
this yarn yet, but I'm looking forward to coming up with a
project that utilizes the many different combinations I've
created.

As far as I can tell, from washing the skeins after spinning in a
bath of warm water and shampoo, and rinsing, these colors are
fast. I've had no bleeding into the wash water from either
Easter egg dye or KoolAid. Since I wash my skeins the same was
as I wash my finished articles, I think this is a fairly washfast
dye. I haven't tested for lightfastness, as I've only been
producing yarns using this dyeing technique for a few months.

I hope you will try this inexpensive, fun and intriguing way to
work with color. For me, the color is one of the most important
facets of this new craft I've rediscovered. And the surprise of
what's coming next when the colored singles are plied together
has become one of my greatest joys in spinning.

Glenna Stansifer
Independence, CA
gstans@telis.org

Short Bio: I live in the rural and isolated Eastern Sierra of
California, and work as the director of the county library. Our
country is beautiful and sparsely populated. We have spectacular
mountains and stark desert vistas. People who live here have
learned to entertain themselves, pursuing pastimes like hiking,
fishing, photography, and, of course, handcrafts of all kinds.

I've always made things, concentrating on the textile and fiber
arts. I've been a knitter for about 50 years, but several years
ago, I became friends with several people who made their own
yarn. I was charmed by the idea, but hesitant to try it, since I
am somewhat of a hoarder. I have enough yarn to stock a small
yarn shop. I surely didn't need another reason to collect
things. And spinning wheels are bigger than knitting needles!

Alas, the bug finally bit, due to hearing about other spinners on
the Internet. After trying to learn on a hand spindle and
failing miserably, I borrowed a spinning wheel from a friend,
thinking that if it didn't work, well, at least I'd tried. Not
only did it work, but after about a week of learning to treadle
and making some really funny-looking yarn, I discovered that I
was spinning as if I'd always done it. It was really eerie, but
I've since talked to others who've had the same experience. I
basically didn't have to learn to spin, as much as remember how
to do it. There must be a spinning gene, because I certainly
have it.

My knitting has kind of taken a back seat, but it's still my
chief love, because I can take it with me wherever I go.
Knitting is like breathing to me. I can't imagine trying to live
without it. I'm looking forward to combining my love of spinning
and knitting to achieve even more personal satisfaction in a
creative endeavor - making the item from start (making the yarn)
to finish (designing and knitting it). I think I have here an
ongoing avocation for the rest of my life.
Glenna
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