Table of contents for Spring 2022 in Spin-Off

There are few things that excite spinners more than color. Whether your penchant is for ultra-saturated hues, dusty jewel tones, or sheepy shades, much of our work focuses on creating and using color. And not all of those colors come easily. In fact, I’d say that even the most experienced, color-obsessed spinners I know struggle at times with a dye recipe or how best to use a beautiful handpainted braid. Like any creative journey, it’s sometimes this struggle that leads our work off the beaten path and in exciting new directions. In this issue, we are celebrating the quest for color! Diné shepherd Nikyle Begay invites us to learn about natural color in Navajo-Churros—brown, blue, and beyond. Eileen Hallman shares her methods for expanding the palette of colors you can get…

Growing up, I was the type of child who would always stop to smell the roses. Taking in as much as I could and just appreciating the world as it was. Who knew that one day, while stopping to take it all in, I would find myself in the midst of renowned Diné shepherds and weavers and it would change my life forever? Fourteen-year-old me drew in a big breath as I wiped the sweat off my forehead. It wasn’t roses I could smell on this particular hot day in June—it was sheep poop with a hint of dust and juniper. I had just finished setting up a makeshift corral and was about to unload my sheep from the trailer. I was at the annual Sheep Is Life Celebration in…

Until we downsized in 2017, I was before all else a dyer. Mixing dyes for that one perfect color was a thrill like none other. After we downsized, I no longer had room for everything that used to fit into our home and my studio. To my surprise, my new limitations pushed my creativity rather than hampered it. To help strike a balance between my yearning to create color and my new situation, I turned to my blending board. Today, my jars of dyestock and auxiliary materials, dyepots, and measuring equipment have been replaced with single-color dyed rovings, handpainted braids, and a few natural-colored fibers. The color lessons I learned over the years from the dyepot are now applied to the blending board. And the time I save in presoaking,…

There are many fun and practical end products one can make with bargello needlepoint—pillows, chair seats, purses, book covers, pincushions—but the perfect project for the handspinner is a tote for a drop spindle. I also use it as a knitting bag; it stands upright and corrals my ball of yarn as I knit. This project gives you the opportunity to play with color and pattern using a small amount of precious handspun. Spin new yarns and carefully plan your palette or let loose using a pile of leftover yarns. Sampling can be great fun using small swatches of mesh canvas, and the stitching doesn’t take up much time or precious yarn. You can get quick results to judge the efficacy of your design and the appropriateness of the yarn. For…

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“Wow!” My exclamation reverberates across the living room, startling my husband and two cats. It’s a quiet Monday night. Work is done. The toddler is asleep. Bargello Needlepoint: A Pattern Directory for Dramatic Creations is propped open on the couch, turned to one of the beginner designs: flame. I’ve done the first few rows in bright reds and oranges on a blank bookmark I picked up from the craft store. Bargello Needlepoint is an ode to a centuries-old needle craft that uses color fades and relatively simple stitches to create eye-popping patterns. After reading the brief introduction and materials description, I was off to the races, looking over the stitches before jumping into my first design. If I approached craft in a more measured way, I would probably have done…

I have a bosom friend who is also my second cousin. Her name is Cecilia. A few years ago, we reconnected after nearly 40 years and have had daily contact ever since. Cecilia is also a spinner, and we see each other at wool events. At one such event, she was wearing a bosom friend, known in Swedish as hjärtevärmare, which translates to English as “heart-warmer.” I hadn’t thought much about this kind of shawl, but when she wore it, I instantly fell for it and wanted to design one. There is something comforting with a shawl securely wrapped around the bosom. It makes me feel safe and, at the same time, free to move. As I worked out this pattern, I knitted a bosom friend for Cecilia in white…

Ancient Earth is a versatile pattern. This elegantly simple triangle shawl can be knitted using a wide variety of handspun yarns, but its smooth stockinettestitch body is ideal for showing off complex variegated, semisolid blends. I created two different colorways using a blending board and diz to explore color-blending potential: the aphanite colorway is from handpainted fibers (see page 46) and the glacial flour colorway shown here is from undyed and dyed solid colors. SPINNING NOTES Two fiber preparations were used for the glacial flour colorway. The main color was a dyed Merino/alpaca blend with a 67%/33% ratio. I stripped the fiber into thinner lengths and attenuated (predrafted) before spinning. Then I blended the accent colors using the One-Step Process detailed on page 47 with dyed-inthe-wool Merino fiber and a…

George Washington Carver (about 1864–1943), the famous African American agronomist from Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), spent his career working to improve the lives of poor Southern farmers. But as a young man, Carver envisioned himself becoming a professional fine art painter and enrolled in college as an art major in 1890. Although he went on to pursue a life in the sciences, Carver’s artistic talents rippled throughout his lifetime of work. One of his many avenues of research was in creating new and improved dyes from locally available plant materials. Carver had experience with natural dyes early in life and sought to develop methods that would allow poor farm families to increase the value of farm crafts. This facet of his work was part of a much larger rural…

No matter what our spinning skill level may be, we sometimes look at our yarn after it is wet-finished and feel disappointed. Sometimes it is just a small sample; at other times it is a full skein … or skeins. The first thing I do when I am unsatisfied with yarn after wet-finishing is try to learn from the experience. Did I overspin it? Underspin? Was I not paying enough attention? Should I use a faster whorl or a slower one next time? Should I have used a different drafting method? After diagnosing the problem and deciding how to improve my work next time, I can look for ways to rescue my unsatisfactory skeins. It may be underspun or overspun, or just not suited to the purpose I envisioned. There are…

Cables aren’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of projects for woolen-spun yarns. Smooth, round worsted-spun yarns are usually recommended for making cables pop. But after sampling this Tunis lambswool from Tarheelbilly Farm, I immediately thought of knitting a hat with squishy cables similar to the Aran wool hats my mother and I once wore. According to The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, American Tunis is a dual-purpose breed with an interesting history. Tunis lambs have a reddish color to their wool when born, which fades to a creamy white over time. The fiber was soft and bouncy, with a warm cream color and medium staple length, and it fluffed up pleasantly when finished. SPINNING NOTES I spun the sample from roving with minimal preparation, only shaking…

USA ARIZONA Grandma’s Spinning Wheel 6544 E. Tanque Verde #150 Tucson, AZ 85715 Ph 520 290-3738 spinningramma@aol.com www.grandmasspinningwheel.com CALIFORNIA The Village Spinning & Weaving 425-B Alisal Rd Solvang, CA 93463 Ph 888 686-1192 Toll Free villagespinweave@mac.com www.villagespinweave.com COLORADO Bountiful 211 Green Mountain Dr Livermore, CO 80536 Ph 970 482-7746 Toll-free 877 586-9332 info@bountifulspinweave.com www.bountifulspinweave.com Blazing Star Ranch 3424 S. Broadway Englewood, CO 80113 Ph 303 514-8780 blazingstarranch@gmail.com www.blazingstarranch.com ILLINOIS The Fold 3316 Millstream Rd Marengo, IL60152 Ph 815 568-0165 thefold@mc.net www.thefoldatmc.net INDIANA The Trading Post for Fiber Arts 8833 S. 5O W. Pendleton, IN 46064 Ph 765 778-3642 tradingpostfiber@aol.com www.tradingpostfiber.com KENTUCKY The Woolery 859 E Main St STE 1A Frankfort, KY 40601 Ph 502 352-9800 info@woolery.com www.thewoolery.com LOUISIANA Weavin’ Place 79434 Deluane Rd Folsom, LA 70437 Ph 985 796-8048 cheryl@weavinplace.com…

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This story starts like an old one, a story of handspun garment design and rejuvenation that begins, “Joseph had a little overcoat. It was old and worn. So, he made a jacket out of it and went to the fair.” Through the story, Joseph’s jacket is remade again and again. He should have tried dyeing! Piece dyeing is a way to refresh a garment, unify a textile created with many odd bits of yarn, or alter a palette of many shades in a previous over-dye experiment. It is also a way to recover from an “oops!” color combination. Samples are a nice thing in a well-planned life, but, of course, sampling doesn’t always happen. There is an enthusiasm that moves us from the wheel to the loom or needles! Piece…

In the chilly months of winter, I love to curl up with a hot beverage and my woolens, pore over my favorite seed catalogs, and dream up a plan for next year’s garden. A few years ago, while looking at a catalog from Seed Savers Exchange, I was struck by a photo of a gorgeous, gnarly-looking flint corn: Seneca Red Stalker. After reading the description, I knew I’d have to try it out in the coming spring. I’d fallen in love with heirloom and openpollinated corns a couple years before. I am always blown away by the variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and uses for different types, and I’m startled by how much taller they can seem to grow in just a couple days. When I planted my Red Stalker…

If there is truly a magical dye plant, I think it is Japanese indigo, Persicaria tinctoria. Its former name was Polygonum tinctorium; it is also known as dyer’s knotweed, and although it is in the knotweed family, it is not invasive. These beloved dye plants grow better than the Indigofera species in climates that have cooler temperatures. Used fresh, without creating a vat, the leaves can produce blue, pink, lavender, green, and yellow. Of the three primary colors, blue and yellow are easy to get, but the red—a gentle pink—is not easy to isolate. It often appears in combination with blue to produce lavenders to purples. WHAT IS FRESH-LEAF INDIGO DYEING? I tell my students that anyone whose mother will allow them to use a blender can do this. The basic…

Hail to the handspinners and their power to create unique, formidable yarn. As a spinner, albeit a very novice one, I always coveted handspun yarns for their beauty and was amazed at the handspun I saw knitted and crocheted into beautiful garments. But my understanding of handspun expanded when Spin Off editor Kate Larson suggested that I try handspun yarn in a form of needlepoint that I have practiced over the years—bargello. Kate and I had been working on an article and project focusing on historic bargello for PieceWork using traditional Persian wool yarns. We hatched a plan to explore my beloved bargello with handspun, trying different stitches and gauges. I have always been a strong advocate and committed user of fine Persian wool yarns. These yarns are crisp and…