creative nuggets

"When we are in the midst of making something, in the actual creative act, we know we are who and what we are because we forget our public reception for a minute. We become the art itself instead of the artist who makes it. In the actual moment of making art, we are blessedly anonymous. Even when done in public, the act of making art is a private act. Creativity is always between us and our creative energy, us and the creative power working through us. When we are able to stay clearly and cleanly focused on that, then we are able to do very well."

~Julia Cameron, the Artist's Way Every Day

Peek Inside The Creative Process: Hand-dyed Fiber

I've always loved getting a peek into an artist's or crafter's creative process.  I find it's not only interesting and insightful, but inspirational as well.  There's a level of intimacy involved when an artist allows a glimpse into their creative world, and I'm excited to offer you a little glimpse into mine.

Today I embarked on a creative journey:  to take raw, organic fiber (Rambouillet sheep's roving) and hand-dye it using the trusty Kool-Aid method.  Yep, Kool-Aid.  I acquired a rather large volume of the roving for free from the kind lady that sold me my beloved Lendrum Spinning Wheel.  At the time of purchase, I was an inexperienced spinning wheel spinner (I wasn't bad on a drop spindle, though), and she gave me the roving for practice.  So since I had the day off of work and the house pretty much to myself, I decided that today was as good a day as ever to give hand-dyeing a go.  Here's how it went:

First, I measured out 1 1/2 oz. of roving.

Undyed roving, after shearing, cleaning, and carding.

Next, I filled a large pot with water and added a splash of vinegar.  I heard that adding vinegar would result in deeper color saturation.  Once the water came to a low boil, I removed it from the heat source and mixed in 1 package each of Cherry and Orange Kool-Aid.  Then I gently submerged the fiber into the Kool-Aid bath.  After about a 45 minute soak, the water left in the pot was clear so I knew my fiber had drank up all of the cherry/orange color mix.

Doesn't look very appetizing, I know.

I then emptied the pot into a colander I had placed in the sink and gently squeezed as much excess water as I could from the wet, fibery glob.  The last step was to lay out the newly dyed fiber on a towel to air dry.  You can see from the picture below that some of the fiber soaked up more color than the rest.  I surmised this was because I left the fiber alone as it soaked without rotating it in the pot so that the color would coat more evenly.  I attempted to fix this issue with the next batch.

Newly dyed fiber with an (unintentional) ombre effect.

Moving along to the next batch.  This time I used 1 package each of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade and Lemon-Lime Kool-Aid.  Here's a look at it during the soak.

Fiber soup

This time I rotated the fiber a few times during it's 45 minute bath and voila!..an evenly coated batch.  Yay!  I was careful not to agitate it too much otherwise it would felt, and we don't want that.

MUCH better!

I had time to do one more batch, so I decided to see what would happen without adding the vinegar.  For the final batch I used about 1/2 cup of store brand grape drink mix.  I was going for a real vibrant purple, which I unfortunately did not achieve.  As you can see below, the color hardly saturated the fiber at all.  So I've concluded that I will be using vinegar in my Kool-Aid dyeing projects from now on.

This was supposed to be a rich purple.  :(

And there you have it!  My first foray into hand-dyeing fiber.  Part II of this project will take you inside my studio for a little spinning action.  Once these freshly dyed fibers have been dried and drafted, I will feed them to Eloise, that Lendrum wheel I mentioned above and whose pic is below, and let her work her magic.  With a little help from me, Eloise will transform the fiber into a beautiful skein of usable yarn.  Can't wait!

My beloved Lendrum Single Treadle Spinning Wheel.  love!