Curry yarn

Here's the finished product of my curry/yarn soup last night. (haha)

It looks quite like curry. I love the results! :) I washed it in the machine to ensure that if it was going wash out, it would. I read somewhere (Maybe on Sandra Rude's blog??) that cellulose fibers dry 4 shades lighter. I'd say that's about accurate. I'm still quite happy though. I wasn't even sure if the color would stick since I didn't mordant the Tencel first but it did! Goodness was the smell STRONG though. The yarn doesn't smell like curry. Just the rest of the house. It was the same thing when I tried tea dyeing. Gracious. My entire tiny apartment smelled like boiled grass. GROSS! And I love tea! But there is such thing as too much of something good. And that was it. :) I'm pretty excited about trying more natural dyes. I have a book somewhere on natural dyeing but I can't seem to find it right now. Blah. This lovely yarn may be what I use as weft for the weave a long. If I can just get the motivation to go tie on, I'll be ready to weave! ...Hmm...motivation....
~JoAnna

Goat Preschool

I got to run Goat Preschool yesterday while at the farm! It's LOTS of fun. :) Here's what it is: In order to get the baby goats acclimated to their environment and also to give the mama goats some time to get out and browse for food (or just eat hay from the bails we have) we take the babies out of their stalls and let them run around while the mamas eat. It's so fun to watch baby goats jump around and run and fall all over themselves. They're adorable. :) Here are some pictures I took:

Merry and Pippin and their mama, Pickles! Merry is the lighter one and Pippin is the dark one.

Betty and Veronica. Betty's head is peeking out from behind their mama Roxanne and Veronica is the solid black one. :)

Olivia sniffing my shoe.

I think this is Betty?

Merry and Pippin. They actually wandered back in the barn and went to sleep. :)

SO cute! And they're HUGE! They are two days old in this picture.

Olivia is the same age as Merry and Pippin and look how small she is in comparison!

Snowflake. :)

Lots of babies runnin' around.

Pickles loves to eat...and when she eats, she likes to stick her entire face in the hay bail.

Snowflake got tuckered out after running around and jumping so much!

She's extremely photogenic! ...For a goat. :)

Wednesday and Totty are a week old and STILL smaller than Pippin and Merry.

Lots and lots of fun! We have several more mamas pregnant and who will probably have babies soon. :) I can't wait!
~JoAnna

Yarn and curry soup

Today I went out to nearly every thrift store I could think of to find a pot to use for dyeing for cheap. I ended up having to go to Dollar General, but I got a nice dutch oven for $10 and it holds a little over a gallon of liquid. So it's the perfect size for the amount of fiber I usually dye.

Most of the recipes out there for natural dyeing (at least the ones I found) are for dyeing an entire pound of fiber. While that's not particularly difficult for pre-made fabric, it's a bit more difficult to dye a pound of yarn. I usually dye around 3 or 4 oz. at a time and that's it!

Once I finally GOT the pot (around 3pm...I went out at 11ish!) I searched online for several recipes. I wasn't really sure how to mordant fiber. I had a basic idea, but didn't have precise measurements. They all seem to say about 10-25% of the weight of the fiber you are dyeing is how much alum (mordant) you use. (Note: I was only looking at alum recipes since that's all I have right now)

Since I had decided I wanted to attempt dyeing with curry powder, I read a few recipes on it first. I discovered that curry (or turmeric) is one of the few natural dyes that sticks to cotton (or cellulose) WITHOUT a mordant. So I was able to save myself a step and just get straight to dyeing.

My lovely red dye pot. I'm so happy it's red.

Yarn soup. Yup. Pretty much.

I must admit I'm pretty excited to see how it looks once the yarn is washed, dried and ready to use!

That's it for now. The yarn is currently in the dryer. From what I've read, cellulose usually dries several shades lighter. It didn't really loose much color in the rinsing process though. I'll post pictures of the results later. :)
~JoAnna