Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2023 i Spin-Off

As this third annual color issue has developed, I’ve often had artist-educator Josef Albers on my mind. Albers has had a profound impact on how I think about and use color in my fiber life and beyond. His writings on what he describes as the “relativity and instability of color” urge us to see the interdependence of color, how colors interact when placed together. Have you ever had a plan for a project that seemed like a grand idea … until you got started? In the introduction to his book Interaction of Color, Albers explains that this resource “does not follow an academic conception of ‘theory and practice.’ It reverses this order and places practice before theory, which, after all, is the conclusion of practice.” This is everything! Albers is…

1 Keep skeins tidy in the dyepot using these 7-inch aluminum rings from Botanical Colors. Sold in sets of five, each ring can accommodate about 200 grams of yarn (or two to three skeins). botanicalcolors.com 2 Boost your color confidence with this color wheel from PattieWack Designs. Select a main color, then follow the symbols to possible palettes. Holes in each section help you match your fiber to coordinating color combinations. pattiewack.com 3 Stony Creek Colors is working to make plant-based dyes accessible to all. IndiGold® EasiColor Pens produce the vibrancy of indigo in an easy-to-use form. Each pen is a mini indigo vat containing 100% natural indigo. stonycreekcolors.com 4 Get your feet wet with a Wool Tincture dyeing kit from Abundant Earth Fiber. Kits include a sturdy glass jar,…

I’m a big fan of the visual interest and depth of color that heathery tweed effects add to my textiles. There are a lot of ways to create heathered color variations. One approach is to start with white fleece, dye it various colors, and then blend. Another method I’ve spent time exploring starts with washed natural-color fleeces that are then dyed before carding. The resulting variegation of colors can be close to the rich colors found in nature rather than the sometimes overly intense colors you can get with acid dyes on white and ecru bases. As a machine knitter focused on designing and creating garments, I enjoy exploring color in combination with interesting knitted surfaces and geometric patterns. I’d like to share three of my garments that combine dyed…

In Judith MacKenzie’s video Spinner’s Color Toolbox (see Resources), she demonstrates garneting—the process of turning yarn back into fiber. Judith cuts yarn into pieces and uses her handcards to open up the fibers, making them suitable for blending and spinning. Judith discusses this process as a way to create unique handspun yarns for weft or for knitting. It made me wonder: Could I garnet my thrums and high-end yarn leftovers? As a spinner, I like using natural fibers, some of which are quite expensive. Being naturally frugal by nature, and also concerned about the waste that I generate, I don’t throw any fiber or yarn out. I have many zipper bags containing small balls of yarn and thrums. The yarn is from knitting, the thrums are from weaving. I’m always…

Editor’s Note: Berna wrote a great article for Spin Off Winter 2023 about her experience re-creating and reenvisioning a precious scrap of ancient woven fabric discovered in Austria’s Hallstatt salt mines. She sent us this update about her work since writing the article. MY OBSESSION WITH WEAVING FABRICS inspired by the Hallstatt Iron Age fragment has developed to the point that I’ve actually now handspun and woven four of them. While my original shawl was with you at Spin Off, I used the zanshiori technique to tie all the thrums together and weave another shawl with similar stripe and twill patterns. I then realized that my original shawl didn’t have the double stripe in the weft, so I spun more green and purple and wove a third shawl. But that one…

Pattern and designer Flax from Tin Can Knits. Fiber Three Waters Farm Out of the Spotlight and Radiant Greens on Polwarth/silk. Fiber/preparation Combed top. Wheel system/spindle Ashford Elizabeth 1 in double drive. Ratio 15:1. Drafting method Short-forward draw, worsted. Singles direction Z-twist. Singles wraps per inch 30. Ply wraps per inch 14. Yards per pound 1,330. Total yardage 2,000 yards. Yardage used 1,188 yards. Yarn classification/weight Light worsted. Needles Prym Ergonomics Size 8 (5 mm). Finished size XXL. This sweater tested my planning and organization from the very start, and I loved every challenging stitch of it! Handpainted combed top is fun to spin. The progression of bold colors keeps the spin interesting, and there are so many gorgeous colorways to explore. However, I don’t always enjoy how the colors…

Quick! What’s your favorite color? I used to just say “green,” but now I find the question more complicated. My favorite is a particular shade of green, leaning far into gold, and the color is mellowed a bit. Even that description doesn’t seem adequate. It also brings up another color concept, juxtaposition of color. How can I explain that I also like a particular shade of golden tobacco, but I really love it next to a bit of Prussian blue? Exploring color interactions can be as simple as holding two or more skeins together. We all do that at yarn shops or in our own fiber stashes. Lately, I have been experimenting with knitted slip-stitch patterns, and I keep in mind the Kaffe Fassett adage, “When in doubt, add twenty…

A few years ago, I started musing over the idea of introducing small flecks of color into my spinning. Looking back at my collection of handspun yarn, I observed that some of my skeins seemed overcrowded with color, and I wished there was a way to create some visual breathing room in my yarns. I decided to try breaking up deeper, saturated colors with a neutral background. Previously, I had purchased a bump (30 pounds) of combed top from Brown Sheep Company and was brainstorming ways to start spinning it up. In case any of you are wondering, yes, I do think that purchasing an entire bump was a lot, and no, I don’t regret it at all! This easy-to-spin Columbia/Rambouillet-cross wool is also available by the pound if that…

Tussah is one of my favorite silks to spin, and it is also a type of silk I recommend to new silk spinners. Tussah, or tassar, is wild silk with a naturally creamy color and a more textured, grippy feel than fine, bright-white cultivated silk. In the hand, tussah is not as slippery as cultivated silk, which makes it more forgiving to the beginning silk spinner. While I prefer the character of wild silks, a weaver friend prefers the full shine and drape of cultivated silk and describes tussah yarns as more cotton-like. I find the hand of my tussah yarns to be more like a midway point between cotton and silk—tussah has much of the shine and softness of cultivated silks, but it clings to itself while spinning and…

As is often the case, this fiber endeavor began as the conclusion of another. My article in Spin Off Winter 2019, “Natural Dyeing, Navajo Plying, and the Australian Outback,” ends with a note that after seeing five colorful handspun afghans created with Australian natural dyes, several fellow members of the Berry Spinners and Weavers volunteered to collect natural materials for my future dyepots and color explorations. The group collected a wonderful range of materials, including orange bracket fungus, yellow mushrooms, hairy she-oak needles, eucalyptus resin, bubble seaweed, and a range of lichens. My curiosity did not wane about what colors might emerge from any plant material that I suspected could be promising. I was also anxious to see if plants that had previously produced rewarding color would give a repeat…

I chose a peahen motif for this project because it was the first design I was given by my teacher when I learned colcha embroidery in the late 1970s. Today, I often use the peahen motif when I am teaching new colcha embroiderers. Feel free to choose your own colors for this project and make it your own. Nature may have dressed the peahen in dull colors for hiding her eggs in the grass, but the peacock has dazzling tail feathers to lure predators away from the nest. Because I tend to be eccentric, I wanted to dress up my peahen! TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUES AND MATERIALS The colcha stitch is a filling stitch made using a long stitch on the surface of the work that is overlaid with a tacking stitch…

1 Put a spring in your step with a bouncy braid from Apothefaery Luxury Fibers. Shown in the Evergreen colorway, this 4-ounce US-Rambouillet top is a smooth spin. apothefaery.com 2 Spin in the sunshine with this ring distaff from The Dancing Goats. This classic tool is handcrafted from maple and based on an old Roman design. thedancinggoats.etsy.com 3 Are you ready for spring cleaning? This card-cleaning brush from The Natural Twist will get deep into the spaces between the teeth on your carding cloth. the-natural-twist-llc.square.site 4 Kookaburra Wash is a plant-based detergent that will keep your textiles clean and fresh. Available in original, lavender, and unscented. Try Kookaburra Scour to tackle fleeces this spring. kookaburraco.com 5 Pockets! Linenia’s reversible cross-back aprons are made to order in linen fabric made from…

AS A SERIOUS MAKER, I’ve thought a lot about what differentiates Craft from Art when it comes to the work of our hands. The only conclusion I’ve come to is that the intention of the maker to create something more than just a functional piece is what makes it Art. The maker may wish to fill the piece with love for the recipient, or the maker might create the object to commemorate a specific time or place. But it’s the intention that makes it Art. Slow Stitch is a meditation on textiles and handstitching as Art. The book’s foundation is a philosophy on making that grounds the work of our hands in time and place through seasonal shifts and dyeing with local plants, allowing us an opportunity to connect our…

THIS IS A GORGEOUS BOOK, cover to cover, and a must-have for anyone whose work focuses on color. The photographs and graphics are vivid and beautifully presented, spilling out to cover the entire page. This is not a how-to dye book but rather an incredible journey through the fascinating world of color—a journey that is not limited to a North American or European scope but is a worldwide view. This is an important approach because colors and palettes were mostly geographically specific in the days before synthetic dyes. We are surrounded by color—it has shaped our world in so many ways. Deep Color takes a deep dive into the history of color and how it has affected our world. From the European Venus of Willendorf to the Māori legend of…

If small-batch dyeing exercises have left you rich in mini skeins of many colors, then this stitch pattern can be your payoff. It’s a bit sneaky. Even a seasoned knitter might be fooled into thinking it is worked with a stranded-knitting technique, but it derives its punch from easy slip stitches alternating with plain rows. THE ORIGINAL PATTERN AND THE GAME CHANGER I found this pleasant-looking pattern in The Harmony Guide to Knitting Stitches, Volume 3, and I was curious to see how it was accomplished. The instructions revealed that the color change every four rows would allow me to try color combinations, but could I adapt the pattern and switch every two rows instead of every four? I was more than a little surprised at the result, and I…

Put your beautiful handspun to work! This project lets you showcase variegated dyed silk tops without needing to spin large amounts or worry about how best to spin the silk to capture color successions. When I found this tussah silk top from Treenway Silks, I loved that the colors reminded me of the Northwoods of Minnesota—the blue of the lakes and skies and the greens of the white and red pines. SPINNING NOTES I unrolled the dyed tussah combed top and pulled it apart into three piles: one that was a deep blue (Color A), one that was a bright and clear green (Color B), and one that combined both blue and green into a somewhat teal shade (Color C). No division of variegated roving or top will ever be…

Humans love color, and historically, they have been willing to work with dye materials that are difficult to obtain to make their world more vibrant. Red is a common color found in Scottish tartans, but madder, the popular red dye plant, is not native. In the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, dyers used the local plant lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum). Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to know what plants were used to dye a historical textile. Everyday clothing and home goods do not survive for long in many environments, and the few textiles that do endure are not labeled with the dyes used to make them. Nowadays, conservation scientists can use scientific equipment to uncover dye chemicals present on museum objects. However, many dye plants can produce the same dye…