KnitMe

Flax!

Aloha from my sleepy little island of Molokai.

Well, maybe not so sleepy after all...I learned to spin and dye flax this week, and I am knitting a towel from my yarn.

I grew up at a time when linens were linen. I fell in love with linen fabric. Its gentle roughness and absorbency speak to me of home. I have always wanted to learn to spin it.

Detta urged me to try the fiber that I am starting with. It is a blend of half flax and half tussah, combed into a shining top. I figured it would be the easiest to spin, since I have already spun silk, and I have spun from both silk and wool tops.

After a disastrous attempt to spin it from the fold, I predrafted the fiber just as I do my tussah tops, spilitting it lengthwise and then drawing and loosening the strips into long coils. I spun it from the ends, and I spun it wet.

The Little Gem is perfect for the job. The bobbins are plastic, so they won't be ruined by storing sopping wet yarn on them. I kept a cup of water on the table beside me, and I put a plastic mat under the wheel to protect the rug. Linen singles should be spun S-twist because of the way the fibers grow inside the plant stem. To do that I twisted the main drive band, just as I would do to ply silk or wool. As I went along, I found that the spinning went smoother if I also twisted the scotch tension band. I used the next to biggest groove on the regular whorl. This slowed down the wheel so that my orifice hand had time to smooth the fiber before it fed onto the bobbin. I kept the fingers of my "smoothing hand" sopping wet, and my "fiber management" hand scrupulously dry. Never once did the fibers stick or gob together. I set the tension as light as I could get it, barely drawing on, at the point where the slightest hesitation of my hand on the yarn would stop it and there would be no pull against my hand. I have never had such a relaxed and pleasant spinning experience on that sweet Little Gem!
In the picture you can see the set-up and the singles.

I also plied the linen yarn wet. The two-ply came out smooth and consistent. However the spun yarn on the bobbin dried stiff as wire. I wondered whether the finished yarn would be too stiff to use. But, fingers crossed, I kept on.

I dyed the yarn with Procion MX dye in cerulean blue, using an alkaline immersion method suitable for flax. Since fiber reactive dyes work with both cellulosic and protein fibers, I hoped that both silk and flax would take the dye, and any difference in color that the two would develop would make the yarn look rich and interesting. I didn't sleep at all that night, as the fiber batched in its dyebath. First thing next morning I raced outside in my pj's and pulled the yarn out of the dyebath. It was.....
35 grams of sky blue success!!!

My linen yarn is beautiful, and it is soft. In the dyebath and subesquent washing, the silk prevailed. I am knitting it into a hand towel from Liz Lovick's collection of delightful washcloths and towels. The lace is the Shetland New Shell pattern. I love the way that the silk makes a soft halo in the lace holes of the ladders. When I get back to North Dakota I am going to spin more of this luscious stuff, and knit all the towels in the collection.

What a satisfying way to finish out my time on Molokai. This week I pack, and on the weekend we will fly home to cold and snowy North Dakota. My stay here has been an intensive workshop in dyeing. I have dyed with fiber-reactive, acid and natural dyes. I have dyed silk, linen, wool, and cotton. I have immersion dyed and handpainted, and having tried tie-dyeing a t-shirt for the first time and it being too late for another order from Dharma, I have tie-died all the clean undies in my underwear drawer.
My friends, I am hooked.

It has been a good stay in Hawaii. I thank all my internet friends, vendors, mentors, and fiber family, for turning this 'workshop' into the learning experience that it was. I thank you all, and I leave you with the flower picture that I love the most from this year's photos. It is my gift of Molokai to you.

Aloha.
-Jan

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Aloha from Molokai

Greetings from the island of Molokai, Hawaii.

On this, our 25th year of coming here, I am finding new paths, renewing old interests, kicking back and having a lot of fun with fiber.

For starters I'm dyeing, in what has to be the most beautiful dye kitchen in the world.

I'm handpainting silk caps and hankies...

...and spinning them on hand spindles. Here is a purple hankie with a 15 gram Holly long shaft Featherweight Bossie.

Next, with the help of a good book and Carol Lee's fine DVD, I have come back to an old love from many years ago: natural dyeing with plant extracts.

I chose six kinds of plants that grow near my doorstep: hibiscus flowers, areca palm, avocado pits and peels, koa haole, schefflera, and beach naupaka. I extracted the dye by putting flowers or leaves in quart canning jars with hot water, and left them on the lanai to steep in the sun for a couple of weeks.

When it came time to dye my fiber, where better to begin than with that quintessential Hawaiian flower, red hibiscus.

The extract and dyebath were a rich wine red.

I put alum-mordanted wool yarn, a Bombyx cap (sometimes a hankie), and some tussah top into the dyebath, heated it, and let it cool overnight The next morning Mother Nature delivered one of her surprises.

The wool yarn came out of the purple dyebath gold, and the silks emerged gray. After rinsing, the gray proved to be a soft sage green.

The other plants gave a lovely array of rich golds, subtle bronze tans, bright yellows and rosy browns.

Two of the plant extracts fermented spontaneously, so I set up ammonia/hydrosulfite vats for them. They rewarded me with an intense saffron yellow and a creamy pale primrose.

What marvelous complex colors, especially on the silks. What a delight. I know there are more plants, more mordants, and more surprises here in Hawaii. And surely more awaiting me at home.

Aside from fiber pursuits, not much has changed this year in our little corner of paradise.

The flowers are beautiful.

The trade winds blow a gale through the channels between the islands.

The neighbors come to call.

And the sunsets are spectacular.

Aloha.