30 Days of Creativity: Week 3, 4 and beyond

Here is the roundup of the rest of the days for the 30 Days of Creativity Challenge. I thought blogging once a week would be a breeze, but by the middle of the month I was completely overwhelmed by the challenge so blogging was put on the back burner. Also, towards the end I started taking pictures with my phone instead of a proper camera. Sorry about that, the appeal of directly uploading to fb and twitter was difficult to resist.

Day Fifteen: Holden shawl.

I finished knitting and most importantly blocked my Holden shawl. I used two colorways of Koigu at the bottom and added an extra repeat to use up most of the yarn.

Day Sixteen: dyed yarn with carrot tops.

The yarn in the middle is the carrot top dye on alum mordanted yarn, on the left is carrot tops with a copper modifier and on the right is carrot tops with an iron modifier. Needless to say we were pretty disappointed in the results, probably why no one talks about dyeing with carrot tops.

Day Seventeen: started crocheting a swarm of bees.

My friend Jessi and I are making a million bees for a yarn bombing later in the summer.

Day Eighteen: more crocheted bees, this time tiny ones.

Day Nineteen: woven bowl from some less than perfect handspun.

Day Twenty: yarn bombed a table.

Day Twenty-one: sewed a simple summer skirt from thrifted fabric.

I've had this fabric for years and wanted a new summer skirt so this was the perfect craftdown project.

Day twenty-two: wing prototype for the small bees.

Day twenty-three: started a crossstitch project for a friend.

Day twenty-four: completed and framed the crossstitch.

Day twenty-five: wrote 800+ words toward a future project. I was trying to stick to visual projects, but this one took a large chunk of my day so I decided it counted.

Day twenty-six: learned to weave on a pin loom.

Day twenty-seven: embellished a poster at the coffeeshop.

Day twenty-eight: started the crocheted cacti for the shop.

Day twenty-nine: carded a sparkly rainbow batt.

Day thirty: dyed with logwood.

30 Days of Creativity: Week 2

Here's week two of my 30 Days of Creativity activities. I have yet to follow any of the themes, but I am pretty okay with that.

Day Eight: knit acorns.

Knit acorns, pattern here.

Day Nine: fabric covered magnetic project board with complimentary magnets.

I think the biggest accomplishment of this project was that I actually mount it to the wall instead of leaving it on the floor for months.

Day Ten: top whorl spindle.

Another spindle, this time substantually smaller. The whorl is walnut and the shaft is cherry. Weighting 1.3oz, it came out a bit lighter than I had planned, but it spins super fast and smooth so I am happy. Perhaps I will try to make a heavier spindle next week.

Day Eleven: yarn bombed a local statue.

Another collaborative effort with my friend Jessi, we turned these kids into superheroes.

Day Twelve: carded some of my hand dyed fiber and spun a chunky yarn.

My plan for the day was cyanotypes, but due to multiple chemical failures I went with yarn. I have three skeins of this, now to come up with a project.

Day Thirteen: dyed some brown yarn black and some white yarn yellow for a future project.

Okay, this one is not terribly exciting, but it is for what I think will be the best of the  30 day projects.

Day Fourteen: painted bike bell (take 2.)

I hand painted the dots so they aren't perfect like I had originally planned, but once finished I was happy with the imperfection so I will call this a success. 

30 Days of Creativity: Week One

Instead of trying to blog everyday for the 30 Days of Creativity challenge I am going to do a weekly wrap-up entry here. If you want to see my daily entries as they happen, you can check out the Twitter feed I set up for the challenge.

Day One: I heart Kentucky block print.

The first day of the challenge just so happened to be Kentucky's birthday so I created a linocut of the state and printed cards.

Day Two: dyeing with red onion skins.

I did blog this one- here.

Day Three: turning a Navajo spindle.

My fist disc on the lathe. I had some issues with the grain, mainly me trying to make the wood do what I wanted instead of doing what the wood wanted, but overall I am happy with the result. It is a 30" spindle weighing 5.45oz with a cherry whorl and a walnut shaft and it's totally balanced.

Day Four: fabric fortune cookies.

This was a joint effort with my friend Jessi. We made fabric fortune cookies, filled them with fortunes and compliments and hid them around downtown for others to find.

Day Five: dyeing Lincoln locks.

I bought a bunch of Lincoln locks at the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber fest last month and I am slowly dyeing them up in bright colors for future projects.

Day Six: overspun mohair single.

Spun from a mohair/wool cloud I carded, it is the beginning of a future project.

Day Seven: spray painting my bike basket and adding some crochet heart streamers.

My original plan was to paint my bike bell, but I couldn't resist  spray painting the basket and adding some streamers as well. I painted the bell, but it was a failure so I will have to sand it down and try it again on another day.

Dyeing with Red Onion Skins

After the workshop, Chris and I set a goal of dyeing twice a month for the entire summer and documenting what we learn. We each have different goals in this, but we both want to learn what is available in this area of the country and how to get the best colors from what we have. Our first experiment was with red onion skins, mostly because I have never died with onion skins and I wanted to give it a shot. I have been taking all of the onion skins at the grocery store when I do my weekly shopping and even though I left with a sizable bag each time, it took me 5 weeks to gather enough skins for one dyebath.

215g of onion skins collected in my Grubby, a counter top compost collector given out by the city. I have vermicomposting in my kitchen so this bin sat unused until now, it's perfect for onion skin collection.

There isn't a lot of specific information on onion dyeing, I think most people just throw in some skins and hope for the best, but since we are keeping records of everything we are doing, I decided a 1:1 ratio of skins to fiber would be a good place to start- that seems to be at the top of the range and will give us the most saturated color. Next was the issue of mordanting. Onion skins don't require a mordant, but the use of one will give you more colorfast results so I went with a 15% wog alum and 6% wog cream of tarter solution (the cream of tartar acts as an assist and ideally I would have done a batch with and a batch without to judge the results, but time did not allow for that. We might readdress this later in the summer after I collect more skins.)

For the actual extraction, I put the skins in a paint strainer and then large pot of hot water and slowly raised the temperature to the 180-190F, a bit below boiling. Everything I read said to boil the skins, but I am not sure that is good for the color. I have nothing to base this on, but I feel like extracting at the higher temperatures will result in more browning so for this go I decided to keep the temps on the lower side. This might mean that I didn't get as much color and it might result in a different color, that's something I will have to address later in the summer. One last note on the extraction- onion skins smell like onions when you add water (surprise, right?) so they might be best used outside.

I really love these 5 gallon paint strainers, they keep all the little pieces together so that you can pull it all out at once and get straight to the dyeing.

After the extraction, we pulled out the onion skin bag and put another bag in with the yarn- one superwash, one not. We let everything simmer around 180F for about 35 minutes. As expected, Chris's superwash absorbed quite a bit more dye making it a deep rich brown.

Final dry skeins. On the left is the regular wool and on the right is the superwash,.

When we pulled everything out there was still a good amount of dye in the water so we threw in some wet unmordanted fiber to soak it up. The fiber ended up a khaki brown which was a bit blah so we added some iron to the dye water in the last few minutes which shifted the color to a really nice green.

The difference in the two colors is pretty dramatic, hard to believe they came from  the same dyepot.

Next time my plan is to use a .5:1 ratio of skins to fiber, skip the alum mordant, and follow with an iron bath to try and get a nice deep green, we'll see.

Day 29: Journal

June is almost done and with July fast approaching, I decided now is a good time to set a new month long goal. I have been reading a lot about modern information overload (which of course only adds to my personal overload) and have decided that for the month of July I am going on a media diet. Basically I want to cut out all of the unnecessary time I spend staring at screens so the plan is to spend none of my non-work time on a computer and even though I need to use the computer for work, I am only allowing myself 15 minutes of facebook per day and 15 minutes of personal email.

Instead of wasting my free time online, I plan to fill it with reading (only fiction), exploring, talking with friends, and creative activities. I also want to keep a journal of my month so for today's creative act I gutted an old book and added blank pages to make a new journal. The tag pictured is one of several I found in my dad's shop when searching for the right sized drill bit. I am pretty sure it's one of those tags you punch through an animals ear, but since there is no chance of that happening I grabbed one to make into a bookmark.


Next week I am on stay-cation and one of the first tasks I have planned for my time off is to build and paint an Adirondack chair so I can sit outside, not on the grass, and enjoy my morning coffee. This used to be my morning ritual and it was a lovely way to start the day so I am bringing it back.

Day 28: Salt Scrub

For the last several years mosquitoes have avoided me, but my body chemistry must have changed because this year I seem to be a mosquito buffet. To remedy this I decided to make a salt scrub that would double as a repellent for those little creatures who feel the need to bite me. This simple scrub is 3 parts sea salt, 1 part oil, and a bit of lemon eucalyptus and citronella essential oils. It doesn't smell great, but it smells way better than chemical bug spray and it will do the job.

Day 27: Extinct Mediums

Another day where I follow the theme, the last time in this challenge. This yarn is a combination of reclaimed scraps and a tape of the Dalai Lama speaking on the four noble truths that I liberated from southern thrift store hell. Despite tape being on a spool, it is remarkably difficult to get out of the cassette in a smooth motion, the entire spinning session was a war with the tape. On the plus side, the yarn is pretty soft and very workable which is something I wasn't expecting.

Day 26: Unicorns

Today's theme is unicorns so I decided to spin a yarn inspired by unicorns. I started with domestic kid mohair top, some handdyed firestar, silver angelina, and some various pink and purple dyed fibers. I sent everything through my drumcarder twice to get the mohair cloud effect and then I spun it around a commercial lace core (handdyed by me.) This was one of the most difficult yarns I have ever spun- I had books, videos, and diagrams to help but ultimately ended up figuring it out through trial and error. I have been spinning a lot this summer (at least 2 hours of every shop shift since May) and I am really seeing an improvement in my technique. I can't wait to see what I am producing toward the end of the summer.

Day 25: Hypotrochoids

On my way to work this morning I stopped at a yard sale where I picked up a hypotrochoid kit for $1. I then proceeded to spend several hours drawing and distributing hypotrochoids on little pieces of scrap paper. This is a quick shot of my lunchtime doodles.

Day 24: Plaid yarn

I haven't been following the theme calendar for the 30 day challenge, but on Thursday I noticed that the theme of the day was plaid. I had been thinking about trying a fabric yarn during this challenge and this was the perfect opportunity. I headed out to the thrift store and found a long plaid skirt for $3. Unfortunately when I got back home I was distracted by the wire and ended up making more wire yarn instead. Today the skirt was taunting me so I cut it into strips, tied the strips together, and spun up a skein of plaid yarn. I am not in love with the idea of fabric yarn, but it was fun to try out.

Day 23: Wire Yarn Take 2

My second attempt at wire yarn, this time using a 24g wire.

Day 22: Wire yarn

A small puff of Monday's batt spun around a 28g brass wire core. I love this so much that I am making a second skein today with thicker wire and scraps of another batt. I think this will likely become a wire bowl.

Day 21: Even more corespinning

I had a big fluffy batt so naturally I wanted to make it into yarn. I know you are probably tired of reading about my corespinning adventures, but as a lover of crazy fiber batts, corespinning is often the best way to show off the blends.

Day 20: Batty

Today I took some of the fibers that I hand dyed and blended them on my drum carder to create beautiful batts for spinning. This batt is a full 6oz and contains absolutely no sparkle (a first for me.)

Day 18- More Corespinning

Spun from an art batt that I bought from last years fiber fest, this is a superbulky, thick and thin pile of fluff. I think this winter it will become a hat.

Day 17: Boozy Baking

My first attempt at cake pops- chocolate and Maker's Mark.

Day 16: Stabby

Today I made dryer balls using this very simple tutorial. I had some plastic dryer balls that disappeared a few years ago so instead of replacing them with more petroleum-based products I decided to use the natural materials I had on hand to make new ones. I just bought a retractable clothesline for my backyard which means I will be line drying for the summer so I won't try these out until the cooler months, but six balls in the dryer are supposed to cut 30% off drying time and eliminate static.

Day 15: Glue

For my creative act today, I glued stuff to other stuff. I am in the process of cleaning and organizing my studio and yesterday I put all of my random buttons in a jar so that they don't take up as much space and a few minutes later I stumbled upon a giant bag of ring blanks. I pulled out my favorite adhesive and within minutes I had sticky fingers and a small selection of cute little rings.

Since I had the adhesive out I also pulled out the pack of Little Red Riding Hood pinback buttons that I bought last weekend at Wholly Craft and attached strong ceramic magnets to the backs so that I can enjoy them everyday.

Day 14: Corespinning

At last year's Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Fest I bought a braid of beautiful combed top from River's Edge Fiber Arts. The braid has been in my stash for the last year, taunting me, so today seemed a good time to do something with it. The top is 70%BFL, 30%Seacell and 4oz. Usually I buy a minimum of 8oz, but upon looking at the braid and the price tag I think the price might have restricted me to just one. After looking at the braid and trying to decide what it should be, I decided I wanted it to be a light and fluffy corespun art yarn.

The core is that same rug yarn from the vine project. I ran it through the wheel to incorporate a strong Z twist (so that my final yarn is nice and balanced.) Then I controlled it with my left hand as I wrapped the top fiber around. Sound easy? Well, not quite. The top was slightly felted from the dying process which led to constant drafting struggles (remember my left hand was controlling the core so my drafting movements were limited.) After a lot of swearing and several breaks, I came up with a system that worked. Despite the struggles, I achieved exactly the the yarn I envisioned.

Day 13: Crochet

For the past few years I have been in the process of phasing out several of my personal care products in favor of things that are more environmentally-friendly and local. One of the more difficult changes for me is eliminating the products that are diluted with water in favor of denser, drier products. I did the no poo thing for awhile with baking soda and it was okay, but I really craved the lather of a shampoo and I missed the lovely way my hair smells after a wash. I decided that a natural shampoo bar would be a good compromise since it still uses less packaging and has less water than traditional shampoos. Switching to a shampoo bar has been an off-and-on two year trial, apparently my hair is really picky about what I use to clean it. Recently I stumbled upon a winner, but it is not cheap stuff so I decided to make a little soap saver to keep it in. This is just a simple crocheted pouch with a drawstring that I made with some leftover Euroflax. The purpose of the pouch is to get more suds out of a single bar and to help it dry faster which will make it last longer.