Woodstock Fleece Festival

Oct. 17, 2015 was the Woodstock Fleece Festival held in Woodstock, ON, Canada. I had the opportunity to visit the booth of Willow Farm where they had beautiful Icelandic fleece, of which 3 came home with me. Over the next 3 days I scoured all of the fleece, one at a time.

It washed up to be just beautiful!

Dark to light grey

Moorit

White with champagne

 Spent a couple of hours looking around, enjoying the fibre and colours of the wool.

The Oxford Weavers and Spinners guild held a weaving workshop making a 'Boho' handbag in cotton chenille. Lovely little pattern and everyone that attended had a lovely handbag.

Looking forward to Woodstock Fleece Festival in 2016. Every year it gets bigger and better.

Targhee Dye

This is a 2 ply skein done up in a nature dye of leftover tansy with some fresh marigold added. Premordanted with alum and cream of tartar. 

This is uncarded Targhee that will be blended with dyed hemp top. Same dye as above. 

This is uncarded Targhee; alum mordant and a previously used cochineal vat. This too will be blended with fibre reactive dyed hemp.

These are 2 carded batts of Targhee blended with 25% hemp. A cochineal dye with marigold overdye. Alum & cream of tartar mordant. Here had the blended batts prepared with 25% hemp. Hemp is a cellulose fibre, so it must be dyed using fibre reactive dyed by either fibre reactive dyes, a substantive dye or with a different mordant process.

I decided to just dye the batts and see what the outcome would be. For this it doesn't matter if the dye on the hemp is permanent or not.

A satisfying dye day. 

IDS. 15% Hemp and Suffolk

I'm finally making a start on my study! So many things had to be looked after first before I could get to it.

A little cooking, some canning, gardening...some nature dyeing. I could not resist. 

But it lead me to the beginning of my in depth study.