Combing Wool for the Wheel

Hello!  I'm way overdue for a new posting here.  Life has been a bit, well, HECTIC. So I realized that I still needed to show how I prepare clean dyed fiber for the spinning wheel.

There are some out there who take the locks of fiber directly and spin them from there.  No way, Jose!  You'll most likely have knotted/felted areas, bits of debris...not for me personally as this is hard to work with.  There are predominantly two ways to get your wool/fiber ready to spin after it's been cleaned, carding and combing.  Each method produces a different type of yarn when spun.  Carding produces fibers going in every which way that are spun into woolen yarns.  These yarns have a lot of air between the fibers and have a soft springy feel to them.  These yarns are used for garments and most day to day projects.  Combing produces fibers lined up parallel to each other and are spun into worsted yarns.  Now I should say there is a yarn weight called worsted also, but they are two separate things.  Yarns spun worsted style show off the natural luster of the fibers and are quite strong.  This type of yarn is good for hardwearing items and garments. They are well suited for weaving, too.  I personally use large English Combs.  They are big, sharp, and potentially very dangerous if not used correctly.  I make sure my kids are either asleep or secure in the next room when I'm working with them.  Now, I do have hand cards and I do use them from time to time.  Here is a really good link showing how to use hand cards.   If I have short fibers to work with, my hand cards just work better.  Now to start, I anchor the combs to a table using C-clamps.  Here you can see what the combs look like.

 Like I said...big and sharp!  Each comb has a large wooden guard that stays on the sharp tines when not in use.  Now you take your locks of fiber and lash them onto the anchored comb.  This is called the stationary comb.  Here is some Lincoln Longwool fiber from Gandalf that I dyed with Kool-Aid and food colors.  You can see how I do this here.  You want to make sure you're lashing the fiber on from the same direction.  I always lash on the butt end of the fleece.  This is the end that was closest to the animal when it was shorn off.  Fill the comb all the way across and about 1/3 of the way up the comb.  Much more than this and it can be difficult to work the fleece well. 

Now you turn the stationary comb so the tines are pointed to the right.  You take your other comb and VERY CAREFULLY swing it downward starting at the outside edge of the fiber.  With each pass you pick up more and more of the fiber and you move closer and closer towards the stationary comb.  Once you have transfered the fiber from the stationary comb to your moving comb it's time to transfer the fleece back to the stationary comb.   

 You VERY CAREFULLY swing the moving comb from right to left starting at the outer edge of the fiber.  Again, with each pass you'll be transfering more and more of the fiber to the stationary comb.  Repeat these two steps until the fleece is nice and open and clean.  

Turn your stationary comb so the tines are pointing up again like they were when you started.  Smooth the fiber with your hands to bring the fleece to a point.  Now you'll be pulling off the fleece to form top.  Top is what you spin.  It's a long continuous strip of combed fiber.  

From here you can either pull the fleece off to form top completely by eye, or you can use a diz.  A diz is a small device made from many different materials...wood, plastic, cardboard, even stone.  I've seen a lovely one made out of Mother of Pearl before.  The diz has a hole in the center that helps you to pull off the top more evenly.  As you pull the fleece through you move the diz closer to the stationary comb.  The longest and strongest fibers will be pulled through while the short fibers, noils, dirt and debris will be left behind on the stationary comb.  Now, I was taught that you waste nothing when it comes to your fiber.  I take the "trash" fiber that's left behind and clean it up by hand to use for our felted soaps!  It's a great way to use wool or other fiber that would otherwise probably end up in the trash.

Once you've pulled off all the fiber you'll have a nice long strip of top that's ready to be spun into lovely worsted yarn!  I gently roll the top around my hand to make a nice and tidy "ball" of top that easily unrolls as I use it at the spinning wheel.

Now all I need to do is get Matthew to take some pictures of me spinning so I can explain how that part of the process is done!  It's hard to get decent photos of yourself while spinning.  Believe me, I've tried.  I promise to have that sometime soon!

Getting the Garden In!

We have been pretty busy around here getting the gardens prepared and planted.  I feel like there are just never enough hours in the day to accomplish all that needs done.  I know I'm not alone in this feeling!  Every year once May and June rolls around it just seems like everything else comes to a giant halt and the main goal is to get things planted and maintaining the gardens.  A lot of what we produce I preserve by canning and freezing for us.  We try to produce and save as much of our own food as we can.  The rest, which is still a large amount on a good year, goes to market with us on Saturdays.  We decided to stick to more of what we always grow.  The old saying "If it ain't broke don't fix it." comes to mind!  Multiple varieties of heirloom tomatoes, squash, green beans, cucumbers, and sweet/hot peppers can all be found growing, as well as some other wonderful vegetables.  This year I was able to get my hands on the infamous Bhut Jolokia or Ghost chili pepper seeds.  This is apparently one of the hottest peppers known and comes from the region around India.  We also have Fatalii and Carribean Red Habanero Peppers this year, too.  We seem to have this thing about really hot peppers.  I mean, yeah we're chili heads, but come on!!  If you like it hot, come see us at market and we can fix you up!
Getting the gardens prepared is no small task.  This year we invested in a moldboard plow to really help dig deep and get the rich soil turned over.  It also seems to have helped bury a lot of the weed seeds.  We try to avoid plowing/tilling too much as we don't like to disturb the soil ecosystem anymore than we have to, but we do give it a good going over at the beginning of each season.  Here is my brother Josh breaking in the plow.  It was like he had done it one-hundred times before!

A week later Matthew went over the turned over soil with a walk-behind tiller.  This was a massive undertaking.  The moldboard plow leaves giant mounds and dips of soil that need to be smoothed out.  Matthew certainly got a good workout fighting his way through it all.

Ronan had a great time playing in the freshly tilled dirt that day.....

Willow spent the entire time picking "flowers."  In this case it was some type of yellow-flowered weed that was blooming like mad.  I told her she could pick all of the yellow flowers she wanted and I tell you what...she picked every single yellow flower she could find!  Here she is with flower smeared on her face and eyes closed for the camera...typical Willow.

 So now we can fast-forward to the last few days.  I've spend many long hours outside getting plants in the ground so they can start growing.  The warmer spring we've had this year has been quite beneficial in many ways, one being that we were able to work the gardens sooner.  Last year I wasn't able to get the tomatoes or peppers in the ground until after June 1 because it was so wet for so long.  The plants were pretty sad by that point and they never did fully recover.  This year I have had some of the best looking transplants I've ever had.  I think this is in no small part due to the generous sun and early mild temperatures we've been blessed with.  This morning when I went to let the chickens out I snapped a couple pictures of what things are looking like now.  Here is what the main garden looks like at this point.  Give it a few weeks there will be a lot more green in this picture as things grow bigger and bigger!
This is a portion of our tomatoes and "greens."  Putting up the tomato tee-pees is always A LOT of work, but we always have the nicest tomatoes when we use this system.  Each stake gets one plant and I just tie the plant up as it grows.  I don't do too much pruning either.  This is just my preference.  I'll sacrifice a little fruit size to have larger yields.  Needless to say I get some sprawling branches despite my best efforts to keep them all up off the ground!

 Here's a lovely young Lacinato Kale plant.  It produces lovely dark blue-green leaves that are just packed with nutrition.

As I was walking out of the garden I spotted this tomato plant with flowers in bloom!!  This is wonderful because it means the first of the tomatoes aren't too far of.  I can not wait...

I like to intermingle flowers in my gardens along the veggie plants.  Some flowers can actually help ward off certain pests you don't want in the garden.  I thought this little lady was just too pretty to not share.  This is an heirloom flower called Zebrina.  Such pretty colors on a easy to care for plant.  Imagine a small version of a hollyhock...

The sheep couldn't help but notice me while I was out and decided to come and say hello.  Well, it was actually more of a "Are you going to give me some sweet feed?" kind of greeting.  They are now permanent additions here I'm glad to say.  Matthew had to get the fencing finished before we were able to move them up here from my mom's barn.  So now the sheep are here and the goats are at her house.  Matthew and I have decided that we do want to get a couple weeder goats just to help maintain the lot.  It's really big for just two sheep!  It's nice to have livestock back here on the farm.  I'll leave you with a picture of my two balls of fluff!  Until next time!

Gandalf and Raziel

Rachel's Wheat Sandwich Bread Recipe

 We eat a lot of bread.  I mean, A LOT of bread!  Maybe it's the fact that we have two small children and sandwiches are such an easy go-to for lunches and many snacks in between.  Maybe it's because bread goes so well with so many things I cook for my family.  Maybe it's because there is just something about fresh bread that triggers this wonderful feeling of nostalgia.  I really don't know.  I have been making bread for a long time.  To start it was just because I wanted to and I missed having fresh, homemade bread around.  My dad made wonderful breads all the time while I was growing up and I was use to having them.  His Thanksgiving dinner rolls will be painfully missed this year.  These days I make bread for my family twice a week.  It's on my "chores" list but I really don't consider it a chore at all.
Here in America there does not seem to be the same importance placed on bread as in so many other countries.  You would be hard pressed to find a French, Italian, or any European table that didn't serve some form of bread with meals.  Bread is made fresh and eaten fresh in so many these countries daily.  People go to their bakeries everyday for their daily bread.  Of course, many households make their own, too.  In the Middle East, bread is an absolute staple.  Hummus and Baba would not be the same without delicious soft pita bread.  It is the constant, unchanging absolute to food and mealtimes in so many nations around the world.        
A lot of people seem scared to attempt to make bread for some odd reason.  Maybe it's all the steps involved or the fear of doing something wrong.  Perhaps it's the fact that most people today just head to their local grocery store where they can buy a loaf for next to nothing.  Well, I don't know about you, but the last time I picked up a loaf of your standard store-bought bread I couldn't even pronounce half of the ingredients that were listed!  I really don't want to be eating all those chemicals nor do I want my children to be eating them either.  I was taught a long time ago to never eat something if you can't even pronounce what it's made of.  To top it off, if you want to buy the higher-quality bread that does have the simple list of ingredients, you're going to pay somewhere along the lines of $4.00!!  I can buy a whole bag of really good flour for that much and it will make MANY loaves of wonderful, good-for-you bread.
Today I wanted to share with you my recipe for the wheat bread that I bake.  This is my own recipe I'm proud to say!  It makes two loaves of sandwich style bread.  I have other recipes I use for crusty bread and grain-type bread, but this is the one I use by far the most.  I've gone through a lot of recipes to figure out what I like and what I think needs improvement.  I finally came up with this recipe.  Now I will say, it is not 100% whole wheat.  I'm sorry, I just CAN NOT find nor create a bread from all whole wheat that doesn't have a residual cardboard-like texture!  Believe me, I've tried.  Bread has to have at least some soft chewiness to it!  I did still want the healthy qualities that whole wheat has to offer though.  I finally decided on half bread flour and half whole wheat flour.  Now if you are someone who just can not stand the texture of true whole wheat, you can substitute white whole wheat flour instead.  I also wanted to incorporate the wonderful raw-honey from our bees into the bread.  You can feel free to tweak the amounts of honey and salt if you so choose, but I think it's a pretty good balance.  Please give it a try and I really do hope you like it as much as we do.  Now for the recipe.....

 Rachel's Wheat Sandwich Bread
1 1/2 Tablespoons Active Dry Yeast
2 Cups Warm Water (~110℉)
1 Tablespoon Sugar or Honey
1/2 Cups Vegetable Oil
3 Cups Bread Flour
3 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
1/3 Cup Pure Raw Honey
3 Teaspoons Salt

First you need to dissolve the sugar/honey into the warm water.  Add the yeast, stir to dissolve, and allow it to "proof." This is when the yeast starts to foam and get all puffy.  The yeast feeds on the sugar in the water.  Just leave it alone and let it go, don't be tempted to stir it.  It can take about ten to fifteen minutes for the yeast to get there depending on how warm your kitchen is at the time.

Here is what proofed yeast looks like.  You can see the foamy layer on top of all the liquid.

 While your yeast is proofing, measure out your flours and combine them in a large bowl.  Make sure that you get a high-quality flour and please be sure that it is unbleached and unbromated.  Bromine depletes your body of Iodine, a vital nutrient your body needs, ESPECIALLY your thyroid gland.  I spoon the flour into my measuring spoon and then level it off with a knife.  I have been told that next to weighing out your flour, this is the best way to get an accurate measure.

Now I will admit, I use my KitchenAid stand-mixer these days to work and knead my dough.  I have done it by hand though many times! Oh gosh.....countless times!  I hand-kneaded every dough I made up until I was gifted my mixer two years ago.  It's a great workout and there is something more "authentic" about hand-kneading I think, but boy, it sure is quicker and easier with a stand-mixer! Add the salt to the flours and stir well to get the salt well combined.

 Add the honey to the flour mixture.  My honey had crystallized so if you're wondering why it looks a little odd, that's why.  By now your yeast should be ready.  Add the oil to the yeast and give it a stir.  You now pour the yeast and oil into the bowl with the flour and honey.

Combine these ingredients well and continue to knead until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  If you're kneading my hand make sure you work on a nicely floured surface as this dough is on the stickier side.  You may think the dough is too wet, but it seems that the extra bit of moisture helps the bread stay nice and moist during the baking.

Because this dough is a bit sticky, I use an oiled spatula to help scrape it out onto a floured surface.

 Lightly oil a large bowl ( I use the same workbowl it was mixed in.) and turn the dough-ball over in it to lightly cover it all with oil.  Leave it in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Place the bowl in a dark, warm area to rise.  You really want your room to be at least 72℉.  Yeast likes warmth and it helps it work better.  If it's too cold, it may not activate at all.  It can take from one to two hours for the dough to fully rise.  For me, it is generally closer to two hours.  You want the dough to double in size.  If you're just not sure, one way to check if the dough has risen enough is to poke your index finger into the dough and pull it out.  If the dough at the indentation basically stays in place it's ready.  A tiny bit of give is okay.  If it starts it close back in it needs a little more time.  Below you can see the dough before and after it's first rising.  You can see the size difference.

Before

After

 When the dough has finished rising you then punch the dough down.  It will deflate back to it's original size.  Knead the dough by hand a few times just to redistribute the yeast.  Divide the dough into two equal pieces and shape them into loaves.  Place each into a well buttered 9 by 5 inch loaf pan.  I really recommend butter for this because for some reason it really does help the loaves come free from the pans after baking so much better than oil.  Each time I have used oil in the past the bread sticks really bad.  Just trust me on this one.  I actually butter the tops of the loaves also because it helps give the bread this nice browned top during the baking process.

Again, cover the loaves with plastic wrap and place them in a nice warm, dark area.  They now start their second rise and this generally takes 30 minutes to an hour.  The loaves should rise to one inch above the pans.  Here is what the loaves look like when they are ready to bake.

Once they get into a hot oven they puff up a bit more during the first ten minutes or so.  It's kinda neat to walk away only to return a few minutes later to see this bread all puffed up.  Meanwhile, while the bread is about done with it's final rise, heat your oven to 350℉ and place a rack in the middle of your oven.  Once they're ready, place the loaves in the hot oven and bake for 30-35 minutes or until the tops are a nice golden brown.  Make sure to leave a couple inches between the two loaves while they bake or the tops will fuse together as they puff up!  The smell will be amazing, almost nutty thanks to the whole grain in the bread.

 Let the bread sit in the pan for ten minutes or so and then remove the loaves from the pans being very careful not to burn yourself because they are still very hot!  Put the bread on a rack to finish cooling.  Now if you're like Matthew, the kids, and I, you won't and can't wait until it's totally cooled.  Fresh hot bread with real butter is up there on my list of favorite things.  I put each loaf in their own bag.  One I leave on the counter for us to eat right away and the other I place in the refrigerator to keep it fresh until we need it.  If it's going to be awhile until you eat it, bag it well and put it in the freezer.  Just pull it out in time for it to thaw and enjoy!

 And there you have it, the bread I make all the time.  I do hope you give it a try and if you have any questions or need something explained more, please just ask!  Sometimes I think I've explained something well when in reality it's only so-so.  I will be glad to help however I can!







   

A Few of Our Yarns

I had promised I would post a picture of some of the yarn I spun up from the Kool-Aid/food color dyed fleece I had talked about earlier.  Well, here you go!  The pink toned yarn is a Lincoln/Mohair blend.  The dark blue/purple blend is 100% Lincoln.  The pretty aqua yarn is 100% Kid Mohair.  It is SO SOFT!  You could wear it directly next to your skin it is so downy soft.  We are planning on selling these as well as many more of our yarns and prepared fibers at the Grandview Farmer's Market this summer.  We are set to take part in two of the "pre-market" days in June.  We have promised to be there June 9th and 30th.  Market time is the normal 10am to 1pm.  Hope to see you there! 

We just added three new Angora goats to the farm roster.  They are set to be getting sheared next week sometime so I'm going to have so much wonderful extra fiber!  I'll be making some more blends and will also be spinning 100% Mohair yarns.  Now all I need to do is find time!  Lets see, I have soap to make, fiber to process and get spun, kids to chase, the gardens to get planted, weeding, house chores, the beginning of homeschooling.....oh, and at some point in there I need to try to eat and sleep!  Life is busy around here right now.  With a new baby set to arrive sometime in September I'm feeling extra squeezed for time this year.  But you know, I wouldn't want it any other way.  It's such a wonderful busy!  Now speaking of fiber to process, I better get to it.  Until next time!

Dandelion Wine - Part One

 I freely admit, I love dandelions!  It seems like I'm in the minority on that, too.  In my days of working at the garden center there were SO MANY people coming in to buy nasty poison to kill these plants.  I would just cringe as I rang up their purchases.  See, not only do dandelions make great food for our honeybees, they also make a wonderful wine.  The first time I made this wine it was definitely a learning experience as to what NOT to do.  I mean, I got wine but you could clean out a car engine with it because of how strong it got!  It never fully cleared and was always pretty hazy.  In the end though, I got wine and considered my first attempt at winemaking a success.  In any type of homebrewing, sanitation is key.  If you're not someone who takes extreme cleanliness seriously, homebrewing is not for you.  All of the equipment you need should be cleaned and disinfected before you use it, everytime you use it.  There are many good beer and wine homebrew companies out there that sell almost all the supplies you need to get started.  I decided to give it another go this year.  I found what I think will be a good recipe to use.  I decided to use a recipe from Jack Keller's website.  You can find it here.  I used recipe 29.  He has a wonderful glossary of different winemaking terms to help you understand everything as you go.  Okay!  So to start off, we needed dandelions.  Lots and lots of dandelions!!  For this particular wine recipe I needed nine cups of dandelion petals.  Nine!  You only use the petals because the rest of the plant is very bitter.

 My children took the task of collecting all these dandelions very seriously!  It was quite cute.  Willow got especially involved.  She seemed very happy to have a "job" to do.

 

Here are both of the kids with their collection of dandelions.  Ronan was too interested in trying to fling out handfuls of picked blossoms.  Willow was trying to get him to realize that we needed them inside the bowl and not out!  I really do have some sweet children.

Ok, enough talking about the kids!  Once we had picked all the blossoms we would need, it was time for me to pluck the petals.  This was the part that took awhile.  Like I mentioned earlier, I needed nine cups of petals.  This was just the beginning.... 

 

About two hours later I finally had the amount of petals that I needed.  The petals along with the zest of two oranges and two lemons got placed into a nylon straining bag and tied up.  I used a good vegetable peeler to carefully remove the zest from the oranges and lemons in strips.  However you choose to do it, use care not to get much if any of the bitter white pith underneath the zest. 

I put the bag into the primary fermentation vessel and poured the proper amount of boiling water over the petal/zest bag.  I did have a photo of this step but for some odd reason I can not get it to upload on here!  The bag needs to be squeezed a few times a day for a few days.  This is what this brew looks like once you remove the bag at the end of day three.  I strained out the extra little petals that escaped through the holes in the bag that you see floating on the top.

Now is when you add the sugar and dissolve it well.  This particular recipe also calls for the addition of white grape juice and citrus juice which you add once the sugar is dissolved.  Now is the time that yeast nutrient, tannin, and pectic enzyme are also added.   Here you can see what some of these wine additives look like.  I should say, the Acid Blend is not used in this recipe.

 Each of these ingredients play an important role in the winemaking process.  Please see Jack Keller's Glossary of Winemaking Terms for what each one is responsible for.  Stir all of these ingredients well, cover the primary, and set it aside for twelve hours.  After twelve hours, it's time for the addition of yeast.  Yeast is so important in the making of wine.  Different wines use different yeasts, and boy are there A LOT of different wine yeasts out there!  Your recipe will generally tell you the type you need.  The yeast is what is responsible for turning the sugars into alcohol.  Before you add the yeast to the rest of the ingredients you need to activate it.  This particular yeast required me to mix the yeast into 1/2 cup of warm water and leave it to "proof" for 15 minutes. This isn't the best picture, but you can sort of see the white foam that formed on the top.

 After 15 minutes, this gets added to the mix.  Cover the fermentor and let it go.  You will need to gently stir this mixture twice a day for five days.  This mixture gets very active as fermentation gets going.  It hisses and bubbles away!!  You can also see the foam that forms on the top as ferments. 

After five days it is time for the very young wine to be racked into a sterilized secondary fermentor that will be fitted with an airlock.  I use a one-gallon glass carbouy.  The airlock lets the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation out but keeps oxygen from getting in.  Oxygen is not a friend of wine.  If too much oxygenation occurs, you'll end up with vinegar!  How do you think we get apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar?  Oxygen exposure to the wine.  There are special tools to help you transfer the wine from one carbouy to the next without adding too much extra oxygen.  Here you can see what the very young wine looked like right after it was put into the carbouy.  It's VERY cloudy and would not taste very good at all if you were brave enough to take a taste at this point.  It has a long way to go yet and still had some fermentation to complete. 

I covered the carbouy with a cloth to keep it in the dark.  It bubbled away for another week or so.  During this time a lot of sludge fell to the bottom of the carbouy as the wine started to clear.  This sludge is called "lees."  At this point in the process I just had to wait.  I had to wait for fermentation to totally stop and the wine to fall as clear as possible.  This took about three weeks.  I again had to rack the wine into another clean, sterilized one-gallon glass carbouy.  At this time I added a crushed Campden tablet and attached the airlock once again.   You can see in the following picture how much more clear it had become.  There was a lot of glare in this photo and it actually looked more clear in person. 

The wine will continue to clear the longer it sits and ages.  I have to repeat the racking and addition of a crushed Campden tablet in two months.  For right now it is sitting quietly and peacefully in the dark coolness of our basement.  I will be sure to post updates as they happen.  Watch for Part Two in a couple of months!

Honeybee Swarm

Recently one of our beehives swarmed.  This is the result of an overcrowded hive and you see it a lot in the spring.  The hive has been busy rearing up the next generation and before long there is no more room!  Basically what happens is the Queen Bee leaves the hive and takes a good half of the hive or so with her.  They take up residence temporarily in a new location.  This can be a tree branch, the side of your home, a bush, you might be surprised.    Scout bees then fly around trying to find a new permanent home for the colony.  A swarm may stay in their temporary location for a number of days...a good week is not uncommon.  When bees swarm it sounds like a mighty roar of bees.  When this hive swarmed it looked like a giant dark cloud of bees in the bee yard.  It really is quite a sight to see!!  Below is the swarm all clustered together on a honeysuckle branch.  Lucky for us it was only about five feet from the original hive.  I didn't even need a ladder!

The queen is in the middle of that giant ball of bees!  We generally try to collect swarms when we have them and when we can safely get to them.  After all, it's a new free hive of bees!  Being five months pregnant with our next child I was a little hesitant this year.  It seems that while I'm pregnant if I get stung, I swell up so bad!  But, after talking to one of our beekeeping friends we were convinced and decided to go ahead!  It's actually not too hard to collect a swarm.  All you really need for the short term is a cardboard box if you don't have a hive ready to go.  We happened to have an extra brood chamber that we just drilled a hold into until the new hive pieces came a few days later.  So, the first thing I did was trim as many of the little branches that were in the way.  You have to be able to get a good hard shake to knock all the bees down into your box that you hold right under the swarm.  For us, once they were in the cardboard box they then went into the brood chamber box that we had set up waiting for them.  You can see me literally dumping the heavy box of bees into their new home!

Once we had the bees in the brood chamber box, we put a piece of wood on top with a large weight on top of that.  This would serve as their home for what was about a week until we got the rest of the hive components that we needed.  Now we were very lucky that this swarm was so close to where we set up the hive.  You can see the bush that they collected on right in the background!  If you have to move a swarm too far from where they collected, about 10-20 feet or so, all the scout bees won't be able to find their way back to the group.  

The bees took to this new location very well and very fast.  Within a week they had drawn all this lovely white comb and the queen was thriving.  This is much better than last year.  The swarm we collected last year did not do well from the get-go and it didn't take long for the hive to fail.  That swarm had collected on a branch above our barn and he had a difficult time getting them down.  Plus, we had to move the swarm much farther than 20ft. so I know we lost a lot of the group.  Here was this years collected swarm the next day.  

There you have it.  That's how we collected yet another swarm.  And you know what?........I didn't get stung once!!

Kool-Aid and Food Colors for Fiber.

Some people are amazed when I tell them you can dye wool with Kool-Aid or other food colorings.  To be honest, even I was a bit skeptical in the beginning!  After I tried it, I was sold!  I never drink the stuff as I try to keep my family away from consuming artificial colors or flavors, but boy do they produce some beautiful colors on fleece.  Food colors fall into the Acid Dye family of fiber dyes.  I could go into a long and complicated chemical explanation as to how these colors work, but you'd need to have a background or at least a very good understanding of chemistry to understand what I'd say.  So, for the rest of us, it basically works like this.  You take a protein fiber (This won't work on cellulose fiber, like cotton, hemp, or linen.) such as wool, expose it to an acid while in the presence of the dye and heat, and it causes certain molecules in the fiber to create a new chemical bond with the dye.  This is what makes the fiber take the color!  I should add, one of the biggest reasons I love using food colors is this.....It's safe to use in my kitchen around my kids and pets.  I don't have to suit up, glove up, or mask up.  I don't have to run my kids out of the kitchen.  If my kids or I come into contact with the color I don't need to panic at all.  I can also use the same kitchen pots and utensils I use when I make pasta.  No separate pots or tools required!

Alright, let me tell you how I do this.  First, you decide how much fiber you want to dye.  I tend to dye one pound or less at a time because it doesn't overcrowd the stockpot and the dye has better access to all the fiber.  You could do more, you would just need to get a pot large enough to suit your needs.  Take your weighed fiber and put it in a large bowl.  To this you are going to add equal parts cool water and white vinegar.  You want to be able to really soak all the fiber well for 10 minutes.  Again, you really need an acid, such a vinegar to make this work.  I get the standard 5% acetic acid white vinegar that is sold at every grocery store, but I have heard of some dyers purchasing the much more concentrated version from photography stores or chemical supply companies.   

While the wool is soaking in the vinegar bath, I get my colors out.  For this particular batch, I used Kool-Aid in Lemonade, Orange, Cherry, and Peach-Mango.  It smelled very fruity needless to say!  I also use the Wilson food color gels you can get at craft stored in the cake section.  Some grocery stores have a few of these too.  These produce some amazing colors.  If I'm using these I take about 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. of the gel and mix it very well into 1/2 cup of vinegar.  This is what I pour onto the fiber.

After the 10 minutes has passed it's time to put your fiber into the stockpot.  I generally separate the fiber into two parts so I can add two layers of dye.  I very gently take the first section of the fiber out of the vinegar bath and lay it in the pot.  I squeeze the vinegar/water out, but you don't have to.  You'll be adding more of both once all the fiber is in the pot.  Add hot water until you're not quite up to the top of the fiber.  I use the hot water out of the sink.  Now you add your colors.  You can do this however you like, be creative and experiment!  You'll never quite know what the final result will be.  You can see below how for this batch I put the different colors in different locations.  This gives the fiber a really nice variegated effect in the end.  One word of advice, don't put opposite colors right next to each other or you'll end up with a muddy brown.  Think green mixed with red or purple mixed with orange.  These colors just don't mix well!

I then add the second layer of fiber.  Again, gently remove it from the vinegar bath and gently layer it on top of the color soaked fiber.  Very carefully add more hot water to the pot until the water comes up to almost cover the fleece.  You just don't want to slosh the water in because you can disturb the Kool-Aide below.  Add the last of your colors.  Now, you're going to add 1-2 cups of white vinegar to the pot.  Put the pot on the stove, put the lid on, and turn the burner no higher than about medium-low.  You want to get the vat to the point that it is steaming.  Much hotter than this and you can damage the fleece.  Imagine boiling your hair!!  The vinegar and heat make the magic happen!  I VERY GENTLY push and poke the fiber occasionally as it heats just to help the dye disperse, but be very careful not to agitate the fiber or you can end up with felted bits.  It generally takes about 15 minutes for the fleece to come to steaming and set the dye.  Ideally, you want to "exhaust the dye bath."  This means you want the fiber to take up all the available dye in the pot.  Sometimes this happens, sometimes it doesn't.  Don't worry if it doesn't.  Below is a picture showing what this looks like.  You can see that the water where the spoon is is sort of cloudy, but there is no red or orange color.  All the dye has been soaked up by the fiber.

Now you're going to dump the fiber into the sink and soak it with cool water until the water runs clear. This can take a handful of rinses to happen.  Just fill the sink with cool water and let the fiber soak for 10-15 minutes.  Repeat as many times as you need to.  Sometimes it takes me five rinses.  If you've used very vivid colors, I've found it can take a bit longer.

Once the water runs clear, gently squeeze out as much water as you can and then set it out on a towel-covered table or drying rack to air dry.  Don't worry if color leaches out onto the towel.  A good wash with some hot soapy water will take it right out.  Remember, these colors can't dye cotton or other plant fibers.  Once it's dry you have lovely fiber that's ready to comb or card for spinning or felting!  If you leave wool or other fibers that have been dyed with Kool-Aid or other food colors in sunlight they will fade.  So for the sake of all your hard work, avoid storing your fiber in constant sunlight.  Most fiber isn't suppose to be stored this way to begin with!  The vast majority of fiber-folks I've talked to who use these types of dyes are very happy with the colorfastness over time.  And as with most animal fibers, you want to handwash separately in cold water, then lay flat to dry.  The fiber on the left was a white wool/mohair blend dyed with Kool-Aid.  The fiber on the right was silvery-gray wool overdyed with both Kool-Aid and Wilson gel color.  It was a good day!

So yeah!  You can use many colors or just one, but it is so much fun to see how the fiber turns out.  No two batches are ever the same, even if you use the same colors as you did before.  I've been getting the wool spun so hopefully soon I can get some pictures posted to show how the fiber looks when spun into yarn.  Until next time!