Blue to the Elbow with Topsy

An idea becomes a search, which leads us back to our roots:
In thinking about some of the finer gauge items for ladies and children - lovely spencers and caracoes and other such jackets that don't want to be of a woolly pully weight as with Fair Isle - a possibility crept into my mind: lace-weight yarn (such as we use for Shetland shawls) in Fair Isle patterns!
I suspected that the result would be an entirely different animal than regular Fair Isle, and I was right - it is very dainty.

But how to achieve our colours in a reasonable price-point for people (Rowan yarns having a nice range of lace-weight colours but not extensive and at $13 a hank, makes the finished products very spendy.) Well, clearly, taking an ivory yarn and dyeing it. Just as Morris did to achieve his soft colours back in the day. Going back to our roots here of concocting plant-based dyes.

There are two options for the wool, a washing wool with nylon added, and pure merino. The two will dye similarly, but the washing wool will survive normal laundering at a warm temperature.

 As for the dyes, there is still the old option of bark, roots, leaves and berries, with the addition of mordants of alum, tin, copper and soon to achieve different shades.

But there are also now pre-mixed natural powder dyes in 48 beautiful colours, waiting to be blended. Mix water and powder, bring to a boil, add wool. No mordanting required.

I still do, however, think of Topsy at an important meeting, his arms blue to the elbow from an indigo dye vat.

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

Rush out NOW and read this book.
EVERYTHING that Shannon advocates for in Radical Homemakers is what I've been about since I was 14 years old. Everything. It is downright amusing that a radical sociology book about taking back the home can make me CRY. But it does.

I feel validated for everything I have ever believed and striven for. And she describes the three stages of the process, and I can agree with her conclusion that if one spends too long in Step Two that one becomes subject to the kind of depression and futility that Betty Friedan wrote so passionately against.

She also argues against the wife-mother as chauffeur car culture that arose after the Second World War - which was totally foisted on us by the corporations. We are not here to drive our children from this and that or to buy this or that for the husband and 'the house'! That is not our role in life! But we have been pressurised into that role. Unless we rebel...

=) Here's to rebellion! and making a real home.

Viz:
Renouncing: increasingly aware of the illusory happiness of a consumer society. Recognise and question the compulsion to purchase goods and services that they feel they could provide for themselves 'if only...'

Reclaiming: Recovering many skills that enable one to build a life without a conventional income. This phase can take a few years or a lifetime and will perpetually be returned to as one builds ever more skills. If dwelt only in this phase for too long begin to manifest symptoms of Friedan's housewife's syndrome - 'what's all this for?'

Rebuilding: Take on genuine creative challenges, engagement with community, make significant contributions toward rebuilding a new society that reflects one's vision of a better world, through artwork, writing, farming, fine craftwork, social reform, activism, teaching, or a small business.

'The choice to become homemakers is not an act of submission or family servitude. It is an act of social transformation.... it is time we come to think of our hoes as living systems. Like sourdough starter, the home's survival requires constant attention. A true home pulses with nonhuman life - vegetable patches, yeast, backyard hens, blueberry bushes, culturing yoghurt, fermenting wine and sauerkraut, brewing beer, milk goats, cats, dogs, houseplants, kids' science projects, pet snakes and strawberry patches...'