A Saturday with Fiber (and dye)

This morning, in spite of still being sort of sick and grouchy because of it, I had Hannah, Joe, and Stui over for sourdough pancakes and a wee fiber fest. I've been feeding my sourdough ever other day for weeks and weeks, and haven't baked a thing. It was beginning to be slightly wasteful. So last night I started a batch of pancake batter with the starter, and we fried them up this morning with some maple syrup from last spring (none of the new stuff has made it to our table YET!), blueberries and crabapple jam from the summer, and some other delicious tidbits. Here's the pancake recipe I used (from sourdoughbreads.com):

The night before, mix well (to incorporate some air) 1 cup of your sourdough starter with 1½ cups of all purpose flour and 1 cup of warm water (85°-90°). Leave at warm room temperature (70°-85°) overnight, covered well with plastic wrap.

The next morning, return 1 cup of the starter mixture to the fridge.

Then mix the remaining 1½ cups of starter with

1 egg, slightly beaten
1 Tablespoon of sugar (or more if you like)
1 Tablespoon of melted butter
¾ Teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon (generous) of baking soda 
2 Tablespoons of milk
Try to have your ingredients at room temperature. This will help to make more tender pancakes.

Bake on a 400° griddle. Enjoy!

You really shouldn't pour copper sulfate mordant
 right next to your banana pancakes.
And you probably should wear more than one glove.

Meanwhile, we heated up to very big pots of water on the stove, one with onion skins in it, and the other with some copper sulfate mordant, as outlined in Jenny Dean's super cool book Wild Color. Here are the results of our dyeing day, and just a few more pictures for your entertainment. I also spun up a bobbin's worth of some soft unevenly grey roving that I had left from a few years ago (not sure where it came from), and it turned out very nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I am plotting a way to incorporate it into the vest. Unfortunately, it may steal the limelight from my lovely white yarn, which, lovely as it is, does have some bumps (or "noils") here and there. 

A pot of copper sulfate mordant with some of Hannah's yarn and some of mine,
as well as some roving thrown in for good measure. 

Onions skins simmering away. The whole house smelled like French onion soup.
Yum! 

Kayla salvaged some fleece ends and edges from shearing on Friday.
She picked and cleaned them diligently, and then dyed them in our onion dye pot.
Beautiful!

Onion dye liqueur! 

Steam, steam. 

A skein of slightly twisty yarn looking gorgeous in its new golden coat. 

An ASL lesson happening side by side with some yarn winding and mini-sheep felting
(not in the picture, but you'll see them here, soon). 

Stui brought me flowers 'cause its grey and yucky out and we're missing spring quite badly. 

Let me say: this picture does the colour no credit. None whatsoever!
Imagine glimmering sun-gold! 

Joe's hat knitting station...

...presided over by the irreplaceable Elizabeth Zimmerman. 

Joe and Hannah, happily a-knitting.

Hope your weekend's filled with sunshine, even when the sun outside is hiding behind a cloud.
Enjoy! 

Oh and by the way, here's what was left of the fleece after my last bout of scouring.
That skein is in there for size. Just sayin'