As my creative pursuits have blossomed in the time of COVID-19 and a new normal of staying at home, I have decided that a long-form space was needed to discuss my projects, give the plethora of details I keep when experimenting, and display more images of the processes. Instagram hasn’t been cutting it for me lately. My intention is that this will become a hub for categorizing and keeping track of my projects and thoughts so that they are accessible to the fiber community at large.
One of my biggest goals here is going to log my naturally dyed yarn and fabric colors. Since I was young I have been googling how to get various colors from plants I could grow or forage. These recipes have been sparse, poorly organized, or simply un-replicable. By cataloguing the base recipes I’ve learned and the results and timings for each type of dye, I intend on creating a database of as many colors as possible, so that other natural dyers who say: I have a color in mind but I’m not sure how to get it naturally, will be able to find the color on this blog and then get a recipe for how to do it. I will also be including side by side experiments to elucidate the ways in which pH, metal shifts, and other dyeing techniques can alter pH neutral natural color dyes.
Besides dyeing, I plan on writing up some of my recipes, particularly the ones that folks ask me for all the time. I had another blog when I first moved to Chicago where I had written some recipes, so I plan on moving that content over to this blog to start.
I have tried to start several blogs in the past, the first at age 7 was to sell my handmade jewelry, the most recent, to write recipes. I think as I have come into my own as an artist and a creator I needed a less specified space to write about and de-mystify some of the work I do and food I cook. This shall be the place!
Lastly, as there is a move away from fully centralized spaces like Ravelry, which really only encompass a section of my creative pursuits, I will be posting about my knitting projects, patterns I’m designing, and will also have my patterns added to my Etsy shop, “Sycamore Jam”, which is linked in the top-right main menu.
So… Welcome to Tommy Plays with Fiber! Follow this blog and my instagram to get updates about new postings and projects. I think we’re going to have a great time learning together 🙂
Tommy Plays with Fiber 