colour red

this week is nearly over - time to post my favourite dark red. well, I like darker red anyway, but this week my dahlia gave me so much joy (even though she dyed golden yellow and not red:)) - so here it is:

it was a bit bedraggled by rain already, when I took the photo, but I had cut off all the others for dyeing:)

next week it's going to be pink - there won't be much in the way of textiles as I am not really a pink girl. but I am sure I can find pix from the garden.....

more natural dyeing

while I am dyeing like mad - I am also translating several articles from the spinoff autumn issue - about natural dyeing... very befitting, though I don't agree with everything that's written there:)) anyway, I finished my red dahlia session - two dips, the first one (on silk/tussah blend) is a strong golden yellow, nearly light orange. the second batch turned out much lighter, silk/tussah in the background and in the middle a smaller amount of superwash wool top. which took the dye better - now I wish I'd used it in the first bath, too:(( there are a few more dahlia flowers to come - maybe I do get the chance for a small lot of it, though it depends on how the rest of september will turn out to be weatherwise. but at least now I know that I have the right dahlia variety again for dyeing yellows and oranges - instead of yucky dirt beige/brownish! I had to run around with the clothes drier several times though - and in the end there was a shower so heavy that I gave up - and had everything wetter again than it was before I put it out:((

the photo also shows the dried silk/tussah blend dyed with the reed flowers - this time the light was better and the green is much closer to reality than the last photo.

I think the colours go very well together - but I still need the purple I had planned to use with it. first up are the rhamnus berries though - 1.5 kg in this lot! though it might be a bit less as I nearly dropped the bucket they were in - and spilled a good lot on the kitchen floor:(( we'll see if dog hair and dust bunnies will influence the colour outcome:))

I still didn't block the green scarf - can't seem to bring myself to do it... unfortunately the edges are wavy from the leaf pattern, so I can only use my carbon fibre rods for the outermost stitches - and have to fix the rest with pins.... I might do it tonight - when the kitchen table is empty and nobody needs it for urgent jobs such as forgotten homework, messing around with paper and glue etc....

autumn = rich pickings for natural dyers

the weather has finally changed. after 10 lovely days, warm and sunny and dry, we are back to more normal irish autumn weather - it started raining this afternoon. it's not cold, but pretty windy and a lot of the leaves are already coming off the trees - mainly the maple leaves, as they suffer from blackspot disease over here and fall earlier than in germany. I just made it in time today to pick a small bucket of rhamnus frangula berries - not for eating (they cause severe diarrhoe) but for dyeing. on wool they give a lovely grey-green with a blueish tinge, but on silk they give a dove blue! and they seem to be pretty lightfast, there has been very little change on the dyed fibres from last year, even though they were kept in normal daylight with occasional sunlight on them. I stopped picking when the rain became heavier - but I hope I'll get a dry spell again tomorrow to pick more - there are plenty on our 3 small trees! they are odd really - the trees are full of unripe and ripe berries - and at the tips they start flowering again! they are easy enough to pick - if you don't mind the occasional spider running all over you in its attempts to get away from the rude picker:))

I also rinsed and dried about 200 g of a tussahsilk/wool blend I dyed with reed flowers yesterday - the green is difficult to catch in a photo, the real stuff looks less flat and livelier somehow, it's "greener", not as grey as this:

I also did a small cross stitch project - an insert for a birthday card, with a summery theme - but when I worked on it we still had lovely sunshine:)

the aida is white of course - but I took the photo inside and couldn't avoid a bit of shade on it. I hope it arrives ok; I put a piece of bubble wrap on top of the charms, which should really be enough to keep it from poking through the envelope....

I also finished the green spring leaves shawl - with a few problems at the end:(( I weighed the yarn into two equal balls - or so I thought. of course there might be a very slight difference in length - but I didn't expect it to be enough to work a whole pattern sequence! or rather not to work another sequence... I did 11 plus the last finishing pattern on the one side - but had to frog the 11th on the 2nd side, because I ran out of yarn. after finishing 10 repeats plus the finish on the 2nd side I am left with just 3 or 4 m of yarn! well, it might not be perfect, but it's quite a long piece and as long as the two sides aren't put exactly on top of each other nobody will see the difference (but me, which annoys me of course:)). I have to block it first though - a bit of a job with this long band - pix to follow.

and being sunday today - we had the first plumcake of the season. with our own plums! yummeeh - I tried a new recipe, where the base is made with quark (a kind of soft cheese) and oil instead of the usual yeast dough. and on top of the plums are lovely streusels (a topping like crumble) made with brown sugar, almonds and butter..... half of the baking sheet is already empty:))

black and white "colours"

this week it's black and white - and there is really only one black and white thing that is really important to me. written words, books, mags, patterns  etc. I knit a lot, but I read even more:) I can't imagine my life without reading; I do it all the time and voraciously - the saying "inhaling books" fits me very well. so here is my one and only choice for black and white:

word puzzles, (blurred) texts, a cross stitch pattern and even a piece of knitted text (I think M. Isager "invented" the newspaper sweater?) are my very small choice to stand for all books and texts that have changed the world so much over the last few centuries! I wonder where the world would be without the invention of language, writing and printing?

I nearly forgot.....

.... to show you what arrived in the post for me today (apart from the new piecework and the new journal):

I am walking around as Luna Lovegood today! my niece has been trying out different beading techniques and when she showed a strawberry on her blog, I asked her why she doesn't make radish earrings like the ones Luna Lovegood wore in one of the HP books/films. I didn't expect to find a pair in my post:)) DS thinks I am slightly loony (very befitting!) - but so what? ok, age, shape and hair are more Hagrid than Luna - but never mind.  thanks Sandra - great fun:))

more pictures

as I said we had visitors = not much time left for textiles. but I did start on toe-up socks (Laidman's changeling in schoppel zauberball "berry") before they arrived - to show how to knit them for the sock knitting demo at the museum in castlebar. I managed the foot part, but knitting the cables while playing cards (ok, during the breaks, when others shuffled the cards:)) wouldn't have worked, so I finally started this dishcloth.

the rows start with only 20 stitches, perfect, if you have to put your knitting away after a minute or so:)) I actually managed 1 1/2 of them - which proves that we played cards a lot!

my acid green spring leaves scarf gained a few rows as well - but there will be a few more tv evenings left before it is finished. spinning was in short supply - one morning I dragged the Louet out into the sunshine, together with the big bag of Akita Chiengora - only to rush inside 5 minutes later, when a hefty shower came down:((

I did however finally take the pix of my not too successful attempt at irish solar dyeing. here they come:

the upper photo shows all of the results. the middle shows the stronger purple (no surprise as it was a gaywool dye, not a natural one),  but the added red dahlia left nice orange-yellow blobs in it. and the photo at the bottom shows the different yellows with fireweed and galium flowers - and the much stronger dahlia yellow/orange again. on the whole the colours aren't bad, though I had to help them along with heating them up on the range. I should have put the jars out during the sunny few weeks we had - I know, mea culpa. but I think solar dyeing works better in wamer climates:))

I also should have known better than to put brazilwood directly onto fibres - I'll have a hell of a job to pick the leftovers out, even though I already shook/picked out as much as I could after drying. some dyes didn't really show up at all: the (too old?) dried walnut hulls and the lovely "black" violets among them. well, another year, another try maybe?

for now I am back to "normal" dyeing: the rhamnus berries are ripening and I am going to pick the black ones for my first dyebath - on silk, where they give very lovely blue tones....

late colours

we had visitors and I am way behind with uploading colour pictures. instead of rushing around trying to snap whatever is missing - I just drop those that are missing - and continue with the one for this week (at least I think silver is the one!).

silver - isn't available in my garden and neither is it in my stash as a textile. ok, maybe one piece of grey, shimmery silk would match "silver", but when I looked around in my wool room, I realized that many of my tools show this particular colour - or at least parts of them do. on the left you see the hook of my ball winder, my fabric scissors, the spout of my sprinkler (used for wetting felt - or, horror - my ironing:)) and a metal container for cigars. no, I don't smoke. and I find the smoke from cigars even more revolting than the one from cigarettes. but the container (found in the recycling center) holds my felting needles, very useful it is!

these gadgets are just as essential to me - the clamps to fix my drumcarder (and the crank is visible in the uppermost part). the pins I use for making bobbin lace - and probably the most important gadget to me: the leader wire of my lendrum upright - in constant use, not to be missed!