colour sessions

I have been dyeing during all of last week, but today will be the last day for a while; hard to believe, but I am running out of stuff to dye! I picked another lot of alder buckthorn berries and had even darker colours than last time - silk in the middle, viscose on the right - and wool on the left. even though the blues are accurate - the "green" is not! it really is a green tone, not this yucky muck colour! (I put some samples of the first blues into the window to test the lightfastness - after a week in pretty bright daylight no visible change...)

same for this pic: I picked fresh fuchsia flowers (the red-purple ones that grow wild everywhere in the west), because I read that you can achieve purples and reds... this is my umptiest trial, I had everything from beige to biting yellow on wool - and as you can see, I had another very light yellow - though in reality the tone is far more golden yellow than beige. the silk however did turn pinkish - neither purple nor red, but not yellow either:))

this is the result of my dye sessions of the last few weeks. I assembled everything on the patio table, waited until the sun wasn't quite as high in the sky anymore - and still the colours look totally different in real life:(( I dyed loads of green tones, which hardly show up. pretty much all the colours look different in reality, far more autumnal, not as bright as in the photo! I tried changing all kinds of settings, but if the reds are ok, the greens are not etc... weird, but at least I have enough choice to keep me busy with the wheel and the knitting needles for some time:))

the plan is to blend some of the fine lace yarns for a shawl in autumn colours, yellow, green and reds. I am already spinning some of the blue tones into a lace yarn, though I am not sure whether to ply with a blue silk or with another blue-green woollen yarn. the two petrol blue skeins of tussah silk on the upper right side are going to be knitted into a lace scarf and I think I am going to spin a yarn with "glacier" colours from some of the lighter coloured viscose and silk, maybe together with a small amount of angelina and some white, either silk or wool (silk might be more fitting for a "cold, sparkly, icy" yarn?)

off to work a bit more on my miniature, while dinner is in the oven.....

dyeing obsession

we are still having glorious weather - but unfortunately the forecast has mentioned drizzle for tuesday and a decline in the weather from midweek onwards:(( we were just getting used to a bit of sunshine.... but to make the most out of it (a typical irish saying:)) DS and two of the dogs went down to the bog with me. this is one of Stefan's favourite pasttimes - and the dogs love it too, because normally they can run around in total freedom. even the old girls go totally nutty, roll around in the grass, run down to the small river to drink and take a bath every now and then. not today though - because the second we rounded the bend along the bog road - there was a huge racket going on. three donkeys against two dogs, on the one side mad braying, on the other mad barking! of course we had to take out the leads and the donkeys watched the dogs suspiciously during our stay. other than that it was very nice - apart from the heaps of rubbish some of the neighbours throw into the bog - instead of the rubbish collection, because it costs money there:((

to cut a long story short - the pickings of blackberries were so measly, that I dropped the idea totally. I am rather careful and look at every berry - in case it is "inhabited".... a lot of them were and the rest looked so ugly that I didn't bother. I did however manage to pick 175 g of reed flowers - in the hope that I might get another nice green tone for my autumn colour collection. the mean part about this is that there are reed flowers as far as I can see - and I can't reach most of them without running the risk of ending chest-deep in a bog hole or worse:(( I could only pick along the small concrete brick and as far as I dared stretch across the river.... a canoo might be helpful - I could try to stake into the reed like the native americans, when they collect wild rice:))

well, anyway, the plan is to collect some yellows, gold, greens, oranges and reds to spin some lovely autumn coloured yarns - and also to dye some of the fine lace yarns I bought last year for the same purpose. it was a funny coincidence to read the article about the autumn leaf shawls in the fall issue of the spinoff - exactly what I thought I'd be doing with those colours! I also saw on another blog a nice idea - one multicoloured singles plied with one singles coloured in brown, to draw it all together. I still have some woven fabric (commercially done) in those colours and always had the plan to make a vest or something similar, part knitted and part commercial fabric. my usual complaint here: I wish I had more hands and/or more time:))

back to my reed flowers now - hoping for the lovely slightly smokey green I got last time!

not so small miniature....

I am still busy with dyeing - which has been much easier the last few days because we have brilliant sunshine and temperatures of over 20 deg. C during the day - late summer or what? but it means that I can hang the dripping tops outside without leaving colourful drips on my tiles inside. also the drying is much faster of course. above the results of dyeing twice with "tibetan" madder (not sure if it is really tibetan - or just normal madder, from india though). I used alum as a mordant and no after-treatments. the two balls on the left side are nz lamb top, below the 1. bath, above the 2nd. on the right side the brownish top had been dyed with a beige before and with madder in the 1st bath. half hidden above a ball of silk top, dyed in the 2nd bath; the barely dyed stuff is viscose top and the ball above silk again - but from the 1st dyebath.

the funny thing is that normally madder shouldn't be boiled, so I only barely simmered the first time. it's not a red, more a dark salmon that fixed on the fibres. the second time round I boiled quite vigorously and the colour became much stronger, but not really a rusty shade. hm, maybe it's "tibetan madder" after all? I am not sure whether or not to do a 3rd bath - I don't really use those colours for myself, would fancy a more blueish red from brazilwood myself.

on the other hand maybe I should leave those dried dyestuffs alone for the moment - I had a look outside and there are many more ripe alderbuckthorn berries ready for picking! sometimes I think it would be far better if I didn't have to spin all the dyed fibres as well - and could just buy in more and more fibres for dyeing:))

I am also still busy working on my embroidered miniature - which takes an aweful lot longer than I had anticipated:(( I am in doubt whether I'll manage to finish in time. it's not only the black pattern - I have to fill all the background with the multicolour yarn as well! slow progress... and I can't do it longer than maybe 90 minutes without a break; despite the daylight lamp I use it does strain the eyes! I couldn't resist doing a little bit of the multicolour yarn though - and once the black pattern is finished, at least the counting of stitches will stop. should I do another pattern like this - I'd skip the counting and would draw the basic pattern onto the silk gauze and just fill in the outlines! lesson learned:))

I am also waiting for two orders - one is from the US, a few berocco patterns and the swirl shawl from jojoland, which a kind soul, a fellow knitter in germany, ordered for me - and the other a huge box full of fibres from germany! I couldn't resist the baby alpaca and silk bricks etc. - and also ordered 1 kg of Akita (dog) fibres... looking forward to spinning this - though I wonder how our three dogs will react, when they take a sniff? I think I am well prepared for those autumn and winter days, when there's no chance of going out! weird thought - with the sun blazing outside just now....

dyeing with alder buckthorn berries

I finally found a dry spot to pick the first batch of my alder buckthorn berries. quite a few ripe ones had already dropped, but I managed about 1 kg of ripe, black berries. the stuff is sticky beyond belief; after picking for half an hour I had trouble pulling the fingers of my right hand apart! I put them into cold water over night - and simmered them lightly for about one hour the day after. when they had cooled, I strained them through an old fabric nappy and pressed them out well.

this is how the dyebath looks with the first batch of fibres inside. well, the photo is taken with a flash - the real colour is more purple, less blue. unfortunately the yarn/fibres don't stay the same strong colour....

these are the tops after rinsing (simmering for an hour and letting the dye bath cool). on the left is nz lamb top, in the middle mulberry silk and on the right viscose top. all three had the same alum mordant treatment! the wool is slightly greener in reality, but the other two shades are pretty close! this was the first time I dyed anything but wool with the rhamnus berries - and I was rather surprised at the result! though it's not uncommon for dyeplants to result in different colours on wool and silk.

this is a larger pic of the wool top - which took the dye rather blotchily (which I don't mind, as it makes a lively colour in the yarn later); this happened with the rhamnus before. don't know why though as I stirred regularly and don't have that problem with other dyes (on the same material!). the colour is stronger in reality, even though I took the picture outside. but with the grey weather over here even natural dyes look slightly depressing:))

the real winners are the silk and the viscose top though - I love purples and blues and though the dye wasn't taken up totally evenly on those two fibres either, I am still looking forward to spinning the batch. I put more silk and viscose into the dye bath, because it was still very dark - we'll see how this lot turns out.

I am also working on a large fibre order from wollpoldi. lots of new stuff and my greedy ordering finger is ticking wildly:)) but if the postage is the same for 11 or 12 kg - or up to 20, it would be stupid to waste the "empty space"?:))

back to working on my miniature - which is close to impossible to see without a daylight lamp even when the sun comes out for a few minutes...

autumn comes closer

but every now and then in this dysmal summer we did get a few hours of sunshine - and the butterflies come out in droves as soon as this happens. their favourite feeding spot is this eupatorium - there are still some left, even though at least half of them fluttered away when I came closer.... this plant is great for them, we have several around the garden and all of them are covered in butterflies when in flower! I read that they are real thugs in the garden, but apart from their impressive size after a few years I had no problems; I wouldn't call 2 seedlings in about 10 years "thuggish":)) though they would probably be too big for a small garden - when in flower they grow taller than 2 m and need at least 1 m square!

we had a pretty bad year for fruit-bearing plants as well (again!)... barely any apples and pears, only about 2 kg of plums, not many strawberries and so on... but on the plus side are the rosehips again! never mind bad weather, constant rain or storm - those roses carry a lot of hips - which we transform into rosehip jam every year! admittedly it's a lot of work to scrape out the seeds and seed hairs, but the end result tastes so good that it's worth it!

I didn't just lounge around and pick a few hips - I unravelled my grey cardigan and started to knit it all again! I did like the pattern in the new twistcollective, so I set out to make my own (i.e. I usually change pretty much everything:)). this time I'll only use the main yarn to make the cardigan less heavy - though I am still thinking about putting a lining in... we'll see, I finished the first sleeve (I usually start with the sleeves, saves me from doing large samples), the second is halfway up. I started with the cable, put it together with kitchener and knitted an attached i-cord at the bottom. then I knitted the sleeve into the upper border - in the round. mindless knitting, but for fiddly I started the new hp socks for DS - I think I'll better embroidery Hedwig after doing the sock or it'll be far too complicated....

we're also painting several of the rooms - DS's is finished (can't remember it being so clean and well sorted for a long time:)), the bathroom is in the making, the living-room will follow last. the kitchen was done last year - and my room can wait until next year:)) this will be a major job - not the painting, but the dragging out of boxes and bags, filled to the rim with fibres and yarn:(( I'll better not think about this - it gives me a slightly panicky feeling (probably a sign to reduce stashes all over?)

oh yes, the dyepot is filled again as well! when I passed some goldenrod on the way to town, I had to cut and use it - but it's not finished yet, photo to follow. same for the tibetan madder (or not?) - which is still in the bucket for soaking.....

wakey, wakey, little snakey:))

I finally managed to take a photo of the Nagini-Socks. I had planned to knit the snake as a cable along the sock leg - but when I knitted the "Guinevere" socks, I decided that it looks nicer to knit an i-cord along the top, with a loose tail and head. DS is delighted with his snakey socks - I just hope that the flicking tongues will stay where they are - or I'll have to knot new threads in after every wash:))

they look rather nice in the photo - the green is stronger in real life and makes a good contrast to the black - they look rather dangerous:)) pity that I couldn't find green sock yarn that glows in the dark.... I am still looking for glow in the dark fibre - I could spin some whacky sock yarn with it:))

my second try at socks with "Harry Potter" themes were the shadow/illusion knitted socks with a gryffindor lion. my first try looked rather foolish, because the 4 rows of knitting for each row of pattern made the normal shaped lion (rampant lion in heraldry) look rather elongated and too narrow as well. so frogging was in order - and this time it looks much better. when seeing the pattern straight, you can only see yellow and red stripes with a few purl stitches...

but from a different angle the rampant lion is clearly visible. maybe it's a bit childish, but I think it's fun to knit a "hidden" pattern like this!

not everything was a success though - I thought of knitting the same lion into the heel, but changing the pattern every second row would have led to too many rows! so I knitted the pattern every row - which ended in a blotch of purl stitches:(( I think even with a lot of imagination noone could see a lion from this blob... but DS insisted it stays like this, so it stays. kept me from frogging again as well:)

tomorrow I will embroider wands on sock pair no. 3 - only 9 more pairs to go in the 12 pairs of harry potter related socks (one for each month... though I hope they get changed a bit more often than that:)) maybe next in line will be something halloweeny - with orange? pumpkins maybe? or black bats knitted into the orange? or vice versa? also on the list is the snitch of course. I had an idea for each month, but we haven't finished discussing the recipient's wishes fully yet. to be continued.....

visitors....

a few days ago we had a visitor again - she was here once before, stuffed herself on fish - and left a day later.... I think she's only in it for the food, but DS, who'd love to have a kitten (a no-no with three dogs, who aren't fond of them), was excited about it.

first scene: come on, let me in - it's raining!

sorry, no photo of the second scene - when she devoured half a tin of cat food DS bought when she first visited....

but then: bliss at last, a nice dry spot in the glasshouse - and the dogs are safely locked away:)) living the good life?

she spent the night - and in the morning she took off again - no wonder, the sun came out for a few hours!

what surprises me is the eucalyptus in this wet weather! it doesn't only grow on - it even flowers in the constant rain! the whole tree is covered in white fluffy flowers - it looks really pretty!

on a textile note - I finally started the promised gryffindor socks for DS in shadow or illusion knitting. and I spun some more of my natural browns and beiges, dark brown BFL and some in "humbug" - the lightest colour is going to be the main colour for a vest, supersoft merino with 20 % possum mixed in (from jamiepossum). still a lot of the main colour to do though....