time for textiles

it's official - autumn is here! a sure sign is that the leaves of my ornamental acer turn a deep red! this is not a sad time for me, I love autumn - and esp. the fact, that time in the garden decreases and time for my textiles increases....

it seems I am in a finishing mood - I am nearly done with the "dress sweater" (a long sleeveless vest in a simple lace pattern) - and also with the scribble lace shawl, which I started ages ago, when I didn't know what else to do with my first coil yarn - which was thin and quite evenly "spun" (should really be called plied?).
I used a thin 2ply mulberry silk (handdyed) for the fine base yarn and added only single rows of the coil yarn. I started with coil yarn plus some beads for the bottom (and will have enough to finish the same on the other end) to add a bit of weight to the scarf. the main picture shows a right mess of squiggles - but once the scarf is stretched a bit the rows become more visible. it's narrow, but feels very soft and silky - which is fine for me as I don't need very bulky warm stuff around my neck, even in winter. this will definitely be a keeper for myself!

this is the rest of the coil yarn I spun a few days ago for the "blue" project. it's much chunkier than the one for the scribble lace and only the core yarn is tussah silk (because it's so smooth), the wrap is a lambswool singles. don't know what to do with it yet - I might add a few rows to some knitting project - or maybe keep it to use it for weaving? the skein looks big, but there isn't a lot of yardage on it - most of the singles yardage is lost through wrapping it around the core. definitely more an accent yarn than something for a larger project! I like the "jeansy" colour though!

this is the "chiengora" - the light marbled grey is from the AKITA breed - extremely short fibres to spin. the brown and black is from our own two dogs and the fibres are a good bit longer and softer in the end result! the akita felt extremely soft when I spun it - but now in a navajo ply it's not quite so soft anymore. I am going to try the fibres in a 2ply before I work with it, but I thought the fibres might shed less if I spun it up tighter. not much good though if the yarn turns scratchy instead! on the other hand - DH doesn't mind the sweaters slightly scratchy - and the dog wool wasn't for me anyway:)) the dogs were very interested in the yarn at first - but after washing they weren't keen on sniffing anymore - which means to me that the wool would be safe to wear - without having all the dogs in the village follow the wearer around:))

at this time of the year I tend to develop a bad habit - I fall for magazines in the shop! well, ok, I do buy some knitting mags on a regular basis, but not usually embroidery magazines! with christmas coming closer the mags offer free bits to make cards though - my biggest trap, I have to admit. I have plenty of patterns, yarns, fabrics, blank cards - but every year I increase my stash with those freebies instead of using up some of it! yesterday I came home from the weekly shopping trip with this batch - plus the magazine it came with, of course. simple and quick designs, I just have to add the fabric - and the time to make them. which seems to be the biggest stumbling block! I remember the years, where I made all the christmas cards by hand. about 25-30! all different, no fun in making several in the same pattern! then I started to dye, to spin and to weave.... and suddenly I didn't manage to make more than maybe 4 or 5! and every year I look for simple patterns, that are quick to make - but somehow the number of finished cards doesn't seem to increase by much. well, it's still some time to go to change this weird pattern - I'll show results - but only if I manage to better my results:))

ps. the donkey above grazes down in the bog, together with 3 other adults and 4 baby donkeys. he (she:?) seems to be the "whinger" of the group - he keeps braying, when he sees people, when he doesn't see people, during the day, in the middle of the night, no reason not to?:)) even when they all broke out a few days ago and went for a trip up our road (and back down again, when a car passed on the main road) - he was the only one to bray! I admit it's not much fun to stand in a field all day every day (with growing hooves, because their owner doesn't look after them very well) - but why is it always him to make the racket?

I give up!

nothing special happened! I just can't find the time (or inclination?) to put stuff into my blog just now. I think it's best to give up on trying the colours once a week - I'll just show you what I have done and if I find a nice colour - I put it up as I find it....

I have done quite a few things in the meantime. I finished my "green monster" - the spring leaves shawl

 both pix show the scarf still with the blocking "wires" (actually they are made from carbon fibre) in. I haven't worn it yet (we have about 15 - 18 dec. C at the moment!), and didn't manage to take another photo of it either....but I am quite happy with it, even though the green is quite strong and luminous:))

I also knitted several dishcloth - this one is the starfish, the last one with this leftover cotton yarn - which used to be a baby cardie before:)) I like the pattern; it's pretty - but I am not too sure about the practical side: the main area is quite small and the starfish "arms" a bit in the way, when in use...

then there is the "blue" project for our spinning group. somehow I couldn't decide on just one project - so in the end (to get it finished in time!) I made up a mood board with handspun and handdyed yarns. the upper "cloud" yarn was inspired by a blue sky with fluffy clouds. the yarn is a two ply; one lambswool and one (fine) viscose thread, and when plying I trapped short pieces of cotton fibres in between.

then there are 4 yarns inspired by "sayings". the upper one is "send in the clowns", lambswool, plied with sewing tread, on which I threaded small pompoms. the second one is "midnight blue", blue lambswool with black alpaca. the third one is "blue plus" - several lambswools blended with some angelina and a second ply with added beads. the fourth one is my favourite: like a bolt from the blue. dark blue merino with flashes made of silk and viscose.

the last samples are inspired by the different blues of the sea - I spun and dyed blue tussah silk and some bourette silk in blue/turquoise. I then made 5 samples on the weavette loom, where I started with pure tussah and added some more bourette in each sample; the last one is pure bourette.

 those are some samples that didn't fit onto the board anymore. one is a coil yarn, tussah silk as the core and several blue lambswool tones as the coil.

the second is a royal blue corriedale, simply navajoplied.

and the third is my beloved "bolt from the blue" yarn again - easier to see on the light background. I'll definitely spin some more of this for a project!

 yesterday evening I finally managed to finish the last batch of the blue coil yarn - not all that much yardage, but plying takes up quite some time!

I also navajoplied my first batch of "chiengora", but the photo was so blurred that I have to take another one. the fibres come from the Akita breed, naturally a melange of nearly white to light grey. as I also had a box full of combings from my own two dogs, part of it is "foxbrown" and black:)) it's not washed yet and both "suppliers" were very keen to take a sniff!

of course being autumn means that there are still quite a lot of "pickings". the rosehips are done by now, but we still have tomatoes left in the porch, some "white" cucumbers from the polytunnel, lots of runner beans and the last batch of blackberries. I also juiced a lot of elderberries - which I am rather keen on as I just love the taste. and they're healthy too! we haven't had a good elderberry year for some time, so when I saw the trees this year I just had to collect each and every one of them!

we also have a few small cape gooseberries on most days - and very soon the sloes should be ready for picking too. this would be it, the sloes are always the last to pick!

of course I started a few new things here and there - but that'll keep until the next entry.....

other colours

I did dye a lot last week, green and yellow and orange... and blue/purple too! this is the result of my rhamnus berries - nice colours like last year. esp. on silk... silk and wool is bluer and even the second batch in the same dye bath gave a nice colour on mohair and tussah/wool.

I had planned to take pix when all the wools are properly rolled into balls - but it took so long for them to dry that I lost patience:)) the colours are a bit stronger in real life, but you'll get the idea. I already picked another batch, but first I have to sieve off and dye with my goldenrod!

I also finished the plying of grey/black alpaca I spun. this is meant to be a Sirius dog. the sweater is very dark, so it couldn't only be black or the dog would hardly be visible (which might have suited Sirius really well?:)). the spread of grey is uneven, which is intended to make the dog look a bit shaggy and patchy. and I am going to try to brush up the alpaca slightly to give a more furry effect - after knitting of course. I recently got two small brushes, which are originally intended to fluff up Madeira wool embroidery yarn. should work on a dog just as well?:))

oh yes, and I still had some of the flecked cotton here, which I used for the dishcloths. just now I remembered that I forgot to take a pic of the starfish shaped one... all of those are knitted. I stumbled across another one, crochet this time (originally a potholder) and finished it - but already noticed halfway through the pattern that one thread would have been enough to make a dishcloth! well, I can never remember the US sizes for crochet hooks, so I doubled up the thread and worked with a 3.5 mm hook.... which resulted in a doily, far too large to use as a dish cloth or potholder:))

or maybe only useful for Hagrid's large tea mugs (buckets:))... well anyway, it doesn't look too bad and is fully washable, so what the heck. I did work one more round and an additional round of crab stitch, so that I only had about a metre or two of yarn left. which means - that the next batch of potholders/dishcloths can be in a different colour of leftover cotton yarn:))

late yesterday evening was spent with scratching seeds/seedhairs out of about a ton of rosehips (ok, it wasn't a ton, but it took so long that it seemed to be more:)) - I scratched for about 4 hours, not only the seeds, but also my arms etc... those seed hairs are itchy!! but I listened to some old cd's in the meantime to pass the time a bit faster... and stumbled across this: the hunting of the snark. somehow all of a sudden I had the idea of spinning a yarn inspired by this - might take some time, but I already know what I want to do. so let nobody say that scratching out rosehips isn't inspiring:))

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?