surprise, surprise!

at the beginning of last week mail income was slow - probably due to the flight disruption caused by the volcano eruption in iceland. but it looks like being back to normal - and the highlight today was a surprise parcel from Germany! I saw a blog entry recently with lovely "wollmeise" yarn - just my colours. the comment that this should be mine and not the blog owners to knit - was meant as a joke (really!:)).... but this arrived in the post today:

not only one hank of wollmeise "poison" (another kind of poison, won't go with my green, I suppose?) - but also several things in my favourite colour purple/lilac. one handmade bag, purple inside and newspaper fabric in different languages on the outside - just right for storing socks in progress.... also one small knitted p0uch - which contained 5 lovely stitch markers (you can only see the one here in front - because its siblings are already hard at work:)) - and, DS's favourite - a "ruler", foldable, also usable as a key ring - with the writing "real women knit socks":)) yep, I agree - or so they should! thanks, Kristin - that's a real surprise - but maybe I should keep my big mouth shut in the future?:))

of course now I have to think about a suitable project for my very first "wollmeise" yarn. it's 150 g - too much really for socks! it's pure wool and soft - so my thinking goes towards a lace scarf..... I just need a suitable lace pattern that goes with "poison":)) darts maybe???

one other idea came to mind, when I saw the little pouch! I bought a table cloth for my garden table, but it's often quite windy over here, so I need something to hold it in place. I don't like those metal "springs" all that much, but I do have small clips with rings, to hang up curtains etc. if I knitted 4 or better still, 6 little pouches, filled them with gravel or something else with enough weight - I could use them for holding down the cloth - and use up leftover sockwool at the same time:)) yep, sounds like a plan - esp. as it is raining right now (and probably on and off for the rest of the week!) - I might manage the pouches before the sun comes back!

I also received the black rocailles beads yesterday - I finished my "tea embroidery" a few days ago, but had to wait to "dot the i's" with the beads. once I find a suitable fabric as background and "frame" - I can hang up another finished project!

Miss Messy at work!

I couldn't help myself - again! whenever I dye, I just can't resist throwing fibres or yarn in as long as the liquid shows even the slightest bit of leftover colour! I have had many skeins with barely any dye on them, but there's nothing to loose - it's easy enough to overdye again! same with the poison green - but this time I didn't add a skein; I put in a ball of sock wool. the idea was to wind two threads of the sockwool into one flat ball - which I'd then dye to achieve two very similar socks in the end. this ball was quite tightly wound - but it took the colour beautifully. I was pretty sure that the colour wouldn't penetrate fully, but I didn't think about the fact that of course the middle (where the cone of the ballwinder sits) would be loose enough to dye evenly.

this is the result - a strong green, nearly as strong as the first batch.

then I rewound the yarn, the outside went into the ball first this time.

obviously the lighter part is outside now, together with the patches from top and bottom, where the dye attached well.

I then sat the ball into half a pot of blue leftover dye, turned it over after half an hour and put the undyed half into purple dye. I figured 3 dye sessions should be enough for one skein - but I couldn't wait until the ball was dry (this takes extremely long!), so I wound the damp ball into a skein and hung it up outside. the dyes aren't spread evenly, on one end there's a lot of strong green, on the other end is more blue and purple - and the patches are spread out all over. but I still like the colour - now I just had to separate the threads!

this is not the fun part! of course when winding the two threads into a ball, the threads wound around each other, which meant that I had to unwind them again when making the separate balls! grrrhhh.... be warned, if you try this, you'll need a lot of patience! of course you could just start knitting with one thread and keep winding on the other - you still have to separate, but the annoyance factor might be lower during knitting:))

tada - the end result! two pretty identical balls of sock wool - each enough for one sock! I have to finish another slouch sock first (1/2 way finished), but I am looking forward to how the colours will look when knitted.

now - in my eagerness to dye a lot of sockwool - I made 3 more "double balls" like this - which I want to dye - and have to separate after doing so:)) if you hear funny sounds, that'll be me gnashing my teeth in the process.....

what a difference a colour makes!

I finished plying and winding the "easter yarn". I decided first to try plying with a commercial purple yarn, alpaca, but there was quite a lot of yarn on the bobbins - so I ended up plying the rest with a commercial sockwool, dyed charcoal (used for the tree of life socks...). all in all I have nearly 600 g of yarn now, though in two batches that don't really go together. still - the cat approves:)) ehm, that cat - quite embarrassing...when's a cat not a cat? when she is actually a tomcat! she must have been very young and we didn't look too closely when she "moved in", but now it's easily visible - and it explains, why "she" didn't like to befriend the neighbouring tomcat:)) he is quite small for a tomcat - but very friendly and he likes textiles to boot!

I wound 4 balls - but I have to admit that I prefer the purple one. not, because I like purple anyway - but I think even though the coloured yarn is the same on both sides, the mix with purple looks much friendlier and more inviting.

I also dyed the yarn with the Goodall's food colour - can green actually look poisonous? I think it can:

I spread a little bit of yellow food dye on the two skeins before, irregularly, so that it isn't a totally even dye. then I just put 125 ml of food dye with some vinegar into my dye pot - added water and the wool and heated it all up. simmering or 30 minutes seems to have done the job:

the green is actually very strong - and I'd say if poison had a single colour - it wouldn't be too far off:)) but I like it - I found a pattern for a lace scarf online and even though I wouldn't like to wear a whole sweater in a colour like this - I think a scarf like this would look good on any dark colour!

the surprises of natural dyes

I promised to upload pix of my egg cozies, here they come:

both cozies and doily are unfelted yet. the egg cozies shrunk as expected and fit well, even though the colours changed a bit. the crochet shrunk far less and stayed much softer. which is ok for this purpose, I didn't want a board made from wool:)) crocheted egg cozies on the other hand would be rather floppy!

here the felted cozies - as you can see, the colours changed most in the lighter ones on the left and right.

this is the original light green yarn on the right - and the change to grey, both in the doily and the cozy.

and the light yellow, that changed to apricot - luckily not to grey, or the original yellow cozy would look rather sad:)) I have had colour changes before, when adding washing powder to the felting process with naturally dyed yarns, some changed dramatically. but I didn't use any on this load, so I suppose there must have been enough residue in the machine to work small changes. for this project it didn't do much damage - but if you plan on a larger one, where the colour changes might ruin it - I can only advise to either let the machine run for a clean at hottest settings - or not use the machine at all (or wash with powder on purpose and test for changes beforehand:)).

this is the rather mucky, yucky looking superwash top I used to mop up the leftover easter egg dyes. I think next time I'd separate the green/blues and red/yellows...

the yarn doesn't look bad though - as a singles. it's rather fine like this and I am not sure how to use it. I could ply it, but this would muddy up the colours even more. I could navajo ply - but that's not my favourite technique:) I might use a single colour yarn to ply it with - but first I need to spin the last of the three parts of the plait!

Happy Easter!

not much text today - just pix from my "easter nests" (didn't work quite as planned, the yeast dough grew a bit too much and closed the holes for the eggs:)) but they tasted lovely as did the easter yeast plait....

we also dyed our traditional easter eggs. we used the liquid food dyes from the supermarket for the first time and they worked very well. I used 2 tbsp of dye in a glass, added 2-3 tbsp of vinegar and filled up with cold water. I boiled the eggs and dumped them hot for 2-3 min. in the dye - lovely strong colours, even though 1/2 blue and 1/2 red ended up in a rather brownish purple:)) and the yellow looks more orange - on the brown eggs (for some reason I cannot buy white eggs over here!)

because there was so much dye left I grabbed some superwash top, plaited it up and sprinkled all the dyes on top of it. after I set the dyes in a turkey bag in the oven - I rinsed them out, no dye loss whatsoever. the top looks very autumnal - but I found out that the green dye unblended gives exactly the strong green I was looking for to dye some lace yarn! so off to the supermarket next week to stock up on a few bottles of green:)) and the top - might end up as sock wool.....

off to eat some waffle eggs (no easter cake this year, I couldn't be bothered - too much else to do!).... Happy Easter to everybody!

winter and spring

no, this is not a complaint about the weather again - though we've had rain all day yesterday and early today. and the forecast is for wintry showers and cold from tomorrow onwards! but I doubt that it will last very long at this time of the year - and we usually have a cold spell in spring anyway.

I did however manage to spin two batches of my "4 seasons" batts, winter and spring.

winter is a blend of NZ lambswool and baby alpaca top, with some white angelina and a bit of trilobal nylon for sparkle. I spun it a bit nobbly and plied it with a fine handspun viscose thread. fluffy white clouds with a bit of glitz = winter:))

spring is a blend of three naturally dyed lambswool tops, bright yellow, some light green and a bit of salmon. no glitz here, but I added yellow and green silk top for a bit of sheen. the yarn is a 2ply, soft and squishy and I like it - though I have no idea what to use it for - yet. I'll spin up summer (blue) and autumn (leafy colours) first....

I also had the weird urge to knit-felt egg warmers for easter! I own three, one for each of us, but they are embroidered and at least 13 or 14 years old - time for something new on the easter table! I have to admit that I don't normally use egg warmers. when we do eat boiled eggs, they are gone before they have a chance to cool off too much:) they are more decoration than anything.... dito for tea cozies - we usually drink from mugs, freshly made - and if I do use a teapot, I use a "stoevchen" (yes, like a small stove - a brass gadget with tea light inside) for keeping the tea warm! but the plan was to make more for my own home this year - instead of giving everything away - so eggwarmers it is! I took a pic, but I have to felt it all first. I'll show "before-after" pix later... I also crocheted a small square "doily" in matching colours for the egg basket, which will also serve as a comparison to how different knit-felt and crochet-felt behave.

invasion of species.....

we're being invaded - again! the cat Miss Schindler has moved in more or less permanently, though she still runs off for a day or so every now and then. and a few days ago DS went for a bicycle drive around the village - and came back with two small dogs in tow! now, I really love dogs, but I already have two, who more or less managed to get used to the cat invasion - but they weren't all that happy about two more dogs! I definitely don't want two more dogs, not even such small ones. it's not lack of space and by now the older ladies have more or less given up their complaints, but dogs need vets etc. too and that can be costly over time! we went through our village and the next, but the poor things don't belong to anybody there (that's what they claim at least, but I've never seen them around before either). the only way now is to contact the local radio and put a few signs up in the library shops etc. I have a feeling that they were "inside" dogs, they are house-trained, used to sofa and chairs etc. and they are very well behaved. so my guess is that someone just didn't want them anymore, maybe the owner died and the family didn't want the poor dogs:(( they probably drove somewhere and just "dumped" them here:((

and they are really cute, even though I don't usually like small dogs so much. the brown one is a very lively, funny male, the lighter one with pointy ears is a female, a bit shy and very quiet, but she loves being cuddled and would like to be on someone's lap all the time:)) that's the problem: not getting used to the two cuties:)) of course the men in the house already caved in - so I have to be the voice of reason here! two lovely dogs anybody????

Edit: I was wrong this time - they ran away from their owner, when out in the bog! we gave a note about them to the reg. radio - and 5 min. later the phone rang - the owner, a young guy, who was desperately searching for them! he jumped in his car immediately - and shortly afterwards the phone rang again for the two dogs. luckily not another "maybe" owner, just the father of this one, who heard the message on the radio:)) a few minutes later two happy dogs flew into their master's arms - they nearly wagged their little tails off, when they saw him. no doubt he really was the owner (there are warnings over here that people who "steal" dogs for research labs drive around and we wanted to make sure!) DS was very sad, when he came home, he'd have loved for us to keep them. happy reunion was what we had hoped for - and our own dogs happily reclaimed their sofa minutes later:))