Bit of this and that

Sunny day...I'm sure everyone is talking about this wonderfuly warm day...spring is in the air.

But we also all know that we will surely have more snow before we can say winter is over.

We live in the north after all!

With hubby gone, I spent a lot of time working on a few projects.

More dyeing.

These are huge skeins of of silk/merino yarn. 8 ounces each.

I have 5 of them.

I will put some up for sale but I am looking for a large shawl project for myself.

And more sock yarn in various shades

Bulky yarn, lots of it!

And I knitted a bit. Tiny little hat in hand dyed bulky yarn. I love the mix of colours.

I also tackled the sideboard in the kitchen. I recently bought it and it needs some tender loving care. I can tell that it had been previously painted in red and once in cream.

I am not a big fan of wood, I like to paint everything...so you can see where I'm going with this?

One coat of white and a few more to go.

I will be staining the top in a dark walnut.

Time to sit down with a beer and take a breather!

With next week being the March break, I will be spending some time with my daughter...she's off for the week.

We are planning on doing a mural on the walls of the baby's room.

Only 10 more weeks before the birth of our little grandson...exciting!

Hope your weekend was a good one.

How was your weekend?

I had a very productive weekend!

The dyepot was full all weekend...

From lace weight to super bulky yarns.

On Friday, I test knitted these cute little fingerless mitts for Masi Knits.

Olivia was quite interested in my own fingerless mitts and I know she'll love to have a pair of her own!

Pattern: ASL fingerless mitts

Rav project page

Last week, Olivia left with one of my cowls! She went into my drawer and picked one and asked if she could wear it to go home. Of course, I agreed knowing right away I had to make her one in her size.

Off I went searching for a child size cowl and found a very nice pattern on Ravelry (I love Ravelry!).

As you can see, I have lots of pink yarn and this was made in pink also.

I can't wait to see how it fits her.

Pattern: Hearwarmer

Ravelry project page

And I also had a bit of time to card and spin more of Ginger's cria fiber.

This is the second batch of carded fiber.

I plan on making a 2 ply yarn once I'm done spinning the singles

and using it to knit a shawl.

It's amazing what you can get done when the man of the house is not around!

And he's going ice fishing again next weekend.

YAHOO!!!

Nature's dyes

There's something to be said about enjoying what nature has to offer to feed your passions.

A few months ago, I had purchased Wild color by Jenny Dean. A very interesting book on natural dyes.

Eventhough the author is from England, the book is still relevant to us Canadians since many of the same plants and trees are here in North America.

This book has been by my side for a few weeks now and is already a very favorite of mine.

I must say that I'm a little late to start to harvest plants because we have had a couple of cold nights already. But nevertheless, I was able to find a few patches of goldenrods still in bloom.

I eagerly had them simmering in the dye pot in no time.

I must say, I had trouble finding alum to use as mordant and when I did I could go ahead a prepare the fibre to be dyed.

 (Goldenrod flowers. They grow in open fields, along the highways and in ditches.)

The colour is a very soft yellow with a touch of green in it. I am really excited about it.

Well, yes, I know, I do easily get excited about these things!

(Goldenrod dyed yarn)

A trip to my mother's house to help her dig out and move her rhubarb plants this week meant a great big pot of rhubarb roots for me to play with!!!

Yup, rhubarb is not only to make jams and pies.

I could not believe how big and deep those roots are. We worked really hard to harvest these!



(freshly washed rhubarb roots) 

In order to extract the most dye from the roots, I chopped them up in smaller pieces. It's also the best way to dry what I will have left for another day.

I soaked the roots for a few hours, then simmered them a few more and left everything to cool overnight.

The next morning, strained the dye stock and proceeded to dye my yarn.

Look at that glorious colour...almost orange.

(yarn is simmering in rhubarb roots dye stock. Roots still in the sieve.) 

A very rich golden orange type of colour. Love it!

(Rhubarb root dyed yarn)

Sorry, just have to put up another shot of this colour. I'm so happy with it!!!

Oh, and by the way, I have lots of dried rhubarb roots left. I have a feeling that I'm not yet done experimenting with this stuff.

Looks like it will be a glorious weekend here, hope to enjoy every minute of it! Hope you can do the same.

Just in

I am just so glad that it's Friday today. Allthough, it's quite cold, the sky is blue and the sun is shinning. I just love winter...my favorite time of the year.

But the best part of today is I just received a package with my online order from KnitPicks. It's the first time I order from them and I have to say the service was wonderful and the shipping fast enough.

Want to see what I ordered?

I decided to start with some yarn, Natural Bare Peruvian Wool Worsted yarn. Why bare? So that I can play around with more colours and dye again.

And to take it one step further, I also ordered a sock blank. This is a knittted piece that you dye then unknit to knit your socks. Since the blank is double knitted, you use one strand for one sock and the other for the second sock. That way both socks are identical in colour. This should definetly be fun.

This little gadget is a yarn cutter. You simply pull the yarn through one of the little dents on the medallion to cut your yarn. The great thing about this is there is no sharp edges in your knitting bag and the big bonus for me is that I can take it on the plane with me. I travel a fair bit and I like to carry my knitting with me. I had bought a similar yarn cutter at Michael's for $12 and this one was only $4.99. A good buy!!

I have dyed with Kool Aid and Easter Egg dyes but I wanted to try the Jacquard dyes. Now I will have a good selection of colours to give this a good try!

But where to start when you learn things by yourself??

I ordered these two books to guide me along! I have quickly leafed through them and they look wonderful!!!

The great thing is that both of these books were at 40% off. Even with the shipping, they were a whole lot cheaper than if I had bought them in a bookstore in Canada.


I also ordered one other thing but it was shipped seperately, so I will tell you about that later on.

Guess what I will be doing this weekend?

I'll be back with pictures to show you.

Here we go...

I finally got around to dyeing some handpainted yarns today!

My experience with dyeing yarns has always been with one single shade at a time.

But this time I used four flavors that kindda gave me four different colours.

I used KoolAid powders in:

• Tropical Punch
  
• Grape
  
• Cherry
  
• Ice Blue

The Tropical Punch and Cherry are pretty close in colour but the Tropical Punch is a bit darker. In retrospect I should have seperated those two colours a bit more than I did when I handpainted the yarn.

Here you see the yarn drying after the whole dyeing process. I actually hung it over our cookstove by opening the door to the warming oven. Too impatient to let it dry slowly.

Turned out ok. But I was not quite so happy with it so I decided to overdye it with Tropical Punch KoolAid. I found it had too much blue.

I'll get a pic of the new yarn as soon as I can.