more purple

Well, the heat wave here continues... yesterday it reached 47C... 116.6F... and of course we lost power AGAIN, but only for a couple of hours...

Can I just say that NOTHING works effectively in that kind of heat... especially not me!

I don't want to lay blame with the camera, or the operator... but today's photos are very average.

Maybe it's the heat radiating from every possible surface, which has made them come out so blurry? Yes... I'll stick with that theory for now...

I have a project in mind for the red/purple colours, but I'm going to need a little bit more yarn. All the pieces from that garment have been frogged now, but there was a piece which I frogged BEFORE I thought to experiment with the dyeing.

It was already skeined, so I thought I'd just throw some purple on.

First I soaked it in the vinegar/water mix for 30 minutes, then took off the excess water and laid in on some cling wrap.



Then I added some food colouring diluted with vinegar and water...



Wrapped it in the cling film and gave it a bit of a squish. I wanted to spread the colour around a bit... but not enough to distribute it evenly.



Then microwaved it... rinsed it... and here it is... almost dry...



and finally ready to use



Next time I'll share my new project with you!

looky here...

Ugh... 43C again yesterday, and to top it all off we had a 10 hour power outage!!! Let's just say that all the perishables in our house have well and truly PERISHED!

But, on to happier things... the resulting yarn from my experimental dyeing...







Do you have a favourite here?

Mine is the green,although I guess the next experiment will be to see how the work up.

Hmmm... knitting or crochet? Decisions, decisions...

experimental dyeing

Man it's been hot here!

The mercury hit 43C yesterday... that's 109.4F... hot... hot... HOT...

And we won't be getting any relief for at least another three days... so it is definitely not crafting weather... especially since we don't have air conditioning!!!

It doesn't even cool down much in the evenings, so there's no point in picking up a hook or needles... but I have to do SOMETHING crafty, right???

Well... I saw this post a little while back, and really wanted to try some experimental dyeing of my own. It looked like so much fun, and I have plenty of old knitted garments around here to play with. I have only tried dyeing once before, and I wasn't delighted with the results. In fact, I had pretty much decided that I should just leave it to the experts... and stay well away from the whole colouring process.

But, as I said... the experimental sleeve dyeing looked like fun, so I had to indulge myself...

I took a piece from an old wool jumper (I started with the back piece) and pre-soaked it in a solution of water with about a cup of vinegar, for about 30 minutes.



Then I gently removed the excess water, and laid the piece on a plastic bag. I added some horizontal stripes of food colouring, which had been diluted in water with a little vinegar. I was aiming for long colour segments of deep purples and deep reds.




See the way I have bunched up the piece to form three ribs? That's not a fancy technique of any kind! I only did that because the plastic bag I had underneath was a tiny bit too short, and I ran out of space! The original instructions say to use cling wrap... but sadly, cling wrap and I DO NOT get along... it does too much CLINGING and not enough WRAPPING for my liking, so I thought I'd try using an old bag instead.



I then wrapped the piece in the plastic bag and put it into a bowl. Then into the microwave... two minutes on high, two minutes to rest... two minutes on high, two minutes to rest... two minutes on high, two minutes to rest... six 'cooking' minutes in total.



You can see that quite a bit of the dye has escaped from the bag. I later experimented with the notorious cling wrap, and the dye did not escape.



So, here it is after it has been rinsed in cold water. Not quite the deep purples I was after... it would seem I should have made up a stronger dye mix.



I worked this sleeve in a blue/green colourway using vertical stripes, which will give me shorter colour runs... when I use the yarn, the colour changes will appear much more quickly.

Finally I made a spotty one, using full strength food dye... which I dripped randomly onto the sleeve using a syringe.



Want to see the resulting yarn?

So do I... but we both have to be patient! Hopefully I'll have some photos for you tomorrow.

the milkweed project

Have you heard about The Milkweed Project yet???

click here to find out all about it...

Essentially, this is a collaborative project... they are planning to deck out the inside of a gallery so that it looks and feels like you are inside a milkweed pod. Shan is calling for knitters and crocheters from all over the world, to make a piece and send it to her... and she will be assembling them all as a part of the exhibit.

If you feel at all inspired to join in - GO FOR IT! It's a wonderful opportunity to play randomly with some yarn... you can't go wrong... seriously! Just have a play and see what you can come up with. You can drop stitches, the edges can be wavy, nothing is a MISTAKE!

I have to say a big thank you to Sam... who read about me having lost my mojo, and suggested this project as a way of helping me get back on track. Much appreciated.

I've decided to use this yarn, which I won in a competition last year. It is soft and fluffy with a little bit of sparkle... should be perfect! I think I'll work it up with my 20.0mm hook

seraphina shawl

I'm very serious about this 'learning to read a pattern' business... at the moment I'm working on the Seraphina Shawl, and can I just say...

NICE SHAWL - NIGHTMARE PATTERN

I thought the hard part was going to be choosing the yarn. The pattern calls for a 10 ply/worsted weight yarn and a 6.0mm hook. But I didn't want a shawl which would be chunky and bulky and heavy... so I knew I would need to use a lighter weight of yarn...

But what? I'm not a fancy girl, by any means... and I definitely didn't want a fancy shawl. Casual suits me perfectly. In fact, I'll more than likely be teaming the shawl with a pair of jeans!

I ummm-ed and ahhh-ed for the longest time, before finally making my decision...



I'm combining these two lightweight yarns. The blue is a denim kind of colour, and is made up of two strands... one slightly darker than the other. It's a cotton which I recycled from a men's jumper. The variegated purple is a lightweight wool, which I bought second hand from a charity store. Worked together, they form approximately an 8ply/DK weight cotton/wool blend. Using the 6.0mm hook, it offers a nice drape.



Now... listen carefully...

IF you are interested in making this shawl, here is the original pattern

BUT I highly recommend... actually, NO... I INSIST that you click here and go over to Crochetville, before you pick up your hook.

Many crafters have made this shawl before, and many have struggled with the original pattern. The nice people over at Crochetville have re-worded the pattern in a couple of different formats. Scroll down the page when you are over there, and you will see there are a number of different 'versions' of the pattern. The first post is a very wordy (but informative) description of the steps involved. Then in the next post there is a chart for those of you who prefer to work with a diagram. Thirdly, there is a basic description of how the pattern works.

Would I recommend this pattern to others?

Yes... BUT... be prepared... the first 10 rows are a struggle. You are setting up the pattern for the rest of the shawl, but it seems fiddly at this point, and nothing seems to 'flow' or make sense. You need to lock yourself away, with no distractions for this stage. It's stitch-by-stitch work in the beginning, but once you get into the flow... MUCH EASIER!

Over at Ravelry, 485 people have made this shawl... so it is DO-able...

Have you tried it yet?

!@#$ wind...

We've had some hot and gusty weather through here over the last week. At first I thought it was going to be fabulous 'drying weather' and that I could get some of those many skeins of recycled yarn washed and dried quickly... but I was a bit ambitious...

The winds were wild beyond words. Anything that wasn't nailed down, was picked up by the wind and carried across the yard. And unfortunately, that included my skeins which were happily drying on the line.



So, now I have a tangled dusty mess to sort through. I'll have to remove the leaf matter, re-skein them and give them another wash. Oh well...

did you figure it out?

Did you figure out where I went wrong with Esther's Square???



Take a look at the centre of my square... see the + at the centre? Now look at the original pattern... see it should be an X shape? When I joined on the navy yarn for round 5, I must have started in the wrong spot, which then threw out the corner placements.

I only noticed this AFTER all my ends had been sewn in AND the piece had been BLOCKED. So there is NO WAY I will be fixing it, but I was curious to work out exactly where I went wrong, so I could learn for next time. It's a mistake that I wouldn't have made if I was working the piece in one colour.

But how often do I use just one colour for ANYTHING?

Not very. Although I had planned to work these afghan squares in single colours, I just couldn't do it... it felt SO WRONG!

So I took my colour inspiration from a rug on my lounge room floor instead...