Baby Blanket Begun

I decided not to go with the granny squares for the baby blanket. Instead I've turned to my favourite armchair project design.

I've dyed up some more yarns in the past few days. I like the way the variegated blue and palest of greens set off the other colours. Is this the time to confess that those two were dried off with my hair dryer because I couldn't bear to wait any longer to get stitching?

For reference, that's a 3mm crochet hook and 2 ply wool, so it's my usual design in miniature. It feels particularly apt to do it this way because a really big blanket like this was my gift to the parents-to-be. 

Rose Again

I haven't been making rose brooches since my elbow started playing up. I had a skein of variegated yarn which I'd dyed especially, though. It's been talking to me and I've been resisting. This morning I decided to try a knitted rose.  

I like the range of colours. So much so that I'm tempted to risk a bout of crochet to see how it looks in my favourite pattern. Of course the dyed variegations can never really reproduce the beauty of the real thing.

Today

Today I need to spend some more time in the garden. Those weeds are not going to go away on their own. Here's another one of my roses to remind me that it's worth the effort.

I don't know the name of this one. The flower is relatively small, but the variegated petals are so much fun.

By Design

Of course I had crochet flowers in mind when I dip dyed a variegated wool in landscape grevillea. I have a couple of variegated rose bushes in my front garden and they always make me smile.

I also had a go with the rose in a square pattern, but found that the bulky yarn there wasn't such a hit. 

Snap

Still on the subject of roses--I'd rather not think about the weeds, though I did spend several hours yesterday phoning and visiting hardware stores to get myself some serious weapons against my kikuyu grass invasion. As I was saying, roses:Here's one of the pink candy-striped roses from my garden--sorry, it does have a name and I can't think of it. Below you can see another bloom draped in the silk ribbon I dyed in its honour. It--the ribbon--is on it's way to my friend D who will manipulate it with her skilled hands and needles and turn it into an image of a rose. At least that's what I'm hoping. Of course she may prefer to pat it and keep it as a pet for a while or turn it into something else altogether. In any case, its been fun to make the match. There's another 20m or so of silk ribbon in my sink dyed a gradation between "plum" and "galah". It's proving to be a challenge to rinse well, since I really had too much dye in the pot. I've had it soaking overnight and also boosted the water with some vinegar, so I'm hoping it will come clear soon.

Rose Riot

My front garden is riot of roses this week. Not that I did much to deserve it--all I did was fix the grey-water hose, so they get the run-off from my washing machine. Roses are so grateful and generous that I got a profuse reward.

Here's one which I picked for my living room:The variegated petals are such fun--I've got another rose which is candy striped in pink:) These are the colour gradations that I strive to reproduce in my dyeing.

Now I have to be honest and say that the weeds have responded equally well to the extra water and they too are rioting. The weeds in the back "garden" are rioting too, even without any extra encouragement, so a whole heap of weeding is once again on my "to do" list. That's not going to happen today, though, and there's nothing to stop me enjoying this bit of beauty. Maybe on the weekend I'll pull out the weed spray and try to get things a bit more under control.

Dip Dye

Dip Dye seems to be all the range in fashion this season. With fabric the technique gives horizontal bands of colour. Used with yarn, it's another way of getting a variegated skein. I decided to have a go with a leftover bit of lace-weight yarn. It's been dangling in the dyepot for several days now. I've looped it over one of the handles to keep it in position. I heated up the pot a few days ago to set the colour, but then didn't get as far as rinsing it out. Now the colour has travelled a bit further, so today I'll cook it up again and see what I get. In case you're wondering about the pic: the autofocus on my camera has fixed on the reflection in the dyebath, so the skein itself is a bit fuzzy. Sorry about that, but hopefully you get the idea.

Here's a macro shot of the part of the skein that's not in the dyebath. You can see how the dye has been drawn up along some of the fibres. That's capillary action at work!

Variegated

My friend D, who is visiting from Queensland, loves silk ribbon embroidery. She and I have had lots of fun over the years trying to achieve variegated colours in hand-dyed silk ribbons for her to use.

So this tulip photo is for D: The challenge in dyeing ribbons is to get just enough variation in the colour. It looks as though whoever designed these beautiful tulips was having fun experimenting too.