Ready to Wear

I started knitting this cowl last week and now it's ready to wear:
Very simple--stocking stitch all the way, which when I'm knitting in the round means just a plain knit stitch over and over and over. The way it drapes around the neck means that you can see a great deal of the reverse as well. It's soft and warm. I'm looking forward to wearing it.

Apologies for the pic being on my delapidated manequin. I did try taking it on my --delapidated:)--self, but I had to use the flash which on my not-so clean mirrors resulted in all sorts of smoky, blurred effects, but no decent view of the actual cowl.

Now today I have more rinsing to do; dyes to use up and a great need of a general tidy up. I'm tempted to cast on something else to take the place of the purple cowl in its simplicity and warm fuzziness, but I really should do some more swatches for my folio first. Hmmm, I think I'll make a coffee while I wrestle with my conscience on that point.

Funky Feet

Here's one of the pairs of socks I showed in yesterdays post--plus colour:The socks and singlets are all done: dyed, rinsed and ready to hang on the line. They were one of the bonuses of this batch of dyeing. The yarn colour samples, which were the main point of the exercise are all dyed, but I've only just started rinsing them. That will take a while and my pile of dirty dishes is growing, so I'll have to make an effort to get them through the sink fairly promptly.

Using dye thickener was my big experiment yesterday. I've had the manutex paste for ages, but never quite got around to trying it. Well, now I've tried it and I'm amazed. Manutex paste plus dye makes something with the consistency of poster paint. And it behaves just like paint as it comes off the brush. It just stays where it is put. That caused me some difficulty with the painted skeins because I had to work fairly hard to cover each strand. On the other hand I was able to make a much clearer distinction between areas of colour than I can with the straight dye. As for fabric, I found myself painting little lines, dots and a heart--just like a kinder kid! The fabric needs to air cure for a couple of days before rinsing, so stay tuned. Meanwhile I'd better get back to the rinsing: three skeins clear and fifteen to go. I'm afraid I'm going to be tired of my sink quite soon.

Little Socks

My kitchen is full of colour--not to speak of the small pile of dirty dishes on the far corner of the stove. Yesterday morning I cleared the sink and a good portion of my big table ready for a batch of dyeing. I'm mostly focusing on yarns this time, but I had a few little extras squirrelled away waiting for the next colour opportunity. These socks for instance:And a few baby singlets. I'm planning to make a banner out of them to advertise the next "Any Colour You Like" day at the Neighbourhood House.

Meanwhile, I had to work out the proportions of dye solution to use for the tiny 5g samples I had planned. Usually I dye 50g hanks or at least a fat quarter of fabric. I'm still figuring out the best way to handle the small quantities. I'm also planning to have a play with a dye thickener. My brain wasn't working very effectively yesterday, so all my calculations were slow and had to be checked and double checked. I'm hoping I'll be a bit brighter today. Maybe I needed to get some colour in the room to get my neurones firing along the right paths.

Yummy Yarn

I dropped in to the Yarn Barn a couple of days ago. I wanted to see what cellulose fibres they might have. I'm teaching a Procion Dyeing workshop at the Guild next weekend. We'll do most of our samples with cotton, but a bit of variety is always fun. Here's what I came home with: The two balls of yarn at the front of the pic are cellulose--natural coloured cotton on the left and viscose-rayon on the right. As for the rest, well . . .

• 200g of undyed wool tops, because I didn't have any left, which is pretty much as bad as not having any chocolate in the house!
• a cone of wool-acrylic blend, because it was on the clearance shelf and its warm glow was irresistable. I can tell you many ways that I might use it--and probably will--but the truth is that it talked to me and I had to bring it home.

My plan is to dye some cotton samples today. I managed to clear at least half of my big table yesterday. A bit more effort this morning should see it usable. Today and tomorrow my calendar is quite open. Sunday's a busy day, but then there's a bit of space early next week. That should give me enough time to do the tedious rinsing that goes with procion dyeing and still have time to enjoy my colours and put things in order ready for next weekend. As I say, that's the plan. Now to execute it I need to start by sorting out the kitchen.

Promotion

I'm branching out a bit with my craft teaching lately. To add to the quilting classes at the local Neighbourhood House, I've been planning some basic jewellery-making classes there and at another nearby Community Centre. So far it's been rather a tentative start. What to do? Try more publicity.

I made these chokers a few weeks ago and photographed them individually. Yesterday I was looking for a more promotional shot: I'm pretty pleased with how they look laid out on my timber table. This is my second attempt at this particular view. The first was in crisp focus--complete with a large dog hair highlighted just at the front of the pic. I gave the table a wipe down and tried again. It's amazing how starkly obvious just one little hair can be when it's been picked up by a macro lens! Oh well, I did consider registering the name "Hair of the Dog" for my textile art, but I decided it would be open to too much interpretation.

Shades of Grey

I picked up this silky wool at the Handknitters' Guild Expo on the weekend--it was one of those weekends with an overwhelming number of craft events to visit. Silky wool is one of the few fibres that didn't make it into our Spinning Certificate requirements. It's a modified wool--sort of stretched--which behaves more like silk because the microspcopic scales that characterise the wool fibre in its natural state are pretty much inactivated by the process. I bought some tops, hand-dyed in grey. You can see the tops in the background of the pic above and the yarn I've spun in the foreground. Despite being grey, it was interesting spinning because of the lustre of the fibre and the constant variation in shades. Now I've allowed myself a bit of lee-way in the past few days, but I really must get back to knitting up some swatches so I can get that folio in--medium mohair today.

Fashion Frustrations

Today is officially the first day of winter. For quite a while now I've been giving thought to what I'm going to wear for the next few months of cold weather. On the weekend I finally found some long sleeved t-shirts that are approximately the right size and shape for my body. Buy them in every colour! Hmmmm, one problem, there are hardly any colours that suit me. I bought black--several of those. I rejected white, cream, and bright red. That left purple. "Purple is one of this season's fashion colours", the shop assistant told me. Oh good! I bought purple--several of those, since I'll be completely depressed if I have to wear black all winter. The grey sky is dull enough.

What to do when you can't find what you want in the shops? Create:
The purple mohair on the circular needles is left over from an impulse buy at Bendigo a few years ago. It's about to become a cowl. Black t-shirt plus purple cowl should add up to a warm smile. The two bundles of yarn above are bits of hand-dyed alpaca left-overs. I think they'll become little wrist bands.

My next plan is to add some threads and beads to a couple of the plain t-shirts. That won't be today. Meanwhile if I see any colours in the shops I'll be rushing to have a look.