Spring Day

After a morning of bright blue skies, we've had a bit of grey rainy weather. Now it's undecided, which is a pretty good summary of a Melbourne Spring day. I'm sharing the sentiment. I've had a slow start: a bit of cooking and cleaning up, interspersed with a nap or two. I'm just beginning to feel as if I'm ready to start the day, and it's lunch-time already. These geranium buds are a little more confident.
They're growing in hanging pots outside my north window and are just starting to cheer the place up. I've got a list of phone calls to make and work to do in the garden as well as the usual indoor tasks. I guess I'll wait and see how long the sunshine and my energy last.

Rhythm in Blue

I'm nearly half way through this little lattice lace scarf and I'm finally getting into the rhythm of it. It's a simple enough stitch pattern, but the combination of a decrease on either side of a double yarn over just wasn't flowing smoothly for me. The left-leaning increase was specified as, "slip one knitwise, knit one, pass slipped stitch over"--that's three steps for one stitch. I've substituted "knit two together through back loop", which gives the same effect for the effort of just one step. I've also shifted one of the corresponding increases to the second row of the pattern. Now I've got a nice rhythm going with three stitches on every first row and four on the alternate rows and I'm happily zipping along.
I'll take this with me this morning, though I doubt I'll have time for much knitting. I'm off to pick up a minibus from the Council offices. I'm taking my Monday morning group in to the city to visit the Immigration Museum. Driving a twelve-seater minibus is a bit of a stretch for me, but I'm up for a new challenge. I'll have a little time before I pick up my passengers to get into the rhythm of the new vehicle.

Deep Sea

I caught up with my friend M at a quiet cafe yesterday afternoon. Normally this street in Carlton is buzzing, but the Football Grand Final was on, and people evidently had other priorities. I arrived a little early, and was happy to have a few minutes to finish off this wrap for M before she arrived. The knitting was done, but there were the inevitable loose ends to weave in. This is a tencel-acrylic yarn. The tencel gives a nice sheen which adequately compensated me for the absence of natural fibres. There were a few balls left after my teal blanket project. I've had a few conversations about naming the colour. I thought it was somewhere between a grey and a blue, leaning towards the grey. My friend R, who loves grey, said it was definitely a blue! M settled it by calling it "deep sea".

Indigo Results . . . and questions

I've had "wash indigo samples" on my to-do list since the workshop a couple of weekends ago. One of the goals of the day was to experience how different types of fibre took the dye. This was complicated by various events of the day, with our vat being more effective in the afternoon than it was in the morning. Nevertheless there are some obvious trends:

Cellulose fibres gave the best results. Silk was pretty good. Most of the wool samples took the dye rather weakly. The exception was my 70% wool-30% cotton skein, which was a real winner. As a quilter and silk-lover I'm happy to acknowledge the positives. As a spinner and wool-lover I want more! I've emailed R, who leads the Natural Dyeing group at the Guild, with some questions. One of my Indigo books suggests a different recipe for wool. That's not surprising given the different fibre structure, but how can the vat satisfy the needs of the dye for a higher pH environment as well as the wool's desire for a lower pH. . . ? I guess I've got a lot of learning to do. That's just fine by me. Meanwhile, I can tick another task off my list and decide what to do with this bunch of samples. You can see from the pic that I've carefully labelled each one, so one option is to paste them all up nicely and add them to my folio. On the other hand, I could just play with the variety.

Now I'm going to leave them hanging in the bathroom and head off to brunch with my weaving buddies. One of the weavers is off to London with a one-way ticket, so we're gathering to wish her well on her way. My contribution to the meal is a batch of orange and date pikelets, courtesy of my friend L's recipe, so there will be sampling of a different sort in the next few hours.

Book Bonanza

By yesterday afternoon I was feeling tired, slow and sad. It's been a big week and I was running out of steam. On days like that I can't wait for it to be bed-time--even though there's no guarantee I'll be able to sleep when I get there. Filling in the last few hours of the day can be a real challenge. Enter the local library: I dropped in to see what I could find about silk painting. The Community Quilt project I'm working with will involve some silk; and we're planning for the women to decorate scarves for themselves. While I was there I checked out the catalogue for anything on Indigo dyeing. That drew a blank, but I did score several books on colour and a dyeing manual. By the time I'd picked up some groceries for tea and driven home via one of the other branch libraries to collect their contributions, the day was done. I didn't actually read any of these books last night, but just having them on the table was a boost.

Stop and Breathe

It was a big day yesterday. In the morning I set up my contribution to the Window Frames Exhibition. I happily accepted the offer of a stray piece of electrical equipment to stabilise the wobbly mirror. The interaction between my installation and the context both inside and outside the store was challenging and fascinating--pics to come.

My evening's quilting class was punctuated by dramas with security alarms and missing keys. In between I had a couple of hours at home. I needed a safe little project to give me a break from the rather intense day. I tried this little lace lattice stitch from one of my stitch dictionaries. A four-stitch, two row repeat makes it easy enough to remember and intricate enough to catch my attention for a concentrated breathing break.
This morning I got a little over-confident and tried to keep up the rhythm of stitches while chatting with a friend on the phone. I didn't quite get it right, so I'll have to undo a few rows. There are double increases and decreases on every second line, so I'm not sure how I'll go picking it up again. OK, I just convinced myself to un-knit it rather than take it off the needles. Then a bit of cleaning up is on the agenda before my afternoon appointment.

Adapting

Installing my piece for the Window Frames Exhibition in Sydney Rd, Brunswick is top of my to-do list today. It's proving to be a bit of a challenge, and I haven't left the house yet. I have an old dressing table mirror as part of the piece. I expected to be able to lean it against a wall as a backdrop to the other items. Yesterday I went down to have a look at the space I've been allocated. There is no back wall. There is no side wall either. It's a corner window with a doorway on one side, the shop floor behind and windows on two sides. I've been trying to rig up some supports for the mirror for the past half hour or so. I'm due at the shop in about 20 minutes. So far I've discovered two ways that don't work! My next thought is to use couple of weights to stabilise the back of the mirror. Hopefully there'll be something there I can use. Otherwise I'll have to think again.