And the Rest

The purples for my colour wheel are done.

As is often the case, I'm having trouble getting those colours to show up accurately. I adding white and greys to the frame for the camera to "see". Nothing changed. I also tried adjusting the colours manually, but I couldn't get the subtleties to show up any better. For reference, the other strands of colour are exactly the same as yesterday's. Any tips? 

By Request

My friend Sharon requested some yarn in the hot pink-purple tones I've been using for my socks. It's just about ready.

The weather here hasn't been conducive to drying, so the skeins are hanging on the back of my spinning chair in the living room, where they can have the benefit of some warm air. After that I just need to wind them into balls and they're ready to go. I anticipate a happy visit to the post office tomorrow.

Meanwhile I've been working on a hand-dyed colour wheel for myself. I'm using teeny-tiny samples, so it's been fiddly, but dyeing is always fun.



Purple Power

I added a bit more purple to my lace-weight alpaca yarn. Here's the result.

The original yarn is on the left, overdyed yarn on the right. I wanted to add a bit more colour without obscuring the subtle variations. I think I achieved that. Now I've skeined  up all the yarn I have left and am ready to overdye it. I think I'll try to repeat what I just did for half the skein and add a bit more oomph to the rest. That should give me the effect I'm after. In any case, I know I can't end up with something I won't be happy to use with this yarn and colour combination. 

Implementing

I've happily agreed to dye some yarn for an encouraging friend. The colourway will be hot-pink-purple. I've obviously had fun in the past with these colours, but it's been a little while and I'm keen to re-acquaint myself with the available options. In particular I have two very similar dyes: landscape grevillea and galah. I figure the best way to check them out is to put them near each other and see if I can tell the difference in real life. I think I'll dye this batch of yarns in the microwave. So I picked up a stray skein of undyed handspun. It weighs in at 25 grams. Here it is soaked and ready to go with the two colours in question separated by the purpley cyclamin.

I can just see a difference between the two pinks in real life and maybe also on my monitor. Meanwhile I have another two different purples and that's before I start mixing colours from first principles, so there will be no shortage of variety.

While I've been uploading the photo and typing, the yarn has been heated in the microwave. Now I just need to wait for it to  react and then rinse it out before I can see the result. 

Purple

I'm happy with the colour variation in this purple hand-dyed yarn, but capturing it on the camera is still a challenge. Today I've decided to try editing the photo itself. I've got a lot to learn, but this is closer to the real thing than what I had originally.

It's another pair of wristies. I have plenty of time to work through my list of requests, so I'm having fun exploring various possibilities rather than than trying to find just one right version. That should give me a nice little collection by the time the cooler weather comes around again. 

One More

I made another couple of roses for brooches. I used the leftover yarns from the scarves I've been making, so these ones are purple.

Purple is still a difficult colour for me to pick up with my camera, but there you are. The one at the bottom of the pic isn't rolled up yet, so it still looks like a funny little worm.

On the subject of counting, my Blogger tools tell me that this is my 1000th post. It seems like a big number. One a day adds up over time, I guess. I'm not planning to make anything like 1000 roses, but I might surprise myself yet!

and Friends

I found a few more skeins to add to yesterday's collection:




















There are some different tones and wool-silk combinations, but still clustered around the purple theme.



Mix It Up

Here are some of the yarns from the bobbin I snapped yesterday, along with a couple of friends. They're all based on the same hand-dyed purple merino.

• Across the top is a navaho-plied yarn.
• On the far right, a thick and thin--I expect the big fluffy bits will felt a little;
• In the middle is a black-purple marle yarn;
• On the far left a bit of core-spun yarn--I made a fine single and a thicker one and wrapped one around the other. I like the texture and it's reasonably stable.

What to do with this little collection? I'm thinking of a scarf knit longways of big needles.

Colour Challenge

I've been dyeing a lot of purple skeins lately. Admittedly it's one of my favourite colours, but it's also one of the top fashion colours this season. What better excuse to indulge my passion! My camera on the other hand is not so good with these tones. I took a few shots this morning to try to capture the variety. This one is the best of them, but it's not great.I've already set myself several challenges for the school break--coming up in only a few weeks now. Getting some basics skills of machine embroidery established is high on the list, since my textile art course seems to rely on that technique a fair bit. I've also been challenged to do some more drawing--I'm still incredibly uncomfortable with my pencil and paper. Some more photography skills had better go on the list as well. Hmmm and organising the house a bit more, and getting some exercise, and, and, and . . .

Small, Soft, Warm

I knitted up this little neck wrap this week:It's a combination of merino and silk, hand-dyed in purples. The forecast here is for a maximum of 12 degrees today, with showers and possible hail. I may be looking for something just a bit more bulky to wrap around my neck, but the first sunny day I'll be wearing it. It's so soft and warm and the colours are even richer than they appear in the pic.

Gaps

I just spent an hour or so looking through a couple of craft magazines looking for purples. I didn't find a great deal. Unfortunately when I tried to photograph the snippets I found, the camera shifted the colour back towards blue, so I couldn't capture the subtleties of colour. Here's the section of the colour wheel I'm focusing on: Even with the red-magenta spectrum in the pic the colours aren't coming up quite the way I see them. I guess that's a lesson in itself . . . and yes, there's also a lesson to be learned in how to adjust my photography, but that will have to be another day.

Improvising

I've got to the whatever! stage in my cotton dyeing. This is the stage where the dyes are ageing, so I'm not sure how they're going to behave. At the same time, I'm getting overtired and more willing to just see what happens than usual. You could say that I too am ageing and not sure how I'm going to behave! Nothing too wild just now, but this skein has been fascinating me for a couple of days: To give you the orientation: we have a skein of cotton in a white icecream bucket. The skein is draped over a plastic chopstick which is resting on the edges of the bucket. Both ends of the skein are dangling in a pool of dye. The skein was soaked in some soda ash solution which had just a hint of the fuscia colour in it--just because that was the only soda ash I had mixed up at the time. The dye bath is a combination of the fuscia and warm blue and the resulting purple colour was not unexpected. From memory, I set this up one morning and then headed out to do something else. When I came home I found the blue was creeping up out of the dye bath into the upper part of the skein. It was less than a centimetre or so of the blue at that stage, but I decided to just let it go. Well, the blue just kept slowly creeping up, until the two edges met. Now I have the blue-purple combo you can see in the pic. I haven't rinsed it yet, so I have no idea how much of the colour will wash out and how much will stay. And I have no idea why the blue dye chose to go travelling and leave the fuscia colour behind.

Theoretically procion dyes lose their reactivity after 5 hours or so of being combined with soda ash solution, but I've found that they often maintain a bit of life well beyond that point. In this case there's no real risk of failure. Any degree of blue, pink or pale purple will be a nice contrast to the more intense colour of the rest of this skein. Even white would be ok. And I can always re-dye part of the skein if I don't like the result. I've got a lovely day of outings planned, so I'm not going to rinse it now. I'll just leave it for another day and wait for the surprise.

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.

Purple Fleece

I'm still working on the "Bubble and Squeak" knitting I started a few weeks back. It's growing slowly and I'm incorporating more yarns as they come along. I had a stray bit of English Leicester fleece all washed up with nowhere to go, so I threw it in the dyepot yesterday. I had a bit of "plum" colour left in the pot from whatever wool I dyed last. I added some "marine" blue. Out came this purple: As you can see, English Leicester is not a fine fleece, but it takes colour beautifully. I'll spin this up today and add it to the collection.

Purples

Here are five of the little skeins I dyed on Saturday: These are the clearest purples in the set. They were made by mixing marine blue with magenta in increasing proportions. For the other three colour runs I used turquoise and/or scarlet as the primary colours.

Yesterday I mixed up some earthy oranges and yellows in the dye pot. Those skeins are on the line drying. Today, I need to do some tidying up--never as much fun as creating, but essential.