Dye & Spin Experiment a Success - Resilience

Last post I had just dyed a whole lot of wool roving and was being mysterious about what I was planning to do with it ...

Voila!

I like variegated yarn with long lengths of colour, when knitted up it gives a banded look, however, most of the commercially available yarns with long length colour variegation are really expensive and/or single construction (not plyed) which means they wear very poorly. So I've been dreaming of spinning up my own for ages and at last I've worked out how to do it. Long lengths of colour, plied and nice and thick (about 12ply).

The yarn is mostly Bendigo Woolen Mills 'Readyspin', the charcoal came that colour, I dyed the green and yellow.


I'm calling this colour-way 'Resilience' because it is inspired by the way the Australian bush bounces back after a fire. It is amazing how (when the bush-fire has been fast and not-too-hot) only 6 to 9mths later those apparently dead trees are sprouting new green growth all over their blackened branches and in the spring there are wildflowers and wattles in bloom. Amazing resilience! The charcoal is for all the burnt branches etc, the green is the new growth and the yellow .... that's the wattle blossom.

Now, what to knit with it ??

Cooking up some Colour

Dyeing can be fantastic fun when all goes well and the colour is just as you had planned; it can be a disaster when the colour ends up all wrong! However, as I get more experienced I'm having fewer disasters :-)

This weekend I had the dye-pot on the stove again and everything turned out really well. This is a spot-dye, the yarn is Bendigo Woolen Mill's 4ply wool - when knitted up this sort of yarn looks very pretty, like spring blossom.Then I dyed some roving - Bendigo's Readyspin and some Border Leicester - in shades of grass green and gold/yellow (showing quite washed out in the photo, sorry!)



The green and gold will be part of a spinning experiment ... all rather exciting!

More Kitten Ears

According to Coco Chanel, a Lady can never have too many silk blouses (not an exact quote but then, she would've said it in French) and according to me a baby granddaughter can never have too many Kitten Ear Bonnets :-)

This one is from a wonderful Bernat pattern dated 1963, the yarn is Bendigo Woolen Mills Alpacca Rich in the rose colour. Unfortunately my granddaughter lives interstate so I had to find another model - this is a very old teddy bear, looking rather like a chihuahua!


The pattern is very cute with a panel of Moss St through the centre and the ears are - well - they could be little devil horns! guess it'll depend on the wearer ... when she is good they'll be kitten ears and when she is naughty ...

More Hyperbolic-ness

Posted off my last contributions to the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project last week - I am rather proud of this one:


a 'pot top coral'. The base is finger crochet - made with some denim FabYarn (yarn made from recycled fabric and I'm selling more of this in one of my Etsy shops) the bobbles on top are from a wool & soy yarn.

The complete Coral Reef will be on display at the PowerHouse Museum in Ultimo from the 22nd August - but there are some sneak previews - I think some of the reef will be on display at the ABC's Knit In this Friday morning.

Playing with Food

Another current crafting obsession has been making (and buying) felt play-food for my grandson ... he loves cooking.

I bought some great pieces from a fellow Etsyian FeltFoodCreations - a wonderful Banana and this fantastic Breakfast Set ...
just love those eggs!



I've also been making some myself - and I certainly appreciate how much time-consuming hand-sewing goes into this play-food !!
I bought some really good patterns from another Etsyian Umecrafts ...

Here are some vegies:




and some fruit - very proud of the strawberries:
Then I got really enthusiastic and thought sandwiches would be fun to play with ... here is the bread, wholemeal of course


Took ages to make as I hand embroidered all the 'grains' - there is a kitchen sponge (new & unused) inside the slices. I've also made the butter, some peanut paste (crunchy), nutella and vegemite ... some of those are in satin fabric as I thought they needed to be shiny. Am currently making some strawberry jam - with felt lumps :-) No patterns - they are just triangles with wobbly edges.

Bright fun knitting from the depths of winter

Well it looks like spring is just around the corner with all the flowers starting to appear but we had some grey and gloomy weeks this winter - and one of my favourite tricks for an instant cheering up, is to dive into my yarn stash, find some gorgeous strong colours and knit ... the other tricks all involve calories !


This bright and exotic scarf is for sale on one of my Etsy shops:

But this is mine all mine - an adaptation of Twinkle's "Best Friend Cardigan" in some gorgeous yarn from Hawthorne Cottage. I just adore the colours ...
all of them!

Hyperbolic!

One of my current crafting obsessions is crocheting bits of Hyperbolic Coral. Even though I'm not much of a crochet-er.

The Sydney Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef will be on display at the Powerhouse Museum in August and lots of people are busy making bits of marine life in yarn, bits of plastic, video tape etc. Visit sydneyreef@blogspot.com for more info.

There is a workshop this Sunday at the Powerhouse from 3pm - I'm looking forward to it :-)


These are my favourites so far - a group of "sea squirts" from the "recycled sari silk" yarn