Pretty Colours

These are all the colours I've developed over the last few months.

Left to Right: 

Tumeric/Tea/Red Cabbage

Portobello Mushroom

Red Cabbage (acidic)

Red Cabbage (neutral)

Red Cabbage (alkaline)

Black Beans (neutral)

Black Beans (alkaline)

Copper (diluted)

Copper (strong)

Copper (very strong with vinegar)

Now I have the colour and they seem to be relatively stable over several months its onto whole skeins! Then I take over the world!

Ignore Everything and Look at Pretty Yarn

Isn't this the most lovely thing you have seen?

I finally made a 'natural' green dye for yarn.

Its magnificent.

Its a celery green colour. Quite vegetal.

I made it from copper, vinegar and lots of time (about 3 months). I'm not sure what the chemical name is for this but I think its Copper Acetate. Not sure if its poisonous, so I wore gloves and rinsed the yarn very well.

The dye is actually a blue green colour but this skein is under-dyed with black tea and so was yellowish. Thus mixing blueish and yellowish I made green.

This is the copper wire soaking in vinegar about 2 months in. You can see the bright blue colour of the vinegar below and the crystals forming on the wire.

This is the copper wire after I took it out after 3 months. After this stage I soaked the wire in a little water to remove the blue from the wire. Worked really nicely.

On the left is yarn that was not under-dyed with anything, its just a natural wool colour. The finished yarn colour is much closer to blue than green.

This was my first experiment with wool in a tiny amount of the blue liquid that showed me that the colour would stick and might produce greens or blues. 

Happiness.

A Winter Scarf for my Mama

I wanted to make my mother something special for Mother's Day. So I decided to weave her a scarf as amazing as she is.

The red (warp) is fingering weight merino while the colourful weft is chunky weight hand painted wool which I brought in Canada (though the yarn is from Germany!).

This is the third thing I've woven after my sample piece and I'm happy with how it turned out. As I was doing the calculations by myself for the first time, I wasn't quite sure that it would turn out nice. I was worried the fabric would be too stiff, but it is just nice.

The colours are really lovely too. I enjoyed weaving with the colourful weft yarn because I enjoyed seeing the colours emerge so much!

Look what I made!

When I was in Canada, I took one lesson in hand-spinning with a drop spindle. I found my spindle and bags of 'Top' when I was unpacking my boxes last week. Happily reunited with my tools and with a sudden desperate desire to make something right now, I sat down to make some thread. 

My previous attempts at making yarn had been quite thick, in the realm of 'bulky' or 'chunky' weight. I had only made yarn usable with a 8-10mm hook/needle. So this time I tried to make my thread as thin as possible. I had trouble keeping the thread thin without breaking while I was spinning. In fact, the thread broke about 5 times while I was spinning, but I managed to spin it back together. 

Finally I made a long length of thread and plied it together to make a 2 ply yarn. I'm happy to report that this yarn is definitely in the 'sport' or 'light worsted' range. I can use it with a 3.5mm crochet hook quite easily. So I'm very pleased with myself. A list of standard yarn weights and all sorts of useful things can be found on the Craft Yarn Council's Website. 

Scarflets of Grey and Linen Things

I just brought Tricotage de Lin (see pictures here) which is a Knit & Crochet book published byAttention Japanese Products(!). Its really nice. The linen they use to make everything is really nice. The photos are really nice and the finished products look really nice. The company also has a really nice web catalogue of perfect people wearing perfect clothing living perfect lives (yes, really!)

I made a scarf (one of a set of three) from the book and it turned out really nice. I wear it as a necklace substitute.

Set of two scarves in Rowan Lenpur Linen (Linen/Viscose)

As a necklace

Original pattern image with my scarves (second one is not finished the same as the pattern as I ran out of linen!)

Shell textured shawl, a possible future make

Definitely going to make these coasters

And the real reason I brought the book - these socks! Aren't they fabulous?

I dreamt about this camisole top last night. I think its a sign.

The cover

Paper Dyes

Continuing on from my experiments the other day, I've dyed a whole stack of postcards with tea-based natural dyes. The colours are so lovely and turned out really well on the paper as my earlier experiments had indicated they would. Paired with my naturally dyed wools, they look amazing and promise to be something really beautiful...

The naturally dyed postcards with some of my previous woollen experiments.

The postcards alone. Each postcard has a different depth of colour and different dye mark.

Another view of the wool and postcards, just because they are so lovely.

And the balls of wool do remind me of scoops of icecream...

Project Mama's Summer Handbag

The skeins, post dye

Wound into balls ready to go

The beginning of the bag

After wrangling with the wool 3 times in the dye bath and it not coming out nicely, I finally had the wool ready to start on the requested bag. I chose a favourite bag pattern from Debbie Stoller's Stitch N Bitch: The Happy Hooker. I'm hoping desperately that I will have just enough wool dyed to finish it!. I have 150g, the pattern asks for 140. I'm to gauge, so it should be fine, but I worry, none-the-less, because its impossible to dye wool exactly the same colour again!

Felted Hat

The Red Felted Hat

Wondering if the matching brooch is a good idea or not...

Details - though felted pretty closely, you can still see the shape of the crochet stitches

Brooch is nice on its own too... I eventually decided to make two separate brooches and just wear them as is and not on the hat

Hat looks better on a head I think

The hat is made from a simple hat design in a book called 'cool crocheted hats'. The yarn is Spotlight's own brand of pure wool in a orange red, with a ball of Daiso's red fluffy synthetic mohair. It is crocheted with a strand of each at once and felted well despite the synthetic.

Weaving

I finally finished this table centrepiece made from scraps of wool/acrylic of various colours. I'm quite happy how it turned out and the combination of colours makes me happy. I might sew a strip of cloth around the edges to protect them from moving about too much, though I think it will be secure on its own.

More Weaving

Here are some images of the first complete woven project I made, a table runner for my ma. I think she uses it as a scarf because she says its too nice to put on a table. But anyway, I wove all the little rectangles and blanket stitched them together in order of their tonality. The wool was a shaded one so the runner/scarf has a gradient of red from deep black red to bright red.

Weaving

I saw a version of this simple loom in a book and made a small one (picture 1). It produces a roughly 8x15cm rectangle (pictures 2-3) quite nicely, but I wanted to make bigger pieces, without having to join millions of little squares together. So I used this scavenged frame (pictures 4-6) and made a larger loom. I'm about halfway through the piece so far and its turning out nicely. Next time I'll use a thicker pure wool so I can felt the piece once its done and close up the gaps. I hope then to have a sturdier piece of fabric. That said, I'm happy with the colours for this one and they way the mustard livens up the grey and black. It's my eventual dream to use my own dyed yarns for a piece. I'm planning on using this as a table runner or centerpiece for my dining table when its done, or making it into a cushion cover front.

Beet Flower

Remember the beetroot dyed wool from the other week? I used a little to make this cute little flower brooch for my ma. Its a simple crochet flower with an extra circle to give the centre a more three dimensional quality. The colour seems to have faded/settled a little on the wool giving a slightly duller but deeper pink with a reddish quality. It will probably continue to fade over time to a duskier pink.

Dyeing Results

The results of my last batch of dyed wools and cottons.
Top Row (L-R): (all wool) Blueberry, Ginger Flowers, Green Tea, Spanish Onion Skin.
Middle Row (L-R): Ginger Flower on bamboo, Bouganvillea on wool, Spanish Onion Skin on wool (new!) Carrot and Tomato on cotton and bamboo, Green Tea on cotton.
Bottom Row (L-R): Pandan on cotton, Blueberry on wool, Spanish Onion on Wool, Balsamic Vinegar on cotton, Balsamic Vinegar on bamboo.

The green from Orange Ginger Flowers and the yellow from Red Spanish Onion Skins are my favourite.

(edited 07/06/09 with new photos, with new deep gold wool)