A sunny creative happy week.

 The weather has been glorius here.

The sun shining and the warmth returning.

I've been taking advantage of the weather to get some fleeces washed.

I've dyed up a few skeins of commercial wool.

And dyed two fleeces.

 I'm already spinning this one up.

I've carded most of it on the Ashford wild carder.

I picked up a couple of Lucinvale fleeces cheap as they are last years.

I wanted to get them washed to remove the lanolin.

 Pete moved the old microwave from the bus and has set it up in front of the kitchen window for me.

I feel like I have my very own dye studio now!

 I love playing with the dyes and enjoy that the results are often not what I predicted them to be.

I'm not the sort of dyer who measures accurately so my results are varied and unrepeatable!

One day I may get around to keeping a dyeing journal, but that may ruin the fun.

No, Michael wasn't into the toxic dyes!

He was into his finger paints.

Creativity and messiness run in the family.

 Another of my new outfits.

A little summer dress from TEMPT with a little cardigan over the top.

The last few days I've been wearing SHORTS!!

Sorry for shouting but I'm so excited to be wearing shorts!

I kicked another of my goals last night and ran 5 KM under 30 mins.

I'm grateful no one else was in the gym at the time 

as I was whooping it up and jumping all over the place when I finished.

Nothing like achieving a GOAL to make you feel fabulous!

Time to set some new fitness goals.

This is the best photo I could get of Heather wearing the new top I knitted her.

Little Miss is very active.

Thanks for the shoes TAS.

Mulberry Yarn...

This is the end result and the colour in the photo is true.

I boiled the yarn in the strained mulberries liquid for an hour.

Then left the yarn to sit overnight in the liquid.

I did felt it slightly but it's not too bad as the yarn can still be wound off the skien.

I'm really not sure I like the colour after all of that effort.

It's sort of a muddy purple brown.

I still want to try dyeing with the walnuts.

The walnut tree looks fabulous this year and has lots of walnuts,

so there will be husks to try out walnut dyeing.

The books says that walnuts don't need a mordant.

And talking of books.......

We went to Port Pirie yesterday. 

Mum sent me some money for my birthday and 

I visited Meg's books and I spent my birthday money on two books.

The First is Make It Perfect By Toni Coward and the second Wool toys and friends -step by step instructions for Needle-felting fun.

My challenge is to make something from each of these books this week.

I'll write a review of each once I've had a chance to make an item from each.

We went to Pirie to pick up my machines which were in for a service.

One  is an electric spinner, that didn't need a service!

Turns out my power board is a little dodgy. 

If only I had checked the spinner in another socket!

 My friend Helen of Stitcharoony saw this at an auction in Adelaide and bid on it. 

She knew I would want it.

She is a total sweet heart!

I think it's a home made spinner.

There's a foot control and a dimmer switch.

The tensions are adjusted like on my Ashford traditional.

I've had a little play and spun a little merino on her and she spins very nice.

I'm finding with all my wheels each feels different to spin on. 

They have their own personalities and I have to spend a little time learning the 'feel' of them.

Being Brave with a dye pot and my handspun

 I'm at present cooking my beautiful handspun Merino X EL wool

It's cooking away in it's mordant of Alum with an enhancer of Cream of Tartar.

For 200gms of wool I'm using 20gms of Alum and 14gms of Tartar. Well that was the recipe for dying with Blackberries so I'm hopeful that for Mulberries it is the same!

The recipe comes from the book in the photo.

Pete bought it for me as a birthday present a couple of years ago.

I bought the Alum from the Chemist, they ordered it in for me $18 for 100gms and the Cream of Tartar is from the supermarket in the baking section. Mums will know it, you use it to make play dough!

The yarn has to cook for an hour than soak in the solution for a few hours before it is dyed with the mulberries. I;m going to leave mine overnight and dye with the mulberries tomorrow.

The recipe in the book calls for 600gms of blackberries (Mulberries) and that isn't a problem right now!

I'm dyeing!

 Sunday was a gloriously sunny day.

I set myself up on the front for a little dyeing.

I bought a dye kit from Earth palette, which is just outside of Gladstone.

 Earth Palette dyes are made to dye over greasy wool

I dyed a Lucinvale fleece I bought from Wirrabarra.

 I had a lot of fun and made a little mess.

The colours are very bright as I didn't wet the fleece but applied the dyes to the dry fleece!

I used a lot of dye, next time I'll wet the fleece first.

 I used a salad spin to spin out a lot of the rinse water to allow the fleece to dry quicker.

The dark purple in this yarn I spun from a small amount of Grey Romney I also dyed.

It's the section of fleece in the bottom right of the navy towel

It's plyed with some left over singles I had rolled into balls.

Wool dyeing

Fern had her first lesson in dying wool.
She chose her colours, I mixed them up for her and she applied them.

Her wool came up beautiful.

It's a 50gm skein.
Next I'll have to show her how to ball it up ready to knit with.

I used up the remaining dye to dye up some merino roving.
I'm planning on spinning this soon.

Latest from the dye pot

Destined to be a knitted pair of longies.
Knittery 8ply Merino
Dyes: Landscape - Surts Desert Pea and Wallaby and Gaywool Blue
Dye Method: Icecream tub and microwave
I should of twisted the skeins together before I put them in the tub as they have taken up the dye very differently. I'm not sure about the red. It does have a tendency when I hand dye to look a bit pink. Will see how it knits up. These are for a boy so if it looks pinky I'll dye another couple of skein ups.

Knittery 4ply sock yarn
Dyes: Landscape Galah and cyclamin.
Dye Method: Icecream tub and microwave.
(it may be the Cashmere?? I'm not sure I shoved it all in the same drawer)
This is destined to be a custom crochet skirt.

Dying Wool

I used a mix of Gaywool and Landscape dyes.
The base yarn is 250 gms of Treliske Organic Merino 8 ply DK.

This wool is destined to be a pair of longies. A custom order.

Colour fun

Last nights dying session.
Landscape Dyes: Cyclamin and Galah - left skeins
Landscape Dyes: Cyclamin, Galah and Fern - Right skeins
The skeins on the left are Knittery Merino the ones on the right aren't
There is a big difference in how the different wools took up the dyes.

I do love the way the Knittery wool dyes.

More dyeing

Bruise

Landscape and Gaywool dyes
12ply country by Cleckheaton
I used a mix of dyes Wallaby by Lanscape and the blue was a Gaywool (I think)

Autumn Leaves

Landscape Dyes
pot dyed in the microwave
8ply Totem by Patons - cream
Dyes: Wallaby, Wattle and Desert Pea

I wanted to try Kettle dying but can't be bothered with the stove top. Instead I put my wool in a microsafe bowl and poured the dyes on the top, squished them through a little and nuked them for four lots of 2 minutes. Rinsed them out and ta da done!

Another go at dying

i'm using landscape dyes for the first time. The colour reminds me of watermelons.

New toys!

Thanks to the Australian Govt. I had some extra money to play with this week. I bought myself a skeiner and ball winder from The Wool Shack. Here's the the link. Their service was awesome! my goodies arrived in the week! I was inspired to wind wool into skeins for dying and skeins into balls for knitting. I'm really impressed how much faster and easier these tools make the job.



I have a commission for some custom sea themed longies. I've dyed the wool and I'm pretty happy with the results :)



and lastly ...... my first attempt at deliberate felting. It still needs it's zip and the embellishment sewn down. I'm pretty happy with it. I hope the recipiant is too :)

Dip Dyeing

I had my first go at dip dyeing. This is also my first Dandelion Dreamers knitted soaker. I'm happy with the result.

Handdyed wool My first Attempt

And here it is crocheted up :)