Dyeing

I saw on Loch Ness Knits’ Instagram she has been collecting lupin heads for use in solar dyeing yarn. They are a non-native invasive plant in the wild here and she’s working with a conservation group. I have lots of lupin flower heads that have fallen over and considered solar dyeing them but I just can’t get enthusiastic about giving it a go for some reason.

I did, however, get my acid dyes out and dyed:

• 5 skeins of BFL/Silk Aran yarn to make my 2nd Quick Sand.  My pot is literally just big enough to dye 500g of yarn so I wasn’t aiming to get a consistent colour.  I put the bottom of the 5 skeins in with Opal and Hot pink mixed, then added more of the yarn and added Ice and hot pink mixed and then popped just some pink on the top and did some lifting and lowering the skeins. There’s a few bits that are a little more blue but I’m happy.  If I do another jumper quantity dyeing project I’m going to need a bigger pot!
• Some pink 2 ply non-superwash yarn to use for decoration on a felted bag I’m planning…hopefully
• Some multi-coloured Wensleydale locks for fairy hair
• Some auburn Teeswater locks for fairy hair
• A blend of llama, ramie, whitefaced woodland and bamboo in a russet colour…I was hoping for a warm red but never mind
• A blue blend of merino, llama, yak and mulberry silk.
• Sand coloured corriedale for my lampshades

Felting

The 6 finished lampshades were dropped off at the gallery this week. See separate post for photos.

Knitting

It has been a weird week for knitting. I made a mistake on my habitation throw and tinked back 2 rows…then when I picked it back up a few days later I made the same mistake! So I have one extra thick section between islet rows…life is too short to unpick the same rows again.

As I was rummaging around for any more waste yarns I remembered I planned to knit a bracelet with leftover yak and silk yarn from Coastal Colours. So I made the Stash Bracelet. It uses just over 3g of yarn to make the medium sized double wrapped one. Its my first time doing a project where you intentionally twist it when joining in the round, so that it lays flat on your arm. I love it and will make more from other scraps too fancy for my throw. It would be a nice project to incorporate beads in maybe.

Sewing

Definitely sewing my Town Bag this week!

Spinning

I have now finished spinning all of the peach and blue coloured baby camel and tussah silk fibre.

I refer to this as #2 on Ravelry because this is the 2nd of 4 colours I bought of this fibre. All from Coastal Colours. (Eek, I just went on their website to get the link for this post and see such pretty colours available…resist Liz, resist! 😂)

#1 I spun and knit Easy Goes It Shawl

#2 some I spun and knit Reyna out of it and now have finished some in lace weight and some in Aran weight

#3 was the purple Worsted weight I had fully spun and used some in my recent Twig beanie hat.

#4 I haven’t started on yet. It’s a gorgeous electric blue and purple colour! I’m wondering if there’s enough for a garment!

Weaving

Must stop procrastinating and get it warped!

Wood

No word back from the wood turning guy yet. My fingers are still crossed I can get another lesson this year.

Other News

You can see I was running around doing lots of last minute things on my YOP list haha! I would have done more but we are planning some changes in the kitchen, dining room and sunroom so a visit to a kitchen shop, kitchen brochures and Pinterest took some of my attention this week.

I sat inside a Costa coffee shop this week and had a toasty and hot chocolate…it is soooooo long since I have done that. (US friends remember it’s not hot here in summer so hot chocolate is consumed year round 😁.)

My order from World of Wool arrived and it included a 250g bag of lap waste they were giving away! (Lap waste being what they clear from the machines at the end of producing top and blended tops.) Sometimes this includes fibres that aren’t suitable for wet felting so I decided to do a burn test on them all. I took a candle and ipad to the greenhouse and filmed myself and my comments on what happened so I could identify what was what. The majority is wool, some with probably bamboo blended in but nothing that melted into the hard nugget you get from acrylic so that’s good.

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This is a Year of Projects post. Officially the Group is in its 10th year, but this is my 3rd year participating. If you would like to find more about the Year of Projects Group on Ravelry.