The saga of the red onion skins continues

Wednesdays is drawing day. All morning I stand and draw. The standing is hard (my back doesn't appreciate the continuous upright and still position. It would be alright if I was walking, but walking and sketching at the same time.......) however, drawing is wonderful. My teacher, Peter, is terrific, if somewhat manic and I've learnt so much even in this short time.

Today was hatching, which is a way of getting tone into a drawing. The setup involved a jacket on a dummy (well, light stand to be perfectly correct) against a window which gave strong tonal contrasts.

Using a felt tip pen, so no errors could be erased, I managed to do a reasonable drawing, learning alot about observation of light, medium and dark tones and learning to start as lightly as possible and building up the drawing. I do tend to be heavy handed which can at times result in very dark drawings.

More practice.

Anyway, this week I also managed to include some more red onion skin dyeing. I've seen a lime green obtained but up to now have failed to obtain anything approaching it. Until now. I used an alum mordant and then put in the red onion skins.

I dyed the silk first and then the wool. For the sake of saving water, I mordanted the silk first then put in onion skins in the same bath and returned the silk. The wool was dyed, in the same water, where I added more red onion skins and alum at the same time. Seemed quite successful to me.

And magically, here is the result. I am very happy, they are beautiful colours.

The interesting thing is the silk dyed so differently than the wool and the variation between the different skeins of wool was also very interesting.

I am going to do one more dye run. I have an approximately 200gm skein, which I will dye and probably put up for sale. These will go into scarves and fingerless mittens.

I'm not sure what I'll do next: brown onion skins or rosemary. What a lovely dilemma to have.

A tale of two skeins

Remember my CD drop spindling on my holidays, well this is the second half of the 100gms of First Editions tops.



I then plied both with some soft beautiful light blue reeled silk that I had in my stash. (Don't know how it got there, I'm not really a light blue person, but how can you doubt the wisdom of the stash and the choice of the perfect colour?)

These are the resulting skeins:







Now I don't know if you can tell but they're differents.

The one on the right is the holiday skein. It's beautiful with a slight wrapping to ensure the tops are highlighted. I love this skein.

The other is the home skein. It's finer - I was trying for the same, it's pulled apart in several places and whilst, on it's own is a lovely skein, I can't sell it.

I can't in all honesty sell a skein the knitter is going to have to manage. I'll knit it up and where it's week, I'll rejoin and generally work around. This is definitely NOT what people expect when they purchase handspun wool.


But what is the difference? Spinning on holiday, Spinning at home in front of the television. And maybe I've answered my own question - relax and concentrate!

Happy spinning!

Frogging

When people ask me if I have a lot of UFO's, I can honestly answer 'no'. If you look at my current set of projects, I think you can see that this is a fair response. I have a pair of socks I'm currently knitting for myself. These have been put aside by the knitting of a blanket for Woolybutt's bushfire appeal.

I have a couple of fingerless mittens, waiting for buttons and a scarf that requires a fastener. This is fair game as I am confident these will be finished and find their way to my Etsy shop.

I have also some UFO's that will be frogged because they're experiments that haven't quite worked out. I usually wait for inspiration and these cause me no problems.

You can see from this that I'm happy with the state of affairs and I like to keep it that way.

So WHY, after reading an article in the latest 'Yarn Forward' magazine about frogging, a subject I don't need any further information on, and while a pleasant read didn't afford much in the way of new information, did I end up with:

This is a jumper that I've had for many years, it started out as this:

It came from a pattern book called 'The Creators' published in 1986, which is when I purchased it. It does, nowadays often appear in op shops. I don't know why as I still like looking at it and it has some interesting designs. You might have guessed the era from the hairstyle and makeup?

I have worn this jumper to death. It's very open and catches on everything and finally there are too many snags/holes to look good. To emphasize the age, when I frogged the seaming was in back stitch and I can't remember the last time I used back stitch, mattress stitch being my preferred method of finishing off my knitting.

I don't need a new project, not just yet, but I will skein up the balls wash it and contemplate when to start on this:

From the latest Designer Knitting (Vogue knitting - still not really used to the new name). I figure that in our hot climate, I can't really justify another jumper.

And really, all I want to do is start!

Onion skins

Friday and today have been days to cook up onion skins and create some new yarns to work with.

The idea was to mordant with copper coins then dye with red onion skins.

Unfortunately I think I've learnt something I've suspected for some time: silk is selfish and steals all the mordant and dye. The change from the previous dyeing wasn't great, however, upon first putting the silk in the dyepot it turned yellow then proceeded to take up the brown.

They all did turn out lovely as I removed the silk early, put back the copper coins and left the wool in.

It's a lesson well learnt, but now I have some lovely yarns for next week.

Knitting on the train

The first few months of this year have been hectic as I try to incorporate my new studies into my already busy schedule. Having made it to Term 2 in one piece I feel a bit more in control of the schedule. The house is still a mess, there is way too much 'just in time' management and I'm still not drawing enough. (Drawing the foundation for everything!) But, hey....



Mondays are sculpture class. This is what I wanted to do the most. The teacher is terrific and is busy teaching us the tools of the trade. We've done a cardboard mock up of a sculpture we're turning into a finished wooden sculpture. I've learnt to use a jigsaw and am currently trying to figure out how to cover wood in plastic!


As I've mentioned before, one of the benefits of going into the city is knitting on the train. Yesterday was some fingerless mittens knit from some dyed yarn from First Editions. (That stop is Euroa is really dangerous!) I wanted a stitch that would show off the small dots of colour and thought that some sort of slip stitch effect would be good.

What I came up with (I'm sure there's a stitch in a dictionary somewhere, but I was in the train!) was to yrn twice on every second stitch and slip that on the return purl row. Then alternate that.
As I knit it on the train it unfolded and was lovely and I was happy!.

Today, I off to SnB Rosanna, just a quick trip as I'm off to Ivanhoe Library to give a talk to their Creative Craft group. So if you're in Ivanhoe from 11-12pm, come and see me.

More on holidays and spinning

Going on holiday with your family is about time spent with each other without the distractions of work, washing and various electronic devices. I'm not a fan of the term 'quality time', spending time in itself is enough. I enjoy wandering around a gallery looking at art with my son, but I also enjoy sitting around a table listening to the boys argueing about football (not my favourite topic!)

At home it's sit down, eat as fast as possible and return to whatever you were doing before. At a restaurant you have to take time to order drinks, read menus, wait for everything and wait for everyone to finish....you might as well enjoy the company.

Going on holiday also means leaving work behind, closing the Etsy shop, cleaning the house (well making it presentable enough that you don't groan upon return!) and warning partner to minimise use of Blackberry.

I must admit that I did take the fibre sandwich from Harrietville with me and during quiet times spun it all up on the CD spindle. It went quicker than I thought and when I got home I plied it with the never ending bobbin of purple.

I decided to create a bit more texture by creating a bead yarn. This means allowing one single to wrap around the other rather than evenly plying. It's basically a matter of different tensions. I held the fine purple single firmly and the lovely fibre sandwich single quite loosely. I love the finished yarn.

I've decided not to sell this skein but will make me a pair of buttoned fingerless mittens. I'll wear them everywhere and show off.....a little bit!

CD Spinning

I've been spinning on my CD spindle while I was away in Sydney.

Tomorrow is the 9"x5" Quality Makers Market, about to be renamed to the Ivanhoe Makers Market, and I'll be there spinning the rest of this top from First editions that I bought on my way to Harrietville this year.

Last month was my Autumn sale and proved to be reasonably successful. We're currently trying ways to improve the market and get more stallholders and attract more visitors.

Come and see us!

PS Don't you just love a photograph on a glass table?