Archive for the 'Dyeworks' Category
Moods around here are very much improved following two days of steady rain. The drought (and it still is, despite the rain) has been very depressing on so many levels, and watching our garden wilt and die has not been fun. The ground is actually wet now, and I’m beginning to feel the mild stirrings of inspiration to plant for winter crops. We’ve never yet managed to have a winter vegetable garden - I think it’s because planting needs to be done while the weather is still sweltering, then tending/harvesting needs doing in the misery of late autumn/winter. Blah. But we’ll see. It would be nice to have soup vegetables at the very least.
Speaking of harvesting, we have managed to keep a few things going… on Saturday I picked beetroot, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and leeks. Then last night we had pesto on spaghetti, courtesy of our own basil and garlic. Yum. (We also opened wine, it was terribly civilised around here after the small people were finally in bed 
)
Other delicious produce from the weekend:
Niamh was very accommodating with her naps, and I got quite a bit done, replenishing a few colours of my sale floss and dyeing some fabric for myself and others. There is one monstrously ugly piece of fabric hiding in that pile though… not sure what I’ll do with it yet. If you think you could use a fat quarter of Belfast that kind of looks like army-camo, drop me a line (OtherHalf was more generous and said it looked ‘kind of foresty’. Yes. Like camo!).
Other people were busy on the weekend too… we found out this morning that my mother and stepfather snuck out and got married yesterday… finally legal after nineteen years together! Congratulations you two 
!
January 22 2007 | Dyeworks and Family and From The Garden and Other Craft | 11 Comments »
In the absence of much advice from you, dear readers, I had to make up my own mind on what to spend my recent earnings. I decided in the end to add to my dyeing stash rather than my stitching stash (is it actually possible I’m approaching SABLE with my stitching stash?) So I bought some more white fabrics (including opalescents), and have some new dyes coming to me from Kraftkolour. I’m excited about the prospect of returning to some dyeing, and I have some ideas brewing.
Which leads to my next item of business. I’ve spotted this ‘paying it forward’ concept on a couple of blogs lately, and tonight I decided to join in, on Christine’s blog. So here goes:
I will create some ‘piece of art’ for the first five people to respond to this post in the comments below. I’m interpreting ‘art’ fairly loosely here. Given my recent purchases (see above), you can probably guess along the lines of what I would like to create. So if you’re interested, comment away. Next, drop an email to me, letting me know your postal address, and I’ll be in touch 
The catch? You need to blog this too, and ‘pay it forward’ in your own way. Go on… it’ll be fun!
November 04 2006 | Counted Stitchwork and Dyeworks and General Ramblings | 6 Comments »
The Hiccup Stuff
Or more accurately, the hiccoughs. They have started. Finn hiccoughed in utero for about the last two months. (Didn’t stop for about a month afterwards, either). Looks like Small will be following suit. I think it’s so cute! Much cuter than my abdominal bits are feeling and looking lately, anyway.
The Wall Stuff
The Wall, it comes down this weekend. Be afraid. Be very afraid. You know, I’d really like to take Before and After photographs, I would. If only I could get the kitchen and living areas clean enough to do so first! (Actually, I’ll probably have to, since the tearing down of said wall will necessitate some tidiness, after all).
The Dyeing Stuff
#1 - I’m very sad at the loss of my dyeing space, due to Wall-goings-on and the rest of the kitchen ‘rearrangement’. Am going to see if I can manage enough space in our stupid tiny laundry area to set up, but it may well be that my dyes go away for the forseeable future.
#2 - Hoping to squeeze this in before packing the dye-bits’n'pices away. Mum gave me some yarn to try dyeing. I picked up a couple of Landscape dyes (easy-peasy no-extra-acids-needed wool dyes) from Kraftkolour on the day they were closing their doors (sob! They went mail order only, how sad). So I’m going to try a couple of vareigated yarns. I don’t really knit - I can manage a scarf or a cushion though, so I’ll let you know how it turns out.
#3 - Also on the dyeing, I just wanted to remind those of you who’ve bought some floss that you probably should rinse it in cool/lukewarm water prior to stitching with it. I do rinse fairly extensively after dyeing, but there is always a chance of some excess dye left clinging. I’ll add this suggestion into my sale page shortly.
The Employment Stuff
You may remember a bit ago I decided not to take on the offer of a job, as documented here? Well, my lecturer has come back to me with a modified offer - would I like to do some marking? This can (mostly) be done from home, and it won’t begin at the very start of semester, so Small should be 2-3 months by the time I start. I said yes, I’m interested. I’m probably going to slap myself later - my university is not renowned for its generosity s’far as remuneration is concerned. Nor does the time allotted to mark assignments come anywhere close to the actual time that marking takes. But… I figure, it keeps my brain alive, keeps my toe in the water. It could be a good experience.
The Stitching Stuff
Um… no 
Must try harder.
Meep. Where does the time go? Finn has been at kinder all morning and I have acheived nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Except a very ordinary blog post. Sigh.
April 26 2006 | Dyeworks and Family and General Ramblings and Other Craft and Pregnancy | 2 Comments »
Christine, your comment about crazy stash acquisition made me smile… since going off the Wagon Challenge at the end of ‘05, I’ve been a bit crazy myself. I haven’t always fully confessed, but needless to say, I haven’t stuck to that ‘goal oriented’ plan I had 
My latest temptation was the SB&B Easter Sale, and I’m waiting on a couple of The Cat’s Whiskers charts, Enchanted Mermaid, a Drawn Thread chart and some mesh bags. I think that’s it!
Anyway, all guilt aside - first off today, a new fabric I dyed up recently. I adore this. It’s a fat quarter of 28-count Lugana, and I dyed it with Mirabilia’s Midsummers Night Dream in mind. I have just plugged it into the fabric viewer, and it does look lovely with that design, but there’s a number of other Mirabilias it looks great for too - oddly enough, Enchanted Mermaid is one of them. I never envisaged a purple for that design.
I have a bunch of other white fabric just waiting for inspiration to strike - 2 FQs of Quaker (my personal favourite), 3 FQs of Cashel, and 2 more of Lugana. I also have a piece of Belfast I dyed but hate the results of, so I’m going to try over-dyeing that to see what I can acheive. Hopefully, if I get a bunch of satisfactory fabrics out of this lot, my desire for stash expansion will subside a little!
Next is my newest start - yet another Mirabilia - Mermaids of the Deep Blue. I seem to be going through a very definite Mirabilia phase at the moment I’d estimate there’s about 20 hours put into this so far, though I didn’t record times so far. There’s two weekends away worth of work in it, put it that way. I’m stitching this on hand-dyed Babbling Brook Jobelan - my first large piece on Jobelan, and I like it more than I thought I would, actually.
April 21 2006 | Counted Stitchwork and Dyeworks and General Ramblings and In Progress and Other Craft | 2 Comments »
Edit: this post originally linked to some hand-dyed floss which I had for sale, but which is no longer available
April 20 2006 | Dyeworks and Other Craft | 3 Comments »
No, I’m not being rude. I just finally finished the tutorial for dyeing your own floss, that’s all See here. I would love to hear about (and see) any results you might have if you follow this tutorial. Let me know if you have any questions or difficulty understanding my instructions. I tried to make it short, because the process really isn’t as difficult as it sounds, but I had to keep adding in extra bits of information, so it did get quite long.
I really, really ought to get a proper website organized for myself, I know, rather than using my blog for everything. I am supposedly qualified to do that, after all! I think I need to fill out one of those 101 goals in 1001 days which are popping up all over blogland, and make that a major goal!
April 19 2006 | Dyeworks and Other Craft | 1 Comment »
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