The treasure of colour/Mein Farbenschatz!

Finally I'm done with the dyeing and rinsing, and most of the yarns and rovings are dry by now - it was quite a bit of work, and now I'm happy being able to sit down in the shadow, enjoying this huge colour treasure, making plans for all new projects I have in mind ...

This is mainly Tussah-silk and bamboo - it's funny how the fibers stick together due to the dyeing process and look dull, like paper - and then again recover and regain their shiny look when being slightly pulled and drafted ...



I love this one! I spun and plied the wool into a soft thick+thin yarn before dyeing, and although it was one of the first tries I had, the autumn colours are just what I was looking for ... I'm only sorry I don't have more of this!



These are some of the cotton threads I dyed for embroidering with - maybe brighter colours would come better for the picture - but believe me, these somewhat faded and blurred colours are just wonderful when you work with them!



Wool-with-silk rovings, providing spinning material for the long winter nights to come ;-) ...



... more spinning material - this is New Zealand-wool (yes, the colours spots are made purposely!):



- and sheep locks, of course! (The colours turned out very bright, but I will soften them down when carding and spinning ...)



And finally, some of the silk yarns - I do look forward to knitting with these!



(German summary: Ich glaube, die Bilder sprechen für sich selbst - Garne, Fäden, Spinnfutter - alles, was mein Herz begehrt - und der Lohn für die Färbemühe!)

First harvest/Die erste Ernte

Look, our first harvest!

These are some of the woolen yarns I dyed with the Ashford dyes - I was surprised that even the mohair wool survived the tough heat in the microwave ...



... some rainbow colours ...



... some more yarns and bright wool rovings for spinning ...



... and when I went out into the garden in the morning, two butterflies had come along to inspect what they must have thought to be flowers!



Our working conditions are hard at the moment - it's so excessively hot even in the shadow - and in the evenings there are so many mosquitos that we just have to quit our work outdoors within minutes! And this afternoon we had a heavy rain with flash and thunder going down on us ...

I do hope that we'll manage to continue with the cotton dyeing tomorrow - that'll be the embroidery threads and some mesh fabric.

(German summary: So, ein paar Bilder der ersten Ernte von unserem Färbevorhaben! Es ist nur so irre heiß, und heute Nachmittag wurden wir von heftigem Regen und Wärmegewittern unterbrochen. Ich hoffe sehr, daß wir morgen die Baumwollfärberei mit den Reaktivfarben schaffen können ...)

It's been a hard day's night .../Uff!

It's been a hard day - real tough, actually.

It's one o'clock in the morning, I'm exhausted - and we only did the wool part and the Ashford dyes today ...

All I can say is that now I'm really impressed by those people who do this kind of dyeing regularly and even sell their wool ... the price isn't exaggerated at all!

Sara 'died' into bed at 10-ish and didn't even want any dinner - I've been doing some more rinsing and tidying up - but the mosquitos almost ate me for supper and I'm happy to crawl into bed now too - hopefully there will be some beautiful results tomorrow!

(German summary: Meine Hochachtung für alle, die das Färben regelmäßig und professionell betreiben ... ich bin fixfoxfertig, und dabei haben wir 'nur' den Woll- und Ashford-anteil bis jetzt gemacht ...!)

D-day for dyeing!/Morgen geht's ans Färben!

Tomorrow is D-day! D for 'dyeing', of course!

Sara is here, and we're busy making preparations for our first dyeing session together. We are both excited and a little nervous, as we have tons of wool and cotton and silk and ramie, as yarn, roving, fabric, threads and locks ...



We'll be dyeing both with Ashford and Procion colours, partly with a microwave - and it is my first experience ever.

Hoping for the weather to be stable - the amounts of colour, vinegar, salt, jars, plastic foil, buckets, beer (oops!) etc being sufficient - our energy and nerves to be on top - we will finally face this challenge!



(German summary: Morgen ist es soweit - nach langem Abwarten und einigen Vorbereitungen werden wir jetzt endlich färben - wir haben Tonnen von Wolle als Garn, Fasern, Fäden und Locken und sind schon etwas nervös, ob wir das alles auch schaffen werden ...)

Recycling bag and plastic jewellery/Recyclingtasche und Plastikschmuck

I'm in the mood for recycling again ... besides all the well-known reasons why this is a great thing to do, it sparks the imagination!

This is a small round shoulder bag, made out of tiny scraps of different sock wools which I found in my stash.

I started with the bottom, crocheting a round piece, then I turned it and went on crocheting upwards, without doing any more increases.

I added four button loops on the last round, turned the top down to make the bag more sturdy and sew on some flower buttons, so I can close the bag if I like to. As the shoulder strap has a button hole on each end, I can unbutton the strap and use the bag as a table container if desired as well.



And this is 'plastic fantastic' - a simple summer necklace to wear on the beach with the swimming gear, for instance:



I crocheted a long necklace with a thick, multicoloured cotton yarn, then I took a dive into that box with toy plastic beads which my daughter had sorted out - and I had kept in my stash a while for some reason :-) - and added these by crocheting another round onto the cotton necklace, this time with some of that variegated embroidery yarn.

As I still had more of the thick cotton yarn, I went on by knitting two circular necklaces in stockinette stitch, letting them curl up to a kind of rope:



And the colourful combination of these necklaces could be quite an interesting piece of summer jewellery, don't you think?



(German summary: Aus vielen kleinen Sockenwollresten habe ich eine 'Topftasche' gehäkelt - und aus dem Kaugummiautomaten-Plastikperlen meiner Tochter und dickem Baumwollgarn noch einen bunten Strandschmuck gestrickt und gehäkelt. Recycling fördert die Fantasie!)

Recycled Paper Butterflies/Schmetterlinge aus Altpapier

And now to something completely different (I think they say that in the Monthy Python show):



I like recycling, re-using, remaking, and in the small village library, where I work a couple of hours a week, I sometimes find a pile of books which are out of date and have to be sorted out.

When I was in Sweden lately, I saw a butterfly paper garland in a shop, made out of scraps of Indian handmade paper, sewn together on a sewing machine.

So now I'm using this idea for my purpose, cutting pages out of the old library books, combining them with some b/w pages out of a brochure - and fortunately having a butterfly stencil in my stash and a red stencil pad, combining these too, for colour.

They look great hanging in the library window now during summer time!

I can also imagine this could be a nice idea to use for hearts or flowers as well ... and a single butterfly in coloured (recycled) paper would be nice on a greeting card, too ...

If you like to try it out yourself, just draw the outlines of a butterfly (or other motive) on a sturdy paper or light cardboard, cut it out, put it on a pile of about 5 bookpages if you're cutting with a craft knife - normal scissors would take about 3 pages at the same time and you will have to hold the template fixed on top of it with your fingers.

For the smaller butterflies inbetween, you can make a butterfly stamping stencil yourself by cutting it out from a big pencil eraser, maybe using it with a coloured stamp pad.

I sew the paper butterflies double, but they look great one by one as well. It could be a good idea to use an old needle, which you only use for paper sewing, in your sewing machine, as it gets rather dull to sew properly in fabric afterwards.

Leave a long thread for hanging before sewing the first pair of butterflies - then let the machine sew 'empty' (this produces a nice thread chain) before you sew the next pair together. A variegated thread looks nice, but is not crucial.

Adding a bead or other kind of weight at the bottom keeps your garland hanging right.

(German summary: Aus alten Buch- und Prospektseiten habe ich große und kleine Schmetterlinge ausgeschnitten - mehrere auf einmal mit dem Stanleymesser oder mit einer kräftigen Schere - und mit der Nähmaschine zusammengenäht. Wenn man zwischen den Schmetterlingen mit der Maschine "ins Leere" näht, bekommt man einen schönen Kettfaden dazwischen. Es ist ratsam, eine alte Nähmaschinennadel extra für's Papiernähen zu nehmen, mit dem man nachher keine Stoffe mehr näht - das Papier läßt mit der Zeit die Nadeln stumpf werden.)

Felted pencil holders/Filz-Stifte

Oh dear, it's been a fortnight since I posted last, I'm sorry for that ...

The heat of the summer has struck us completely now - 30-35°C in the shadow, and it's often too hot to do anything ... The kids have two more weeks to go before they're off on summer holidays, and we're all looking forward to get a leave ...!

It's late in the evening, and I've just finished preserving ten small jars of strawberry jam with elderberry flowers - if you're lucky still to have some fresh elderberry flowers in your garden when the strawberries are ripening, you really should try this: just boil the strawberries as usual, but put a small branch of elderberry flowers into the jar before filling it up with the hot jam - that's all! The combination is wonderful - and no extra effort at all - and I'm sure you won't regret this little experiment!

Two weeks ago, my daughter Emily and I spent an afternoon felting some pencil holders, just for fun - you just wrap a pencil tightly with some wool roving, felt it with warm soap water, rinse it and form the upper tail as you please, then let it dry:



When completely dry, I embroidered a couple of them with the handdyed thread and some beads:



Well, I've managed to finish the first silk/wool shoulder scarf as well, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out:



As you can see from the detailed picture, I felted a shawl pin in the matching colours to go with it:



Following an idea of Sara, I used a Chinese chopstick for the pin and wet felted around the top in a similar way as with the pencils. The shawl and the pin were a birthday present for a very dear friend of mine.

(German version: Bei uns ist es im Moment so heiß, daß man fast gar nichts machen kann! Trotzdem habe ich heute das Spezialrezept meiner Mutter, für Erdbeermarmelade mit Holunderblüten, machen müssen: Man kocht die Erdbeeren wie üblich, nur daß man noch ein Blütenzweigerl ins Glas gibt, bevor man die heiße Marmelade hineinfüllt! Sehr einfach und sehr empfehlenswert - wenn man das Glück hat, noch frische Blüten im Garten zu haben!

Mit meiner Tochter habe ich noch ein paar Stifte mit Filzwolle ummantelt und naßgefilzt, dann bestickt - ja, und das Woll-/Seidenschultertuch ist auch fertig und hat schon eine neue Besitzerin gefunden!)