Little Miss Mouse has started school. She's settled in well so far and seems quite happy about it! Last week she was only in for two-and-a-half hours a day but from today it's full mornings so after a very hectic child-dominated summer I suddenly had three-and-a-half hours to myself. Which feels a bit odd to say the least.
This morning I dug out some felt and fabric I had tucked away and decided to make her a little brooch. I (slightly reluctantly) went for the felt as the fabric seemed a bit too thin to hold the shape. The brooch has come out looking a little like a political rosette unfortunately - it's actually purple, dark pink and light pink rather than red, white & blue though! The purple button in the middle is one that was one an old pair of her trousers - the trousers were absolutely trashed but I salvaged the buttons at least. She likes it anyway!
This week I've been continuing with the garter squares. The soft pinky-brown there is from yarn I dyed myself though I'm not sure what I used for it. It's a fairly recent one so maybe it was my last batch of onion skin dye. I do try to label things but the labels fall off and I lose track! I keep meaning to get organised and keep a dyer's notebook with samples of the dyed yarn stuck in but haven't got around to it. It's the story of my life *grin*.
My anthemis tinctoria (dyer's camomile) has just started flowering so I also took the opportunity this morning to do another bit of dyeing. I used aran-weight undyed yarn, mordanted it with alum/cream of tartar, and the dye-bath was all the flowers that were open - not very many but after a couple of minutes it was a clear yellow, so apparently a little can go quite a long way. Though I should point out I only dye about 50g of yarn at a time due to the limited size of my dye-pot.
The end result is some nice light yellow wool, though not quite as light as it shows up in my photographs.
I'd really love to have as much of my own dyed yarn in my garter square blanket as possible. The muted colours should go together quite well I think.
And that was my Monday - one in which I finally did some making (that didn't involve swearing or splinters)!
No comments:
Post a Comment