However I'm a relatively glass-half-full person so here we go :-).
1) There is still some colour in the garden! There was some sunshine and blue sky yesterday morning so I grabbed the opportunity to take a few pictures:
2) The other day I hauled out all wool I'd dyed myself to have a look - actually I was looking for the blackberry-dyed stuff to compare it to the elderberry-dyed but once I got everything out I just had to take a few photographs!
And it really gives me a boost to see how much I've done with so many different bits of vegetation, and how much I've learned in the process. When the kids came home from school we spent some happy (non-bickering!) time looking through and they decided which were their favourites. Miss Mouse, predictably went for the pinks:
(balls at top - blackberry; middle skein - red cabbage, I think; bottom skein: elderberry)
..while the Boy decided his favourite is the soft orange at the bottom of this picture:
I like the brown in the middle best I think.So, a bag full of naturally-dyed happiness. I'm easily pleased :-D.
3) Looking at something I'd cast on the other day I decided that the cast-on wasn't really stretchy enough so this morning I had a look at YouTube for stretchier cast-ons (my usual cast-on is the long-tail thumb cast-on). And I found one excellent one involving a crochet hook (which I notice a nippy purist has cast aspersions on in the comments - come on, most knitters have a crochet hook lying around for picking up dropped stitches, and can learn how to do one chain in two minutes with YouTube, it's hardly taking you over to the Dark Side) and another one which took me a minute or two to get my head round but could be useful. So my third Reason To Be Cheerful is for the learning of new skills, however small!
You know if type 'cast-on' often enough it looks really weird. Also, do any other Scots habitually think of 'YouTube as 'ya choob'?
6 comments:
Oh wow! Love those soft cuddly colours, natural dyes are a real adventure. Thanks for joining in, glad to see you've had some gorgeous blue sky! xxx
Your flower pics are simply stunning! And love the look of your lovely yarns in all their naturalness. Hooray for youtube, I have learnt so many useful things from there (and then revisited when I've inevitabley forgotton!)
Thank you both :-). Penny, the sun didn't last long that day but I make the most of it when it's out! Faith, I keep forgetting how good Youtube is for stuff like tutorials - I'm hoping that having blogged about it I might remember to look there for useful stuff instead of just music and funny stuff!
Lots of warm yellows and golds hanging on to that last moment of summer!
I love your hand dyed colors! I have not gone the path of hand dying ... Not sure if I want to but I am always impressed with people who can. And thanks for the YouTube video help with crochet hook cast on. I always wondered why you couldn't use a crochet hook in casting on or off.
Scarletti, the sunflowers are deluding themselves, we're well past summer here :-D.
Martini Knitter, I'm glad the cast-on link was helpful :-). I've tried it out properly myself now and I'd say it's more loose than stretchy, so I haven't used it on the mitts I'm knitting just now (which really needed stretchiness), but I can see it being a useful alternative cast-on. A crochet hook is a very useful thing!
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