A little knitting but a lot of dyeing

Yarn Along

Joining in with Ginny.. who's having another Baby... I'm so pleased.. and i'll never even meet him or her.!! nuts world of the blog family!

 

 

A day late again... (for yarn along...i'm not having another one!)

Well I have had a wonerful day today. I am organising my eldest boys' eleventh birthday and I had just one thing left to do. It was weighing heavily on my mind and it was only a small logistical thing, but I knew that I was in great danger of not doing it at all, because i'm like that. Anyway...  I did  it and it only took five minutes!! Hooray!. 

 

Therefore I had time to do lots and lots of dyeing.. therefore my yarn along is the dyeing book Wild colours by Jenny Dean and I'm still knitting my boxy saddle shoulder thingy .  I keep falling asleep when putting kids to sleep so it is progressing very slowly.

 

 

 

I had mordanted (with alum , iron, and rhubarb root) various sock yarns and I had gathered a large handful of broom flowers and i got going.  I'd remembered that a few years ago I had dyed some wool with gorse before (another word for broom) and it was a fantastic bright yellow.  I've been a little bit obsessed with finding a yellow and grey combination for the last year, but I rarely find it. I have come close with my boxy saddle shoulder thingy but this is taking an age and I need something to divert me.  Anyway, to cut what could take a long time, short, I didn't really get it.  The yellow is really pastel and wishy washy and not me at all. I had eight skeins ready and waiting and I had plans to make a sweater worth of one colour. However, the disappointment in the yellow meant that I had to do more more more!

So here below are today's excitements.  I found some old cochineal hidden in a draw. Hardly any really - about a tablespoonful.  I boiled it up and added it to my alum and left over gorse flower pot. I also picked some amazing rhododendrums and put that in another pot.  I then put the gorse and alum skein in both - dangling one end in one and and the other in the other.  The rhodoendrums were very strange... instead of a pale pink... green.. go figure.

 

 the pear blossom with cocchineal/rhododendrum wool

 so.. left to right. iron and thrice extracted oak galls, left over gorse flower and alum, soaked and forgotten about eucalyptus bark and simmered overnight, gorse flower and alum mordant all in one (no different to the exhaust bath) then...... delicious oak gall an iron and alum mordanting with the exhaust eucalyptus.

 necklaces waiting fo the perfect yellow sweater to go with them.....  ooh just noticed small girl on stairs!

 

I went on the most amazing walk yesterday.. the mist had well and truly come in and I waited for three hours for the sun to burn through... did it? NO.