Tis a busy life!

Sorry I've not been a too regular blogger of late...the house is still in need of a lot of decorating and so the weekends are mostly being spent on that at the minute. I have been trying to dabble in a bit of dyeing here and there, and trying to finish sewing some bits and pieces that have been lying about for a while in the evenings - I am slowly running out of products that are photographed to upload to my shops to keep things fresh!

Rosie on the other hand is having a marvelous life - kept warm and well fed, can sleep all day and catch moths by night....wish I had her life sometimes!

Will blog more soon...I promise! x

Purple Daze

The latest in my yarn dyeing has produced an array of bright purple daze!

Dyed using a natural plant based dye from Logwood, the yarns below show a varying gradient of purples.
The yarn is DK Merino 100grams per skein.

I have lots of yummy coloured yarn to list still - the reason it is taking so long is that I am having great difficulty taking good pictures with my camera lately. Very frustrating as I have tried two cameras that I have and they both are showing fuzzy and the wrong represenations of colour!! grrrrr...I am working on it and will hopefully have some good photos soon.

Below is a piece of silk that was also dyed in the Logwood dye pot. wrapped in a bundle and tied with elastic bands it was firstly soaked with heat added and left overnight. The following three nights I have rearranged the elastic bands and left it to soak in the cold dye bath which has created a striking pattern throughout...


Which type of scarves shall I make from this?....

Garden Life

The past weekend was mostly spent painting and decorating the house, and sprucing up the flower pots in the back garden.

The house is very slowly progressing - there is still no room completely finished and possibly a lot more dust to come but we'll get there. I really can't wait for the day when I can unpack some personal pocessions to make the house a home!!

Some potted pictures to brighten this post...

The eucalyptus tree was intended for the front garden but I can't see us digging the borders that are needed for it this side of spring unfortunately! I bought some pansies to replace all my weather beaten pertunias from the horrible amount of rain we had in August and now the wind has set in and made them look a little droopy...my poor plants are not having a good time of it!

I also decided that I would get my dyeing pans out at 4pm on Sunday, as you do when you have to go to work 15hours later, and cooked up some purple delights. I shall post the results in a couple of days as I still have a wrapped bundle of silk soaking in a pan and need the wind to die down so I can take a good picture for you all !

Finally...

...the silk from the jar experiments has been made into a scarf!

Do you remember this jar with the silk stuffed inside and left to do it's thing through snow, frost and sunshine?

The final destination for the silk was in a aluminium bucket with several exhaust dyes poured on top. Lots of reclaimed iron nails were added. The top of the bucket was wrapped with cling film and then it was left out in the sunshine and rain for a further couple of weeks.

I didn't report on this at the time as it was when I lost my camera back in July so I couldn't take any pictures to share!

So, anyway, here is a final piece (finally) to show you all.

I have made a triangular scarf...

The piece of silk has enough left to make a second triangular scarf and hopefully a long scarf or a circle snood scarf.

I think it was worth the wait :)