Hand Dyed Rikke Hat

Welcome to another Fibre Arts Friday!  I am still in the mindless projects only phase, this week I'm showing you a very simple hat that is in progress. It's the Rikke Hat by Sarah Young, pattern available for free on Ravelry.

I'm using a skein of unknown yarn from my stash that I dyed sometime ago with KoolAid. I wasn't too sure about it when it came out the dye pot so it's been sitting in my stash...

When I was looking for the perfect yarn for the Rikke Hat this skein screamed at me and practically jumped into my hands, so here it is...

It's a bit hard to get the true colour which is somewhere between the two photos. The pattern itself is very easy although some might say that knitting garter stitch in the round is a bit tiresome, but it is a mindless project regardless which is what I need right now (No, the trial is still not finished but the end is in sight, really!). I also learnt to do the German twisted cast on as recommended by the pattern for a more stretchy edge. There are many videos showing how to do this on YouTube, I followed the instructions by TheKnitWitch.

Now show us what you've been doing in the wonderful fibre arts world :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Blanket for KOGO

KOGO (Knit One Give One) is an organisation that collects and distributes hand crafted items, mainly knit and crochet, to various charities from women's shelters to premie babies to the homeless... etc. I discovered KOGO when we moved to Australia in 2008 which coincided with my picking up knitting/crochet again after a long hiatus, since then it has become a tradition for me to contribute to the collection what I can each year. I don't often list items I make for KOGO but this week this is the only thing I have for show and tell ;-)

An easy baby blanket in garter stitch made from my stash yarn, I only have each colour for half a blanket so it became a blanket of two halves. This project has been in my car for a while and I only worked on it whenever I had to wait for something, it's finally done!

That's me for this week. In the meantime the trial continues... yes and I'm getting really tired!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

And the trial continues, so I spin on ...

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! I am very happy to be sitting here writing this post as I wasn't sure if I would have time, as it turned out the court adjourned at lunch time today so I was home early - yay!  I mentioned last week that I'd been working on a trial for a couple of weeks, well it is still going and is looking likely to run for another week at least. Some of you asked if I could talk about the trial here, unfortunately not yet, maybe after it concludes. If you are interested I can relay some anecdotes about courts and proceedings, but first thing first, some fibre goodness...

This is a merino silk blend 80/20, the top came from World of Wool - my new favourite online woolly haunts ;-)  There are many colours in the top: pink, lime green, yellow, orange, white... but because I spun it very finely the colours became muted and indistinguishable. The new shade does have some depth to it which I quite like, it has a very soft handle.

That's all I was able to do this week and even this was thanks to my weekly spinning group. If you don't mind my talking shop perhaps I'll just touch on a little bit of what I do - Vivian this is especially for you :-)

I have been engaged by the Office of Public Prosecutions to attend a murder trial and my job is to interpret for the accused, which means I provide simultaneous interpreting of everything that is uttered in court by the judge, the prosecutor, the defense barrister, and the witnesses...  etc. It's a demanding task and I enjoy it, the only downside is it leaves me drained at the end of the day but that's all part and parcel of the job. I am known as "Madam Interpreter" in court and I get to wear a headphone to help me hear, but I sit in the dock alongside the accused.

Here's a little trivia for you: in Australia women were not allowed to serve on the Jury until the 1960s.  Incredible, is it not?!

Supreme Court of Victoria - where the trial is being held:

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Mordant Wonders

A few weeks ago we had some storms which resulted in many fallen branches... and yes, you guessed right, this branch followed me home ;-)

This is a different species to the one I used before, although I haven't confirmed what it is yet as the identification of eucalyptus is proving to be a real challenge - that's another issue entirely, one I would like to learn more about but don't have the time right now. But even I can tell the differences: the leaves are of a slightly darker shade with a bluish tint, also the bark of the tree was rough and dark rather than brown and stringy like the last time, etc. However when I fed this information to Google it turned up a dozen possibilities, I'm just not skilled enough to pick this out from thousands of varieties of eucalyptus. So for now all I need to know is that it came from a tree in the park near the train station.

Anyway my initial attempt at dyeing a white skein pre-mordanted with alum returned a dark beige, not very exciting. Then I remembered from reading Spinning Around that you can change the colour by using different mordant and there were recipes in the book for making different "mordant teas"...  these are not real teas of course but a way of acquiring mordant without the use of chemicals. So I made a "iron tea" by soaking some metal hairpins in white vinegar, then I added the "iron tea" to the dye bath and added the beige skein, not knowing what to expect. Imagine then my surprise when I lifted the skein after simmering, a cool olive green, how's that for a change!

I was encouraged by the result, and as the dye bath was not exhausted I looked for something else to dye. There were a couple of balls fingering wool yarn in my stash that I was not crazy about, so they became the next experiment. The photos below are before and after:

The before colourway reminds me of German flag for some reason, not that I have anything against Germany, I mean I love sauerkraut! I'm just not too keen on these colours in one ball/skein, the afterwards muted tones are much more appealing to me :)

I am going to suspend any project that is intricate for a while, as I just started working on a trial which is likely to run for the next three weeks or longer, the demand on those little grey cells in the courtroom is a bit taxing on the old brain that I find it hard to concentrate when I get home. So for the time being I'm favouring mindless activities, like spinning...

This was an experiment with a merino/sparkly blend, I think the sparkly might be angelina but can't be certain. It came out rather well, n'est-ce pas? :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Spin spin spin :)

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a relaxing Good Friday.  I'm having a really lazy day, a much wanted lie-in in the morning, hot cross buns for breakfast (ok, brunch then!) followed by a nice long walk around the lake, then some spinning... I like lazy days :)

First a quick update with what's happening with my crafts. Remember Tricky Tricsi the little cardigan I was making for my goddaughter? Well it's proved to be tricky alright, I've got to almost finishing the yoke and sleeve caps then realised that it might be too small, after checking with my friend for measurements it was apparent that I had to frog and restart again. It was my fault really that I didn't do a proper swatch, also I was using a fingering weight yarn rather than the recommended DK weight by the pattern, plus maths was never my forte, etc., etc., ... anyway I will have to start it again, maybe with 2 strands held together rather than trying to re-calculate, we shall see.

At least I was more successful on the spinning front, and managed to finish a few skeins that I was quite pleased about.

This is from a dyed merino top I recently bought, I love the colours but they came off and stained my hands while I was spinning, so I soaked the skein in a white vinegar solution and steamed it to set the dye, hopefully the colours won't run again in later washes. I actually just finished another skein from the same top, it's soaking right now.

This is made from a hot pink merino top that I blended with some pure finn and alpaca that I dyed a pale pink myself. I made rolags and spun semi worsted, I still can't spin pure woollen but I shall persevere. The merino top came from the same source as above, the colour also came off and I had pink hands after spinning, and I now also have a pair of pink hand carders! The skein had the same vinegar treatment as above.

But I am most proud of these skeins of a wool/alpaca blend, I bought the slivers from the backroom of Bendigo Woollen Mills when I went to Bendigo for a job - couldn't resist the opportunity and I'm so glad I did ;-)  The slivers are so easy to spin and so smooth, now I know what it means when someone says "it spins like butter", it's pure bliss!

It's been a while since I talked about my work, so today I will finish with a little anecdote. If you've been reading my blog for a while you will know that my work takes me to all sorts of places, here's another example.... in the last couple of weeks I haven't been able to take Elliot to his piano lessons and this is what he told his teacher: "My mum went to court last week and this week she's in prison!" - well that seems to follow the natural order of things ;-)

Happy Easter to you all!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

p.s. Our big trip has been confirmed, it's called "around the world in 40 days", more details later :)