Help - My Life is Being Devoured! Oh, and I Made Stuff Too...

Wow - I have no idea where the last few weeks have gone. Devoured by the great twin time-sinkholes of university and the internet, I suppose. Such is life.

So what have I been up to? Ummm, lots of things! I have been playing nicely with the other children. I have been blazing trails, picking battles wisely, and doing my best to eat enough vegetables. I have been working away busily on my Sylvi. I have been cultivating a dreadful addiction to Etsy. All the usual things, really.


On the craft front: I finished Richard's Canada scarf. No brother of mine shall have a cold neck, if I have anything to say about it! He's already worn in, and given it the thumbs up:



Vital statistics: Pattern: Noro Striped Scarf by Jared Flood. Yarn: Rowan Pure Wool Aran, one skein each of 'Charcoal' and 'Noir'. Needles: 4.5mm bamboo straights.

That stuff wot I thought about it: This pattern is awesome. I mean, obviously it would have been awesome-er if I'd actually used Noro yarn, but this was for Richard and I couldn't really see him being willing to wear a rainbow striped scarf, so sombre shades it was. That said, this pattern is still great even in comparatively boring and tasteful colours - the way that the slipped stitches hide the yarn being carried up the side for the colour changes makes me very happy indeed. I may make another one of these at some stage - the small stripes are surprisingly addictive.

And now I just need to furnish the brother-thing with a hat and gloves before he leaves. In three weeks time. Hmmm, better get cracking on that...


In other crafty news, I did some more natural dyeing. I made a second attempt with eucalyptus, trying a few different things this time (using rain water, soaking the leaves first, cooking the yarn for longer, etc), and subsequently got a gratifyingly different shade from last time. This batch still came out brown, but it was a yellow tinged brown (on the left in the photo below) that was a distinctively warm colour, as opposed to the cool purplish brown I got with the last lot (centre front below). I'm quite happy with it - it's a lovely colour in a subtle way.

I also tried dyeing with rhododendron leaves, since I'd read that they could be used for such things, and I had some readily available in the garden. I wasn't expecting too much from them, since I didn't have any proper mordants to use and had to make do with vinegar. I am pleased to report that rhododendron leaves smell thoroughly revolting when they're being simmered. But I did get some colour. Not much - just the faintest tinge of light green (you can see below - it's the small ball in the middle), but it was still colour, so I was pleased.




Also, I baked the best garlic bread ever. Seriously, it is all downhill from here. The recipe was from Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and it contains four heads (yes, that's heads, not cloves) of garlic. Indeed. Before anyone keels over and dies at the prospect, it's not actually that scary. The garlic is roasted for nearly an hour, so that it gets nice and mellow. Then you puree it with parsley and olive oil and merrily slather it all over a basic focaccia dough. It was ridiculously tasty. I will admit that you suffer from pretty killer garlic breath for a good three hours after eating it, but hey, there have to be up-sides to tragic singlehood, right? This is definitely one of them! I love Nigella Lawson so much - she rarely steers you wrong...




Yumbo. And now I'm wondering if it's feasible to make this again this evening. Preferably with a big vat of fresh vegetable soup. Hmmm... If anyone wants me, I will be rummaging frantically through my cupboard, or possibly raiding the supermarket with rabid enthusiasm...

Natural dyeing, and more restlessness

Okay, so as previously mentioned, I did some dyeing with eucalyptus. I rashly promised to document the exercise, so here we go.

I'd read a little bit in books and on Ravelry about the uses of eucalyptus, and had been itching to get into some more dyeing, as previous experiments had been good fun. Also, I just generally wanted to try a few new things while I had the time, so I figured I'd take a bash at it.




I used dried leaves, for the very scientific reason of: that was what I could acquire. Then I simmered the leaves for a while (and for the record, they made my kitchen smell delightfully of rainy forest), then removed them, cooled the mixture slightly, and then added the yarn - probably "cooked" it for about 40 minutes all up:




I also did some dyeing with turmeric while I was at it, and man is that stuff vivid! I've heard that the light-fastness is not great, and I had to rinse it for ages before it stopped bleeding, but at the moment the colour is still very intense. The eucalyptus is much paler than I expected (I'd seen some people get some very vibrant colours), but the result was still very intriguing - a pale grey-brown with faint purplish streaks in parts (which of course fail to show up in the photo).




Not bad for a first attempt, all in all - especially considering I didn't bother checking the exact variety of tree involved. I'm thinking I'm going to use the yarn to make some lavender bags or something, as neither are really my colour. Still, it was definitely a fun experiment, and I definitely plan to play more with natural dyes in future.

In knitting news, I started yet another project. Bad Anna. I'm very good at starting and not finishing at the moment, but such is the ebb and flow of creativity I suppose. At any rate, my younger brother is heading off to Canada on exchange come August, and he's going to freeze his arse off if I don't furnish him with an appropriate level of woollens. So, a scarf:




Admittedly, it's not a very interesting scarf, but my priorities with this one are to make something that he'll actually wear, rather than something with gorgeous yarn or an elaborate stitch pattern. Last thing I checked, twenty-one year old guys weren't renowned for their love of lacework. So yes, at the moment there is a lot of scarf. Perhaps given time and enough cups of tea, I might actually get around to finishing one of the other projects I've been putting off. Perhaps.