Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Progress

First, I am happy to announce the arrival of the first lavender bloom in my garden for this year. Here it is.

While warm weather has worked its magic on the garden, I have started and finished a knitting project in what is (for me) record time. For the Guild's recent natural dye workshop I could only find a couple of small, lumpy skeins to dye. These were leftovers from my very earliest spinning that I just couldn't bear to throw away. I split the larger one so I had three little skeins at not even an ounce each. In just 2 evenings I have knitted this hat, making up the pattern as I went along. It still needs to be washed and blocked. I think (I really do) that the lumpyness of the yarn gives it a lovely texture. It is a bit brighter in person (the flash washes the colors out a bit). In a totally unscientific manner, I only vaguely remember which of the dye pots and modifiers I used to get these colors. I think the purple was brazilwood modified by ammonia, and the orange was madder plus something else. The dull beigey-pink went in and out of several pots in search of something other than dull beigey-pink. Ah well - looks OK when used with the other two.

1 comment:

Sharon said...

The hat is a wonderful display of the natural dye results. Why am I not surprised that it has purple. The orange is madder, and I'm jealous that you had already spun up knitting fiber yarns. I'm stuck with rug yarns and no wonderful hat.