Something old, something new

A couple of week's ago I took a knitting class based on the Gunnister pouch.  The 17th century original was found in a peat bog in Scotland, along with other personal items.  Here's a picture of the original:



My adaptation includes a design of crosses, instead of the stripes and checks of the original.

It's also a little bit longer - just the perfect size for holding my iphone.

All Wound Up

I have this bin in the garage (OK, I have lots of bins).  Up until today this particular bin was full to overflowing with left over bits of yarn.  Over the last two days, I have grouped the yarns, mixing textures and colors, and wound them into warps for scarves - ten in all.  Here are some of my favorites:

I love the candy colors of this one:

And the cool sage of this one.

This one reminds me of a berry/ peach smoothie.  Yum!

Meanwhile, I've been dyeing the purple and green warps for the Water Lilies shawl.  Here they are with the multi-colored warp and the blue weft:

And here are some of Monet's Water Lilies.

Getting Ready to Dye

This morning I mixed up the dye solutions for the projects I'll be working on this week.  With the solutions already mixed, dyeing the yarn will be much simpler - just mix the solutions in the right proportions and put them in the crockpot with hot water, yarn and, after a while, a little soda ash.

Mixing the dye solutions reminds me a little of my chemistry major days:

While the yarn simmers in the crockpot, I'm working on the lavendar scarf on the rigid heddle loom - see the "What I'm working on now" pic in the margin.

A Week's Vacation

I have a week’s stay-cation and my plan is to fill it with as much fibery goodness as possible. First stop was my yarn stash to see what spoke to me. There were lot’s of possibilities, but I settled on this:

Doesn’t it remind you of Monet’s Water Lilies? But there is not enough to warp up a full shawl, so back to the stash where I found this white cotton rayon blend. I don’t want white, though, but this cotton/rayon blend should dye up beautifully with Sabracron F dyes. Using my swatch book from Sarah Lamb’s workshop, I picked a blue and a green to match the Water Lily yarn, and a purple for some 20/2 silk for the weft.

It will take a couple of days for me to get all the yarn dyed. I don’t want to wait to start weaving, so in the meantime, I warped up my rigid heddle loom with a warp I’d had sitting around for a while.

This is a mélange of left over yarns: some black and purple ladder yarn, pink and purple eyelash, purple 20/2 silk (doubled), purple wool (a sample from a workshop) and some gray kid mohair from a UFO sweater. The weft is a super-fine lavender kid mohair.

Tomorrow I start weaving and dyeing.