Alice Jean

The wool I used to try this out was the veggie O'Wool from an earlier post. This wool is absolute not suitable for children's clothing, but it will be useful for scarves or bags. I'm not sure what to knit with it yet, I'm leaning towards that popular Clapotis right now, especially because it is said to be a no-brainer to knit. The oranges are both dyed with Madder root, the darker is fixed with citric acid, for the lighter one I used alum. The blues were not meant to be all blue. One of them was dyed with Logwood, dipped in Indigo. It was supposed to come out more purple, but it did not. Another one was originally green, dyed with Weld, dipped in Indigo. It really was green, until I decided to fix the Indigo with citric acid - it turned into blue. Bad decision, never too old to learn. :-) The other three are blue as they were supposed to be. Well, I am pretty content anyway.

My BFF Darcy is a sweetheart. She was feeling so sorry for me I had to wait that long for my parcel in the UK swap and decided to step in as an Angel. Of course there was no need to do so, I'd had been contacted by my upstream partner again, she was dealing with some health problems. The angel package was delivered today. The delivery itself was kind of a miracle, a Royal Mail van stopped by when I was walking along the main road in the neighbourhood. The driver asked me if my address was ... and handled me the parcel over. He had been at the door, but as I was out, he took the parcel back again. The alpaca and malabrigo are amazing soft. And the 3 balls of cotton are lovely. A handfelted soap, cedarwood and eucalyptus. Can't wait to take a shower! A sheep with chocolates. That is definitely not mine. :-) Celestial Seasonings, Vanilla Strawberry Rose. Yummy! Will try it this afternoon. Acid dyes. They always come in handy. Okay. This is meant to sew into a knitting bag and sen...

In the mail this week a lovely set of stitch markers. Ladybirds, so well chosen. Thanks so much Lieke , in the mean time I managed to take them out of the dolls house and to put them in my knitting bag. And because I am one of the participants in the Vintage Socks swap it occurred to me it could be a benefit to order the book . And I am glad I did, it is full of beautiful sock patterns. I also tried out to dye with Indigo. Before I believed it was a very difficult dye to use, now I know better. Dyeing with Indigo is pretty easy to do and a bit magical. In the vat the wool (and dye) are a greenish yellow, the horrid shade of this colour. As soon as the wool comes out of the vat and is exposed to the air, the colour changes into blue. The large skein is a Scottish Highland pure new wool, the smaller skein is 75% BFL/ 25% nylon.

I had 4 skeins, each approximately 60-70 grams, of hand spun undyed wool. Excellent to try out some natural dyeing. In the past I promised myself only to dye with natural dyes after I had done a workshop. But the workshop has still to be done. I bought some books instead, browsed the internet for more information and to buy some ingredients. After that I dyed the hand spun. I still don't know whether it was a bit disappointing or not. On the other hand it was the very first time to use natural dyes, so there is still a lot to discover and learn. The wool is of unknown sheep. The lady who did spin it has five sheep, but did not tell me the breed and I did not ask for it. The wool is a bit rough, I am planning to knit Dory a skirt out of it.... albeit she is currently very picky with what to wear and, above all, what not . Unfortunately hand knit items are in her prohibited list. Left to the right: dyed in madder root (I used only a little), annatto seed second dyebath, annatto seed ...