Goings on

I've been busy. Outings, innings. Spinning, knitting, dyeing. And as spring continues to be pretty springy, getting more done in the garden, too.

First up, a finished pair of socks. the thicker, Araucania ones, cast on as a speedy knit, and so they proved to be.



I was galloping towards the toe on the second sock on Sunday at the Bear knitters group, when someone said that the finished one seemed to have a pointed toe. Indeed so - I have pointed feet. But it would have been nice if they matched, I suppose. Here we have a prime example of what happens when you don't write down exactly what you do, count rows and follow your own instructions. Yer toesies don't match. But as they feel perfectly ok on, and if anyone is grovelling down by my feet and risk a comment - well, they will get what they deserve! Meanwhile, the Jitterbug pair march on at a slow but steady pace - the picot hem has been completed, the rest will follow.

So, to dyeing.



Yup, more goose shit green. Actually, more of a pale yellow, and deeply unexciting. This was some purchased lichen, that I think I acquired somewhere along the way. I wouldn't bother again.



These two are somewhat better, though.



Logwood and madder. I have to admit, I am being rather underwhelmed with the colours I am getting. I think that me only rarely doing natural dyeing - well, any dyeing - is showing. Utterly gorgeous colours can be obtained from natural dyes, but you have to devote yourself to it, experiment, make it your main focus. And I haven't done that and in truth, don't want to. I remain fascinated by it historically, but as a practitioner, maybe not so much. I'm going to be doing more over the next few seeks, though, and it could be that my opinion will change again, and why not?

More dyeing. I was reading somewhere on teh interwebs about how all the super indie dyers prepare their fibre by "plaiting" it, which I interpreted as chaining it as one would a warp. So, I had me a go. And for an extremely quick and dirty trial, I am very pleased with how it turned out. I used too much dye solution, so my colours merged too much, but I got good penetration with minimal disturbance of the roving. More work to be done. It is going to be a bit of a pain to accomplish though, as I had some help from the young cats as I had rather feared that I might, and they had too much fun. Ah, well.



Look closely, and you will see - two beautiful Spindlewood spindles. A box arrived this morning with my order for Woolfest - lovely spindles, and their packaging was a work of art, too. And not only did they fly here at practically the speed of light, but they managed to whizz straight past Customs!

Speaking of cats....





It still seems strange that there are only three......

The exhibition at Temporary Art Space had changed last week. I shall be interested to see if viewing it again this Thursday will make any difference, but I wasn't as enthused as with the first one. Just my taste, I guess.

There is one very large installation that is a hut made from old radiators that I quite like, particularly getting up close - I took this shot that I like.




The one I did very much like - and I'm not sure if it is for the right reasons? Whatever they might be.... (That sentence has gone somewhere and convoluted itself.) Well, I can't show you it, which is one chad taken form a printed sheet, in a very large frame. That I like of itself. But this is what you get when you photograph it hung, and that I like even more.



You see, I know the chad is there.