Dyeing...

After the reed blossom natural dye I went for another dye plant that was in my stock for almost two years. I collected these birch leaves on midsummer day in 2013.
Only 30 grams of leaves gave an intense yellow on two 100g skeins of DK yarn.

The yarn was mordanted first with alum, while the leaves were allowed to boil a bit for dye extraction.
Then I poured the mordanting water into the dye bath and hung only a section of each skein into the simmering "birch leave tea". After a little while, I added more of the skein and more and more... In the end I put the whole skeins into the bath and let it cool over night.
Then the skeins were removed and washed.
Into this almost exhausted dye bath I gave a spoon full of alum, heated and let a part of a skein of sock yarn hang into it, heated it up for a short time and then let it stand for a day (at room temperature). It also got a pretty soft yellow... I'm planning to use that skein for some indigo dyeing.

Apart from plants I was also pretty productive with acid dyes and tried myself at kettle dyeing...
The roving was immersed completely in a pot of water. Different dyes were added in different sections of the pot. The dyes spread a bit and talk to each other.... as a result I got very harmonic colors that fit together so well.

For the following two rovings I only used Ashford hot pink, blue and yellow (no black or other colors). So beautiful!

left: BFL wool, right: Merino 16 mic

And as I am showing dyed stuff already.... the following was dyed already some months ago, but I never showed them. Pure Tussah silk and merino/silk blends. They were dyed using the handpainting method, wrapped in foil and steamed to fix the dyes.

When am I going to spin all that??!!

** Epona **

By the end of 2014 I took the Craftsy online class "Shawlscapes" which is taught by Stephen West.  I really enjoyed this class, Stephen is such a funny instructor and I had to watch all the lessons at once!

In the class you learn how to design your own top-down shawl with Stephen West's techniques. He talks about how to use increases (yo, m1r/m1l, ktbl etc.) and distribute them in order to achieve certain shawl shapes (triangle, long wingspan, semi-circular, shawls with more than one "point", etc.). How to play with color, how to go crazy and improvise a bit. And finally there are a lot of helpful tricks that you can use also in other projects than shawls.

Well, after watching this, of course I wanted to design a shawl. And I wanted to make it for my sister!
I took notes of it too, but I'm not sure I could write a pattern out of them :-P
I'm not even sure if I could knit it again to be exactly the same... :- S


Here it is:

The yarn is  Merino 150 from Lang Yarns (Sport weight) and I used 4.0 mm needles.

I did "double increases" at the beginning and end of the row to get a wider wingspan. In the beginning I used yarn-overs and decreases to create this wavy "peacock" pattern. Afterwards there are some garter stitch sections, along with intuitive color changes to create the stripes. The shawl was finished by a section of seed stitch followed by two ribs of garter stitch in contrasting colors, and finally a pretty i-cord bindoff (was my first time, and I loved it!)

The finished scarf got the name "Epona".

I like to generate random names using this website here: *click* 

When it came up with the name "Epona", I thought it couldn't be more perfect. My sister is the biggest horse lover I know :)

I also made some fingerless gloves for my sister, to match the shawl, but forgot to take pictures of them...

They are in the lavender purple shade and are finished with a dark brown i-cord like the shawl.

 

Here's the link to the shawl in my ravelry projects. If you also watched "Shawlscapes" and got inspired, I would be happy to hear from you and see the shawl that you produced :)

Wave after Wave - Swap/KAL in the chantimanou ravelry group

Quite some time has passed without a blog post. I had the pleasure to spend my Christmas/ New Year holidays in Brazil where my boyfriend lives and where it is summer right now.

During the 12 hour flight from Zurich to Sao Paulo I cast on the "Wave after Wave". I could use the flight very efficiently and finished about 3/4 of the scarf :)
I did 11 repeats using 5.5 mm needles. The pattern is super easy and perfect for knitting "out of home", but at the same time, knitting the waves using short rows is a lot of fun, so that I didn't even use the on-board entertainment system on the plane :-P

Here are the pictures of my finished scarf! After blocking, it became a lot longer than I originally intended... it measures 206 cm x 20 cm. Perfect to wrap twice around the neck!

I have written a post about the yarns that I spun for that project here. The thread about this swap on ravelry (where you can admire the projects of all the other participants) is here.

Spindled Leftie

This week I have been a good girl and finished many things :)

Here is another UFO that landed this week:

It is a "Leftie"(pattern from Martina Behm). The pattern originally calls for Fingering weight yarn, but as this is not my favorite weight of yarn, I decided to go a bit thicker :) The yarn that i had spun had about 9wpi  (somewhere between DK and worsted weight) and I knit with 4.5mm needles.

The colorful yarn was originally spun during the Tour de Fleece 2014, it was a leftover from a roving that I once dyed for a different project.

It was only 43 grams (97 meters), but I loved the colors so much that I wanted to turn them into something big.

Then I found the Leftie pattern and thought it was perfect!

For the "background" yarn I decided to spin a Merino/Babycamel mixture (50:50) in natural color.

And as I was so happy with my new spindle from the famous German wood turner Matthes, I decided to spin everything on the spindle.

That took a while.... so here some photos of the progress :)

I love the result! It's so decorative!

Bulky Mini Poncho

And another update today :)

This is what I made from my first handcarded batts using my new drum carder...

 100% fine Merino wool, dyed in a rainbow gradient by myself

then carded, first each color separately, then blended to get a striped batt

These are the batts, which were spun into thick slubby singles

The bobbins before plying

And the yarrrrrrn, 2ply colors a bit random... 

And this is what I knit out of it: a cute mini poncho with strings for size adjustment.

Below are two pictures of me showing to different ways to wear it:

The wonderful texture of the knitted fabric

Soo this was a quite fast project compared to others, as it was spun very thick (100g, 216 m) and then knit with 10 mm knitting needles. I cast on 66 stitches and knit in the round until I almost ran out of yarn. Then I added one row of purl, on row of *k4, yo, k2tog* and another row of purl stitches. Afterwards I bound off loosely. Through the holes created in the yarn over round, I put a string with two wooden beads. Finished!

Hope you like it and it inspires you. Knitting bulky is so much fun!

Winter Swap/KAL Chantimanou Group

Ohh I didn't write a blog post about this yet? So it is about time.

This project is a fiber swap including a KAL (knit along) in the chantimanou group on ravelry.
Every participant sends 100 grams of dyed fibers to another spinner and keeps 100 grams of the same colorway for herself. In this way you receive 100 grams of "random" surprise fibers that shall be spun and then used together in the same project with the fibers that were kept for yourself. Everyone will have a different combination, and we will all knit the same shawl in the end.

The shawl knitting pattern is Wave After Wave which has been designed by group member Cordula just for this swap (it is available to other knitters too, of course).

So here are some pictures of the progress so far...

These are my 2x 100g fiber (100% Polwarth). I dyed it myself and called the colorway "Ubatuba", which is a coastal town in Brazil where my boyfriend lives.

My cat Leila was quite sad that one of the two braids had to leave us...

... but not for long, because soon afterwards we received a huuuuuge box that looked very promising.

The contents of the box! 100g Merino/Soja dyed by The Spinning Cat accompanied with wonderful gifts - chocolate, tea and a candle :)

This is the combination of the gifted fibers together with my own. I like their contrast, and how they still go very well with each other. 

Now some pictures of the spinning process... :)

I have finished spinning and plying the yarn, and the balls are waiting to be knit into the shawl.

I am planning to cast on during my 12hour flight to Brazil, which is on Sunday.