Thursday, March 5, 2015

black beans and a new shawl

Spring is in the air.... and somehow i always want to dye something when that happens...
Last week i was cleaning the cupboards and i found a bag of black beans, and they are wonderfull to dye with. You can get blues, greys, or purples with them.
So i got a big glas vase, filled it with the black beans and let them soak for two days...








Looks a bit weird doens't it.

I thought i still had some alum in the shed, but it was nowhere to be found. So finally i went to a shop in the city and they sold small bags of alum. The lady in the store told she also had big jars of them. It turned out to be much cheapier to buy a big jar. So i guess i have to do some more natural dyeing this season!

Yesterday i mortanted the some fiber (not sure what breed of sheep it's from) with the alum.



and spooned the reddish brown soaking water from the beans and put it in my dyeing pan, warning, bean dyeing doens't involve heating!
Normally i would have put it in a big glass jar, but last autumn a broke the jar, so now everything has to go in my dyeing pan.


This was late in the afternoon.


And just left it there, this morning it looked quite good!

I will leave it for another day...


A while ago i showed you the skein of madeline tosh i got from my knittingfriend who visited the USA, she bought it in a yarn shop in Washington. It's tosh sock in the colorway modern fair isle.
A long time ago i was gifted a pattern from ravelry, Forest Beauty. It could work with my yardage, the pattern is well written and easy to follow. After 5 repeats of the body part i used 35 grams, so i decided to add another repeat. When i got to the decreasing part i was a bit unsure if i had enough yarn left. 



It was a very close call, and i did finish with only a few centimers left!!

After blocking it turned out a very lovely shawl, nice and soft!!







And i got a great model for the shawl!




I really enjoyed this knit, the yarn is sooo soft, and has a nice shine.



Right now i'm working on a pair of socks, with an old pattern called coffee bean.
It's quite easy, and looks fun!

The pattern is only for rows and easy to memorise
Row 1 : knit 2 purl 2
Row 2 : knit 1 yoke knit 1 purl 2
Row 3: knit 3 purl 2
Row 4: slip one stitch knit 2 pass the slipped stitch over, purl 2

And you just keep repeating those 4 rows.


i have no idea what yarn it is... i found it labelless in my stash.

You probably already know Arne and Carlos designed a sockyarn for Regia. Based on fair isle patterns. I've read about it a couple of weeks ago, and there would be limited available. And boy it sold out fast!! I looked at a lot of webshops here in the Netherlands. But it was sold out everywhere. And then there was a message on facebook from one of my friends, she bought some at a shop. It turned out that lady only had 50 grams balls available, but she did had the colorway i wanted and she was willing to send them to me. So finally i can try this yarn, i'm really looking forward to it...



have a wonderfull day!!


2 comments:

  1. Ooohh wat leuk allemaal en wat is je shawl toch mooi. Mooi patroon. en die sokkenwol is ook zo mooi. Woensdag even in het echie bewonderen allemaal.

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  2. ERg mooi en wat snel allemaal - leuk die Madelintosh en wat je ermee hebt kunnen maken!

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