A weird pink

I ordered this strange pink wool because it was on special and it's quite a pretty colour.

Unfortunately it has a strange feel - even though it's 80% wool it feels quite plasticky. And odd. And lumpy. And when I did the pull test it came apart far too easily, so no good on a warp. However a bit of strangeness won't stop me weaving with something, so I used leftover pink and grey on the warp and the pink stuff on the weft. It turned out all right.

It's quite solid, and would probably be quite warm to wear. 

But that only took two of the eight balls, so I made another one with the badly-dyed cotton (blue, white and purple). I thought if I set the fine cotton very far apart it might be interesting, with less blue and more pink.

That certainly worked - you can hardly tell the warp is blue at all. And it was very quick and easy to weave. But not particularly attractive. It doesn't have much drape.

My Dad left this morning on a six am flight; ten hours ago so he should be home again in a couple of hours. I always swore it was twelve hours from my house to his house no matter how you do it - Canberra to Sydney to Auckland to Tauranga - none of them are long flights but there's always lots of sitting around and waiting. I went in to work for a couple of hours this morning for various things that couldn't be done before I left on leave, then grocery shopping this afternoon (which I HATE, there is something about supermarkets that destroys my will to live), but I did squeeze in some wool dyeing and two loads of washing, so there's that. What excitement will tomorrow bring?

A week and a half has sped by

I did not mean to go ten days without blogging! There has just been things happening - nothing out of the ordinary - but things nonetheless, and time has passed. Let's see, I am now on several weeks' leave which is going to be wonderful. My job goes very quiet after Parliament is dissolved, so it's  a good time to take a big chunk of holiday. Except that the week before Easter I was still working, and of course racing around making sure that I had finished everything up and left it all in an acceptable state.

And then Easter itself was back to the National Folk Festival! It was wonderful, again. I went every day, caught up with friends, stayed a bit later a couple of days, and turned up early for the others. This band was very good, although this was Sunday morning and I think they were slightly hungover. Folkies. 

The weather was gorgeous and warm for autumn, except for a big rainstorm that blew in Monday afternoon. The bunting in the trees always lets me know I'm back at the folkie for a happy time. It really was great, and I left the family and my Dad fending for themselves - including number one son who had a seventeenth birthday in there somewhere! How very grown up - he had some friends over for pizza and a movie but it didn't matter that I wasn't there (in fact I don't think I was invited).

Then the second week of school holidays - including Anzac Day which is a public holiday here too - so I took Dad and number one son down to the beach for a couple of days to get a bit of sea air. And get the boy off the computer. He wasn't super happy, but came along, and I think had a good time. He won more yahtzee than either his mother or grandfather so that's got to be good.  And this week it's back to school (them) and work (husband)  and New Zealand (Granddad) .... and I can figure out what boring domestic tasks to start on first with all this time off!

Bright dyes!

I took my new colour dyes that I bought (gunmetal grey and sun yellow), and dyed, and wove them. And I think they look fantastic together! Who would have thought it ... but it is super bright. Like the yellow is almost fluorescent.



The warp is the heavier 8 ply from Bendigo, with a bit of the lighter merino blend, and the weft is just the merino blend. Which is such a beautiful wool, it almost feels silky.



And if one bright scarf isn't enough, I had left over yellow so put it with pink! Such pink. The warp pink is a dyed one that I had left over from the sock yarn pink and grey one, and the weft pink is a purchased one from Ice, that is lovely and soft but is far too fragile to use on the warp. I pulled it and it came apart with hardly any pressure at all, so no good for the warp. But isn't it pretty, and so bright!



I'm really fond of both of these. I think I am finding a bit of a voice with the scarves, and what do you know, it's the same solids / simple / brightly coloured voice I have with my quilts. You do you, as my children say to me, in full sarcasm, when I'm being embarrassing.

Sock yarn

I bought some pretty pink and grey self-striping sock yarn (75% wool 25% synthetic) to see how it wove up. First I did just the sock yarn - with stripes on both the warp and the weft.



The stripes on the weft work quite well, but the warp stripes are too far apart to be interesting. The colour repeat would probably be great on socks, but it was too much of each colour on a scarf I thought.



So the next time I used the stripes on just the warp, and did alternate hand-dyed weft rows of pink and grey. I think this is much nicer and more interesting. You still get the random stripes on the length of the scarf but not the great chunks of colour on the weft. Here they are both together, in front of my still-tidy chest of drawers. It's a really nice soft yarn so both scarves are super snuggly.

A high-achievement weekend

To make up for past laziness, I knocked off a pile of random chores on the weekend, helped by beautiful blue skies ... and watching several episodes of Marie Kondo on Netflix on Friday night. I turned out my sock drawer, my undie drawer, my scarves and all my shoes; found three bags of stuff to donate and cleared the top of the chest of drawers. It is all very tidy now (and WILL REMAIN that way, I swear). 

We went to IKEA to buy a couple of plastic tubs so the boys can finally put away their Lego and Dr Who figures. I already put the Beyblades up on the local Buy Nothing group where they went in an instant! I am hopeful of getting number one son to part with the K'nex; I think there are lots of boys who would enjoy it. At IKEA we also got a soft mattress topper for the spare bed, some outdoor furniture stain/oil and a pink breakfast dish to replace my favourite cereal bowl that number two smashed last week. I found the exact same replacement so was very happy, and number two did penance by being penned in the back seat by the mattress topper, and the dog cage that we forgot to take out before we left the house.

Next job was to re-stain the outdoor furniture, which certainly looks much better now. I just did the tops and sides, and will flip it over and do the bottoms after it has all dried. A bit fiddly but quite satisfying.

And I went for the first run in four months which just about killed me. Every bit of my body said "WTF are you DOING" and seized up in protest; so I probably actually ran about ten minutes of the half hour, in maximum three minute bursts. Never mind, I know it will come good, eventually. I am a bit creaky today though. Canberra was very lovely - warm and sunny but an autumn nip in the air and autumn colours on the trees.

Other jobs included failing at making muesli (forgot about it, burnt to a crisp) and failing at clearing the drain in the upstairs hand basin. Actually I did succeed in clearing the drain, where I failed was forgetting that I had tried to clean it with baking soda and vinegar last weekend. So I poured down the super industrial cleaner with massive warnings all over it saying "DO NOT COMBINE WITH OTHER CHEMICALS" and "HIGHLY TOXIC ACID", and then it hit the baking soda residue and started foaming and making a terrifically hideous smell. I bolted - "Suburban Mother Killed in Bizarre Drain Gas Horror" - then went back in half an hour later. The smell took twenty four hours to dissipate but the drain now runs unbelievably well.

More dyeing

This is a really lovely merino/mohair blend that I've been getting from Ice on super special. For some reason no-one wants cream! Except me, because I make it into pretty colours. This yarn is soft and light and beautiful to work with, but I haven't used it entirely on its own yet. So I thought that I would dye up four variegated skeins to just use together. I was aiming for blue and yellow with a bit of green.



This is the before photo - soaked in vinegar and water, spread out on the glad wrap, ready to pour the dyes on.



This is with the dyes poured on - some mingling. I had both the orange/yellow and a different, more yellowy yellow, that I bought. Much nicer shade.



This is after boiling, sitting, rinsing and resting ... it's green! Almost entirely different shades of green with some yellow and some blue. Not what I was after but I'll take it.



It looks a bit muddy in this photo but I think that was the lighting. I've wound it into balls and you can see the yellow and blue more on the ball. On to the weaving ... who knows what it will turn out like! A mystery.

Yet another beach weekend

Unexpectedly, everything at work sorted itself out last week, and rather than being a last minute bunfight it turned out to be very quiet at the end. So I took a half day recreation leave on Friday afternoon and headed down the beach. It was rather fun to stop in Braidwood for lunch and poke around the cafes and shops instead of barrelling straight through.  I even got a walk in before it got dark ... although the storms were brewing. There were enormous electrical storms and heavy rain all through the night. 

Saturday wasn't much better, so I stayed indoors most of the day and sewed myself a pair of pants and read. I finished a biography of George Orwell (long, detailed, but surprisingly interesting) and a biography of Edgar Allan Poe (short, not very detailed, but interesting because his life was a TRAINWRECK). Mostly what I learned was that if you want to support your family financially don't become a writer, and tuberculosis is an awful hideous illness that cut down whole families over agonising decades. 

There was a patch between rainstorms where I went for a nice walk, but I wasn't tempted to swim, even though the water temperature was quite warm. The pants turned out quite well although they were a bit of an experiment - a 'wearable muslin' where you use fabric that you aren't especially fond of, but that you will wear, before trying again with the good stuff. I have some good stuff in mind so will make them again.

Sunday was much sunnier but also much colder as the temperature dropped into true autumn. The snowfields got their first dusting and I reckon you could feel it where I was! Despite this lovely blue sky I did not swim. The main beach had the nippers in training and quite a few surfers, but not many fat middle-aged ladies. We are a cowardly bunch.