Hodgepodge

october view
How the view from my office window distracts me from matters at hand.

What, no plant dyeing post this Monday? Well, yes, I do have a couple in my drafts, but they are rather dull and not very urgent, so I thought I’d find a time where I push the lot out at once “final natural dyeing week at the colour cottage 2013”, like. I do have a few more dye jobs waiting too, but as I’d mentioned, I needed a break, because I feel no urgency whatsoever.

No worries, in fact my entire first page of wordpress posts list are drafts! Surely I can find something else to talk about, right? Except they all pretty much require me to do things that I can show and tell. The knitting, the coughcough tapestries, the WIP paintings, the daily(?) postcards etc. etc. Lots of sketching/designing going on behind the curtains though.

yarn sample spinning
Yarn sketch showing how I do not intend to spin this fiber. 2×2 cable.
dried leaf
What happens to leaves encased in acrylic painting medium?

There is in fact some knitting. I’m almost, well sort of, back to the same place where I frogged my blue reversible sweater, now in a longer, slightly wider version with I hope a better looking raglan. And I’ve decided to first knit a hat in some old leftover yarns from my stash (needs busting anyway) before I commit some of my handspun, as I’ve never knit a hat before, so sizewise it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s something to be said for small items like this, though. You get it over and done with pretty quick compared to sweaters. Unfortunately I go through a lot of the latter and don’t really use accessories much. I may reconsider of course: The hat looks tiny on the needles. If I end up having to knit it three times, not much time is saved. Or I suppose it could become a Thing-finder pouch, to have something to show for it.

knitted hat wip sweater

I “accidentally” ordered some more random library books instead of reading the ones on my shelf/ordering from my study list. I did have an ambition to order only one or two at a time, to take my time reading them and perhaps remember more of what they say. Problem is, sometimes they take almost a year, at other times I get 10 in a week. So I need to finish these and then try to be more systematic with my reading, so it doesn’t take away my crafting time because I have a deadline. Twice I can renew – sometimes. And only if nobody else is in line, so I sometimes have just 30 days for a whole pile. Fine for novels, I can do one per day, but the others I need to put down regularly.

books

Then I thought I did have some really exciting news to share with you, but right now I’m almost afraid to jinx and postpone it even more if I say it out loud. An exercise in patience for sure. Going on three weeks now… And I’m not even superstitious! I need to learn to not agonize over other people’s tardiness and supposed intentions. Do you master calm in the face of “bad” excuses? I seem to be getting better at seeing the logical side of it and not just fret, you could say I stand aside and watch myself do it for a bit. 😉 So while it still distracts me I seem to be getting over it faster, even when things happen in droves, as they are prone to do.

october garden belle de boskoop
I really should be making apple sauce before we have another frost.

Blandet landhandeldanish

Denne mandag er der ingen plantefarveindlæg, dvs. jeg har et par stykker, men de er kedelige, sÃ¥ jeg regner med at udgive dem i en bunke. “Sidste farverunde i 2013-uge”. Jeg har nogen flere ting jeg vil farve med, men jeg trænger stadig til en pause kan jeg mærke.

Heldigvis har jeg jo masser af blog-kladder, en hel side fuld. Nå, ikke, de handler allesammen om noget der ikke er færdigt til at vise frem. Der sker en masse forsøg og skitser bag kulisserne, men mere om det senere. Lidt spinding, lidt collage og maling og forskelligt andet.

Strikket lidt har jeg ogsÃ¥, sÃ¥ jeg kan blive færdig med min ret/vrang omvendetrøje som blev en anelse for smal og kort men for stor i ærmegabene. Nu næsten tilbage hvor jeg var nÃ¥et til sidste Ã¥r, og forhÃ¥bentlig ogsÃ¥ en lidt pænere raglankant, jeg fik eksperimenteret lidt for meget sidst. Det virkede i teorien som jeg ønskede, det var bare ikke særlig kønt! Og sÃ¥ forsøger jeg mig med en demo-hue i restegarn – er lidt spændt pÃ¥ den, for den ser godt nok bette ud pÃ¥ rundpinden. MÃ¥ske det i virkeligheden er en tingfinderpung?

Jeg er “kommet til” at bestille flere tilfældige biblioteksbøger, sÃ¥ nu har jeg igen travlt med at læse faglitteratur pÃ¥ deadline, det holder virkelig ikke. Jeg mÃ¥ prøve at holde fokus og ikke bestille sÃ¥ meget og kun fra min officielle liste, sÃ¥ jeg bedre kan fordybe mig. Romaner sluger jeg hurtigt, men fakta kræver at man lægger det fra sig og fordøjer i ny og næ.

Og ellers har jeg gået et par uger og ventet på at fortælle en spændende nyhed, men den lader vente på sig. Selvom jeg er blevet bedre til at træde et skridt til siden, så lader jeg mig stadig gå lidt på når ting går i hårknude uden min indflydelse og jeg er i tvivl om den anden parts intentioner. Er du god til at sige pyt og fordrive tiden med noget andet imens?

My week in images

Making this post has made me realize two things: A. my life is very dull and onesided B. My mind is even narrower because of all the things I don’t think to take pictures of. I also realized B is perhaps just an excuse to not admit completely to A. I obviously can’t count either.

I don’t mean dull as in being bored or not doing many things, which I obviously do if you’ve been following along, but they do tend to revolve around the same. I seem to mostly be looking a plants and the sky and nothing much besides! Of course, that’s what we’ve got to look at out here. I need to drive to the “city” (18 km) for some bits and bobs but most importantly more hydrosulphite to make blue, but I never thought of taking pix there. We usually just go to the mall, quickly scoop up what we need and head back home. Not really worth looking at.

How often do you do extraordinary things?

Bits and bobs

Not much going on here, but I did pop some of the solid hexagons I’ve knitted into a dyepot for a bit more pow. Should have diluted it a tad more, as some of them came out black! Of course being superwash, they grew to gigantic proportions when wet, so I tossed them in a bag and into the dryer. Wanna see what happens when you do that?

hex02

I’d meant to tie-dye or paint some of them but felt too distracted. Instead I did a couple of micro skeins with mixed leftovers. There goes “subtle” for the blanket colourscheme! And I have a couple of other ideas to try out…

hex03

Otherwise I’ve managed to finish the sleeves on my two “endless” sweaters, meaning they are in fact DONE. And since it’s never ending sweater summer, I may actually get to wear them… The orange is a cotton/alpaca blend on 4 mm and the blue is Wollmeise lace-yarn on 3mm. And no, the fronts don’t meet up and aren’t supposed to.

orange3

wollmeise02

Sweater SAL 3

shettie5

It’s knitweek at the cottage, so I finally managed to assemble my handspun sweater. Just have to weave in all the ends etc on this thing. I’m no grand knitwear designer, but it’s warm. I knit a double collar with silk to protect my dainty neck from scratchies.

Now for the second Shetland project, for which I need to dye more wool first, then spin.

Spindeforenings SAL del 3

Fiks og færdig pÃ¥nær et par løse ender – ikke sÃ¥ køn, men varm, med silke i halsen for at beskytte mit sarte skind.

Sweater SAL 2

I finally spun a skein of each colour for my long sweater, I still have to spin some moorit and purple, but at least I can begin test knitting. The grey skein is straight off the wheel and hasn’t been washed yet, so it looks a bit flat compared to the others.

allshetties

≈ Leave a Comment

Sweater SAL del 2

Der sker da lidt, omend langsomt med Spindeforeningsprojektet. Der er nu spundet 200 g rødorange, 150 g sortbrun, 100 g moorit, 100 g lilla og 150 g grå. Jeg har til 200 g af hver, men jeg kan jo ligeså godt komme i gang med at strikke og så spinde efter behov/hen ad vejen. Det grå fed er helt frisk fra tvinning og ikke vasket, derfor ser det en anelse fladt ud, men der skulle fotograferes mens solen kiggede frem.