Bits and Pieces

It's been an odd week, but a busy one.  We've had a lot of rain -thankfully rain and not nearly as much snow - but so much rain that it's just been puddling, with standing water all over the place. It's been quite funny watching the chooks decide whether they thought the puddles or the snow was the lesser evil.  Most decided wading was better than the snow - funny birds.

I finally rinsed out the solar dyed fibre experiment .  Well, mainly rinsed out.  The excess dye just kept coming and I was starting to be concerned about fibre felting.   The colours in the photo are just a tad more saturated than in real life.   I'll have to do more research into Lac recipes and how to get red instead of purple.  I can get those purples with Logwood and Cochineal as well.  Good reds are much more difficult to find.  The Madder though, yielded a nice red colour with the solar dyeing.

I've started quilting my daughter's quilt.  The centre log cabin blocks are stitched in the ditch.  The bulk bamboo batting only had washing instructions, (wash after quilting) and no quilting instructions.  From doing a bit of web research, it seems that a number of the bamboo battings need to be quilting no further than 2-4 inches apart.   I decided to go with the 2 inches, just to be safe.   It was easy with the blue quilt as all the stitch lines were 2 inches apart.   The wonky log cabin blocks are fine as they are narrower than 2 inches, but the wonky stars in the corners needed a little more fussing with as the odd shapes have somewhat less equal dimensions.   It's going to take a little longer to quilt this one up, but it's still a lot faster than hand quilting.

The cat is undicerning about what quilt he sleeps on.  He did however choose the quilted blue quilt over the plain log cabin top.  Once the layers were together, it no longer mattered to him, which quilt he occupied.    He seems to like sleeping on the treadle sewing machine when it's open.  He can survey the room easily and still gets the heat from the woodstove!

I wound off a new warp for some tea towels with 2/8 cotton.   I'd been dithering over 3 different projects.  I printed out the specs for 2 of them and decided on project number 3.  I proceeded to wind the warp for project number 1.   It's not so bad, but of course my excitement to quickly dress the loom has slightly faded.  Mainly though, I realize that getting the quilt finished has to take priority.  Once it's done, I have several little project bags to make as presents and then I can dress the loom.at my leisure.

The dark blue fibre which I've been spinning on the Mazurka is almost finished and the bobbin is just about full.  I thought I had another lot of the dark blue, but all the other blues I can find are substantially lighter in colour.  I may  ply this with a lighter blue of a similar weight.    We'll have to see what I can come up with.  It's a little to fine to ply back on itself.  I find that with the singles are very fine, self plying tends to end up with tangles unless one is very careful.

In other news, I may never get a chance to keep my new white mittens clean.  I've put them in a safe spot and cannot find them anywhere!  I'm quite sad about that.