Garden update and weekend dyeing - dyeing with a Y

 I feel like I've hardly done anything in the past few weeks.  I was scheduling classes and taking registrations for those classes for a Victoria Day weekend event.   The weekend came, I spent some time with friends I've not seen in a couple of years due to Covid.  A huge storm came through and flattened all the sunshades on the camping field, and a couple of modern dome tents.   We were in a cabin, so just had to deal with no hydro for 30 hours.   It came back on the evening before we had to pack up and leave!

Now I'm finishing up my class on Spinning to Weave, which is next Saturday.   It's a 2 hour virtual class.  I find virtual classes so much more intense than in person classes, so being over prepared is taking up all my time right now.  I'm not normally nervous about this stuff, but this time, yup, just a little.   All this has taken up my time to weave, spin and sew, which I'd normally have, which is making me feel unproductive, even though I know it's just a different productivity.   I like seeing a finished project.

My son got me this lovely blueberry plant for Mother's Day.   We went to a different nursery and all the plants were so much nicer than elsewhere.   He also added not one, but two gooseberry bushes.   Both were red gooseberries, but different varieties.  One is early and the other is mid-season and supposed to bear heavy crops of berries.   We'll see in a couple of years when they really start to give fruit. 

 I'm looking forward to those gooseberries, but also the blueberries.   We planted a few blueberry bushes a couple of years ago, but mostly they haven't really done well.   They were very small to begin with though as we hadn't found this nursery yet.   I will need to protect them in the fall because one had a bit of bunny damage.  They ate the tender tips off the bushes.    

This is the first Allium of the season.  I do love the deep purple flowers that are so early.  This one popped up earlier than the rest.  It's also in an area where hubby stacks the wood he uses for making maple syrup, so it must be hardy.

 Only about 4 more weeks of hockey!  Yay!   Enough said about that, but really hockey games shouldn't run until almost July.  Just sayin'!

On the camping weekend, we had some natural dye classes.   The pink yarn is from a madder exhaust dye bath.   The blue is from an Indigo fructose vat.   I've never had the uneven dyeing from Indigo before.    I'm not sure why it happened.   Yarn was soaked before it went into the vat.  I did use several dips and having never done a chemical fructose vat, don't know if it had anything to do with colour stripping from it as the vat became exhausted.   We really used up the entire vat and there was no colour left.   The blue yarn is a skein of 430 yards of BFL superwash with nylon, which I spun up for sock yarn.

 

May - may there be no more snow, may it stop raining, may the lawnmower start up because the grass is growing!

These socks are a pair.   There was no repeat in the sock yarn!   There was one which at first looked close, but it was missing one of the colour repeats, so after much fussing, I just kept on knitting.  They are fun though and definitely bright and colourful.   The colourway was called flame.  They were nice to knit up, and fairly fast.   I used a square heel, also called a Dutch heel.  It doesn't fit me quite as nicely as the flap and gusset heel, but it seems faster and more simple to knit.  Once the socks are on my feet for a couple of minutes, I can't tell the difference, so I consider that a win.  

I knit another pair of socks after this one, but despite
checking the dye lots on two skeins, they are noticeably (at least to me) different shades and I'm still ticked off about that.  Since they aren't planned differences, I kind of expect the reds and browns to be a bit closer in colour than just similar.

After two pairs of chaos socks, one which didn't match sort of on purpose and one that didn't match due to dye lot issues, I decide to play around with some buttons.  I have a lot of odd bits and bobs left from my crazy quilting days.  I grabbed some plastic and metal rings and started making some Dorset buttons.  The first two too a bit of time and effort because I'd been using 2/8 cotton.  I learned a lot though and that is what I'd use if I couldn't find the appropriate linen thread if I were making reproduction buttons.  However, I was just making fun buttons, so I dragged out the crazy quilting threads and started experimenting.  Not all of them worked, but I was trying to see what threads worked and what didn't.  So embroidery thread covers well, but you need to reduce the strands used, as you go down in button ring mould sizes.  Rayon threads are very shiny and super slippery.  That slipperyness causes the threads to not lay nicely or to pack in properly.  They weren't fun to use.  Perle cotton was nice.   Weirdly, some cheap 2 ply embroidery cotton worked so very nicely on the larger rings. 

Making these buttons works nicely for keeping my hands busy in the evening.  This means when DH has a game on, or is watching something gory on the tv, I have something to occupy myself with.   He's finally getting around to watching Game of Thrones and I can't tell you how many socks and how many of these buttons I've made while they kill off most of the main characters and all of the extras, in flaming, bloody battles.

Off topic - a few years ago, a guild member took me to a fibre arts group meeting in another town.   I was told they were welcoming and friendly.  However, because I'd brought a spinning wheel and some bits of roving with me, rather than a weird and funky arty project,  they were all rather cool, until I told them that yes, I did crazy quilting.  They they were a bit friendlier.  There was a drum carder set up in the room, and was told that I could use it.  So I blended some of my roving together to make this gorgeous fuchsia batt and proceeded to spin it.   Then I was told that it must have been from an indie dyer they knew.  When I told them I'd just blended it, they looked at me like I was an idiot, called me a liar and ignored me the rest of the afternoon.   It was hilarious as I watched them pat each on on the back for some of the iffiest projects I'd ever seen, but that they had no idea you could take multiple colours of fibre and card them together for optical colours.  I didn't go back but every time I think of or see a crazy quilt, or the threads I'd used to decorate them, it brings back that particular memory.

Yes, the rain seems to have finally stopped, but the promised sunshine is nowhere to be seen yet!