Simple dolls and the start of spring colours.

We had some glorious weather in early March and the crocuses started to bloom.  Not these ones though, but some others.   They were sort of small and pale in colour,  but very early due to the weather.   Lots of us were worried that we'd have another of those years when the fruit trees bloomed very early due to unseasonable weather and then the normal frosty weather returned and killed the flowers resulting in little fruit that year.   So the crocuses bloomed and then of course the weather turned cold and snowy.  I thought that was it for my spring flowers.  However a few more patches of crocuses have bloomed and they are quite beautiful.  

This is a doll snake.  Knit on the CSM, it's 5 simple dolls and a cat toy.  They are linked together with waste yarn and knit in a tube.  My ravel cord was being unhappy and breaking, so I ended up using cheap waste yarn and cutting it off instead of reusing it. I'm not happy about that but I was less happy about continuous breakage and tangling.

These are small, simple dolls with no moveable parts.  I almost did some with safety eyes so that I didn't have to embroider them on, but I don't think the knit material is really strong enough to keep them on without pulling out.   Because I want these to be safe for young children, I'll bite the bullet and embroidery wonky faces on them.

The doll on the left is with the instructions I was given.   It makes a doll about 5 inches tall and I think it looks oddly proportioned.  After I made a few of these, I just sort of made up the pattern as I went along and changed the proportions.  After I sewed them up and stuffed them, I realized I like my proportions better.   It as difficult to know until they were finished because it's hard to tell what they'll look like while still in the tube.

It's faster to knit them all together because you don't have to set up the machine each time you make one, just knit them with the waste yarn between them.   This set of dolls will be for gifts.  

  If I can find some more pumpkin coloured yarns, I'll make more pumpkins for Westfield this year.  Finding inexpensive yarns of a suitable weight and colour can be difficult though and as they are donations, I'd rather be able to make more of the items than less for the same dollar amount.   I did get a new bag of stuffing though.   Prices were odd -  relatively expensive for the 8 oz or 16 oz bag, but larger bags were dramatically less per pound.    I could only find 1 bag available though, so ended up with a 64 oz bag for double the price of the 8 oz bag.  How does that make any sense at all?

I'm also trying a new ravel cord.  I got some braided fishing line and will try it.  I'm hoping it doesn't cut the yarn when I pull it out.  It's very strong  and doesn't like my scissors for cutting it, so fingers are crossed.  The ravel cord separates the knitted waste yarns so that you can just zip off the items.   Some people cut their waste yarn but I've not found how to do that particular trick yet and just end up with a useless pile of tiny bits, trying to get the doll, sock etc, off the waste yarn.   It's one of those they're both right answers and you just use the one that works for you.
 

Silk Hanky - Mawata experiment

 I was looking for silk cocoons several years ago to make my own silk hankies, or mawatas and couldn't find affordable whole ones.  They're a bit icky, because they still have the larvae in them.  Of course now, the prices for cocoons are crazy high, plus I couldn't find anything that didn't have to be imported.    Finally with a bit of in from Michael at Worm Spit, I decided to try the cut cocoons for facials.   Since a portion is missing, I figured that I'd need a smaller frame.   It was faster to take my 6 inch continuous weaving frame that my husband made for one of the Olds Master Spinner levels and remove most of the nails. 

Before the cocoons can be stretched, you have to remove the sericin which is the glue that binds the silk filament together.  I simmered them in a solution of soap and sodium carbonate or washing soda.   First, I let them simmer for too long so they were really soggy.  Then I realized I'd used too much soap, so rinsing has been a big job.   The cut cocoons are a bit more delicate than the whole ones so they flatten and get a bit misshapen while simmering.  As well, they have a few more loose, cut threads of silk so a couple of them clung together and had to be separated when I pulled them out of the bath.

They stretched on the frame fairly easily, although they were a bit fussy at times I think due to being cut.  It wasn't onerous though and once I got into the rhythm, it went quite quickly.  I did stretch a few by hand to square up the edges a bit.  I think my original frame had side nails to help with this, but I remember thinking that they were less helpful and made the process a little more difficult.  I left them out this time and had no issues.  It was easier to stretch them on the diagonal first and then to the remaining nails.

Even without a lot of side manipulation to square them up, this was what I woke up to this morning.  A lovely bundle of 12 cocoons to make up a good sized silk hankie.   I was very happy!

I have a few full cocoons to add to the rest of the packet of cut cocoons. I'm prepping for a class which will hopefully happen in May, so people will get to try both the cut cocoons and a couple of the full cocoons, to get the whole buggy experience!  

They can be dyed once this process is finished.  When you dye the whole cocoons, much of the dye is absorbed by the sericin and just washes out once you remove the sericin.   They dye beautifully in the hankie stage though.    These are easy to draft the fibres out, which can then be spun, knitted or used in felting.  I've only spun them though.

A lot of fibre projects getting finished up!

Last weekend's maple syrup production was just over 2 litres.  Not a lot, but enough for a nice taste now and again.  The partial jar was taste tested for my lunch, and then for a batch of Maple Butter Tarts that I made a few days ago.  It's very good.  Of course we haven't had a year where it was awful, so I'm not sure that the pronouncement of very good means very much.   

On a good weekend we can process up to 9, 23 litre buckets (5 gallons) of sap.  The weather on the weekend was ideal, but the temperatures bounced around.  The sap only flows when the temperatures are above freezing, so those cold days, not a single drop of sap dripped into the buckets.  We only had 5  buckets of sap so this was a fairly good result.   We have 7 buckets of sap this weekend to process, despite having 2 days of freezing weather.   We're hoping for 3 1/2 litres from this  It's a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup.  It won't be one of our better years, but we missed the first window and the way the trees are budding, it will be a short season.  Once the trees bud, the sap loses it's sweetness and gets bitter.

I made some socks.  I didn't count in any I made for myself, like the one's I finished from the handspun yarn, which were so very soft and warm!   These are for my kids.  I need to do some finishing of the socks, kitchenering up the toes and sewing in the loose ends.   The three folded pairs on the right are ready to go.  I'm happy that I found a compromise for my daughter who has specified that she only wants black, grey or dark blue socks - boring to knit!  I found the grey and black yarn, the solid blue that I added a coloured heel and toe to make the production interesting and the blue/wine coloured yarn was found in the bottom of a bin.  It's a nice yarn and it's too bad that they don't make it anymore.   

The sparkly shawl is off the loom.  It looks striped  in the photo and in person.  However, I separated all the colours out and wove it up as a plaid or checked pattern.   I separated out the purples and the darker blues and wove them in blocks with the reddish stripe in between.   You can't tell that I went to all that work to do so.   It all just blends in seamlessly.   If I were to use a yarn like this again, even without the sparkle, I might just not separate the colours and use it in the manufactured gradient in the original sequence.  They weren't equal, so the variation would be in there.  If I could find that yarn without the sparkle, I'd  maybe try it see see the difference.    The sparkle is one of the plies of the yarn, which runs the whole of the yarn.   You couldn't really tell that from the skein.   The effect was different depending on the light.   A lot of the time it was as though there were rain drops on it or a layer of frost at other times.  Always though, the darned things sparkled!