The Wool Palace

What I did on my day off

Today was my turn to run the craft activity at the village youth club.  I wanted to take along some completed examples, so I spent the afternoon turning some of this

into these.

 

It was such a sunny day I was convinced everyone would be off outdoors playing frisbee or football but in the end I had 8 out of the 13 attending sitting down quietly for 45 minutes.  Now the village is overflowing with felted bead bracelets.  Of course, my children were amongst the 5 not interested in taking part.

Roving from Wingham Woolwork at last year's Woolfest.  Felted bead instructions from Knitty.

Have a good weekend.  I'm booked in for driving test mark two on Monday morning, so think good thoughts for me.

Flower power

I have a self-induced headache today - too much red wine at the pub quiz last night.  Consequently today has not been the most productive of days.  There are dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and the minutes of last week's Parish Council meeting are still untyped. 

What I have been doing is indulging in a little retail therapy, via the internet of course.  I'm in a bit of a sewing mood at the moment, so my various shopping baskets have been filled with fabric and a few books.  I'm hoping things arrive before the weekend so I have some time to play.

I made the pincushion yesterday in preparation.  The tutorial was on WhipUp sometime last year and I've been meaning to do one for ages.  Very quick and easy - maybe I should have saved it for today and done the minutes yesterday...

The goose is getting fat

It's getting closer!

The tree is up, Christmas cards are starting to roll in.  We have the village carol service this evening and Sam and Josie break up from school tomorrow.

Christmas knitting has been done, in sporadic bursts.

Bedsocks in Calmer, as requested by my mother-in-law.  I made a similar pair last year but unfortunately one got lost while she was in hospital.  If I have enough yarn left, I should knit a third and then she'd have two pairs.  I used a basic top down sock pattern, 56 stitches on 4mm needles and added in a little cable down each leg.  Amazingly, the short row heels came out OK - maybe the thicker yarn helps to hide the holes?

I have one pair of socks left to finish.

Men's socks, but just plain stocking stitch so it shouldn't be too hard to get them done.  The yarn is Lana Grossa that I got on sale at the last Get Knitted open day.

I have a hat to do for my sister as well, but the yarn I ordered for that hasn't arrived yet has just been delivered by the postman.  It will be a quick knit as it is a bulky yarn so that shouldn't be a problem to finish in time.

And that, I am happy to say, is the sum total of my Christmas knitting.  Good job too, as there is plenty of other stuff to be getting on with around here.

And now, I would like to finish this post with some shameless boasting.  Those who don't want to hear, stop reading now.

My latest Christmas crafting, with which I am inordinately pleased.

A wreath, made by me, all materials gathered from our garden.  I should have taken a photo before I put it on the door, but I was anxious to see whether it would stay together.  I've never made a wreath before, so have probably made all sorts of wreath faux pas, but as long as it stays together for the next week I'm happy.

Right, boasting over, I'm off to make a shopping list of Christmas food...

Working from home

By rights this should be the post where I say, 'I know I haven't posted much but I have been knitting' and then proceed to dazzle you with a multitude of photos of my fantastic projects.  However the sad truth is that I have not been knitting.  Not true, I have been doing a very small amount but as it's a present I can't show you.

Instead I shall attempt to dazzle you with pictures of other things I have been doing.

Assembling supplies for Back Tack, which will be put together this weekend.  I won't be using all the buttons, just 5 of them.

I did some more dyeing.

This was done by sprinkling the powders directly onto the submerged yarn.  I used red, blue and a smidge of brown, resulting in mainly purple with intense patches of blue and red.

For this one I squirted the dye directly onto the wet skein and then steamed it.  I used a mix of dark brown, red and lilac and I love how it turned out.  I'm keeping this one for myself.  Who knows, I might even knit something with it...

It must have been something you said

It was a rainy weekend at the Wool Palace.  The perfect excuse to stay in and get crafty.  Plus, Toby was away so there was no one to complain about my spreading my wool and things around - except the children of course but I'm bigger than them so there's nothing they can do.  Ha ha!

First I assembled the supplies

Then I remembered that I was going to ask Toby to make me a warping board.  Since he had already left I cobbled one together with a piece of MDF we had lying around (the joys of being married to a decorator). 

After that things got a bit involved and I forgot to take any more photos.  I think I need a bit more practice in mixing the colours of the acid dyes.  I was aiming for red, pink, purple and blue but I wasn't happy with the red or the blue so I overdyed the whole thing with a pale purple afterwards.

I still think the blue is too bright and I've ended up with two reds but for a first attempt it's not too bad.  It needs reskeining properly but I quite liked how it looked in the (very brief bit of) sunlight today.

I need to work on getting more dye into the yarn I think.  The blue seemed to take quite well, the purple less so.  The purple was the first colour I put on so maybe I got a bit more heavy handed as the process went on?

Of course, the children wanted to get in on the act as well.  I wasn't too keen on involving them in the acid dye lark.  We live in a small flat and the potential for spills was just too great.  A quick trip to Woolies for some plain white t-shirts and I let them get busy with marbles, rubber bands and some tins of Dylon cold water dye.

An hour later we had a couple of T-shirts just right for summer days on Cornish beaches.

Looks like colour preferences run in the family...