Yellow is the new green! Fuchsia rules!

Well, ...., what?!
Story goes like this: I was offered a leftover lot of the magnificent Hunters of Brora Tweed on cones - about 18 kilos of it, and in unspecified colors. I couldn´t wait to get my hands on it.
And even though it is REALLY lovely tweedy yarn, 3.5 kilos of yellow was a bit more than I expected to use for the rest of never.
So, asking around for advice for dyeing large batches of wool into solid colors I decided on the Lanasyn (acid dye) method, as it could be done in your well aired kitchen, and in managable batches.
Purchasing the few ingredients proved fun and very affordable. Dye, vinager, ammonium sulfate and a surfactant (I think) called Lyogen. And an old battered camp-site soup pot with a spigot for emptying (as it contained 30L easily).
And I was ready to go.
By the way, the oven underneath contains the worlds first eco-pilot light. As the mice had moved into the insulation of the oven when we took over the house, I decided to clean it all out due to the smell, including the oven door and all. We now light candles in there in the evenings to bring a cosy feeling to the kitchen.
Back to the dyeing:
The wool had been washed and dried in huge hanks. 100-250g a piece. Here is the first try with a fuchsia on 700g of yellow in a 20L batch.
And things got heated:
But fun! And with that huge amount of water you have plenty of time to control the process and knit in between. Dyeing, cooling, rinsing, spinning, drying, washing and drying again gave this wonderful rich and full color:
I think my mom will love this.
Then onto the greens. First I did a batch with a 2% turquoise on the brightest 900g of the yellow, this time in 25L.
Note the almost empty dishwasher in the back! Yes, house chores were also done while the dye process was ongoing. This batch turned out an iridescent green with yellow tweed effects. My favorite! Then I decided to throw caution to the winds and try a 30L batch, 1kg of wool, 0.5% green, 0.5% bright yellow.
And here we go:
This little mortar brought back almost fond memories from organic chemistry lab classes.....almost. Then into the pot:
And the colors darkened:
Almost edible!
So, after two full days of staring into a huge pot of near to boiling water and a lot of anxiety I ended up with this:
And I can´t wait to dye some more! I would say: 112% succes.

For all non-danish readers: this is NOT how we danes live, this is what our old house on Bornholm looks like inside: primitive, downtrodden, and totally perfect for messy dyeing and yarn fun. The house is undergoing a total restoration, but we love it As Is in the Now. Functionality over looks any time!
Next post should be about the knitting, right?

Sleeveless in ... Pafos?

It´s been a while.

There, that´s that taken care of!

Grötö Knitting Festival is worth mentioning - imagine 90 knitting women on a small and picturesque island off the coast of Göteborg, Sweden. And only a 4 hour drive from Copenhagen across the bridge. This including an al fresco lunch at Hallandsåsen.
Charlotte and I picked up Eva in Lund, for the most inspiring weekend of the year, knit-wise!

Though we were the only two danes of the lot, we felt extremely welcome, and only a little embarressed taking home with us, the title of Fastest Knitter in Scandinavia (264 sts in 5min, with a cold start, 20 sts cast-on). The prize, not only included the Honor, but also a small Addi Knitting Machine, that immediately was named Rulle-Marie after the Danish Defence Bomb Dismantler Robot-Thingie. She has so far been extremely useful, and truly merits a blog-entry of her own.

Taking a course in Bohus Knitting was for us like having soaked dried chick peas in water - spry and suddenly a lot more interesting! Charlotte mumbled: Kaffe Fassett meets Bohus Knitting.....and we were off, again. I suspect we will give birth to a few new ideas over the next year, which will NOT be Bohus Knitting, but our own interpretation thereof.

We did not want to leave.

Easter was kinda eventful - my SO Carsten was closing in on the big 39.95 and had decided to run for it - and we ended up (literally!) in Cypress, in our own villa for 10 days, just north of the Coral Bay Pafos area. Litterally Sleeveless time! Balmic and fragrant, in short. Orange trees and rose pepper trees blossoming and gills actually emerging along our ribs, so much wonderful fish they served! Picking your own oranges and following the goats (they are on the right side of this next picture) up the mountain trails, (great legs, Heidi!) being treated with freshly made creamy goats cheese with sugar on top for pudding the same night at the local taverna. Always ending the meals with a small glass of the VERY local Filfar, an orange peel-local herbs liquor, completing any meal to perfection. On our last day, we decided to pack and drive half way across Cypress to Nicosia and spend the night right up against the wall to Turkey - we walked along the wall next morning for a few hours, experiencing a mix of sadness and horror how the city has just been cut in two. One end of a street could be full of shops and cafés, the other end of bulletholes and barbed wire. Apart from this very evident separation, Nicosia was beautiful and very interesting, and we will be back one day for sure. (And in connection with The Holiday Inn right up against the wall, we recommend the Italian restaurant there, especially their shell fish/peperoni gnocchi and their interior decorations!)

Knitwise this is just one pic of one of the thousands of mosaics from their roman infestation around year 5-600 AD. NOOOOOOO INSPIRATION FOR KNITTING. AT ALL. NOPE. NONE.
This next picture is a curiosity - walking the streets of Nicosia, we saw this:

If you zoom in, you can see the greek grafitti just over the door handle. That fight will NEVER die.

Well, Cypress was just wonderful, the people there welcoming and helpful, the weather just right and the fact that all rental cars had red licence plates greatly comforting, as it took a while to get used to driving on the ´wrong´ side of the road. Rental cars are called Tommies down there, and we cashed in many overbearing smirks on the mountain roads, especially when they saw that it was `THE WOMAN´ driving and Carsten reading the maps. But we prefer it that way when we travel.

So, I have not stopped knitting. Not one bit. My health is improving, finally, and some of the nasty chemo is off the list now. I get iron treatments (IV) once in a while, and followed up by weekly, self administered EPO injections (Jeg har taget doping) my red blood cell count is up and under control. Phew.

Woman With Huge Stash - and not afraid to use it!

This entry is dedicated to Sanne - in gratitude for all the awards she has bestowed on me, and to all my new friends who started Hogwarts with me this september - seven years in total is too short a time to spend with you guys!

There is a new love in my life.
He is small, but not too small, a bit heavy at the bottom, but that is actually an advantage. His circumference is just so, and the tip is pointy, but not too pointy. He is soft to the touch, but firm enough to get the business done. He is always at hand, and has never known performance anciety. He can go on for hours, and I recommend all (knitting) women or men so inclined to get one.

Here is a picture of him, doing what he does best:

He is called a ´yarn-thingy´ and the top holding the yarn swivels on a stick in the middle. Excellent. No yarn on floor scooping up dustbunnies, no yarn tangled around legs of chairs or SO (significant others), and when doing double knitting, both yarns can fit on there, and as you mostly (back to this point later) use equal lengths of each yarn in double knitting, it works just as well with a twosome.....Sorry for his intro, but it´s not that kind of blog!
In regard to double knitting! I offered to help out Spinningmaid, aka Ann Kingston, the designer of the amazing Hogwarts Sock Collection, with a Christmas Present. She wanted to make her son Aidan a scarf, but the pattern chosen, a lovely Selbu-inspired one, done in Fair Isle, yielded a really thick and heavy 4-layer piece of knitting. We talked it over, and decided that double knitting would solve it, and make it half as thick, and twice as fast to knit. I offered. Ann sent the pattern, and mentioned that it would be nice if his name was readable from both sides. Hm.


A challenge!
And lo, I rose to it, and learnt a new technique. Fun, not-too-difficult and only one small mistake easily correctible from the next row:
So now, noone can tease Aidan and call him Nadia!
And no, I do NOT knit Christmas Presents for all my friends! (only for those who ask nicely).

So, how about the daring StashBusting?
Well, in Octobers Potions Class at Hogwarts, (HPKCHC on Ravelry), we are supposed to knit with as many yarns as possible, or with as many colors as possible in the same project. I went to the stash, and took out all the balls of Tweed300 and Hunters of Brora thickness (same) of which I had only less than 100gs left. This is what I found:
A little frightening, that is just the meagre leftovers.........I really hope to reduce this pile radically! And there will be lots of time during the project to commune with the yarn - here are The Reds:
Yummie!
Plan is to knit a poncho with sleeves (do you need more, really?). Yes, as I wear them out, they are so comfy. I will find a zig-zag-pattern and then just mix my heart out. A perfect project for the next two weeks, I will spend here:



I know this is a summer picture, but that is the feeling you have when you are there. Two weeks of knitting, laughing and light gardening with my parents and Carsten.

I am very tired these days, but as it is a constant, you learn to cope. And as long as you are happy and feel like you can do whatever you want (well-dressed in a nap and a cup of coffee now and then), life is good.

Life is hard - but then you dye!

This posting is dedicated to Kaae.
She was the one who persistantly insisted that you could dye wool with CoolAid. And easily dye both wool and silk with silk dye on a vinegar base in your microwave.

And after that wonderful day in Jane´s garden, she had me convinced. I decided to try on my own, and after having found two containers of CoolAid in the back of the cupboard, I had the means as well. (Orange and cherry - sorry if I offend anyone, but it tastes disgusting, but the colors are great!).

So, vacation time finally there, and a garden at hand (and perfect weather for fooling around outside with water) I followed her directions and did this:
First make skeins of your yarn of choice. Here three skeins of white sock yarn, 85% wool, 15% poly-something. Then I soaked the wool in 1:1 water/vinegar mix for at least 20 minutes to get rid of any lipids or dust in general. I have used about 30g of CoolAid in about 200ml of a 1:2 vinegar/water solution, and after wringing out the yarn from the initial soak, carefully plan how you want it to look. I decided that white parts in between the colored ones would only heighten the color-play. On this picture I have soaked a 50g skein. Soak for 15 min and then place the whole thing in the microwave and nuke the curls out of it (4 x 2 min at full effect). Make sure that the white parts are still wet with the vinegar solution, so the yarn wont burn.
After nuking, leave as is till completely cool, then wring it out carefully (here the garden and especially the weeds come in handy, they don´t like vinegar and CoolAid, killed me off some nettles during the process, huzzah!) and hang till all dry, stiff and smelling of.....orange and cherry!
The sock yarn is the three skeins on the right, the two long skeins are dyed with CoolAid as well, but one in each color, in a bigger bowl (about 50g of CoolAid/skein and 500ml of water/vinegar). Make sure the yarn is covered by the dye in the microwave.

When I wrung out the bigger skeins, the vinegar left in the bowl was clear - all the dye from the CoolAid had been transferred to the yarn. The two big skeins are a 1-ply 100% lace-type wool. A pleasure to dye and work with.
When all dry, rinse well in lots of cold water (be careful not to felt the wool, just dip and press) and then wask in the washingmashine on a wool program (30C, almost no stirring, 800 rpm, very little soap if any) to get the residual sugar out of the yarn, dry again and wind on a ball-winder.
Here you see the yarn after the final wash.

And weirdly enough still smelling a bit fruity! I have learnt a lot doing this, but one thing stands out: I will never drink CoolAid again.





Here is a close-up of the finished coral (cherry) red wool. Love the color play.









Well, the next day I got a bit more gutsy. I took out the silk dyes I bought at Panduro and mixed plum, moss green, warm yellow, marine blue, cinnamon and dark brown into different containers. I mixed them 1:2 with the 50/50 vinegar-water, while the yarn of choice (this time a silk-wool-linen mix, some more 1-ply wool, and some pure natural silk) was soaking in a bucket of the same mix.
Here is the silk-wool-linen mix dyed in a thin marine blue solution, in a tehcnique I call: Too Cheap Now, Heidi. I had mixed too little color for the two skeins and would have had to break into a new container of dye, when I realized I quite liked the result! So I just added more of the water-vinegar mix till the yarn was covered and nuked it as before. Love the resulting yarn.






I call the color Blue Velvet. I am knitting the Forest Path Stole in this yarn now.
This is an example of the wool dyed with silk color, I call this one: Now I know where the kids were.

From left to right:
´Husband doing the white laundry´, ´Blueberry Roast Beef´, ´Pistacchio Mistacchio´, and the ´Now I know where the kids were´.
I also dyed silk: from left to right:
´Malenes Attick´
´Plums Away´
´Old Tractors´ and
´Rattlesnake´








Here are the original skeins before winding:
the two sky blue silks, Malenes Attick, Old Tractors, Rattlesnake and Plums Away. And then the 4 skeins of wool: Pistacchio Mistacchio, Blueberry Roast Beef, The Kids and Husband doing the white laundry.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself, it was easy to get a great result, I painted the dye on, I poured it on, I dipped and wrung, mixed, stained and flung. And they all look great, even the combinations where I spilt an unwanted color on my yarn......
So, go! Free your inner colors. Try it blindfolded, or in the dark or as a color relay (in these olympic times): one starts, another finishes!
Good luck, can´t wait to see the results!

The Long Sleep (or Sheep, maybe) is Over

The Child is back home. By child I mean a time consuming, constant and most welcome disturbance in the home. Two of them are actually mine, and as I have two homes, well......

The small and beautyful upright belongs to Charlotte.

Immediately after having collected it from Karen (not IN the car, I mean) but when we arrived in Janes garden, I spun this:

122g of the softest Spelsau lambswool. My mum cleaned, carded and gave it a first light wash, and it practically spun itself. I will be keeping my mums wheel (back left) in Copenhagen, it is just a tad better than my own (the front wheel) which will be placed at Bornholm.

At Janes birthday we also explored our abilities (stretched them, more likely) into dyeing yarn.

I do not have the final result of my yarn, yet, as it has not been washed. But until then, the colors look fine!

I call this colorway: old rhubarb.

By the way, it is cotton flamé.....done in a microwave oven with vinegar and silk dye. I am SO heading for a fiasco - and we had SO much fun.

Quandering Questions: Why is wool-gathering considered a bad thing?

Yadiyadiyadah....tell us about The Knitting!

Well, I´ve had a few bouts of Startitis:

This is an example of my knitting desk during an attack of acute Startitis. All the little white notes are each representing A Project.

Carsten remarked, he could not see any reason for not beginning all of them. Now. I remarked, I only had two hands. He remarked maybe I could get them all started over the weekend? He´s a Prince among men.

Well, I ended up starting the following:

Firehazard

AAA - Acrylic Adaptation Anonymous. I really just liked the colors on this skein, and it was actually quite soft!

Green Foreverness:

This is the luxury project. 2.5mm Turbo Lace Addi Needle, Nikolaj Wool-Silk-Alpaca Mix, 612 st on the round to be transformed into the following:

From Vogue Knitting Winter 07/08 issue. Lovely sweater, notice the detail on the sleeves. A wedge by the elbow-elegant!

I also begun a sweater from Hønsefødder og Gulerødder in Kauni and RIO:

This is a childrens sweater, made larger (quite a bit, actually) to fit me. It has a hood and I add the RIO as I go, whenever I feel like it, (or remember to, more like it).

Love the Kauni mix knitted like here, garter stitch on needles 3.25mm (exactly the Falkenberg gauge....go figure?)

Come winter, come spring.

Come Startitis, come Enditis?

I also managed to finish some huge projects:

First, another double knit wonder inspired by Kaffe Fassett, here modelled by its proud owner, Mum (She won´t let anyone else touch it, actually).

It is made in Kauni mix (curry, blue, brown) and two colors of Peterhead that blend right in, a blue and a curry color. It´s light (450g), warm and a lot of fun to knit. I love the way the Kauni sometimes disappears into the Peterhead, when similar colors meet. Another victory for Double Knitting!

I also finished Hanne Falkenbergs Cordelia, in my own color choice:

I left out the longer cuff to fold up as I wanted a better fit into the sleeves of a jacket. Otherwise I followed the pattern for a Large, and it fits fine. A lovely project, pattern and design.

I also finished my Squares Galore, another double knit/Kauni adventure, that turned out really nice:

I love the way the colorchange in the Kauni manifests itself so very different from side to side. The contrast is a mustard Peterhead lambswool.

In the thralls of Enditis I also took up some old projects, maybe the next ones to get done:

a hooded cardigan from Feminin Strik, with a lovely lace rim all the way up the front, ending on top of the hood. Here made in one end of Peterhead in a cinnamon color and one end of a thinner lambswool, in a light cinnamon mix color.

I am making it longer and wider than originally intended, a huge Hoodie for Hiding on weekends.

And I picked up this old shawl I designed ages ago, called the Bubble Wrap, also in Peterhead, this time a golden tweed mix with blue splots in it:

It catches a lot of air in the bubbles, making it extremely light (4 mm needles) and very warm.

My health deteriorated further. On top of Startitis and Enditis, I also caught the horrible Planitis! (No treatment currently available)

So, I had to plan two new projects, this time in Dunlin, the linen-cotton mix I´m so fond of.

First one kept me up a few nights, it was so lovely:

It reminded me of the 80´s, summer and all good things. I immediately went through Therapy (The Stash) and came up with this:

The Avid Reader (read: annoying one too) will notice that one of the skeins is not linen-cotton, but something looking remarkably like wool.......Bingo. A small amount of Peterhead sneaked it´s way in there, but the color was just SO right! And a little Peterhead around the shoulder-area will feel snug and soft! And the Dunlin-Peterhead combo is brilliant in its own right, so I´m not a total pioneer after all. The model is a Shiri Mor Design from the Vogue Winter 07/08 issue.

So is this, by the way:

From Vogue, I mean. I will make it up in Dunlin, in the following colors:

The big ball on the left side is a white-beige mix, and the small one on the left a clean sand color.

I think it will look lovely.

So, I have not given up knitting, as you can well see.

And then there are all the socks!

But that is another adventure all together.

Good night, and sleep tight.

Roof off, roof on......

The barn was built wrong. In 1895. Or somewhen around then. We found out about 100 years later. How is that for a late wake-up?

So, after Jon (The Neighbor) and his father literally tied the barn walls together to stop them leaving.......eachother (!) consequently dropping the roof onto the ground. We went over one weekend to take the way too heavy roof off the barn. The roof was made of concrete, and the construction underneath was dimensioned for.....toiletpaper or something. Anyway, the roof had to come off, before we could tighten the wires and get the walls back into place. If you look closely at the wall to the right of the opening, over the datemark, you can see lines and cracks..... THAT ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!

Carsten is afraid of heights, by the way, and his legs were really sore the next day - not from active, physical work, but from the shaking underneath him!


Notice the 80´s quiltet jacket-Kansas overall combo. Love him in that outfit!
This is Jon. They worked each at one side, Jon was half a roof ahead at times. And the weather was wonderful. What was I doing? Well, besides bringing coffee and lemonade,


I was cleaning the inside of the main house. My parents were arriving that night to give us a hand, imagine my fathers eyes when he saw the whole roof off turning into the courtyard that night!
But we believe he was happy not to be spending the next few days on the roof!
Done!
Four cups of coffee, some lemonade, and 5 hours. Roof off.

For the record, we spent the next four days shovelling and handpicking the crushed tiles up from the ground. In freezing rain and gale-like wind. A huge thanks to my parents for helping out!

Next chapter: Easter. Roof on?