New Chapter Up

I've just put Chapter Four up on The Raven of Arlon for any who might be interested. It has been a busy Christmas period and it promises to be an equally busy New Year.
Good wishes and blessings for you all!

Ah, the Christmas Time of Year...

Okay, I've never been a fan of this time of year and really feel a little freaked out with the stress surrounding December plus some lovely extras from other aspects of life that we could all have done well with out! But I'm sure it'll all work out...
...it usually does.
Anyway, I have been busy, mostly with stuff that doesn't matter much.
I've taken a new photo of the dyed ball of yarn I plied on my wheel so the colours nicer.

And I finished washing, carding, spinning and plying the small bag of wool I got with my traveller. It's lovely and soft :)

Also I started drawing a concept drawing of a rock eating dragon-like bird thing from one of my story ideas. It's been sitting on my mantlepeice while I look at it and think what to do next and last night I broke out the art supplies!

I'm not the best painter, I'm not terribly confident in colour choice and I've never painted anything that was scales and feathers...or even all scales or all feathers! And I haven't photocopied the original so this could quite literally blow up in my face if I stuff this up but at least I've got the tracing of the original drawing. Wont help with the riders on it. They're freehand and all I have is a tracing of their placement, not their details.
But I like it. This is the first layer so I have to wait until it's really dry before I have another go at it.

So that's what I've been doing so far instead of christmas shopping which I can't do at the moment. Probably helping me stay sane. Roll on Christmas Day. The actual day I DO like!
Happy Knitting and Merry Christmas :)

New Chapter Up

I wanted to tweak these chapters a bit before I put them up but I'm having difficulty finding the time. So, anyone who reads them (God knows who that is!) be aware that I'm very interested in any insights that I may have missed and improvements I can make.
Anyway, Chapter Three is up :) on Raven Of Arlon

I really am Knitting, not just Puddling away with Dye!

I really am! But I've got some more dyed yarn to show so don't make fun of me!
please?

Okay, I dyed this 2ply yarn that handles like cotton but clearly isn't. It certainly doesn't dye like cotton! But it's really a bit thin for knitting anything I might actually wear, like a shirt. So I balled up two of the skeins and plied them together on my Traditional Spinning Wheel. It worked out pretty well actually. If anything I wish I'd plied it a bit tighter. But otherwise it's great! About a 4ply thickness.

It has a slightly stonewashed look about the colour, which is a nice strawberry pinky/red. I balled it up and admired my handywork! I've got to get a better photo tomorrow, the colours not nearly this washed out but it's right near a window.

Now I just need to put it away with all the rest of my VAST collection of yarn until I come across something that seems to have it's name on it. It's not like I haven't got anything to go on with.
I'll be good now. I wont be dyeing anymore fibre for a little while...
...at least I don't plan to.
Happy Knitting :)

New Crockpot+Another go at dyeing!

Now I have my own crockpot to use for dyeing I had another go at dyeing this unknown blended 2ply yarn I have. It looks a bit like cotton but it certainly doesn't dye like cotton!

I'd tried dyeing it and microwaveing the yarn but it hadn't worked out very well (probably more to do with the operator than the yarn!) So I put about 2 and a hald litres of warm water in the crockpot, 5 tablespoons of salt and about a teaspoon of tulip red dylon dye in 1 cup od warm water. I's soaked the yarn in a vinegar/water mixture, wrung it out and plopped it into the pot.

Left it overnight on low. In the morning, although the water wasn;t exactly clear it was pretty close and considering the colour I wondered it some of the old dye hadn't leaked out finally. (Probably not possible. Pretty unlikely that while you're dyeing one colour another one leaves!) I put a glug of vinegar in and left it for an hour before I turned it off and let it start cooling down.

I rinsed it in cold water and spun it in the washing machine and then hung them out. I'm really surprised given that they'd been soaking all night how differently parts of the skeins are coloured. There's still pale patches and dark patches. But it looks nice and far more interesting than the plain nude colour it was before. Now all I have to do is be patient and wait for it to dry before I reskein it all up and see the colour gradients really stand out!

Heaps going on at the moment but this is fun and at this time of year that's hard to come by, something fun without stress :)
Happy Knitting and Merry Christmas!

I love Second Hand Shops!

I've been looking for a crockpot so I can do some dyeing without using the same pans that I cook in and on Monday, I finally had some luck! The Drive-In Mart that we go to (a huge shop of just about anything and everything you can imagine!) had this dinky little crockpot!

There's no way my family can confuse this with our big normal one! A lady had bought it the week before but returned it because it wasn't really what she was looking for. Excellent for me! And just to further make my day, a large bag of blue roving and a smaller bag of some brown fleece, quite soft but very dirty. $20 for the lot, fibre and crockpot. SOooo Impressed.
Unfortunately I can't afford any dye at the moment and I'm beginning to wish very much that I had some of the professional powder dyes used by an awful lot of fibre/spinning enthusiasts!
Sigh, there's always something else to wish for.
Happy Knitting :)

Raven Of Arlon - Chapter Two

Putting the next chapter up for anyone who cares. :)
I've got it on another blog now, www.ravenofarlon.blogspot.com and it's in my favourite sites if anyone can't find it. It's just simpler than putting pages of text on this blog.

Finally Got the Christmas Tree up!

And on our Wedding Anniversary too no less! So it's up and I still don't feel excited. Just apprehensive like I do every December. Thank goodness the day itself is usually nice. It's just the lead up that makes me feel sick.

I love sorting!

I love sorting things, categorising, putting things into order. So I've had quite a lot of fun (and frustration!) doing over my blog page. Since I'm the one visiting it most often these days I thought, "Darn it, I'm going to change it to something I really like!"
I think I've achieved that!
My thanks to great sites such as:
www.thecutestblogontheblog.com
www.shabyblogs.com
I am indebted to their wonderful free pretties!
I'm still knitting, spinning and dyeing a bit but I'll put phot's up soon. I'm too whacked out from internet searching to do anything now!