eh..wasn't I supposed to do stuff??

I did some of it.
Sort of.
I did card a (little) bit of the brown fleece. I brought some of my sewing supplies to my workroom (that counts as cleaning the house right?) Did do laundry (Need to fold some to, that's becoming an issue)
When I wanted to start drawing patterns I couldn't find paper so I had to open up the big pack of paper I ordered a while ago and organize it. It came in a big roll so I made smaller rolls of 10 sheets. That took quite a while. Then I laid out a few sheets and my book and pencil and couldn't motivate myself. It is still lying on the table next to me...
Instead I started browsing the internet. I have found some good webshop software, it is open source so it's free, but it will cost me more time. I also did some research on spinning supply webshops in holland. I then did a search to find out if there was already a company with the name I want. Then I did some reading on the website of the chamber of commerce. And then it was time to cook dinner.
So I now not only have a wish list, but also a goal list in the making.
I want to make it nice and put it somewhere in plain sight.
The goal list will be ab addition to the wishlist. It will be a way to get the things on my wishlist. When I am done with it, it will be a step-by-step guide to make my wishes come true.
And I really do need to take action, now! I know that if I don't I will be working in an office for someone else the rest of my life.

Guess it became quite a heavy post...today was a heavy day...
I will be doing some more thinking...
And working on my goalplan...
Tomorrow will be a good day, with lots of creativity (after work)

Completely mine

well, after the sheep donated it's fleece that is...

So I arived home yesterday after work with my drumcarder and of course, had to use it right away. Here you can see the orange wool on the drumcarder.

I ended up with 2 nice big batts.

Here I am ready to spin the first bat. I used 1 1/2 batt and then the bobbin was almost full. I plied it with the navajo 3-ply method. When doing my research I really liked it because you only need 1 thread which you ply onto itself. As I don't have a lazy kate (yet) this was very appealing to me. With the red wool I made a 2-ply using the bobbin holders on the wheel and got tangled up. When doing the navajo 3-ply I found the thread was much easier to handle, but that could also been because I spun this wool better. I will try 2-ply again, but for now I think this is the way I will ply my yarns. Here you can see it drying.

I also did some dying on thursday. I used the purple eggpaint, and then added the red and blue I had left because again, I threw to much wool in the pot...It resulted into this:

And here you can see the end result of the Carmine from earlier this week.

I think this will end up a pretty solid colour too like the orange did.

Although I haven't tried the Dylon dye yet (I want to use them on carded batts) I couldn't help myself and bought some more colours: Bordeaux (one extra, I really like that colour), Olive Green (another colour I really like), Windsor Purple and Pagoda Red. I have saved 1/2 batt from the Orange because I really want to make some combined colour batts. The portion I spun will be used for a beanie for a colleague. But next, I am going to card the whole brown fleece first. Will start on that tomorrow. And I need to draw some bathing suit patterns for school, and the laundry, and some fleece washing, and house cleaning and I thought Sunday was a day to rest? That's what you get for working on Saturday once every 4 weeks, which was today..

Tonight I am going to knit on Moebius #3. It was a good thing I decided to frog it. It was way to big. I counted the stitches as I took it of the needle, measured how much to big it was and ended up casting only 2/3 of the stitches on #2!!!

So, I got myself some nice very dark chocolate with caramel and my blankie (it is cold here) and do a little Moebius Marathon!!

It has arrived!!!

My drum carder has arrived!!

It just got delivered. Thewy send me an e-mail yesterday that they had shipped it, and it is already here!! I am at work so I will have to wait until I get home tonight to try it....

Another 6 hours and the drive home to go....

New Colours!!

So for the people who liked my greens (thanx 2bsewing)....I ran out of it...time for a change....
So yesterday I went for the Burned Sienna. Although I had to go to school yesterday evening I had to do some dyeing. I think I am showing all the signs of a heavy addiction..LOL
Before I went I filled the pot with wool, water, vinnegar and the watercolour. When I came home I immediately ran to the kitchen to turn on the heat and this is the result. Very Orange and I kind of really like it!! My colleague has been asking me for an orange hat and I think this will be it. I still have the orange watercolour, and will try that with some carded wool, and maybe in the microwave to see how that turns out. I think this will go great with some brown or red to.
Tonight I wanted to try out the Carmine. In the picture you can see it before it went on the heat. I just peeked in the pot and it looks very pink, almost fluorescent. I must really be putting to much wool in the pot so the colours turn out different than they probably should. I will see/show the final colour tomorrow. This might even go with the Orange to...
My drying station is working out very well too. On the right you can see my shelves. I am still not finished with them. Somehow there are some screws that wont do what I want them to do....go into the wood. The trash bin I bought at Ikea. I won't be using it as a trash bin, this will be where I will store my pattern paper. I have a lot of it as I draw my own patterns. The drying station is just an ordinary 3 story wash rack. I ripped up some cotton fabric to fit the surfaces, they are attached with clothes pins. When I washed/dyed the wool I put it on one of the pieces of cotton. Close it with a piece of thread so that the woll can't come out. Put it in the spinning cycle of the washing machine, take it upstairs and spread it out.
I still do some crocheting and trying to finish the triangular scarf/wrap. As far as the Moebius goes...I decided to frog it. I haven't even wanted to look at it for day. This to me is a sign I need to frog it and start new. If I don't it will end up in a box and I might find it in a few years. And I really like the Moebius idea/design. I guess I will do that tonight and cast on a new one and knit some so I can be happy to pick it up again...


Tomorrow my car has to go to the car doctor...It is getting dangerous to drive with...well not exactly for me, but for the people behind me. I could loose the exhaust pipe any moment now...

Well..time for moebius!!

My present for myself

I did it!!

I ordered a drumcarder. I really did it.

Yesterday while washing the wool and dyeing it I noticed how much it really is. I tried to do some handcarding, but that didn't feel good on my wrists. So yesterday I did some googling to find a nice carder I know I was first tempted to buy the junior carder because it was the cheapest, but I did some calculations and heavy thinking and realised I had some more to spend and to better invest in a piece of equiment that would fulfil my needs lnger than to go for the cheapest option and maybe in a years time realise that I needed something different. I found a drumcarder in Germany with Wollknoll which makes batts of 22x97 cm.

The watercoulour dyed wool turned out nice, I think the colour will hold, but I am going to test some of it later. I now have a batch on the stove with egg dye, but I think I put to much wool in it, it kept being very light. So I started out with one tablet of green, then put in another one, then because I found it very blue I also put in some yellow, and then because I found it to still be a lot of uncoloured wool I first threw in another bleu and ten minutes later a yellow one. Finally I also threw in the remaining watercolour "Dark Green"I had.

I now have no green left, so next up will be the reds, oranges and the purples. I will have to keep an eye out on the amount of wool I put in the pot, but this is my experimental stage (I hope it never ends....)

I will save some of the "white" wool to mix it in later withe the dark brown I have after I have spun enough of it to make a nice sleeveless vest.

The red I tried to spin turned out really nice, although very thick. When I tried to ply it it must have looked like some slapstick movie, I was constantly entangled in all thos threads. It was very hard to believe I was only trying to twine 2 threads, it felt like there were lots more!! I'll get the hang of it..

Tomorrow is another school night, but I will try to post some pictures of the dye batch from today and my wonderful wool-drying-mobile and ofcourse my first skein of yarn!

Little Update

Just a quick little update.

I just had to show the colours I created today!!
First, This is the one I dyed using the solution I used to dye the cotton in. Just added some vinnegar and let it simmer for an hour. This is rinsed and almost dry. As far as I can tell, this colour wil hold. It is a light minty green.

When that was cooled there was no pigment left in the pot so I decided to try something else. I wanted to try the watercolour. And as I thought I might want to combine these I went for the Deep Green:

As you can see, there are some parts in it that look a little blue. This one is still cooling of in the pot and I think I will rinse it tomorrow as I have no space to dry it (will need to build something for that). I just did a large portion of washed wool in my dyeing pot (formerly known as soup pot), added water until submerged, added a big splash of vinnegar. I think it was about 250 ml. Added the watercolour until I thought it looked good (approx. 25ml) and started the heat. When almost boiling turned down the stove and let it hang against boiling for a good hour.

Can't wait on how the other methods turn out!!!

If you want more information on the watercolour I used you can find it here. I have added an English link, but here in the Netherlands you can buy it at every craft/art material shop.

Stable smell

I bought me some nice wool!!

I bought some lovely coloured Black-Dark Brown-Light Brown wool. The colouring is beautiful, but now that I am washing it I have encountered a few maggets. Luckily I used to go fishing a lot when I was a little girl so I have handled a gazillion of them and I can handle these few too, but I don't like them in what I hope will someday become a nice sweater. I don't know what it means for the quality of the wool and how it will end up, but I just keep working on it. The first batch is outside drying. My kitchen smells like a stable...i have the door open, so it isn't to bad, kinda feels like living on a farm.

I also bought some light beige wool, a part of that first batch is now on the stove in the leftover I had from dyeing the shopping bag holder (I also dyed a cotton fabric so I can make another bag to go in the car). When I was finished with dyeing that I decided I didn't want to throw the leftover away, I decided it was better to see if I could use it to dye some wool. So I added some vinnegar and some washed wool and we will see what happens, the coulour is named "Fluorescent Green"....Maybe, if there is still some pigment left and it holds on the batch which is now in the pot I will add some more...

I also bought some red Merino roving with which I am now trying to spin. Just trying and trying and see how it turns out.

I added a wish list on the right , I discovered there are some things I really want/need/have to have. The first is a drum carder. I have some hand carders that came with the spinning wheel, but I don't think they will give me much pleasure... I will receive my end year bonus next week and I might be able to stretch that with some things i need to pay and go for the junior drum carder. The way I see it, I can experiment with the wool, put everything online except for the wool I am sure I want to use for myself, and take them of the website if I decide to do something with them anyway. This way I will also let my wool pay for itself (I hope).

My shopping trip

Been shopping today. Bought the shelves for my workroom, decided it was better to do it today so that whenever I feel like it I can work on it. And I did. Until the last screw of the second didn't want to go where I wanted it to go so I stopped. I also bought some supplies for painting wool. I have done a lot of googling on ways to paint wool. I haven't found an adress in the Netherlands where I can buy Acid dye, but I have found some other methods. I also found the green dye I wanted for the cotton shopping bag holder. It is now soaking in some detergent so the discolouring can disapear, and it does! So I can start to dye that tomorrow after, or maybe before, wool shopping.
I bought some liquid watercolour. I have found a posting on a forum from a lady who dyed wool with it so I bought some: Deep Orange, Carmine, Burnt Sienna and Deep Green. I bought the smallest containers, and if it doesn't work, I am sure there are othere things I can do with it. I also bought 2 packs of egg dye, each packet contains Yellow, Red, Violet, Blue, Green. Seen some youtube movies with egg dye dyeing. So will try that too. I also bought som Dylon hot and cold wash fabric paint. Hot: Cherry Flame and Bordeaux. Cold: Koala Brown.
Furthermore, I bought some big buckets used to mix cement. 2 of 12 liters and 2 of 20 liters. I will use them to wash the wool. They really smell very bad so I guess I will give them a good soap rinse before putting anything in it.
I have also practiced keeping the wheel spinning, stopping it and changing direction. I have to say, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. But I have to oil it a bit. I think the neighbors were going mad from the noise it made!!!
I will keep notes of the experiments and post them here, including pictures.

Now I am going to try to finish the traingular scarf/wrap. I have one ball of jarn left...I hope it will be big enough...

Where does time go?

Days go by when your having fun, well fun...Today was a lousy day in which a lot went wrong and it started with some idiot not paying attention on the traffic in front of him (me). I was driving on the highway when a came up to a traffic jam. I, ofcourse, slowed my car to not bump in to the cars in front of me, the person behind me wasn't paying attention or whatever and had to make an emergency brake. I saw him in my rearview mirror coming closer very fast, then he started to slide from left to right and then he stood still only a few centimeters from my car. I was surrounded with the white smoke and lovely smell of burning rubber. Guess it scared him enough, when we could move again he kept a lot of distance from the car in front of him (I switched lanes, didn't want him behind me and needed to get off very soon)

Been very busy this week. Finished two projects, started a new one, thinking about frogging another one, done some work with powertools...

I will start with the power tool thing I did...

As I told you in my previous post I bought some shelving and when I wanted to start putting it together this weekend I couldn't find my drill bits. I had my drill/electric screw driver, I had the thing to load it with power, but I couldn't find the case with all the other parts..so I took my hook and continued crocheting. Monday after work I could finally buy some drills, the low budget type ofcourse and started putting it against the wall. Didn't get very far, was tired of a long day of work so didn't do much. On the picture you see the progress made on Tuesday. I bought 4 wide and 4 smaller shelves as that was mentioned to be "normal", but ofcourse I am not, so I need 2 wide and 2 small more. I finished the shelves I had, so there are more now then you see here, but I can't take a new picture now as it is to dark there (still looking for some lighting to hang). I will go to the store next week and buy the rest and do a showcase of my workroom when it is finished.

I have finished a vest I was crocheting, the one I needed to go to the yarnshop for as I was 1 ball short (bought 2, have 1 left over now, maybe it will become a beanie?). I don't know why, but these pictures are all very blurry...I took some different views. It basically is a large circle with 2 holes for your arms. You can do it with any circular pattern, this one is from a magazine I borrowed from a colleague. It still needs to be blocked/pressed and a few ends to weave in (done the most of them..)

The second project I finishe is the hairpin lace scarf. I crocheted all the strips together. I choose to do it in singles. As this was my very first effort at this and the yarn isn't the easiest to crochet I thought I should do it easy and a next one can be more difficult.

The new project is a triangular shawl/wrap. I ha some nice beige acrylic in my stash (and still, no end in sight). I am crocheting this on a hook nr 7, so pretty big, double the size they recommend for this yarn. I saw some picures of this type of stitch so I adjusted it to how I would like it to be and as you can see, it is growing steadily.

The Moebius is becoming the thing I could dream about in a nightmare (don't have them, I am protected by a dreamcatcher). It was getting pretty big, and then I noticed them....dropped stitches...they are too fat from the needles to pick them up again, and with this yarn I don't think I can cover them up very nice. I have put it aside for the moment, put some wool through the stitches so I can find them again if I decide to try to mend them, but I am thinking very hard about frogging it and starting new and fresh...

And then.. I was thinking about wool, and the things I would like to make, and the money it will cost me if I buy all the yarns I need, and I did some searching on the internet, and then I found the solution! The cheapest way to be able to do all the things I want, make it however I like, and maybe in the process earn some money is to make everything from scratch. And I mean really scratch. Start with the sheep. Ofcourse I am not going to keep some sheep, but they produce wool. Something I can't. From there on, everything in the process until the finished item can be done by people. I will have to make some investments, but they will pay for themselves in the long run. So I browsed some auction site and look what I found!! A nice spinning wheel. It was offered, I made a lower bid, the gave me a new price in the middle and I accepted. I am now the proud owner of this spinning wheel and it came with 2 handcarders and some spindle looking thing for only 42.50 Euro. (I guess I should use it to roll the balls on? There is no hook on it so it pobably isn't a spindle). Sunday I have an appointment to go look at some wool. They have some very nice batches. I really like a brown with lighter ends they have (forgot the sheep name), but the lady advised to start with merino. I also searched for ways to dye wool, so I might be trying some of that soon to.

So I have to wait for Sunday to get wool to get started, but in the meantime I will practice keeping the wheel going, in the right direction....

I guess I should stop now..It is a rather long post. Maybe I should post more often to keep them shorter? LOL

Bye for now.

Weekend!

It is weekend! Well for me at least...or not quite so...

Tomorrow I go to school. I go every tuesday to sewing classes, I am now doing Lingerie and hope to do my exams soon (June is the next chance) and I follow an extra course in corset making. So I still regard it as a free day since I am doing something I really like. Haven't wrote about that part of my life yet, but I will post some pictures soon.

I finished the last strip of the hairpin lace this morning before going to work so I can now join all of them. Still thinking on how to join them, single, in groups, twisted or not. If you want to do some hairpin lace yourself there are some very good instructions on StitchDiva there is also link to a video. I am a left handed crocheter so I always have to think the other way round, but I could do it after watching the instruction video. I really like the Vapor pattern on their website, but my hairpin lace loom isn't big enough so I might have to construct something else...

I am also still working on the second attempt of the moebius. It is gowing slow, but it grows! You can read more about Moebius knitting on the website of Cat Bordhi, she also made a cast on instruction video on YouTube which is very easy to follow. The most important thing when starting a Moebius is getting a long enough circular needle. This experience has learned me I need to expand my needle collection (somehow this is a very good lesson...LOL)

And finally I bought some shelving for my workspace today. I will have to do some assembling this weekend. According to the manual you are not allowed to do it on your own, but since I am no fan of manuals I guess I will probably try to. Maybe it helps when I put a mirror in the room, then I will be with two right?
It is kind of heavy, but it shouldn't be a problem. I am even pretty handy with powertools...and I really need that to be up ASAP so I can organize my stash. The yarn I have is only a small part. I have lots of crates with all kind of fabrics and other sewing stuff. I even have 3 large ones stuffed with ribbons and cords and more...

Well..of to do some more knitting...

Been Busy

Last evening of my vacation...

I really don't feel like going back to work tomorrow...

I have been busy the last few days. I have finished the shopping bag sack. Now I need to find the right colour of cotton paint so it will fit in my kitchen. I have seen the colour I like in the store, but they only had the large containers to put in the machine and I don't think it will be very wise to put this one small item on it's own in the machine. I am not in any hurry so I will keep my eyes open for the small packages. I have also been doing a lot of hairpin lace. Working on the last strip. Or at least, at the moment I think it is the last strip. Not sure yet. I have enough yarn to make a few more strips but it probably is wide enough by now. It sure is long!! (710 loops). I finished the Moebius, but it turned out it is the first attempt. That's what you get when you're not working with a pattern...It is way to small. I have already cast on a second attempt (with the second ball of yarn I had). I made it much wider, and it will also be longer. When I have finished this ball I will have the new moebius cannabilize on the other.

I couldn't help myself, hd to visit my parents this week and they live close to a great yarn shop and I needed some yarn to finisch a vest I am making so I had to go there...And bought more. This will be for a very large granny square blanket. I am using the willow square block from the Jan Eaton book, and I calculated I need at least 165 squares. I am working on the first 30 here. I decided to do 10 of each colouring at a time and crochet by color. Already this is getting a bit boring, but I guess I will have to go through it to get what I really want.

Have to get some sleep now, tomorrow will be very early...