My entry to the knitting competition

 And here it is, my entry to the knitting competition that I blogged about earlier this year! It's not completely my brainchild (ha, see what I did there) but I got inspiration from this ravelry project and I think it turned out quite nicely. The colour of the  avocado-dyed yarn works really well and I even had some left after I finished the stuffing. I hope they won't be too harsh on me concerning the anatomical correctness of my model but I truly did my best.

If you want to know more about the technique that I used to make the "i-cord" folds of the brain please see below, otherwise enjoy the pictures:

While I was happily blogging away about dye-related experiments and various FOs I almost forgot that I still have to prepare my entry for the knitting competition! For some reason I had it in my head that the deadline was at the end of April but yesterday I got an e-mail reminding me that it has to be finished in 10 days. Panic! 

Of course I already had an idea in mind at it involved the avocado-dyed yarn that I prepared a few weeks ago. But again I made the mistake of wanting to be innovative by using a knitting mill. For those who don't know what this is: basically an advanced version of the good old "Strickliesel" that most of us made acquaintance with ca. anno 1991 in Mrs Sander's textile creation class in primary school. This contraption is supposed to be a time saving and easy solution to produce large amounts of knitted cords that can be used for all kinds of stuff. It is supposed to be.

In a rush (because no time) I borrowed the knitting mill from a lady in my Stitch'n'Bitch group who was kind enough to give it to me and I started filing the thread. The instructions were simple enough and if I understood the principle as a six-year-old surely it can't be that complicated, can it? YES IT CAN! While almost driving me crazy with constantly piling up the thread at the top and blocking the tube it I almost got into a fight with the boyfriend when he tried to get involved with his "engineering skills" (a.k.a. a genuine but not very highly appreciated attempt to help me de-clutter the yarn mess). 

After several attempts, some torn thread, a lot of swearing and  only minimal results I was close to giving up for my own peace of mind. But because I didn't really have any other alternatives I managed to get at least some of the cord done (with a lot of prodding and with the help of a crochet hook), hoping it would be enough.  It was not fun! I didn't even remember to take pictures because I was just happy that I finished the stupid cord. My verdict: the knitting mill is a product designed in hell and it hasn't helped me an itsy tiny bit, it only cost me nerves.

Despite all the technical problems I finished the project in time and sent off the application. Now I can just sit and wait and keep my fingers crossed in the meantime. Wish me luck!

Pattern: "Dream Factory" by Alicia Williams

Yarn: Coccinelle natural yarn; dyed by myself

From Norway with love (and a lot of patience)

 

I've finished my Marius jumper! As mentioned in previous posts, this project took a huge amount of patience (and this is exactly what I'm usually lacking) so I suppose one could say it was an opportunity to develop. But I'm very happy with the result, maybe especially because I cursed it so many times, chucked it into the corner and ignored it for the next week or so but picked it up again eventually. 

The construction was actually very simple and I like the drop-shoulder sleeves. They're steeked but not as in a fair-isle jumper but basically I just cut opten the "tube" of the bodice from the top and insterted the sleeves, then joined up the shoulder seams. Since the pattern doesn't have to match up this is a very quick method and the finishing didn't take as long as expected. It was also fun to knit the pattern, much better than boring stocking stitch in-the-round because you can see how much you progress. More technical details on ravelry for those who are interested.

And as usual, now that I'm done with my winter project the sun is coming out again. I'f I'm lucky I'll be able to wear it for a few more weeks but Spring is definitely coming fast so I will probably wear it all the time, every day.

 

 Pattern: A combintation of the classic "Marius" jumper and the Arne and Carlos "Hearts Sweater"

Yarn: Rowan pure wool worsted

Latvia

A weekend in Latvia, visiting Jurmala and Riga. I fell in love with the wooden houses, the pine tree forests, the beaches, the little winding roads in the Old Town, the market, and of course the yarn (I came back with 1.5 kg of pure Latvian wool). One of my highlights was meeting up with Melody of Mandarine's who knits beautiful things (check out her scarf!) and takes even more beautiful pictures of these things. It's great to meet up with other bloggers and exchange ideas, addresses and inspiration, especially if they are equally yarn-crazy as me.

Riga is definitely  a place to go back to, I didn't do the city any justice in only spending 1.5 days there of which half was taken up with yarn-hunting somewhere in the suburbs. Even in the worst time of the year, i.e. after the pretty snow and before spring has really started, it is totally worth a trip and there are lots of things to do. Oh, and you can get a cheap haircut which is a thousand times better than in Brussels! If you're brave enough that is.

P.S: As you can see, both Melody and me wear our own creations. While I was lazy and used a commercial pattern, she actually designed the scarf herself! The pattern is called "canopy" and you can of course find it on ravelry.

My first time: dyeing yarn with avocados

As mentioned in my last post, I wanted to try something new for the knitting competition. If this is a very wise decision (i.e. trying something new which is quite likely to go wrong when you actually really need it to work out!) is a different question. But I read a lot on the internet about natural dyeing and it intrigued me, especially because the yarn that we are supposed to use for the competition is undyed. A little colour never hurt anyone is my motto! To sum up my experience in one sentenced: my very first time dyeing with avocados was a total fail, the second time round it worked like a charm.

But while I'm sitting here and wondering if the fumes of potassium sulfate solution are potentially poisonous I have to say it has been an interesting experiment. First of all I chose avocados to dye with because they're easily available and it seemed like you don't necessarily need an additional mordant (but I ended up using one anyways). It's also supposed to make a lovely pink/purple colour like this example shows - how mine ended up will be explained later on. 

Avocado dye, part I (the fail):

So first of all I took four avocado pits and chopped them up in little pieces which was surprisingly easy. The funny thing was that as soon as they were cut open they already started oxydising and turned bright orange, quite surprising. I also kept the peel because supposedly you can make dye from it, too, but that's for a later experiment. I know it looks like I'm preparing some yummy guacamole but no, it's science! 

 I added some hot water and after a few minutes the colour turned orange as you can see on the pictures below. This was with two pits including the skin around it (I wasn't sure if I was meant to put it in or not).

This is the colour of the mix after about 12 hours of soaking without any additional ingredients (left) and

 after 48 hours, adding two more pits after about 24 hours (right).

After having soaked the chopped up pits in water for about 24 hours I then filtered out the pits, putting them separately into a sock (yes, a sock, old but clean I may add) so that the pieces wouldn't get tangled in the yarn. I heated up the dye solution and I added the yarn that I had previously soaked in the mordant while simmering for about 1 hour on the hob. I paid attention that it didn't get to boil to avoid felting. After about 1 hour in the dye bath, the yarn had soaked up almost all the dye but unfortunately the colour was almost invisible! Even after rinsing and drying the yarn you could only detect the slightest little hint of pink, nothing like the nice, rich hue I had seen on pictures before. Meh. 

Here's a picture of what the yarn looked like after the first dyeing attempt:

After this total fail I tried to figure out what I did wrong. I concluded that it was probably because I didn't boil the avocado pits properly but only soaked them, which means that I didn't extract enough of the dye from the pits to dye the yarn properly. Or, alternatively, I used bad avocados because they were not quite ripe yet (on the pictures you can see that they're very green on the inside). On the upside it was easy to overdye the first attempt since it was basically still the natural wool colour and I decided to try again. So.....

Avocado dye, part II (the success):

This time I changed my approach a little. First of all, I bought some avocados that were already over-ripe, if not to say on the verge of rotten. The market vendor at Marché du Midi probably thought I was totally stupid when selling me about 8 avocados that were basically not edible anymore but little did he know that I didn't buy them for eating, ha! And I was happy to buy dyeing material for only 1 € - a win-win situation. Peeling the lot was a bit disgusting because some of them were already kind of slimey-grey inside and partly mouldy. But it worked, so I'm not complaining.

The second thing that I did differently this time (and this might be the most important factor) is that I chopped up the pits just like before but I put them straight into the pot with water and boiled them for about 1 hour on the hob. The water turned a lot darker immediately, almost the colour of mulled wine instead of the more orange hue it had before when I used the mason jar as you can see here:

The rest of the process was the same: I mordanted (is that even a word?!) the yarn again - even though I wasn't sure if this was necessary - and put it into the dye to let it soak. I  let it simmer on the stove for about 1 hour, which seems to be the magic timeframe in this process for everything, and then let it sit there over night until the next morning. That would be about 10 - 12 hours of soaking I guess. The yarn kept on floating to the top and since I wanted it to be all covered I put a little cereal bowl upside down on top of the yarn to push it down. It worked well and didn't leave any traces on the fibre. 

The next morning I witnessed my first avocado-dye-yarn-miracle and it was beautiful! Even after rinsing several time almost no dye came out, it seems to be very well absorbed by the yarn. Here is the result:

To sum up this excruciatingly long post: using over-ripe avocados and boiling them on the hob does the trick and sometimes, if you don't succeed, you just have to try again. Another lesson in life learned. And here are the technical details again:

- pits of ca. 8 small avocados chopped up in smaller pieces

- used a bit more than the recommended 10 g alum to mordant 100 g of yarn

- boiled the dye base for about 1 hr

- added the yarn and simmered it in the dye bath for 1 hr

- let the yarn soak in the dye bath over night, ca. 12 hrs

Let me know if you're trying this and how it turns out!