Yarning Along...Out Back

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now?

I'm blogging from the back yard today, as it's gorgeous outside and this temperature shouldn't be missed.  We've had beautiful weather these last few days.
Not too hot, but warm enough that the tomatoes are happy and thriving. (Which is really all that matters...right?)

Things feel a little bit southern out here-Zeke is practicing the slide guitar, glasses are filled with iced tea, and a plate of piping hot fried zucchini is sitting in the middle our picnic blanket, cooling just enough that we can devour them comfortably.

I'm working on my Leftie, and I'm at that point where I get to play a little bit of *chicken* with whats left of my yarn. Is it enough to finish another repeat? Do i knit on, and risk running out and having to rip back? Or do i just rip back now to the end of the last repeat and kind off? I love this kind of dilemma, and it might be sad to admit, but it makes me as pleased as pie.

I just finished reading 'The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow', and i think i can sincerely say that its one of the best books that I've ever read. It reads like a real, heartfelt, deep and fascinating tale.

It was a book that didn't have me on the edge of my seat, but i still couldn't put it down.
Set in the Fifties, in New Orleans, the scenery alone was enough to keep me captivated. The actual story line was absolutely beautiful though, and the characters were believably human, peppered with flaw, love, and haunting remorse.

Its going to be difficult to find another book to follow in its footsteps, but the first few chapters of "The Beauty of Humanity Movement" by Camilla Gibb have shown a lot of promise! It's set in Vietnam, and loaded with sweet historic and cultural tidbits, which is right up my alley.

The Zucchini is cooled off now, off to get some before I miss out!

::Yarn Along::

There are a lot of projects on multiple needles right now...I need to get some of them finished before I can start more. It's an illness, I think. (One that I secretly enjoy.)

My current on going projects were put on hold this week because I did want to do something quick and fun, and have a finished product to show for it. My sister told me that her new wee sugar-pie was lacking things with long sleeves, and needed something that could warm her up on cool nights or in drafty rooms with air conditioning.
I saw my dear friend Rachel's sweater that she made and thought it the perfect solution and whipped up one of my own, from yarn I already had in my stash that a friend gave me a while back. It's by three irish girls and the colourway is "CandyLand". It reminds me of saltwater taffy, delicious!

The pattern called for fingering and was to fit a newborn. This wool is worsted, so it turned out slightly larger, which is good, because she's not a tiny baby. Newborn, yes. But she's growing like a weed. A porky, pudgy, very adorable weed. (with the biggest eyes I've ever seen.)
I was hoping to get a picture of her in it because really, she's the cute part, but it just so happens that I finished the sweater just in time for a heat wave to hit Ontario, and it's hot enough right now that no one has any business putting on a sweater right now, not even a newborn. If it cools down next week, I might get lucky enough to get a picture of her wearing it.
Project notes here. 

On a side note, I received the happiest mail ever this week. I had ordered some raw, unwashed wool from, British Columbia's  the Fibre Mine  so that the boys could try washing and carding, as they've been wanting to for a long time now.
When I opened the package, the scent escaped and I was immediately taken back to the summer fair grounds, the 4H club, and my Aunt Debbie's farm in Nebraska.
It was all bundled up so softly and delicately, and the farmer also included a lot of samples of fleece from other breeds. What a fun way to try out different fibers....


....Or just sit and sniff them, like I might do.

Yarn Along {Breaking Black}

This week the boys and I decided to have a little wool dyeing experiment.

We had some plain wool sitting around that a friend had given me-the colours were a light army  green and an *almost* cornflower blue, neither of which were terribly saturated. 

I'd read about breaking black Wilton food colouring-which is really neat. Black is just made up of various colours, and when you add acids, sometimes the colouring "breaks" into all the original colours and dyes in blotches. If you're trying to get a uniform colour, this wouldn't be a successful way to dye. But....we had free wool, a rainy afternoon and decided to give it a go.

 So this is the "before" shot of the green. I didn't get one of the blue, because i'm irresponsible like that.

 We unwound it into big hanks (I used my swift for this and it was kinda messy, but it worked well enough.)
Then we soaked these puppies in water and some vinegar for about 20 minutes.

 Dissolved the black food colouring into some water, and then added it to a pot of water and vinegar, and let it heat up. I added the wool, this time one on top of the other. I knew this would make *some* colour difference, but I wasn't sure how much.

 Reduced it to a simmer and let it go about 25 minutes, until the water around it was all clear. (The wool soaked up the dye.) You can see around the edges, the reds that broke away from the black dye.

 We let the wool cool. I ran a sink full of cold water and set the whole pot in there to cool it more quickly without shocking the yarn. (I don't even know what that really means, to be honest. I just read somewhere not to do it.) Apparently wool is sensitive to rapid temperature changes...kinda like me.

Then we gently rinsed the wool with some mild soap (my beloved Meyers lemon verbena dish detergent, actually-one of the few dish soaps i'm not allergic to!) Doing this over a colander helped because the water could run through it without us handling it too much. (Wet fibers get all cuddly with each-other and felt into one-which would be really messy.)
We rinsed until the water ran clear, which didn't take long at all because the wool had already soaked up most of the dye anyway.

The hank that was on the bottom of the pot soaked up most of the dye. See the one that's still green? That portion of wool was the one closest to the top.

Hung the wool up on the porch and sat nearby with small objects to throw at the squirrels who tried to steal it for who knows what.

Once dry, we took a look at the way the dye had broken-and it looked pretty cool. But not so great on the army green. I think if it had been white wool it would have been really pretty. But the result was kind of muddy.

So we decided it was going back in the pot. We decided to go with the greens since that was the direction the wool was going to go anyway.

 This time used several blues to get this mix, to sort of brighten up the greens a bit.

 I used more dye this time, so even though it simmered for almost 45 minutes, the water never *totally* cleared.

 Same process...cold bath for the pot, rinse with soap.

 It started to rain so hard though (and sideways) that we couldn't hang it up on the porch, so we spun it instead.

 And then hung it up while still a bit damp, once the sun came out.

 Twisted it back into hanks-and voila! (I turned a folding chair upside down on a dining room chair and used it's legs diagonally to wrap it back into hanks. Unconventional, but it worked.)

 I think I need a Niddy Noddy, and I took a  risk of complete embarrassment in having to ask the Mr. to make one for me. You should have seen the expression on his face when he repeated the words "niiiiiiiddy nooooddy....?" to me in complete confusion.
Awesome tool. Totally ridiculous name. Just sayin'. 

Oh, and The purple is the cornflower blue batch that we did later, using reds and blues.  We dyed those hanks in cake form, but both side by side so that they'd soak the dye up the same way.
I'm not sure what i'm going to make with them yet, but I'll post a picture once knit up to show the way the colour turned out.
That's one of the things I noticed, while looking online for dyeing tutorials, is that everyone showed how to dye, but not very many people showed the knitted results of different dye methods-which left me really curious!

The boys wanted to name our colours after things that only boys would come up with. And since they helped me, I only thought it fair to let them. So I won't repeat the original names.... They're gross.
I had to talk them down to less disgusting names, which took about a half hour of negotiation.  So, I give you, "Gaseous Peacock" and "Purple People Eater".

Weekend Snippets

car loaded to it's full capacity with sleeping bags and pillows

out of the city and into the green

surrounded by the trees
together with family and old friends

laughing, singing, playing
strawberry cheesecake, popcorn, coffee and s'mores
cool nights, sunny warm days

new foundations of life-long friendships

afternoons, ankle deep in pond water with nets
buckets of water and squirmy tadpoles
campfires that start at dusk and go 'till dawn
mosquito bites for souvenirs 

a few stowaway salamanders in pickle jars
home to meet a brand new baby cousin, all fresh and flaky

...the cherry on top of a perfect, long weekend.

Yarn Along: Leftie and Strathcona

I haven't posted a lot lately for yarn along as I keep forgetting that it's on Wednesdays. For some reason, I have it in my mind that it's a Thursday thing!
This week  I reminded myself to be sure to post. 

Yesterday I got to cast on a project that's been sitting in my queue for quite some time.

I had sort of forgotten about it until April's knitters frolic in Toronto, where a vendor was selling tiny little colour assortments of sock weight yarn. This way I could buy multiple colours for the project (each in their own very tiny hank-so funny!) without spending a fortune.

It was fun to walk away from a booth having spent very little and yet being given four colours to work with! I love the slight variegation in each colour, it's nothing crazy wild, but adds a lot of depth. I just hope I bought enough-I'd much rather have leftovers than be short. I saved the business card of the vendor just in case.

      Photo credit: Sweet Fiber

It took me a while to pick a main colour also-I wanted a neutral, but there were so many to pick from! The tables were like buffets of  colourful candy selection, it was overwhelming! I ended up buying a slightly grey/white; "paper birch" from Sweet Fiber-a gorgeous little company based out of British Columbia. 

This was my first time trying their yarn but I really like it so far. It too is slightly variegated in tone which makes it all the more fun to work with.

I also purchased the sweater yarn to make an "in threes" sweater for Lotte. I found this soft and gentle sweater yarn from Spud & Chloe. I love the colour name: Chocolate Milk. Perfect for a toddler!

Last but not least-the Strathcona. Here's a beautiful pattern that I think I completely messed up. 

Yes, the basics are there, it looks *almost* right, but the mesh stitch is not.

I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but clearly something happened that wasn't supposed to. 

Yes, it's still lovely, but it the holes aren't square like they were supposed to be. As I was knitting it, I was carefully trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, because right away I noticed it didn't look right. But I couldn't for the life of me find what was happening. 

Then I thought perhaps it was because I had never knit mesh before, and maybe this is what it DOES look like before blocking. So I went ahead and finished it, blocked it, and it still didn't look right. 

I'm determined to make another and figure out what I was doing wrong. It was a fun knit, and I want to make another anyway!

An Alley Walk

We're lucky to have these quiet, almost hidden paths throughout our neighborhood. All we have to do is step out of our backyard gate, into what seems to be, when in full bloom, a secret garden full of Lilacs, fruit trees, fresh mint and even roses.

 

To some, these alleys might seem  like the areas of the city that are unkempt, being used for yard waste and dead leaves, compost bins and sometimes leftover building materials. 

But to us, this is a treasure trove. 

This is a place where we can walk without the sound of traffic, or the danger of little ones stepping off the sidewalk. It's somewhere that we can still see the odd toad, sneaky rabbit, garter snake, bee hive, or in this trip's case, a busy woodpecker.

The boys are always sure to bring some pruning shears and small shovels for different botanic treasures they're sure to find and take home to plant in our own garden.

This trip rendered a variety of golden green mosses to go in a new shade garden that they're  working diligently to establish.
I wonder what the tomorrow's treasure will be!

Apothecary Circle Giveaway

Laura Emily is giving away a seat in her very nifty Apothecary circle! (I hope I win!) But you have a chance to win too!  Visit here to enter.