Spincerely yours,

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is such a gorgeous day here so far! I’m trying to blog outside, though the sun is pretty bright making it difficult to see the screen. This was a great week for solar dyeing and I have some new natural dye colors to show you. I did manage to get some very light green color with Hayscented and Bracken Ferns. (For anyone new to my blog, I use alum as a mordant in all my natural dyeing.) The Bracken Fern broth was a golden brown so I was very surprised to end up with a light green color. The Marigold blossoms with their pink broth gave me a nice yellow color.

This week, I am brewing up some Coreopsis and Daylily blossoms (pictures during the week, I hope).

I finally took my the apron class at Gone Quilting that I wrote about quite a while ago. It turned out to be quite different than what I had anticipated. For some reason I had expected it to be a very large class with a lot of hustle and bustle and it actually turned out to be a semi-private class. Also, the other student was a very nice lady I know from the LYS who reads my blog! (Hi M! How far did you get on yours?) I was hoping to complete the apron in one evening and I probably could have if I hadn’t been so tired. The instructor, Diane, was very friendly, pleasant, and knowledgeable. I don’t really have the time right now, but I hope to take more classes there in the future.

This is what I have so far:

Knittingwise, I have not been very productive lately. I did start Fifi and so far I am problem free. I have noted that a few people have written on the Sexy Knitting blog that armhole area has not been large enough and this could be a problem for me as I usually have to do extra increases there. I am, however, nowhere near to the trying-it-on stage yet.

Project: Fifi by French Girl Knits

Yarn: Rowan Calmer in color 490 – Vintage (This is a light lavender.)

Thoughts thusly far: The yarn is soft. The pattern is well written. I just need some more time in the day!

In other news, I sold my first handdyed rovings on Etsy last night! Yay and Whoo hoo!!! Now I get to find out how the rest of it works. So far it seems pretty easy as my buyer has paid with Paypal… So, I guess I’ll just be off the post office tomorrow! I still have more things to add. I have dyed all the roving/top that I currently own and I’m waiting for a new shipment. I still have to explore different vendors to find out the best places that are out there.

Here are a couple of things that I have learned this week about dyeing. First, if you use foam brushes to paint your wool/yarn, do not put them in your main dye jar if you intend to save it for future use. I really think that the foam brushes harbor mold spores and are not to be trusted! Second, it is ok to put superwash roving through the spin cycle, but not Blue Faced Leicester! Felt-a-rama! I don’t know what I was thinking!

So to finish up, I have a cute Agent J riding a John Deere photo:

We may be off to watch Harry Potter this evening. We can’t wait! Hope everyone has a great day!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 11:12 am and is filed under children, crafts, dyeing, knitting.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.