True Blue

Just a note: though Tini is going to move, my humble self is still in the business. Though I am quite occupied, but whenever there is an order coming up, I surely will fulfill your wishes and ship any yarn your heart desires.

Now back to the topic! Since I have a small garden now (and own the book "A Dyer's Garden" by Rita Buchanan for even a while longer), I finally could go and grow indigo and dye with it. The indigo dyeing can be a smelly and lengthly process, using a fermented soup which includes urine, but Buchanan describes a fast method with fresh leaves, and using spectralite and no urine. I had to order the spectralite in Britan, which took a strangely long time to arrive. I did not use "real" indigo, but polygonium tinctorium (japanese indigo or dyer's knotweed) but that has the same color pigment as indigofera tinctoria. I had started the seeds in spring in a small greenhouse, and later I planted them to a sunny garden patch and crossed my fingers that they will grow readily. To my delight, they did so! Now they even start to flower which makes me hope to harvest some seeds later that year. Here they are in their green beauty:



I just cut off around 90% of it, I just left the stems with the most evolved flowers. It is said that it will regrow readily so I maybe can dye with it again later that year. I picked all the leaves from the stems and started the extraction process. Until now it looks good, I have a liquid which seems to be of a dark green, but there are several more steps to follow. I will keep you posted on the results!

Times they are a-changing

A lot of changes has happend in the last couple of months. next to some personal changes am I starting a new job in the middle of September and will move to the beautiful city of Koblenz in Germany. but before then I will go on my long awaited holiday (I know, unemployment is hard..;-)) so I will not be able to reply to requests or send out orders till Aug 29th.

Wish you all a wonderful summer or winter!
So long, Tini

TdF Day 10 & 11

I got my spinning wheel running again and after being held up with work and family I am now a proud member of Ravelry's "Spinkult"-Team :-). And having fun.

Day 10 was just a plain simple soysilk warm-up. Nothing fancy but so soft and cuddly *sigh*

Day 11 turned out to be a shipwreck. Not me, but the yarn. Blue, white and light green merino with mohair locks and some wooden beads. Stormy sea and a sunken ship = shipwreck. No harm was done to humans, animals or actual ships. Promise ;-).

Busy Bee

I know it has been a while since the last post, but I was well occupied with moving, working, a bit of travelling, seeing the family and also creative stuff. I hope I can catch up with that in some future blog posts.

But what I would really announce now is that I will show up at a local craft fair tomorrow! *Squeee*
I just wrote them to add me to their mailing list to be notifyed earlier next year, but they said that a free spot is available because someone cancelled. It is totally unexpected and I have to organise a table, chairs, table cloths etc. and go through the things I would like to sell.
I will share with Katharina, like for the christmas market and expect it to be quite fun. Here are the details:

Marché Artisanal de Mies
9 am to 6 pm
Saturday, April 30
In front of the Administration Communale,
1, rue du Village, 1295 Mies

You can have a look at photos from the 2009 edition here. It seems to be a very nice market, with even a small flea market, animals, music and plant sellers. I just hope the weather will be fine, because we don't have any tent or pavillion. If you are in the area, come and have a look!

It's a baby!

I finally finished two projects I have been drooling over for quite some time. "It's a boy!" and "It's a girl!".
I found the blue polka dot baby buttons in Cardiff and the were screaming out "spin me in, spin me in!". How could I resist that? And when I ripped off my pearl necklace in the same week I knew I also had to spin a girl equivalent. And they are sooooooooooooo cute! You just want to hug and cuddle them all day, make them laugh and sing them to sleep...

Take a look for yourself



Wanna hold?

Take care, Tini

Wakey wakey, have some tea!

So the coffee dyeing went fairly well. Definitively a way to destroy coffee. I also found my two value packs of british black tea I had bought just for dyeing a while ago. I am also no big fan of black tea, because it makes me feel quite weird. But the smell is very pleasant - I was just concerned that the vapours of so much tea would cause some insomnia but it seemed to have no effect whatsoever.

I found a recipe which said something like 8 tea bags for 5l, which would dye 100 g of yarn and I was surprised, checked my tea pack and realized I could have dyed 1kg of yarn with those 80 tea bags which were in it. I re-checked the reicpe and it said it would become some kind of beige, so I decided to make some experiments on my own.
First I used 10 bags, and that gave some quite dark beige, bright brown. Then I used the same dyebath again, put in new fiber and another 20 bags and reached a nice caramel brown. In the end, it put in the rest of the 50 bags and put in more silk and wool/silk blend and got some dark copper.



I like the colors, and it is really easy peasy with the tea bags, no filtering neccessary and no dirty fibers (as long as no tea bags burst open). And very nice colors for a low price.

Wake up and smell the coffe!

As I already reported, we will move soon to another apartment. I took this as a reason to go through my things and sort out what I don't need anymore, because I don't want to drag along all those things I never use from one place to the other.
I came across an old packet of coffee. I must say, I don't drink coffe because I just don't like it. I'm more the tea and hot chocolate type, and the only way I ever consume coffee is in coffee flavoured chocolate. This beforementioned packet of coffee is a leftover from my mum and I kept it because I planned to do some dyeing with it. Well, I never came around to do it, and now I thought why should I move coffee and undyed roving, when I also can just move dyed roving? And also, the process was not very difficult, as it seems as no mordant was needed. The only bad side effect was that the appartment was filled with smells of coffee and vinegar, and thats something neither me nor my boyfriend like much. Anyways, here is the result:


I used merino roving, which I put in at two different times and some tussah silk. I really like the colors, soft brown and beige, and the silk really looks amazing. I am just afraid that I can't spin it before we move, because there are two or three more yarns to finish before and I have so much other stuff to do. There are also two packs of black tea which emerged from the depths of the junk room...