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A Seam

Hello!  We have moved, my workroom is set up and today I sewed my first seam in for-ever.

This lovely, soft, drapey knit with silk content has been turned into a multipurpose scarf by sewing the ends together to make a circle.

Yellow knit

Yellow knit

See you Soon!

After a long think I have decided to continue blogging.  Thanks to everyone for your feedback and encouragement :o)

However, I will be taking a break of 2-3 months while we travel and get settled into our new home.  So please check back in mid to late July.

Taking the time to reflect about what I'm doing here has been a good thing as I have identified areas where I can make changes to improve the experience for me and hopefully for you too:

Blog Identity and Networks: I've been blogging for a long time (blog-wise) and I continue to be very interested in textile art and innovation.  However my main creative outlet is currently utilitarian textile creations (craft?), and I realised that I haven't been making much of an effort to connect with the many like minded bloggers out there! 

At the suggestion of Gina, I linked into the Kootoyoo's 'My Creative Space' meme over the last couple of weeks which has intoduced me to many bloggers with similar and inspiring interests.  This has lead to new commenters too :-)

Comments:  A few of you suggested that the comments part of the blog could be improved.  I asked Chris to look into this and we have made some changes.  I hope that commenting is now easier for everyone. 

I've also asked Chris to find a way to have comments sent to my email address to make responses easier for me. Another option is to respond to comments within the the blog itself  e.g. ungtblod.

Content: Most of your feedback indicated that you are interested in crafty content with some glimpses into what's happening with my life.... the past year 'life' has been a bigger factor than usual - I had a baby!

I also had a good look at some of some of my favourite blogs and the quality of images is a huge factor in my enjoyment of them. So I'll be keeping the camera close by over the coming months to work on improving the quality and quantity of my photographs.

Signing off for now:

Thanks for reading everyone.  I'll see you in a couple of months.

I have no restraint

I thought I'd better refresh my memory of crochet by making up a couple of granny squares.  I used these fabulous video tutorials from Meet Me at Mikes to refresh my memory.

The problem is that I can't seem to stop!  Combining the colours is my favourite part :-)  I'm not sure just how far these tiny balls of wool will go, but I plan on continuing until they run out.  My ideas for 'things to make' depending on the amount I can eek out are:

1. cushion cover

2. scarf

3. bassinette blanket (even though blankets are 'on the outer' due to SIDS)

4. pram blanket (ditto)

5.cot blanket (ditto)

6. lap blanket

I seriously doubt that I'll get anywhere near lap blanket size... but it's there as an option. Just in case. 

I have contempated weighing the squares done so far, weighing the balls of wool and calculating the number of squares I could expect to achieve.  But where's the fun in that?

Travelling Companions

Travelling Companions

Granny Squares

Granny Squares

Balls of Wool

Balls of Wool

Travel Preparation - My Style

Crochet for the road!  It's decided.

I browsed around the net looking at yarn options and not finding anything that gripped my crochet imagination.  Then, eureka! I remembered that there were 4 skeins of white handspun wool yarn in my craftroon AND my little stash of dye out in the shed.  SORTED!

I seperated my yarn into many mini-skeins - winding between my thumb and elbow.

And I've got a new dye method - after an initial microwave disaster I moved operations to the oven.  My containers are teensy, disposable pie tins and each mini skein is dyed in it's own tin.  I roughly followed the directions from this Hello Yarn tute. The tins went onto tray and into the oven at 180degC for 20 minutes. 

Last night I just switched the oven off when the time was up and I retrieved the tins this morning.   Which is a Useful Thing when you are caring for a very sooky baby.

I used Landscape Dyes for the pinks/oranges and Procion MX for the greens/blues.  I think I threw out my blue Landscape Dye as I can't find it... so that's why I tried the Procion on the wool.  I seem to recall that I had problems with Procion on wool in the past, but this time it worked fine.  I just added a good glug of vinegar to the dye mixtures

I'm chuffed with the results.  Jasper is too, even if he looks unimpressed here, the nano second before I took the photo he was smiling an pawing all over the wool with his vegemite fingers.

Jasper and Skeins

Jasper and Skeins

Skeins

Skeins