100 Days - 36th day : pink hair joy

For the last couple of years I have had a small patch of dyed hair at the nape of my neck, that makes a lovely plait. 

I decided I am ready to wreck the whole of my hair with bleach for the joy of pink hair.

Brown hair:

Bleached hair:

Pink hair:

Three osprey chicks also bring joy:

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload

#30DaysWild

10 X 10 X 10 Giveaway post

It has been creeping up slowly over the last couple of months, but finally I have reached my 1000th post! It feels like a huge milestone, who knew I had so much to say. I decided to celebrate the things that I have enjoyed about blogging with a 10 x 10 x 10 post. 
Up first are my ten most visited posts:

10: Cool Aid Dying with 1031 visits
9: Cooking and Sewing Post with 1114 visits
8: Carol Ann Duffy with 1124 visits
7: for the home educators HESFES : long self-indulgent holiday post with 1216 visits
6: for the reptile fans Tegu Walking with 1123 visits
5: for the Philip Pullman fans Midsummer's day with Will and Lyra with 1496 visits
4: Engelby by Sebastian Faulks with 1158 visits
3: Luscious Lemon Cake with 1565 visits
2: an early poetry post, visited by many students I think Margaret Atwood Poetry with 3247 visits
1: (not quite fair on Margaret Atwood but combining two as they go together) Lizard Cake and Lizard Cake Tutorial with a total of 4985 visits

Next I give you, with much torturous decision making, my ten favourite books of the 462 that are labelled at book reviews (alphabetical for I could never rank them one to ten):

Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie

And the final ten posts are the ten that I love, either because they mark significant things that have happened over the last few years or just times when I wrote something important to me or that I was particularly pleased with:

Don't Apologise speaks for itself, I was angry, I should write like that more often.
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be is a brief post that celebrates 15 years of friendship with the Ridley Birks family. 
Two Deaths, Three Kisses and a Punchup was written in 2011 when I blogged for the Library Theatre's production of Hard Times
Monkey Quilt the Final Chapter is the result of over two years working on our beekeeper's quilt.
Favourite Moments gives the best bits from my visit to Costa Rica with my mum in 2014.
Dead Dog Poems is one of many many post written during my longstanding involvement with the Manchester Literature Festival, it was one of my favourite events.
What I Think is a course review of 'A Brief History of Humankind', of the many courses I have done with Coursera since 2013 it was the most interesting and engaging.
Night of Writing Dangerously: Monkey and I have participated in NaNoWriMo several times, and are planning to again this year.
Luggage: I have taken part in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge every year since 2012, several years I have done flash fictions, and this is one I particularly liked.
Blogger (a poem) that I wrote back in 2010

I hummed and hawed about what to do to celebrate, and thought that of course there should be a give-away. I know people visit when I post stuff and I hope you get some interest or enjoyment out of reading but I thought it might be nice to know who you all are. So here are three outrageously unique tote bags that I made for my short-lived Etsy shop, so maybe if people just say hi and leave their email contact/blog link and I will pick three people at random to send them to.

Red and Black flocked satin lined with white cotton.

Brown satin with gold spirals lined with pale pink satin.

Pink paisley satin lined with pale pink satin.

Hair Dye for HesFes

My daughters have been dyeing their hair for years, Tish mostly red and Monkey mostly bright multicolours. In fact at one stage I think even Lewis dyed his black. I am very conservative about my hair, having worn it long most of my life and never done anything radical to it. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have been to the hairdresser in my entire life.

But in the spirit of wild and recklessness I decided to take the plunge for HesFes.

This is my normal mid-brown, nondescript colour:

 I allowed the Meister (who is fourteen going on twenty five) to put some peroxide on my hair, (we did her hair turquoise after it was bleached). This was just so the colour would show up a bit more but I didn't want to lighten the whole lot:

 And then Monkey did the deed, no turning back now:

Voila:

 

I had to go to work like this and was subjected to a few curious looks and sarcastic comments. It looked completely fabulous for about four or five days but has now faded to a soft blue. I made the mistake of sitting in the sun and actually washing my hair a couple of times. I think however that I have caught the bug and will be picking a different shade when this one washes out.

Wuthering Heights and all that

October is nearly over, the Read-a-thon has come and gone, the Literature Festival has come and gone, and NaNoWriMo is nearly upon us. I went to a lot of interesting events during the literature festival but Catherine O'Flynn's event at Waterstones on Saturday was my favourite; I reviewed her first novel 'What Was Lost' back in 2009 and treated myself to a signed copy of her new book 'Mr Lynch's Holiday'. She was a lovely unassuming woman who made you feel that ordinary people are capable of good writing and you don't have to be some kind of driven 'creative' type to make a living at it.

I didn't strictly finish 'Wuthering Heights' during the read-a-thon, I read the last few pages after I got back from an afternoon festival event. I am not sure what to write about a book that has no doubt been analysed to death. It was not what I expected, though I don't know what I did expect. It was gripping in the way that only really nasty characters can make a book; it was following a litany of people who's only pleasure in life was the manipulation and control of others. I did like the way that the tale is related by a servant, so you get a very particular view of the characters, because of course she was close and intimate with their lives in some ways and yet kept at a remove in others. Because of course it is partly about social boundaries, like the one that divided Cathy and Heathcliff, although I felt it was less a commentary on the position of women than Austen manages. I liked it much better than Jane Austen because the emotions are more real and there is less of the tedious formal politeness that blights the lives in Pride and Prejudice. I pulled out this one quote, just because it encapsulated for me the whole thing about their relationship. I definitely did not find Heathcliff very loveable or romantic but it helps you appreciate what he meant to Cathy:

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I have watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary." (p.81)

I have been doing various bits and pieces. This is a pattern called Corinna which I have been working on for a while out of some lambswool/silk from Kingcraig fabrics. It is sort of a replacement for my lovely yellow cable jumper that I managed to shrink just very slightly, enough to make it less of a pleasure to wear ... such is life.

And here is the cowl I knitted with some homespun yarn for my sister Claire's birthday, knit to this nice simple pattern. I was a bit iffy about the whole idea of a cowl but I really liked it once I had made it so might very well do another for myself; all the benefits of a scarf but none of the bother of the dangly bits getting in the way.

 

When we were at HESFES I bought this quilted jacket. The peachy colour did not really appeal so I transformed it with a dark red dye:

And finally just a quickie of Creature's birthday cake; she didn't want to be photographed with it as usual, but Tish and I were quite proud of our efforts here.

Kool-Aid dyeing for Fibre Arts Friday

I have been very lacking in creative inclination in the last few months. I tried making a pair of felt slippers for Creature at the weekend but they came out too small so will have to start again. However in digging through the box of roving I found the packets of Kool-Aid that Julie bought back from America two years ago, and so I decided to do some dyeing (vaguely following the instructions here on Knitty.) It's slightly worrying that some people feed this stuff to their children, it really is the ultimate non-food 'food'.

This is about 5oz of fleece roving, just soaked in cold water.

The instructions say you do not need extra acid to fix as the Kool-aid is pretty acidic.

1 pack per 1oz of fleece or yarn, so I made up 2 packs strawberry, 2 packs cherry 

and 1 pack blackcurrant, each in a glassful of water.

This batch has all three colours:

This batch has just the cherry and strawberry, it looks all the same but one is more pinky:

They were both heated in the microwave for 8 minutes, in two minute chunks with a rest while the other was heated. The instructions said a mere 4 minutes but suggested you keep going until the colour is absorbed and the water is clear; you can see here all the dye has been absorbed:

I left them to cool then washed and rinsed gently, squeezing as much water out as possible 

(do not wring or swish about too much to avoid felting)

Here are the two hanks, one is about 3oz, the other about 2oz

Close up of the lovely soft colours:

Hope to do a bit of spinning before next week.

We are going to see if it works just as well on Creature's hair:-)

(Linking back to Fibre Arts Friday where you can visit other creative wonders.)

Works in progress

I think Creature's experiments with her hair will be an ongoing work in progress for some time. After discussion with friends she has had another go at the multicoloured look, this time sleeping with the colour on, which is supposed to help the semi-permanent colour to last a bit longer. We used green, purple and blue this time, as you can see, wrapped in foil to keep the colours separate, and then covered in a plastic bag to protect her pillow.

This morning the effect was pretty awesome:The yarn I showed you the other day is coming along quite well, I'm only making about a mistake every other row, but mainly if I try and knit in bad light. I think that doing a whole jumper in sock weight yarn may be the thing that drives me to getting some reading glasses. But it looks great and I am pleased with how lovely the colours look. You can't see the lacy design that well, it is meant to be snug fitting and will have to be well blocked after it is finished. It looks a funny shape because the clever pattern creates the shaping by changing to smaller size needles rather than reducing the number of stitches, so the part I am working on at the moment is the narrow part at the waist.

Colourful work in progress

Disgruntled teenager (who does not like being photographed) is bored of having dull hair ... so we have transformed it into this:
though the blue has faded out very quickly, the pink is still gorgeous and vibrant.

I have started a couple of new knitting projects. I promised Carly that I would do jumpers for her twins, in fact I promised when they were little, they will be two in a month so I am finally getting around to it. I have bought some lovely multicoloured chunky yarn and am doing raglan sweaters.

I also had another ball of sock yarn hanging around and started doing myself another pair since all my hand knit have holes in the heels (though I will probably unravel them and reuse the yarn). Wanting to do something more interesting I started doing little cables, but they are very fiddly and I am regretting it. All the other pairs I knitted myself I find a bit lose so I cut down to 56 stitches and I am now worried they are a bit small ... will wait and see.

A felt of two halves

The dark days are certainly with us now. Come the end of September I get a bit depressed at the prospect of six months of walking to work in the dark, but the darker evenings don't bother me so much and it was a lovely sky last night so I went out and photographed.

Anyhow we have done no dyeing nor felting for ages (working days off too much at the moment) so I was determined to do something on Sunday. Tish needed another ball of wool to finish off the cardi she is doing for Julie's baby. She had dyed some several months ago and then found she has not quite enough to finish. Fortunately we did keep a record of the colours we blended and were able to recreate something close enough. And I wanted to do some more felt and dye some more roving.

So this is what you end up with when you are not particularly inspired to anything and just plonk down any available colour.
In one half I used some left over batts of blended roving that I made ages ago, and I really like the mottled patchwork effect. And on the other half I used some pastel coloured corriedale roving for the background and scattered scraps of embroidery silk and other random bits of thread and held them in place with a fine layer of merino. I liked this part too, but they are really two separate projects on one piece of felt. So the whole things is distinctly unsatisfactory and may have to be cut up and used for something else.

The dyeing on the other hand came out beautifully and I am so pleased with them. I am thinking more felt rather than spinning. Although I have mostly bought professionally dyed roving I much prefer the softer more muted colours I get doing my own dyeing. These pieces are done very random and I think I will try and do something more planned next time. I bought a set of very expensive silicone measuring spoons (it's all the rage in cookshops these days apparently)(they go down to 1/8 of a teaspoon) so that we can mix the dyes more accurately and with more subtle variations, and reproduce colours more closely.
M and I took all my library books back, including the ones that were honestly not going to be read any time soon. I really enjoyed Felting Fashion by Lizzie Houghton, which was a lovely inspiring book, but I am getting the feeling as I read more that books will not help and I need to go to a workshop to learn and progress beyond my basic skills. I found a copy of 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' by Susanna Clarke, which I have been wanting to read ever since reading 'The Ladies of Grace Adieu' back in March. We also bought 'A Clockwork Orange' for M to read as her 'banned book' (having unsuccessfully searched for a copy of Lady Chatterley) and a copy of Anna Karenina, which she found and decided it would be a challenge.

Sunday felting

I am feeling a bit crap today, so as not to dwell on this and feel sorry for myself I got up and "did stuff". I dyed the hanks of homespun merino that I have been doing over the last few weeks. There are four of them, probably (I have neglected to weigh them or measure the yardage) about 200g or so. I decided on reds and yellows and managed to recreate the bright blood red that Tish got when we did some a few weeks ago. It is a mixture of the magenta red and yellow, we were anticipating something a bit more orange but apparently not. They are currently wrapped up in the not-so-hot hot cupboard (the heating has not been on much since the weather turned nicer). I will rinse them after work tomorrow and photograph them for you.
I have been thinking for a while about further felting experiments. I wanted to do something more densely coloured so I picked out the pinks, purples and blues from my stash and just kind of swirled them round each other, mostly pulling out two colours together to get a more gently blended effect. The initial layout measures 20" by 18" and the post-felting measurement is approximately 12" by 12"
I have come to the conclusion that I need to be more careful with the thickness of the initial layers and I am guessing that uneven thickness is what causes it to felt so unevenly. I have tugged this around quite a bit while still damp to try and make it a bit more square. I am quite pleased with how it has come out as the pattern has remained quite distinct.

More felting and dyeing

I bought some undyed roving with plans to try spinning but instead decided to do a bit of felting. I helped at a workshop at my daughter's school several years ago and have a grasp of the basic process of felting. You start by making some fine layers of fibre. The stuff underneath is bubble wrap, this is designed to provide some friction when you agitate the felt.

Then you add a bit of embellishment, whatever you fancy really. Some of this is wool yarn teased apart, some is other bits of fibre. any kind of animal fibre will felt but you can use small quantities of almost anything, silk fibres work well for example. I then added another very fine layer of roving over the top to hold it all in place.

Next you use some warm water and soap and gently rub the fabric, then you roll it up in the bubble wrap and roll it backwards and forwards for a bit, then turn it 90 degrees and rewrap and roll again (basically till you get bored). The fibres should all hold together by this time. Then you 'shock' the felt by screwing it up and throwing it hard on the table, again until you get bored.

Finally you rinse the soap out. You can shape the edges while you felt it if you like, to make it tidier and pull it into shape. The finished size on my piece is about 6" square-ish.

We also did some more dyeing this week. I used some yarn that had already been dyed pale pink and just added stripes of red and purple with spaces so it could leech into the paler areas.

Over all it came out shades of pink with a few little patches of purple.

I recently learnt that my brother's step-daughter is going to join the family twins club, so I have more little people to knit for. I knitted a baby hat out of the other home dyed yarn and I am so pleased with it so I will probably do another one to match.

Dyeing experiment 2

So having found some advice online here on the subject of dyeing (in fact the knitty.com website is a great source of info on everything yarnish) we had a much more successful experiment.
So we started with soaking the yarn in the fixative solution, this was made with 1 gallon hot water, one cup of washing soda and 8oz salt (we do have very hard water here but this was a guess).

Then I mixed up some fresh dye, 2 teaspoons to about 250ml of warm water:

Then after soaking the yarn for about 20 minutes we squeezed the excess liquid out (you can reuse this solution indefinitely, so we have kept the bucketful in the garage) we laid it out on plastic sheeting (cut open bin liner) ready for the dye.

Then we applied the dye, this first one is mine, which is 100g of 100% wool yarn, then the one below is Tish's which is 100g of banana yarn.

When the dyeing is all done you wrap it up in plastic to keep it moist. We used cling film to keep the different coloured bits separate but you can just pop it in a plastic bag.

It sat in the hot cupboard (this is where the hot water tank is) for 24 hours (or whatever, it was a bit more than that. It can be less if you want paler colours). Then you rinse in cold water until it loses no more colour. You need to be thorough to get rid of all the fixative solution which will degrade the fibre. Then we washed through gently with some 'delicates' washing liquid.
And we are pretty pleased with the result. Having both used the same colours (except the turquoise which I did not use) it shows what different effects you can get. (If you click on the photo you can see the lovely colours a bit better.)