Intervals

Well now, one may ask - why haven't I been able much textile work recently? In fact, apart from what I describe on a previous blog on visits to London, and stash building exercise buying fleece, yarn and dye recently (October), I have not actually been able to get into making for the course in the last 4 weeks.

My work has been very busy, I get home tired, and then we had a new kitchen built, which means that the house has been in upheaval when I got home. Really not conducive to then sit down and concentrate on the course.

A shame, as I have plenty of ideas, have decided to look at trees in some way for the final assignment and project 7, and so will try to look at sampling along this theme as well in my steps towards that final assignment on this course.

I did do some dyeing of wool, using autumn berries, black and elder berries. I got a variety of colours and have been knitting a waistcoat on an Alison Ellen pattern, which is coming along fine, just a small thing to get on with when you are tired, sitting watching TV and not having to think too hard. OK, I also think that knitting is a kind of short-cut, a way of making something nice and comforting in a direct way, and it fills a hole where my design work should be.

Here is a detail showing the colours:

 

 

The picture does not really do the colours justice, but the rosy pinks are the elderberry dye, the purple tones blackberry. The exhaust gave greys with a tiny bit of iron modifier (the blue is some contrasting commercial yarn which I did not dye). Quite satisfying. The waistcoat was completed in November, but I continued to find it difficult to get into things. Thankfully with the Christmas break I had a chance to catch up and have now got into making samples again.