A Vegetarian Platter of Dyeing

I was leading a workshop with my WSD pals. 16 took part in the workshop, another 4 sat out spinning (what a relief - it could so easily have been the other way round!). First I showed them the raw platter - red cabbage, red onions, beetroot - all dull maroon coloured, but not what the dyes would come out.


I wasn’t at all sure about the water at that Village Hall, and of course nobody else was using Wensleydale fleece which is my favourite. The day could have been chaotic with three microwaves, five gas burners and two electric burners going, but it worked amazingly well, and everybody produced results far, far beyond my expectations. I hope this comes out in the photos. They all got very excited, and Helen suggested that we have a “dessert” course next year - dyeing with fruits such as blackberries. It was probably one of the best days we have had (she said, modestly).

Sockwise or Anti-sockwise?

Having got into some difficulty with the rib on some Lana Grossa yarn, I decided to hand knit the ribs and place the work back on the CSM. Unfortunately because of the thread-up the yarn has to be cut (I wouldn’t have earned anything from the Imperia knitting company for this, they insisted on every sock only have one piece of yarn in it). Dropping the rib into the middle of the machine the same way as I knit means the machine in normal action takes the yarn in the opposite direction and would leave a big hole not easy to mend. So the rib has to be turned inside out. As I’ve done an invisible cast on with two rows of slip stitch it is identical both sides. Phew.

Afterthought - it wouldn’t really be the end of the world if I turned the handle the other way until the heel shaping. Just unconventional.

Up to Lee Mills and being fleeced

Up to Lee Mills to take six binbags full of yarn for the Yarn Mountain and to attempt to help sorting out for the new season. Oh dear, didn’t get very far, there is so much new stuff to be put away. But did some research on Marianne Kinzel, and find we have got most of the patterns. How ever the place is going to be clear for the first set of visitors in two weeks goodness only knows, let alone any displays going up. I do wish I lived nearer. And this year the SkipNorth group will be 44 strong!

Got home to find an email from a new friend about a CSM she has recently bought - she was fleeced £950 for a filthy, rusty, item which took her a lot of work to get going, and when she complained, the man called her a liar! Just goes to show you should never buy any machinery by post without seeing and testing it out first (bit arch of me to say this, I have just ordered a new lawnmower from Tesco Direct online! But that is a recognised brand. It’s all the more embarrassing as I know this man, and like him (but have never bought anything from him.) I feel so lucky I got my CSM via Ruddington.

Purple Sheep

Went up to the local organic farm shop this morning - they had three purple sheep in the field! I hurriedly parked the car and grabbed my camera. Once I had taken a shot I could see they it wasn’t just a purple splodge or raddle (wrong time of year anyway to mark if the ram had been at the ewe, as they are just about to give birth). The message of the side of the nearest sheep read “Hay Ewe”. Apparently some agricultural students had been visiting, and sprayed the message on, silly sods. Made me smile though. Inside the shop I bought uncooked beetroot and red cabbage for my Dyeing Day next weekend. I’m doing onion skins as well. It has since occurred to me that if I display the beets, the cabbage and some red onions, they are all just about the same shade of red - but the dyes they give me are orange, turquoise and golden yellow, respectively, which would demonstrate the point that you don't always get the colour you can see. Don’t know if I will get any of them anyway, as I don’t know what the water supply is like up in Hazelwood.

A Day at Ruddington

Over to Ruddington today to take the Sock Collection ready for sale in the shop. Eight pairs in their own yarn, a 60/40 wool/nylon mix, the kind the CSM likes best, and half a dozen pairs in Opal Harry Potter and Trekking yarns.

They have a Fashion Knitwear student on a three-month “work” placement, and I have been asked if I will show her the workings of the CSM and talk a bit about the history of knitting. H is very amenable and amazingly comes from Godalming, where Keith was born and my No.1 son works. By coincidence (or not?), Godalming was also a small pocket of the framework knitting industry. So we had a good rapport from the start. I started straight in with William Lee’s invention and why he could do it at that precise time in history - Nottinghamshire had good supply of trees for the frame in Sherwood Forest, bags of local sheep, and a new wire works had opened near Belper in 1561. The wire was necessary for the flexible needles with beards on them. I took H over to the West frameshop to show her how the frames worked, from the Victorian one there used for most demonstrations, up to the last one made in the 1950’s. These all produced flat pieces of work, ideal for shawls, but stockings had to be seamed. However, these needles were fixed rigidly horizontally in the frames, and it wasn’t until Matthew Townsend took out a patent in 1847 for the latch needle that needles could be mounted in a machine at any angle. Hence the circular (sock) machine where they are vertical with the working part at the top. Straight or Flatbed machine are generally set at about 45 degrees with ribbers at right angles to this. H has used Dubied at the Poly, but luckily not too much, as you have to “unlearn” some bits. THE CSM only tolerates the needles in two positions, up (out of work) or down (in work) and they have to be moved manually from one to the other, such as in heel shaping.

I started H off with plain knitting to get used to the feel of the machine, which is a Griswold and is dedicated to her for the full length of her stay. We then went back to the very basics, starting from an empty machine. This is slow and fiddly, mad most sock knitters used heaps of waste yarn in between socks to avoid this stage ever again!. We did a small amount of lace holes, picking up a picot hem, tiny cables and tuck stitches, as well as the all-important heel shaping. Of course, several stitches were dropped, all due to the heel spring weights being set not quite right. I advised H to practise this the days I couldn’t be there, and next Wednesday I may let her loose on the ribber, which is a whlol different ball game.

Make Do and Mend Day

Last week I picked up a beige and white spotted blouse in my local jumble sale for 10p. I’d recently completed knitting two bags which were too nice just to have as bags, so I have called them Bag Cushions. The idea is that they will live on the settee until I want them for an outing, so they needed some sort of stuffing that could be taken in and out quickly. The oblong Kilim bag was easy - I had a long piece of wadding left over from my patchwork quilt. Also, because of having the hoards of visitors last week, I had taken an older pillow out of storage and found it was awful - one of those items that’s supposed to be washable and totally changes its shape in the machine! I took this to bits and found that this was also a piece of flat wadding, wrapped round and round. I extricated it down to the good stuff, and cut two circles from it for my sunflower bag. Both these are destined to be going on holiday with us in May, as our gite in France doesn’t have any cushions on the settee. They will be stuffed with balls of wool for the flight - let’s see what the X-ray machine makes of that! For the present, the spotted blouse has provided the covers for the wadding - the back for the Kilim, the sleeves for the sunflower. It’s delightfully polyester and slippery, and must have made its previous owner sweat like nobody’s business (yes, I have washed it before cutting it up!).

I’m also knitting another Noquo (Not-quite-origami) bag from that fantastic shiny Wilko’s yarn in bronze and purple, which will be enormously stretchy and needs a woven lining. I’ve used the fronts of the blouse for this, and for a bit of fun, kept the button and buttonband on as the top edge. One edge slopped off where it has been the underarm, but the bag has cut off corners anyway - serendipity. A few minutes works with scissors and sewing machine and three challenges solved in one fell swoop.

The rest of the morning seemed to be taken up with re-assembling my Knitmaster, taken down to accommodate the visitors. It’s only been down for a week, but I ended up with two pieces of metal that I couldn’t place for ages. Eventually the grey matter got working, and the machine is up and safe. All I needed it for was to knit “shoelaces” which are actually going on socks. These are 3-stitch slipstitch or I-cord. I’d also picked up some clear beads in Southwell, so joined a couple of these to the end of each shoe lace. The socks are made on the CSM, with double eyelet holes every 10 rows down the front of the leg. The laces re purely decorative, they won’t pull the sock in for fit, but they have already given me the idea of socks with a horizontal row of eyelets to tie. Thoughts of shoelaces lead to socklaces, so how about several mini sock suspended along its length round the sock? I’ve got 84 needles to play with, mathematically this divides into factors of 2,3,4,6,7, multiples of 12x7, 14x6, 21x4, 28x3, which is a bit awkward, so I suppose I will have to go for 12 holes spaced every 7 stitches, which will give a bow tie at the front and 11 spaces to hang tiny socks, probably too many, unless I only hang a socks every other one.