Five on Friday - Distracted by Dye

1. Dyeing

One of our many charity shops in town is having a "yarn event". I didn't even realise, as I only popped in quickly before meeting Mr Gonecycling, and he doesn't tolerate delays due to yarn...so when I saw the huge wire bin full of massive cones of wools and threads, I just had to dive in there and retrieve what I could without thinking too long.

Which explains why I now have large amounts of cotton thread that need dealing with in some way. Dyeing, that is the answer. Use it myself, take it to class, sell in the etsy shop? The possibilities are endless. Ahem. So I set to and started to wind it off into skeins. Which then sat on the end of the table until Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning I spent an hour trying to wash them. (There must be an easier way - how do you do this, people? How do you wash skeins of thread without them getting in a huge tangle??) 

Then in the evening, after class, I dug out the as-yet-untried tub of swimming pool grade sodium carbonate, and soaked the threads overnight. On Thursday, I wrung out the skeins and drained off the soda, mixed the dyes and splodged it all over (getting technical now). And then had to run around looking for more things to dye, as I still had nearly a litre of soda sitting there looking like it could be useful. This always happens when I dye...

Then Thursday after class, I spent an hour or so rinsing and rinsing the threads, and wondering how the heck to dry them all - so here we are finally, this morning, with my rainbow threads drying on a piece of string in the garden. 

The miscellaneous soda-soaked fabrics are now in a kitchen tub looking a very dubious shade of purpley blue, and the tray is full of threads again - this time with blues and greens. And I still have 800ml of soda. Sigh.

I don't think I'll be setting up my own hand-dye business any time soon...

2. Hiding

Mr G had a good idea the other day. Well, he often has good ideas and luckily gets paid for them, but this one was just for me. Fed up with me complaining about not having my own space, and either having to shut my work away in a cupboard or leave it out for all and sundry to see, and being interrupted all the time because I work right next to the kitchen, he suggested I use some sort of screen. Like this:

Genius. It folds up and sits next to the cupboard (or quietly behind an armchair when the cupboard is open and I don't feel the need to be screened off). And you can still see through to the garden, without looking over my shoulder to see what I'm up to.

And it doubles up as a screen across the bottom of the stairs, to direct people into the kitchen rather than across my yoga mat - should I feel the need to do some bendy things without being interrupted. What a star.

3. Sampling

I continue to stitch teaching samples for class, and to be honest, I like them as they are - hardly any stitch, so not what I had in mind for them at all. Do I need to start again?!

4. Painting

As well as dive into the charity shop to liberate the wool, I popped into the decorating shop next door for some F&B tester pots - completely on a whim. I had heard good things about one of the greens, and I'd also read (those 59 seconds again, see last week's post) that green is a fantastic colour for creativity. The room I work in is pink - is this where I've been going wrong?! But I'm not sure about painting the dining room green as I've also read somewhere else that it should never be used for a room you eat in, something about casting a pall over your food. Thoughts?

5. Procrastinating 

What I should ACTUALLY be doing is finishing these samples - which I started in August, sitting outside my tent in Brittany. Hmm, finishing things - what's that like?!

And if anyone could answer my burning questions (how to wash yarn skeins, and whether to paint the dining room green) I'd really appreciate your thoughts! I always reply to every comment if you leave an email address, so the replies won't show here but in your inbox :) 

Thank you for reading! Back on Monday with a different sort of post, courtesy of Hilary.

Down to business

Time for a post about something creative!

I've been particularly busy the past month with preparing three courses.  Three!  And of course feeling more than a little overwhelmed....

Two of the courses are supposed to be informal, and more or less identical, and on more of a "project" basis - but I found that I was panicking about what we were going to do, and felt a fraud for taking people's money for a class where we just made it up as we went along - so I've now written a Scheme of Work for the term!  It's based on suggestions from the group, but I'm so much happier with a plan! 

The other course is a City & Guilds Award in machine embroidery - just a baby City & Guilds for now, but my first one to teach!  This one caused me the most headaches - trying to interpret the syllabus and come up with a grand plan to get through all the work in the right number of hours.

And then of course, having decided what we're going to do, I then have to do it all myself!

So there's been sketchbook work on colours:

then into stitch:

sketchbook and stitch work on line

(and tone, I couldn't help myself - I don't think it's Level 1 C&G though....)

and dealing with the offcuts:

I've made a sort of log-cabiny sample with this, but don't seem to have a photo to hand...

And I've finally started work on our EG branch competition "flotsam and jetsom" due in on Saturday....ahem...maybe because I love seascapes, maybe because I hoard things from my seaside holiday, maybe I was just a little complacent???

The Girl did say out loud "I wonder where you'll get some shells from Mummy - we've hardly got any in the house at all".  Cheeky miss.  (She was of course referring to the four jamjars in the kitchen, the massive kilner jars in the office, the shells on the patio, and the as-yet unclaimed shells in the car storage cubbies...)

So it was out with the sea-themed wool, to do some sort of random felting.  Out with assorted sticks and shells.  Out with the massive box of accumulated french papers (bread wrappers, receipts, tourist leaflets, tide tables etc...)

Sorry, have to tilt your head to see that one...

Whereupon inspiration deserted me.  It was Mr G who then suggested I made a fish.

So out with the copper wire and the pliers

A brief detour to a local craft show where I found these wonderful electroplated balls and nearly got distracted from my fish and wanted to make balls...

A very real distraction involving manipulating painted Bondaweb into a bowl shape

I am quite seriously chuffed with this, and need to scour charity shops for heatproof bowls and large ceramic/pottery balls...this may be my new thing....there's even some FOIL in there! 

But I digress.

Finally, I've made a good stab at starting my Fish:

All recycled fabrics and beads. 

Here's me stitching the beaded cords in place on some water soluble.  This is after I stitched through my finger.  (So now I have two tingling fingers on my right hand - the mandolined finger healed beautifully, btw, but is still a little bit numb/tingly - getting better all the time:)

Here are some assorted recycled bits and pieces to attach:

And here is a bit further on:

I'm supposed to be dealing with the tail at the moment, but as it involves stitching over copper wire threaded with beads, I thought I'd write a blog post instead!

 Procrastination, deviation from the task in hand, avoiding something difficult?  Moi?!!