The Sewing Bug

I think my sewing maching may just burst into flames. I don't know if it's been the heat keeping me from wanting to knit or just the excitement of DQS9 but I can't seem to stop sewing things! First I have my completed quilt from the swap. It was for Lael and she seems to be loving it. And her kids seem to love the ducks I crocheted for them. If this isn't encouragement to go on doing swaps, I don't know what is!

So then I moved on to the Scrappy Pincushion Swap. It's another blind swap, like the DQS (where my partner doesn't know who I am so I can't ask him/her questions) and my partner doesn't have much information available as to what she'd like so I've decided to use these cool feed sack scraps that I found in the house we cleaned out a few months ago. At least I think that they're feed sack scraps. There was such an age-range of things in that house that I can't really decide for sure. But I'm sticking with my story for now.

I've also been saving selvedges for a while and, with all of this sewing, have a good selection to make sachets. And I also made one with a scrap from the backing fabric and a bit of cross stitch for my friend who is having a moth problem (they're both stuffed with lavender from the local health food store -- hopefully my lavender plants will produce lavender for me next year!)

And finally, I've started on a doll quilt for myself. Based on this quilt and this quilt from the DQS that I LOVED and this quilt that I saw a photo of some time ago. I've decided that the small size of doll quilts makes them absolutely ideal for my many many quilt ideas. At least I can get many ideas out of my head without completely filling my house with quilts or spending thousands of dollars on quilting fabric!

I'll see you back here in a month when I tear myself away from my sewing machine again!

Cozy Pieces of the House

Inspired by Amanda's Corners of My Home, today I have a few little bits photographed. Since there are few pieces of the house looking "nice" so far, it's fun for me to isolate the nice ones (or at least the ones that are nice, in my opinion) once in a while.

Please ignore the drop ceiling in the first photo. I do believe that it will come down over this long weekend. Something I do love at the top of that one is the door bell. It makes a horrible buzzing noise but it looks pretty cool. Being a real bell and all. It's called an "Edwards Buz-A-Bel".

The last picture is a few things on my mantel. There are other things on the other end of the mantel (mostly more silver stuff) but it will have to wait for another post.

Have a great weekend!

Dyed Roving

Here is (finally!) a photo of the roving that I dyed at the workshop a few weeks ago. The pinkish ones on the left were dyed first with madder root. That dye pot didn't work so well though so I overdyed them with cochineal. The one on the right was done at the very end of the day so none of the pots had much umph left in them. It went in pretty much every bath and wound up slightly ivory-colored. But that's okay. I think that they work well together. Now to learn to spin. . .

Last Weekend at the Fair

Last weekend, my friend, Thea, and I went over to the Dutchess County Fair. Partly, this trip served as an important testing of the route from my house to the Dutchess County Fairgrounds (where this will be happening very soon), and partly it was a trip to check out what this other event in Rhinebeck is all about. It turns out that it is mostly about fried food. We had a great time!

Three (French?) Hens

We picked up our little hens yesterday. Three Buff Orpingtons. Petunia, Mildred Pearce, and Georgia Brown. I don't know that there is much to say about chickens but Patrick and I are both very excited and looking foward to lots of fresh eggs in January.

Patrick built this lovely tractor for them (there is now chicken wire over the part on the left).

Vintage Puzzles

I think I'm finally finished working, photographing, and listing my found stash of vintage puzzles. They're over on etsy if you're interested in that kind of thing (I know I am)!

Dyeing

I never thought I'd really want to learn how to dye yarns. It's silly but there are so many great options out there already that I felt like I needed some parameters somewhere. But that was before I started gardening at my own house and read about a dye plants lecture at the local Weavers and Spinners Guild. I don't spin and I didn't (I've since been very generously given one which I need to learn how to use) have a fancy harness loom but those are both things I'm interested in so I went to the lecture (back in April) and was promptly convinced to join the guild. Then I looked forward all summer to this dye workshop which was held on Saturday.

Not only was the dyeing itself a lot of fun but learning about the histories and materials behind many of the dyes was fascinating! Above, left is cochineal which is a bug which is a parasite on cacti in South America. It makes a beautiful red/pink and was monopolized by the Spanish for 300 years and second only to gold in value of products from the "New World".

In the middle is madder root. I think I may try to grow some of this in my garden next year as it was my favorite of the colors shown (surprisingly -- I thought my favorite would be indigo). We may be a bit too far north but it never hurts to try. The yarns on the left in the photo below are done with madder root. Our batch didn't work out too well so I overdyed my roving (yes, it's true that I don't spin -- but I do want to learn!) with cochineal -- photos of that to come. But I'm willing to try again, for sure. This is the dye used for the reds in real Persian rugs. Always beautiful, right?

The last of the photo mosaic at top (the photo on the right) is a thing called oak galls. These occur when a certain wasp stings an oak leave and creates a kind of cancer in the leaf that grows into one of these galls. The insect lives inside and crawls out through a hole. These can be found on the forest floor, although rarely. She said that the basket in the photo represents half of FIVE YEARS of collecting these doodads. And she's a park ranger! I don't know what color they make but it sounds like a fun treasure hunt to search for them and give them a try someday.

The thing about natural dyes, as mentioned above, is that they are not particularly reliable. But that's part of the fun, really! All we did was mordant our yarns or rovings (with potassium alum) while the lecture was given and then the dye pots were heated and we all ran, full speed ahead, at the dye. It was crazy but a whole lot of fun! I'll post photos of my dyed roving once it stops raining here (it's been raining non-stop for the past two days) and I can get a decent shot.