may-june-july!

Another raincape - this one for sale - Blue nylon outer & jungle print fleece inner, with baby blue zip & snaps :-)

Some blue & purple 8ply, dyed with procion dyes courtesy of my friend angie!

My finished pressie for 07 midwinter secret santa - the embellished cord pants, a long sleeved tee appliqued with wee skaters from the fabric on the pants, and a matching ear flap knitted in 10ply Magic Garden Lollipop...

We've been busy in the garden too, redigging our beds.. I've now got some tiny 'Winter Harvest' lettuces growing in my homemade propagators (3L juice bottles, sliced along one side, then taped shut once the seed tray is in there.. you just take the lid off to add water or ventilation ;-) ) and a single silverbeet lol... and in the beds so far we've sown 'Pukekohe Long Keeper' onion seeds and our slightly-later-than-the-longest-day garlic & shallots have started popping up! (see the tiny green shoots?)

My BIG project recently has been making roman blinds for our kitchen & 'dining' room windows to keep the place a bit warmer (and to cover the manky old venetians!). So we've ended up with *double* thermal blinds, because i used thermal backed fabric plus thermal lining! heh heh heh... might be a coincidence, but they seem to be making a difference! :-D

Some more wool dyeing - the pinky purple stuff is 200g of 8ply dyed with procion dyes, destined to become next winters longies for alexis; the aqua/purple ones are 400g of 10ply that was dyed with procion, but the blues were pretty washed out, so i over-dyed them with Wiltons Cake Icing dyes! much better now & i love the result :-) I'm planning a cardi or jumper for alexis for next winter from them... and all 600g wound into balls by hand! who needs a wool winder?! lol

And had a go at felting recently too! Didn't really have anything in mind to do with it (and still don't) but started with 100g of carded wool (the stuff you have before it gets spun) and some wee bits of plum-ish coloured wool, and spent roughly an hour pouring hot water over it & massaging it until it became one cohesive piece of fabric! I was trying to do swirls with the plum wool, but when a single drop of water compacts the wool from 5cm high to a couple of millimetres instantly, it can be a bit tough to keep everything in place! So some of the swirls got a bit mashed, but others came out ok... the whole thing looks a bit puffier in the pic than it is in real life too...

Currently working on knitting a scarf for me, and a pile of PJs for the kids so should have pics of those soon! :-D
oh & i've just found a big *hole* in the sleeve of alexis' cardi, so i have to learn how to darn that asap too! *sigh*