Dyes

Still catchig up with old pleasures

Left to right: weld, madder root, blackberry with alum and cream of tartar and blackberry with iron. On thing about natural dyes is that even using the same dyestuff and the same procedure you will never be able to get exactly the same colour twice. But still, I am intrigued by the very different colours that I get from blackberry stems, the first year I got gray, the second nothing and now dark green, I like the colour, but why does this happen? This time I had done exactly the same, same season, same type of stems, and I really was expecting to get gray. Is it the different locations of the plants, the different amount of rain water every year?

Old pleasures

100g, superwash merino, 500m. I hadn't been spinning for a long time. I took my time, no rush, spinning just for the sake of spinning, the result is unimportant.

grr...it's so difficult to take an acurate picture of these colours

Knit-1

Possibly you are not wondering what have I been doing in the last 2 months, but I am going to tell you anyway: I was knitting! But a different kind of knitting, I spent 6 weeks in Brighton learning to knit on domestic knitting machines at the amazing design studio of Knit-1. At first I was a little overwhelmed, the classemates (they are from around the world)were designers or design students, and they took everything pretty seriously, the first day I was a little scared, but the teacher is great, she explains everything very well, and the course is very intensive (7 hours a day) so you learn very fast, you can see your improvement from one day to the next, so after a couple of days I felt really comfortable. I got to learn and develope several useful techniques, I met great people and had more fun than I have had in a long time. Wanna see some of the samples I managed to produce?
Examples of the different thechniques

Some full garments too

I have to weave in the ends of this one, plus it's too small form me, as you can see, but my mom has already called it for herself.

I love the last one.

Brighton

Saint peter's church

Colourful houses


Pavilion

Pier and beach


Don't ask me

Bath!

Lovely, lovely Bath

With it's beautiful bridge over it's beautiful river


Parks and gardens

Abbey

Inside

From the big pool of the roman baths(amazing)

Roman whorls

Stunning sunsets from the train station

London

If you want to see the guard in their disctinctive red uniforms, you must come in summer, of course in winter they wear their cozy coats.



Pictures are a little gloomy because
a) My camera isn't very good
b) I am a bad photographer
c)

The textile collection of the Victoria and Albert museum can't be visited until 2013 becouse they are moving it to another center, but we had plenty of fun anyway


Mmm...brunch at the pintoresque Wapping project


I know! But then I don't remember.

Guess where I am

The weather is not the best for taking pictures.



lol, I love these colourful houses.