Frisian Frillies

Who knew that dyeing was so much fun? I never really took the time to do dyeing, because hey, I know people who can do it so much better than me! And with the natural dyed yarns I saw, most of them were yellow, or a dirty colour of yellowy green. But, I also know you can achieve great result with trying and experience... and I am amazed at the things that some wool dye artists can do. When I invited my spinning group over for a Sunday Fun Day, the idea was quickly coined to do some dyeing - with natural dyes! I ordered allum (mordant) and hydrosulphite (for the blue), plus some madder root, and then went scouring the area for plants to use. In my garden, I had sown some woad early this year, and the slugs were nice enough to leave me some. I had a handful to use, not much, but hopefully enough to give the wool a bit of colour... In the end, I used tansy, madder root, woad, alchemilla, nettle, lichen and onion peel. And the results definitely made us wanting to dye more. We ran ...

And again, time flies by.... In the meantime, I've started vlogging - more about that later - been on holiday and participated in the Tour de Fleece. As pictures say more than a thousand words, here's my TDF 2015!

I have never been a fan of cowls, I never saw the point really. Why knit a cowl, with a set circumference when you can knit a long shawl or scarf, which you can wrap around your neck as loose or tight as you want? Hence, no cowls in my wardrobe. Until recently. See, I got this book on brioche. Long story... Ik ben nooit een fan geweest van cowls. Ik zag niet echt in waar ze nou goed voor waren. Waarom een cowl breien, met een vaste omtrek, als je ook gewoon een sjaal of omslagdoek kunt breien die je zo strak of los om je nek kunt slaan als je wilt? Dus, ik had nog geen cowls in mijn kast liggen. Tot voor kort. Want ik kocht een boek over brioche. Een lang verhaal... Aeons ago, at a Breidag in Nieuwegein, I followed a workshop by this woman called Nancy Marchant - who spoke quite good Dutch, which confused me, because with a name like that, you'd expect her to be French, and not American, and definitely not an American who can speak Dutch - and I was tought the basics of brioch...

The shawl came off the needles a while ago, but I promised I'd blog about it - also because I used some needles I testdrove for my lovely LYS at Wereldwol. She had ordered a bunch of bamboo needles from Chiaogoo and wanted to know whether they knit well. And what better to knit on bamboo circs than a humongous gigantic shawl? I had a skein of Scrumptious Lace and it proved the perfect yarn for the Cypress Triangle, a pattern by Dorte Ronnov which was adapted by Marieke from a square into a triangle. De omslagdoek is al een tijdje van de naalden af, maar ik had beloofd er nog over te bloggen - ook omdat ik er naalden voor heb gebruikt die ik heb getest voor Wereldwol. Marieke had een paar Chiaogoo-rondbreinaalden van bamboe besteld en wilde weten of ze wel breiden. En wat kun je daar dan beter mee breien dan een gigantische supergrote shawl? Ik pakte er een mooie streng Scrumptious Lace bij dat die was voor een Cypress Triangle, een patroon van Dorte Ronnov dat door Marieke is bewe...