My Fortnight!

 Having been struck down by some lurgy (popular opinion says covid) some 10 days or so ago, I have been having a quiet time here with lots of reading while I nurse a horrible cough. Feeling a bit more myself this week and am back to light duties interspersed with a bit of knitting and sewing. So what have I been up to. Well I managed to continue with my stitch journal all bar one day - marked with a cross! I had one of my Hundertwasser moments and traced out the main shapes of one of his paintings and have been filling the sections in with stitch.

For my Chookshed Challenge book cover, I had laid out a selection of my turquoise fabrics onto a backing and had them all stitched down ready to move onto the embellishment before I was ill.

I had a plan for adding a flower motif to the front panel and thought that I would paint the basic shape with gold paint and then embroider into it. 

Then I thought that the background stitching might not like that so I thought - gold fabric and bondaweb. When I felt well enough to go rummaging I couldn't find the right gold fabric - too bright or too dull and couldn't find the bondaweb. So I ordered bondaweb while I had a think. I am now moving back to my original gold paint idea - oh well, watch this space as they say.

I opened up two solar dye jars this week. This first one was black bean soaking water, slightly weaker than my previous experiment. The fabrics were just squashed in, in the hope of some nice random markings which is what I got.

We have a lovely 'black' hollyhock in the garden which is actually a really really deep red. There are masses of dry and semi dry flowers on the ground underneath and I wondered if they would make a good dye. Well the liquid was a beautiful deep ruby red but as you can see, my fabrics and threads are not!

Much like the red onion skins which also gave a lovely green.

I have been knitting and the Ryegrass socks have reached the heel turn and I am decreasing for the gusset.

I have lots of sock wool oddments and am always looking for ways to use them. I thought that I would have a go at working with a ball of plain 4ply yarn and some of my scraps to make a thicker boot sock to use with my walking shoes.

I am using the Winwick Mum DK basic sock pattern and am happy with how this is knitting up so far. I love how the addition of the plain colour subtly alters the colours of the scraps.

Right, I am off to sit in the garden with a glass of something nice - enjoy your weekend.