Dyeing Again

I've been busy the last few days. I started a lot and didn't finish much - until today, that is. This weekend I went out to Bankhead to help Bill out with habitat plots, but I was able to do some dyeing - this time using oak leaves and curled dock. The oak leaves produced a gorgeous oaky-brown color and the dock leaves, a light sage green. The brown from the oak really does look like wood! They both turned out really great and will look good together - I think I will make a hat with them. I also collected roots from the dock plants for dyeing, but they had to soak for a few days. They are simmering on the stove as we speak - they are supposed to produce a dark brown color. I think next I am going to try to make some variagated sock yarn with these earth-toned colors. I haven't tried variagated yarn yet, and I'm not sure how to go about it, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.
This morning I finished up a few projects that had been lying around. First off, these adorable baby booties. There is a free pattern here. They are for a high-school friend who is expecting a boy in October. I used some yarn (Katia Mississippi 3) I found at the thrift store for 99 cents. And there is still enough yarn for about 5 more booties. Yea for thrift store yarn! The second thing I finished off this morning is this little top I sewed up. I found a shirt at that I really liked for $58, and decided that I could most definately make that myself, so I went directly to Hancock Fabrics and found a pattern and some fabric (that was nothing like the shirt in the store). I had troubles with the elastic at the top and had to rip it out, but I finally figured out how to do it (my way) this morning. You can sort of see my new hair cut in the picture, but I thought I'd add another one since there have been so many requests. Its really hard to take a picture of myself without making my nose look like Pinocchio, so this will have to do. The hair is cuter in real life, too.

All the Christmas yarn I ordered came last Friday. I think I have a lot of knitting to get to!

Bracken Fern & Coreopsis

Bracken Fern & Coreopsis
Originally uploaded by wickjill

Here is some more yarn that we dyed with plants. The skein on the left was dyed first with coreopsis flowers and then overdyed with bracken fern. The one on the right was dyed only with coreopsis flowers. I think we're getting better at the whole dyeing thing!

What I've been up to...

Can you tell I like pictures??? The top one is of part of our group from Relay for Life, which we did a few weeks ago with a friend of mine that is a cancer survivor (unfortunately, he's not in the photo). We made those shirts, though... we cut out stencils from cereal box cardboard and then spray painted them. Pretty nice, huh? My big project right now is the boxer shorts you can see in the picture - I'm making mine green... almost done with the first panel. The socks are for Sockapalooza4 - I'm not sure about them... What do you think? My sock pal said she doesn't want anything too girly or lacy. I guess they're pretty girly, although not too lacy. Should I try a different pattern? The yarn in the next picture is dyed with hibisucs flowers I got at the natural food store (for tea) and turned out a kind of purply color. I like it! And the bottom ... summer food - I love it! Veggie pasta salad and rice pudding. I don't know if rice pudding is really a summer food, but I always seem to make it in the summer. Its sooo YUMMY!

The Big Reveal

Here it is, the lacy skirt with no bows:














And yeah, it was hard to finish it. I spent so much time knitting it and ripping it and knitting it and calculating and all that... and now its done. I worried so much that it would be too small. But its too big. I mean, its okay, but it kind of bunches more than I'd like at the top where the drawstring is. Even after my millions of calculations, I figured something wrong because the waist is 2 inches bigger than it is supposed to be. However, I am not ripping it out and starting over again! I like it, it fits the rest of my body fine. It does seem a little heavy and "hangy". I don't know what the right word is...
But I am happy with how it turned out.



I am participating in Sockapalooza4 and I just got my sock pal's information the other day. I am really excited, but there are so many choices in yarn, and color, and pattern. She didn't give me much of an idea of what she likes, so I don't know where to start! I was thinking about dyeing some yarn for the socks, but I don't know if she would think that was as neato as I do. And what if the color fades really quickly? I did try using hibiscus flowers (actually hibiscus tea from the natural food store) on a little bit of sock yarn & I really like the color - its kind of a rosy pink with almost a hint of grey. However, I didn't mordant the yarn first so that may change the color a bit. I think this might be a good color for the socks, what do you think? I ordered some undyed yarn from knitpicks and I hope it arrives soon. I am hoping that this dyes a little bit better than the stuff we have been using.

Hey Jamie, I was thinking about dyeing some yarn for your mom for Mother's Day. Do you think she would like that? Does she like earth-toned colors like the ones we've been getting so far?

Oh yeah, and if you want to see the loud and colorful lounge pants I made yesterday, check out my flickr. There are better pictures of the skirt I sewed, too. I figured this post had enough pictures for today.

A day in the life of me...

1. Yarn dyeing paraphanalia 2. Ivy dye bath with yarn 3. Yarn dyed with ivy, virginia creeper, virginia creeper with iron added, and red clover 4. Frazier! 5. Afternoon tea and knitting 6. Ivy & Virgina Creeper dyebaths 7. Bankhead crew 8. Albinistic hooded warbler we caught a couple days ago

Macrame, anyone?

Rachel and I tried out our first dyeing experiment... It was moderately successful. We decided on red clover for our first plant, it grows abundantly in a field near one of our study plots. It is also an exotic and slightly invasive plant, so no guilt in picking it! We used mostly the flowers and some leaves. In the book it said the color would turn out gold. I was thinking, like, a darkish gold. Well, you know those yellowish-gold macramed plant hangers from the '70s? Thats what color we got...

You can't really tell the color that well in the pictures, but its not exactly what I was hoping for. However, it was successful, in that it changed the color of the yarn. I think I will dye over it with something else, because I really don't think I will ever use this! Next up is... cherry bark (pink), bracken fern (tanish/yellow), virginia creeper (peach), ivy (green), and thistle (dark olive green). But not all at once!