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Love love these knitting patterns. All available on Ravelry.

22 Leaves Shawlette by Lankakomero

Summer Flies by Donna Griffin

Damask by Kitman Figueroa

Kirsten by Sonja Esbensen and Anna Rasmussen

Page 75 by Herbert Niebling

Ranunkel by Herbert Niebling

Cladonia by Kirsten Kapur

This weekend, or November 18th, 19th and 20th, myself and my house-mates will be opening up our studio for the Eastside Culture Crawl. It’s my first time ever participating (out studio was literally just finished a couple of weeks ago), and I’ve been busy needle felting and putting kits together.

Our studio is located behind our house in the alley, on Pender & Heatley. Head North East of the pirate house on the corner that you see in this google street view and you should find the alleyway. If you’ve reached Hastings, you’ve gone too far north. There are a few studios in the alley, and we’ll have our sandwich board in the alleyway.

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At the event, I’ll be there demonstrating how to needle felt, and displaying some of the work that I’ve put together over the past couple of weeks. Along with the kit comes a special barbed needle for felting, a foam pad, fibre, and an instruction manual for how to make a needle-felted mushroom. All of the felt for the mushroom kit was hand-dyed with Kool-Aid!

This series is based on the characters from the stop motion Rudolph series that we all watched growing up!

(Yeti still in progress)

I will also have some knitted items, and greeting cards available for sale too. Hope to see you there!

Dyeing with indigo!

The coolest part about indigo is that the colour changes once the item being dyed is exposed to air (and oxidizes). It starts as a bright green, and then changes to the deep blue indigo shade. It’s like magic. You can’t really see it in these photos unfortunately, I caught it after it had changed.

In other dye projects, I’ve been experimenting with natural dyeing by using jam jars (thanks penny!!) They work if they’re placed in the sun, but my stovetop gets pretty hot so I dyed over the stove. This solution is made up with berries that had gone off. I set out the blackberries and cherries and extracted the juices – and dyed some wool with it.

This wool was over-dyed. It used to be yellow – from a batch of onion skins – but is now this berry colour!

I also finished up a spinning project that I’ve been working on. Made my first hand-spun sweater! It was lots of fun, but it weighs a ton. Turns out I have to start spinning so that it traps more air – and less fiber, making it more “lofty.”

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I went to Kits Farmer’s Market this Sunday and couldn’t resist the giant bushel of lavender one of the vendors was selling. There were bees swarming all over it, and it smelled so lovely! It was close to the end of the market, and the vendor was kind enough to give me some extra bunches. I ended up with so much of it! So I decided to make lavender oil – and document the process as well.

This recipe will give you an olive oil infused mixture that you can use as a moisturizer, for burns, cuts, or as a perfume. I’m going to dilute mine with water and put it in spray bottles to spray clothes from the line with it.  Learn more about how you can use lavender oil here.

What You Will Need:

Step 1: Sterilize your jar by placing it in a pot of boiling water. Set it on a cloth to dry.

Step 2: Pour the olive oil in to your pot and heat.

Step 3: While the oil’s heating, puncture the Vitamin E capsules to excrete the liquid. Pour Vitamin E over lavender buds.

Step 4: Remove olive oil from heat and pour over your lavender. Be careful!! The oil will be bubbling and extremely hot. Be sure to wear oven mitts.

Step 5: Let the mixture cool down until it’s about room temperature.

Step 6: Pour mixture in to your glass jar.

Step 7: Place the covered mixture in a warm spot to season for around 2 weeks. Shake daily.

Step 8: After 2 weeks or so, strain the mixture by covering your jar with cheese cloth, and funnel the oil in to a jar or container.

(These jars are so cool! You can purchase them on Etsy from Sweet Eventide).

Some other Notes about Lavender Oil:

Do not use lavender oil if it’s been grown with pesticides. This recipe is fairly concentrated, so watch for any skin irritation.