Swatchless

They are gone!  24 hours of an empty nest and empty balcony signals my opportunity to clear out all traces of pigeon.  The young birds were last seen hopping around in my dishpan flower boxes.  They had practiced flying from shelves to the bench to the balcony floor and back again.

These little birds sure grew up fast!  I snuck a picture of two pigeons on the balcony rail, and I can’t tell from this shot if it is the parents or the babies.  When I opened my balcony door they flew off, hovered and circled back.  This makes me think that they are the young ones–scared to fly too far away from safety.This may be the last I see of them.  I’ve taken down the balcony screening, and moved the bench inside (after I washed a LOT of pigeon poop off of it).  The shelf and flower pots are moved into the wind–we’ll see how hardy these birds are.  They were pleasant enough company for the spring, but I don’t think I would like them to stick around all summer too.

Now maybe my plants will get the attention they deserve.  I was hesitant to go out and water, lest I disturbed the birdies.

I’m happy to announce that the pigeons have made their grand escape from the flower pot!  While making dinner, I heard cooing, peeping and flapping noises from outside.  I saw the parent encouraging Bernie to flap.  It was funny to watch.  Bernie sat there flapping away without lifting himself off of the bench.  It must take several workouts to develop strong wing muscles.

Bernie and Bernice are on the loose

I quietly snuck out onto the balcony to watch their progress–the parents seem quite scared of me and took off immediately, but the little ones hopped onto my shelves and into my dishpans of dirt (that will eventually grow things that are greener than pigeons!)

It’s Tuesday today, and that means cheap movie tickets…so I planned a great escape of my own!  I packed up my knitting and headed to watch “A Shine Of Rainbows” at the Screening Room.  It is an Irish movie which is charming and a bit sad, as most Irish movies are.

before the movie

Last night I had already turned the heel on the socks so during the movie it was smooth sailing…

after the movie

I’m wondering if there is a better heel construction for self striping wool.  I really like the solid construction of the heel flap and reinforced heel, but it doesn’t keep the matching stripe pattern so well.  Short row heels would probably maintain the pattern better.

What’s your favourite heel construction?

The sun is shining, the wind has calmed down a bit, and things are feeling like spring again.

It’s so warm out that the pigeons are showing their toes!

They are making a little “cheep cheep” noise when startled by the camera or by my shadow, and they hop around a lot in the flower pot.

They are getting iridescent feathers around their faces, and they’ve lost almost all of their little yellow feathers they had since they were born.  They look like they are all grown up, but from what I can tell, they’ve never left their “nest”.  I look forward to seeing them taking flight in the future.  In the mean time, they don’t seem to mind too much when I go out to the balcony to water my plants.

A cold and blustery day had me inside under the covers knitting to warm up from time to time.

I am enjoying these stripes so much!!!

I like that they are symmetrical.  This comes from dyeing the very large skein from the warping board in segments from end to end like the skein is a long rectangle.

The resulting stripes are as follows:

Blue, green, white, orange, brown, white, gold, white, brown, orange, white, green, blue

To make a non symmetrical, but repeated pattern you need to take the large skein, and take meter-long segments around the circle and dye them in order in the round.

The resulting stripes would be as follows:

Blue, green, white, orange, brown, white, gold, blue, green, white, orange, brown, white, gold.

It’s always a curious thing how these stripes will work out at the heel…can’t wait to see!

Have you noticed that when it gets cold, you start to knit more?  Maybe it is just a problem for me, but as soon as the forecast mentioned a chance of snow, and the sky clouded over and the cold rain began to fall and the wind began to howl, I couldn’t wait for my freshly dyed wool to be completely dry.  It is mostly dry, and that seemed to be good enough for now.

wool dyed with turmeric, onion skins (partially overdyed with beans), black bean dye, and bean dye dipped in ammonia

I wound it up into a ball….

….and promptly cast on for a new pair of wool socks.

the colours look a little different in real life.

The colours are pretty exciting, and I think I might just turn on a movie and knit late into the night.  I’m sure by the time I have them knit, it will be sandals and shorts weather once more.

If you haven’t done a lot of dyeing, this post won’t make much sense, but read along if you like.

When we last saw the black bean dyeing process it looked like this

After 2 days, the light purple colour had barely made an impact on the wool.

Last time, it took a night to become a lovely shade of blue–that wool was superwash though, and sock weight.  I had also dyed some thick 100% non-superwash wool, which became grey/blue over night.  This wool has 20% nylon in it, but that shouldn’t make it undyeable.

I rethought my process.  The first time, I had soaked the yarn in an alum solution for 30 minutes before I dyed it.  This time I skipped that step.  How important can a little bit of white powder be?

Very important it turns out!  I sprinkled some alum into the dyepot, stirred it around, then had a nap.

Amazing!  When I woke up, the colour of the dyepot had changed, and so had the colour of the yarn.

How does it work?

Alum is a mordant, it serves to fix colours in dyeing.  Mordant comes from the Latin word mordere (to bite).  It chemically binds the pigment to the cells that are being dyed.  Some substances require no mordant at all, and will dye fibers bright and vibrant colours through immersion, or boiling.  It turns out that black beans are NOT some of these substances (for the record, onion and turmeric can be used without a mordant).

I bought my alum at the pharmacy, it is ammonium alum.  You can also buy alum at the grocery store.  I don’t know if it is the same chemical though, or even if the results would be the same.

Wikipedia says: Alum (pronounced /ˈæləm/) is both a specific chemical compound and a class of chemical compounds. The specific compound is the hydrate potassium aluminium sulfate with the formula KAl(SO₄)₂^.12H₂O. The wider class of compounds known as alums have the related stoichiometry, AB(SO₄)₂^.12H₂O.

So…alum is a sulfate of some variety (not necessarily containing aluminum).  Alum has been used in water treatment, and in dyeing, and in pickling and as an aftershave, and on and on and on….

I now know that it is a really important ingredient when using black beans as a dye!

Lesson learned:  Alum is my friend!

It has been so lovely these days!  I went out for a bike ride yesterday and took these pictures before it got cold, wet and windy.  The tulips in the park were stunning…

I think a squirrel transplanted that bulb from another garden…

The crabapple trees are also in full bloom…2 weeks earlier than normal!

Compared to this lovely colour in the park, my dyeing isn’t working out as well as anticipated….

For some reason, the black beans (from the same package as before) are dyeing this wool a light purple.  I’m going to keep it in the bean water for a while longer, and maybe it will pick up more colour.  Maybe I’ll add some alum.  Maybe I’ll end up dipping it in ammonia.  Maybe I’ll need to break out the kool-aid to give it more colour in the end.  Who knows.

In the mean time…..more tulips!

On my stovetop I’m combining onions, beans and wool to see what I can come up with.

Here’s a quick tutorial on natural dyeing and making self striping yarn.

Assemble materials:  I’m dyeing Briggs and Little 1 ply yarn (80% wool 20% nylon).  I am dyeing it gold with onion skins which you can get free from the onion bins at the grocery store if you ask nicely, yellow with turmeric, and blue/grey/green with the water left after soaking black beans for a few days.

Prepare your skein for striping:  I am using my weaving warping board to help me make a long skein

The yarn is wrapped around these pegs to make a long loop.  The distance across is 1 meter, so it is easy to measure the skein.

If you don’t have a warping board winding the yarn around two chairs set far apart will also work

Be sure to tie up the skein in several places so that it won’t get tangled.  I tied every 2 meters as a guide for striping the yarn too.

To keep things from tangling, I gathered the skein up in a single-crochet like chain.
Prepare the dye liquids:

Onion skins can easily get stuck in the wool… 

…so I wrap them up in a mesh laundry bag…

…and boil them on the stove for a while, topping up the water when needed.

Black beans get soaked for 2 days, and then strained off.  The juice is then ready for dyeing.

Turmeric powder needs no other preparation other than pouring it in hot water when the dyeing begins.

Start Dyeing:

Selected portions of the skein are immersed in the pot of onion dye and boiled for a while.

The results are a golden rusty orangey yellow.

A different section of the skein is immersed in the pot and boiled with turmeric powder to dye it bright yellow.

The dyed portion must be kept clear of the stove element, and from the un-dyed yarn, so several big bowls are useful.The funny thing about dyeing is that it ends up differently each time.  The variables are numerous:  the wool (superwash or not, nylon content, etc), the quality and quantity of dyestuffs, the temperature, the time spent in the dye.  The first time I used turmeric powder, the results were a bright yellow.  This time it has turned out a yellowy gold colour, not too different from the onions.  I am intrigued to see how it looks when it is all dry.

So…..today I got a rower friend with big hands to try on the pogies I knit (using this pattern but maybe I didn’t follow it to the letter since they are not quite right).  Now….these are not just knit, these are fully finished, which is what is making me a little mad with myself for not trying them on man-hands earlier.

There is a certain frustration in the “knit first, try on later” kind of attitude, specially when you try things on a non-knitter and ask for their opinion on sizing.  I always hold my breath as they consider how things should really fit.  I hold my breath, hoping that if there is something that needs fixing, it is an easy fix.  For instance, making a mitten cuff longer is easy, but making it wider is not so easy.

It was decided that these pogies will fit oars fine-the opening might be a tad big but that can be adjusted.  The width of the pogie is fine, but it might not be long enough to fit a man’s hand as it goes through the rowing motions.  Hopefully I can rip out the cast-on edge and extend the cuff a few inches, and that will clear up most of the issue.  The ribbing on the oar hole should also be extended a bit too so pinky fingers don’t end up getting exposed and cold.  I think I’ll do these cuff extensions in white because I don’t have enough blue left.

A few hours and several inches of ribbing later, and–I hesitate to say–that these pogies are done!  I hope they are up to the rowing standard.

For those curious, I ripped back the cast off edge at the oar hole and knit one more inch in white.  I didn’t rip out the cast on edge at the cuff because the last time I did that it was a very tedious process.  My work around was to cast on 48 sts and knit several inches of ribbing then use a darning needle and a long tail of white yarn to graft the live ribbing stitches to the cast on edge–it is lumpier than if I had re-knit it, but it’s not too bad.

So, I knit this pair of pogies (rower’s mitts) without really knowing much about rowing.   I don’t know how big oars are, or how big hands are when they are holding oars.  I do know that it is a really neat idea to have mittens that have oar holes in them.  These are for a rower that sculls, so I didn’t need to make a third…but if you know a rower who rows on a team, they’ll need one pogie like these, and one with two holes in it.

These pogies are knit from 100% wool so they will be warm even if they do get wet while rowing.

This particular rower has ties to both France and Canada, so I embroidered flags on both pogies.

I still don’t know if they are the right size for oars…