Dreaming Spirals

Earlier this week I went for a walk along the canal and picked some elderberries. The birds had beaten me to it on quite a few bushes, but I found some. Nearly fell in the ditch at one point….

Here they are waiting for me to use them.

Elderberries are very good for colds and flu, both prevention and reducing the severity of symptoms. I decided to make a herbal tincture by covering them with vodka.

Here they are sitting in the jar. Now I just have to put them in a dark place, shake them every day for about three months then strain off the elderberries, rebottle it and put it in the medicine cabinet! Hmm, that reminds me, just off to give them today’s shake!

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Fabric in dyepots!

I started off doing some dyeing in plastic bags. I dyed one piece in each to start with, all solids, mostly greens, blues and greys. Then after about an hour, I added another piece to each, to get a paler shade. I did this again half an hour later. I may even have tucked a fourth one in before the dye was totally exhausted!

Here they are in the plastic bags sitting in the cat litter tray:

When I had done that, I used up the rest of the made up dye liquid by space dyeing some previously dyed fabric in a cat litter tray (jolly useful, they are!). I threw the rayon thread in at the last minute - rayon seems to take the procion dyes very readily and it was fun to see it creeping along the fibres! I put some underneath the fabric too, to soak up the residue.

I also tucked fabric into jamjars and poured dye liquid over it, and some more into old margarine tubs. I would have put the top picture here but I thought the plastic bags picture was a bit boring to start this post with! As you can see, I trailed some yarn in and out of all the jamjars and it made for an interestingly multicoloured piece. I dyed an immense amount of fabric this time. I don’t know exactly how much but it was two washing machine loads.

Here is the first load drying on the washing line:

And the second one… I was exhausted!

Close up…

Here it is, all ironed, folded and sorted into colours and values. Phew!

We have greens, blues, greys and blacks…. I was pleased, actually, at getting a couple of quite dark black fabrics. I want to try discharging with these to see what colours they discharge to. I mixed a couple of different black dye powders together to get this - one with a bluey tint to it, one with a greeny one.

We have reds and purples…

And we have oranges and browns… some of these were the overdyed space dyed ones.

This was the most dramatic overdyed fabric. It started off being turquoise, and I had so much of it I decided to use it. It went into a big margarine tub in a sort of ‘parfait dyeing’ way, with black at the bottom and then I kept pouring different colours in and adding more fabric and more dye till it was full!

And here is the yarn. It is rayon and some of it has a sort of glittery stuff wrapped round it.

Phew! Got to find somewhere to put it all now… just blogging it took nearly an hour!!

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Please bear with my silence…. textile content will come up soon, I promise! I did a mammoth dyeing session on Tuesday, rinsed it out, dried it and ironed it yesterday and once I’ve sorted it all out into nice picturesque little piles sorted by colour and value (ooh, why do I have so much fun just moving fabric around and folding it and sorting it???!), the photos in my camera will be duly uploaded and you will get to see a colourful treat!

But just for now I’m busy catching up on what I didn’t do the last two days…. Plus there’s a night hike with the cubs tonight and all three kids have wind up torches which they have ALL buried somewhere in the confusion in their rooms and I have to find them in the next couple of hours! So look out tomorrow!!

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Our pear tree has been unusually productive this year. It usually has a year like this, then we have to wait for a few years before it has many pears again.

That’s Zachary’s wobbly climbing frame in front - it does more cluttering up of the garden than entertainment for the kids. I’ve got my eye on it for its rust potential though…

A couple of weeks ago, I felt as though I was drowning in pears. They were falling from the tree faster than I could use them.

They don’t keep very long once they are off the tree, so I cooked them in syrup in the oven. The preparation was the worst… the discarded rotten bits and the peel took up almost as much room as the pear pieces.

Here is a Tupperware full in the fridge waiting to be eaten. There is still a boxful of whole pears in the fridge too…

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Aha! I’m famous!! This blog has been featured in an article in an American quilting magazine. Quilter’s Home magazine, a relatively new magazine, sent me an email some time ago with a questionnaire about blogging and quilting. I replied and promptly forgot about it. Recently, I found out it had come out (thank you, Gina!) and was bewailing the fact that I couldn’t read it in a comment on Candy Schultz’s blog, Not a Walking Encyclopaedia, and Candy kindly offered to send me a copy of the article. It arrived a couple of days ago - thank you Candy!!

I laughed when I read what they had written about me:

Whether it’s painting on fabric, knitting, sightseeing or inventing the most remarkable pieces of quilt art (she quilts on barbeque grills), Liz Plummer has me hooked. “I’m based in the UK so my work probably has a different focus - we haven’t such a well established tradition of quilting here so our work tends to overlap with embroidery and other skills more.” She posts daily and fills her blog with corresponding photos.

Well, before you accuse me of cruelty to sewing machines, please note that I only use barbecue grills to MOUNT the quilts! The cursory glance of a journalist … Hmm.. I will TRY to get back to posting daily, promise!

So if anyone here is visiting as a result of reading the article, welcome!!

By the way, here is the relevant post concerning the “barbecue grill”!

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Our windowsill is getting full of plants.

The middle one is a poinsettia, and it has been there for some time, despite my best effects to kill it by forgetting to water it. The one on the left is a Japanese coriander plant which I bought at Haverfordwest farmer’s market on our recent visit to Pembrokeshire. The friendly man there told me it had to overwinter inside so I planted it out and put it on our bedroom windowsill where it can have company. Living in a Victorian house we don’t have many conventional windowsills. It’s the most unfortunate thing about this house. Nearly all the windows don’t have windowsills at all. Does anyone know where you can buy tall plantstands for holding plants? Our windows are all about a yard up from the ground and I want something which will be reasonably stable from kids pushing it over…

The one on the right was a surprise…

I read on a couple of people’s blogs that they had been germinating avocado seeds, about 6 months ago, and I decided to have a go. I soaked about three in water for about 6 weeks, decided nothing was happening and chucked two of them into the compost bin. The third I recklessly shoved into a defunct plantpot on the patio, whose occupant had given up the unequal struggle for survival. This was a few months ago now. On Monday, when I was skirting round there looking for somewhere to pot on the Japanese coriander, I noticed this plant pot… complete with avocado seedling!! So I brought it inside before I forget it and the nights get colder or the slugs finish it off. The unpredictability of nature.

(Incidentally, in the first picture, the extra leaves sprouting all over the place come from the wisteria growing up the front of the house).

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I painted some fabric on Monday! Yay hay! The first thing textiley I have done for months…or so it seems. But I only ironed it today because on Monday night I started to go down with this horrible fluey cold and could barely drag myself out of bed Tuesday and Wednesday. Just gunky today though.

Anyway, I took a photo of it hanging on the line before the dreaded lurgy started.

But first I was distracted by Cobweb, looking chocolate-boxey lying on the roof of what used to be a shelter for the kids bikes. (Now they just clutter up the garage…).

Here are the fabrics. I used acrylic paints and just some scraps of polycotton I have around. I thought if it was going to make it stiff, I might as well use up the polycotton rather than cotton. The only problem is, I won’t be able to overdye it or screen print it with procion dyes. But I can use it for the backs of postcards or as it is. I just like sploshing the paint on! Though I won’t get this cheap Dali acrylic paint from The Works again. The yellow stuff was all stiff and grainy. I had to throw it out. Ik. I will stick to Golden in future, even though I have to go to Cardiff to get it!

It is a deeper colour than the photos suggest.

Here are a couple of detailed photos from when I was ironing them. Again, the colours are deeper than they look here. In the sparkly one, I mixed some irridescent Golden medium in with the coloured stuff.

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On Friday I went by train to the Knitting and Stitching Show in Birmingham. This is a new venue for it and it was very quiet there, which I appreciated because I could have a good look at the exhibits and stalls without having to jostle my way to the front.

I liked two of the exhibitors in particular - Barbara Lee Smith, an American whom I had not come across before. Her work, a series called Mapping the Mystery, is on the front of this brochure:

The other one is Jae Maries, who had made a series of life-sized figures, very quirky and lifelike.

As usual, I made quite a few purchases!

A book by Maggie Grey on Paint Shop Pro - I have looked through this and it looks useful, so hopefully you will see some effects in the future on the images in my blog!

One stall was selling strings and strings of coloured precious stones. These are the ones I bought - the orange ones are carnelian, I think. I’ve forgotten the name of the green ones. And, of course, a spiral!

I haven’t got any wooden knitting needles so I thought I’d buy a couple of sets to try them. And some cashmere sock yarn from Hipknits.

There was a stall selling alpaca yarn and fibre. I got a few samples to try using it in feltmaking. I love the softness of it - I must buy some actual yarn sometime. I want a good waistcoat pattern but can’t find one, but I would love to knit one in this yarn. Anyone know any, preferably free on the Internet? Fairly long? What do you call waistcoats in the US?

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