All the reds

This weekend, we have some dyeing going on! Using those reds I was playing about with over the last week or so, we have a scarf blank called 'All the reds' especially commissioned for EJ. I would like to thank EJ for being so understanding this month with me being unwell which has delayed her receiving her especially commissioned yarn. But at long last, it is dyed, rewound into a skein and ready to go.

I really love these colours -very intense but still with the feel of Autumn. This blank is painted from light to dark in the middle back to light again at the other end. Very similar visually to the calm horizons in the giveaway last month.

I dyed a couple more skeins, one semi solid and one variegated, in cranberries, plums and purples but they are still drying so photos soon - well, depending whether it stops raining and I get some decent light!

On a shed note, the water has mostly dried out and doesn't seem to be flooding again even after a full day of rain. I think it must have been a flash flood after a month of dry weather hardening the ground so the water ran off the hill instead of soaking in. But, just to be on the safe side, the shed is getting a waterproofing inside. Haven't quite figured out quite how yet or just how expensive that will be but I think it is definitely necessary to stop everything getting ruined once I move in all my work stuff if it happens again.

Got a bit of startitis for a few new projects too so more this week as they progress.... Happy knitting!

A river runs through it - and a little bit of knitting:-)

Woke up this morning to the words 'the shed is flooded......' Whaaa....whaaaat?!' I dozily replied. How, what, why? Well, that certainly woke me up this morning I'll tell you! Grabbed some messy working clothes, donned my welly boots and slogged up to the shed, through boggy puddles which, it transpired, were caused by the river running out of the shed door. 'Oh...... (substitute a big sweary word -or two -here).

I wish I had been more with it to take some pics - or a video, but that may have had to be edited:-) - to show you just how awful it was. Over two inches of water deep with water running out of the back wall along the full length of the shed about a foot up from the floor. Running out? More like pouring literally through the blocks. On further investigation, it seems there is a new drainage ditch running along the back of our sheds in the field behind, which isn't abviously draining. Well, yes, it's draining, but following the path of least resistance, which seems to be through our shed and down the slope of our garden towards the house. And still the rain keeps on filling the drainage ditch up........

Poor shed, it was so nearly dry inside and ready for the electrics. Sigh! Maybe its just as well I hadn't got them done yet with that amount of water pouring in. And at least I had tidyed it so not much was actually on the floor to be damaged. I'm looking really hard for a silver lining .....

Anyway, back to knitting. That has been slow going as I've been tidying like mad for my parents visit this week. They are staying for three days and I had to make a space in my spare room/workshop - major job with a lot of shifting of my 'stuff':-) - for them to sleep in. But it all looks lovely and tidy now.

But on to the knitting. My first christmas project is Durrow designed by Jodi Green. This is for John - but its okay, he knows about it so I can blog about it safely:-) It is mostly a 4x2 rib for the body with an intricate cable on the sleeves - lovely. So perfect tv knitting. I've knitted about 14" of the back so far and I will start shaping - small size - at 17". Not bored so far with the rib pattern as it's not quite as monotonous as stocking st:-) but enough that I sometimes switch off and then find I've made a mistake inches down. I'm hoping after laddering to pick up all these stitches, blocking will be very forgiving!

The yarn is an wool/acrylic mix by Robin -75% acrylic and 25% wool  - and comes in big 400gm balls. It feels nice to work with and has a tweedy look to it which is making the larger areas of knitting more interesting and breaking up the solid colour nicely. Each 400gm ball has 800 metres of yarn so I think two balls should be enough to cover it!

But can't wait to get to the cables as it seems a very interesting pattern - more celtic swirls that regular cable structures. Well, I'll have to wait and see - if I can manage to be patient till then! I may not have a lot of blogging time over the next few days as my computer is in the 'guest bedroom aka workshop' but maybe I will have made more knitting progress by then:-) It's easy to knit and talk at the same time, don't you think?!

Red door!

I couldn't wait till tomorrow to show you the red door:-) Flame red!! I've only painted one coat so far and will give it another coat tomorrow. I was going to paint the door surround red too but I think it may be better fading into the background a little. That means I'll have to get some more white gloss but I'll need it anyway to paint the windows and door on the inside.

Sigh! isn't it striking?! A little bit oranger than I thought but the reflective light is very bright and the paint is still wet. All I need now are some red planters attached to the windowsills;-)) Okay, maybe overkill! I do need to sort out the last bit of the outside though - the fascia. Problem is no-one delivers it and it's way to long to fit in a normal car. Still working on that one.....

It is a little bit darker red in real life, but not much! After painting, I turned round and saw my lovely bright red Dalias. The sun keeps bleaching out the depth of their colour as there are very subtle tonal variations going on.

I've been trying to capture those red tones today in my dyeing experimentation. With red being a primary colour, you can't mix it and have to use the bought tub of dye. Only problem is, that this red seems more vermillion and has an obviously orangey base. Adding magenta to take away the orange cast moves it very quickly into cranberry/plum tones. I'm wanting to run the strong red into deep crimsons but the red base just isn't going there. I know I have all the colours in the range of acid dyes but I really need a crimson red base.

Maybe its because I've painted the door:-) but these just don't seem very 'red' to me. We have orangey-reds, blue-reds, plum-reds, purpley-reds, browney-reds but not crimson red. Oh, they are all lovely in their own right and I'll probably use a lot of these soon but it's not what I'm looking for right now. I'll try again tomorrow or else look for another supplier of acid dyes........

Making progress...

Last week I left you with pictures of the shed before much had happened to it. As promised, we have some progress pictures. We did actually get 4 very sunny days - in fact we are still having the end of an indian summer now, although maybe not as warm as over last weekend. Boy, was that sun hot! and has been the major factor in me not being around to post. I worked so hard to get the outside sealed before the weather broke, that I exhausted myself and managed to give myself sunstroke - typical! So instead of a couple of days work, it was more sporadic when-I-can over the last 5 or 6 days. And, of course, I didn't want to post until I actually had some progress to show you:-))

But here we are! The outside walls were wire brushed to get rid of all the moss and muck and then painted a nice, clean bright white. We did find some traces of the shed being painted once before but it must have been a long time ago. The windows have already been primed with grey undercoat and awaiting some gloss.

The main pain in the butt has been this door. It had been sitting out so long that the paint was flaking away and the door was wet through. Easy, I thought, it will all peel off quickly. Nope. Of course not. Make life easy?! We have slogged over this door for days! Inside and out, it has been very stubborn. Wouldn't sand off easily so we ended up having to use knives to scrape it off. I know, not the best method and tends to gouge the wood when you hit a wet patch, never mind knacker your hands with cuts and scrapes. Maybe it is best not to dwell on how I felt 4 days later when someone suggested using a heat gun - DUH!! I have one, I've used it for jobs just like these, so why did it not occur to me now? And save me all the cut fingers, sunstroke and sheer effort I've poured into this door?!!! Sometimes I wonder where I left my brain - I think it went on vacation last week when the sun arrived:-))

Anyway, the door does have some redeeming features;-) Its had an old ornate handle at some point with this lovely plate. Its a shame I don't have the actual handle now but I do have the latches and bolts from the other side though and they may come up a treat with a bit of tlc.

So, we have cleaned and painted the outside walls, painted the windows white, scraped and sanded the door, and then primed all the wood with grey undercoat. You know, I was wanting a nice bright colour for the door like emerald green or pillar box red but I quite like the grey too. A little more subtle and understated. But don't worry, I'll get over that soon as I've already bought the red gloss paint and anyway, I have to make a bit of a statement and stamp some personality on it as it is going to be a dyeing workshop working with colour:-)

Today though is all about experiments for dyeing and maybe even catching up on some knitting. And my buttons have arrived for my green veyla mitts so I may even get them officially finished! Of course, this is all procrastination as I know I still have the inside of the shed to do! But I think a few days knitting will recharge the batteries a little and give the shed a further chance to dry out before more wire brushing and painting. Fingers crossed! - I may have to sneek out and paint the door red though:-))

Fixing up the shed

When we moved here, one of the main pluses for me was the fact there was a decent sized shed at the top of the garden which was shouting 'workshop!!' A big minus was the fact that it had no door, was really damp inside and was full of junk left from the previous owners. The big question was could I get it dry and keep it dry enough to put yarns or fabrics in without ruining them? This is still the big question I want the answer to but I just won't know till all the work is done.

The first thing we did was to seal in the roof as it's asbestos. Safe enough when sealed but I'd rather not take any chances:-) so its been sealed with waterproof ply. The most major thing was to get the shed weather tight as soon as possible. Summer should be a good time for drying out and DIY but we haven't had the driest summer here in the UK so its been a bit challenging;-)

As you can see, there is no door and this window wasn't held in by much. When it was time to take this out, one little push and it parted company sooner than was expected. I've been trying to keep the rain out from the missing panes with polythene which worked somewhat but mostly dribbled down the wall and soaked the floor on a bad rain day - sigh. But now they are gone and new windows are in place. Progress pics tomorrow:-)

Now the inside. To the left of the door, under the window, there were some mouldy old woodwormed kitchen units - I took great pleasure in ripping them out! And when we cleared a lot of junk away we found this little enclosure for compost on the right. I never even knew it was there. No wonder the shed smelled so - earthy! But its now nurturing my plants in the garden although it took a lot of trips to empty it completely. Then we had to knock down the wall with a sledgehammer but I still have to get rid of all the stones - added to the ever mounting pile of rubbish needing to go to the dump.

On the right side, There is mostly rubble bags under the window - outside now - and the chimney sweep brushes have found a new home as I don't intend to use them when the chimney sweep man has a hoover thing to do it a lot more efficiently - with no mess! But I don't use the open fire much - too messy.

The shelving unit is mine and is storing my knitting machines and tables. The tables have suffered a bit with damp but are still useable. Very annoying but I just didn't have room inside for everything and I didn't think the shed got as damp as it obviously does.

On a parting note, see the little wet patch? Yes? Well, that was a present left by my cat who, we've found out, has been using the shed as her inside toilet!!!!! Yes, a lot dryer than outside but I hope she can tell the difference between manky old shed and nice, clean new workshop. I don't want it being christened, thank you very much!

Tomorrow, I'll take some pics of where we are now - the windows, ceiling and door. It still needs a lot of cosmetic work visually but once I can get the walls dry I can get the paint out and make it look more like a workable space - fingers crossed. But its taking a long time.........