Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Knitting: the next gen

There has been knitting going on. There has been lots of knitting going on. There has been much buying of wool and even the odd bit of buying of knitting needles.

For Dear Daughter has discovered knitting.

It started with a scarf. She knitted it for herself, and discovered the joy of knitting. Then she decided to knit Christmas presents, scarves and fingerless mittens. This all involved her mother taking her to John Lewis, and letting her choose some nice yarn, Rowan even, and buying ball after ball.

Tricky thing for DD was her mother's Christmas present. But I gather that is in hand, and will involve beautiful wool.

After the Christmas knitting, DD has plans. They might involve a jumper. A hand knitted jumper. They may involve a handknitted blanket. Or they may involve crochet.

Who knows?

Watch this space....

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

My hand dyed scarf on TV

I wore a scarf I hand-dyed to do a TV interview today.

The scarf was dyed perhaps twelve years ago, at a craft open day at a hall near where I lived at the time. The organisers changed a nominal fee for doing it. We started with a white silk scarf. The dyes - in this case pink and blue - were dripped onto the scarf, and then it was microwaved to set the dye. I did two, one with lighter colours, the other darker ones.

The interview went incredibly badly - luckily it was pre-recorded, but I got asked the same question about five times, before it had a passable take. In the end, they used a very short section, about two or three sentences, but I made the important points. (It was about this. I was scarfing, scafthing, critical.)

Not at all relevant to the scarf, I thought this article about creative tribes was interesting. In particular the part where the writer says that her quilt guild was subtly influencing her fabric choices, being lukewarm about the ones she choose. Nobody was to blame, but it still had effects she didn't like.