I had an experiment with Dye the other day. Watch out, could be a new addiction...

I dyed some hemp/cotton and some hemp/silk with blue dye. Cant' remember the kind of dye, starts with P......

Anyhow it turned out really really cool. The hemp went a dark sky blue kind of colour, and the silk went gorgeous dark blue on the silk side and a lighter blue on the hemp side. Photos when I get around to it.

And then a large shipment of dye turned up from the co-op the other day. Can't wait for the weekend!

well, I went to visit a friend the other day, and noticed her containers and beading magazines, and asked her to show me what she was doing, and then we went out to the op shop and the beading shop...

So I have spent the past day or so relearning how to knit and trying to teach myself to crochet. I bought the funkiest book at the op shop, I can only hope that one day I might look like one of the crocheting goddesses in this book.


















or not.



I couldn't remember how to cast on and the instructions that I had previously downloaded didn't make sense to me, or it could have been the yahooing kids in the background. However my wonderful sister was able to coach me over the phone from her desk at work (I can only imagine how that would have sounded to people walking past her desk "Now that you have the knitting needle between your knees, use your thumb to do a quick anti clockwise whirl and then with your other hand..."). So I have done a bit of knitting and then unknitting with beading cord, and then knitting and then snipping it off with beading wire. Maybe one day I can put some of these on slings, time will tell.

This is a little bit of knitting with bead cord threaded with purple glass beads. Started off with 15 stitches, I think I might have gained a few on the way! Threaded the beads on to the thread before casting on, knitting each row plain (don't know how to do purl) and on every second row, sliding a bead onto every second stitch. I think this might look cool on a black sling, along the top where the rings join on. I am not quite sure how long I will make this, but am enjoying seeing it grow!

Well, we have a new chook and a new chook/duck (chuck???) home. The new hen is called Penny and she is a Bantam Pekin. Cute hey?
And they have a new home, called Duckingham Palace. It is a permanent fenced off corner of the yard under the fruit trees. I dug out a trench for the fence to get buried in, so that Naughty Dog can't easily get to the tasty poultry. Our Alpha Male did some fencing, I did some fencing, all the birds got a wing trim and then into their new home.