Club pics - Midnight Sun

Wow, lots to catch up on!

Here are pics from May's clubs:

Sock club in soft and squishy superwash Merino/nylon


And, Roving medley, a lovely soft roving of pure British Bluefaced Leicester


And for Fibre Adventure club members, BFL roving, Soy silk and some beautiful Suri alpaca fleece.


And in case you were wondering why I chose this name for the colourway, check out the photo that was the inspiration, a fabulous photo of a Norwegian sunset taken by Thomas Laupstad. Isn't it just beautiful?

Alston Hall dyeing weekend, designing etc.

This week I've been packing and generally getting ready for a weekend of dyeing at Alston Hall (very beautiful, no?). I've also been finishing a crocheted rucksack design and part two of my "how to" crochet feature for Simply Knitting and planning for part three, so it's been a busy week.

Still having a few issues with the old left eye, but thankfully the right one seems to have settled now. Just want the hospital appointments to be over with now so I can get things sorted.

(And I know I have two month's of fibre and sock club pics to put up - I'll try to get them posted asap - promise!).

Look forward to seeing everyone at the weekend : )

Green Day : ))

Only one word is really needed to describe the Green Day gig - Awesome!!!!!!

Will's first gig with a group of his mates and it went down pretty well! We did have to explain that bands don't normally play for a full 2 3/4 hours (honestly, they did!), and not to expect firework shows, people pulled from the crowd to sing with the band etc. His next one is Muse so they've got a lot to live up to, altho' having seen the tour on tv, it looks pretty impressive.

Weather hot, band fantastic, crowd great - what more could one ask for a night out! (Well, ok, maybe not warm Bacardi breezers for £3.60 each or cheesy chips at £4 but hey ho - the joy of the British gig!).

Woolfest - is it really less than a week away???

Just a short post as the dyestudio feels like a two-woman (me and Mum) production-line at the moment (!) but I wanted to mention that we'll be doing a Woolfest voucher for newsletter subscribers again this year. As last year, you'll just need to print off the newsletter with the voucher info, bring it along to the stall and claim your discount on any purchases - "simples" ; )

(If you' re not on the subscriber list, there's still time to sign up as the newsletter won't be going out until next week. Just click on the box on the website home page or email subscribe@dtcrafts.co.uk)

Dye garden - my first woad plant!

Although space is at a premium in our little garden, I've been wanting to grow dyeplants for quite some time. Regular readers will know that I am carefully nurturing a little madder plant (fingers crossed it's still doing well!). I also found out that I have some goldenrod at the back of one of the borders which was a nice surprise. A friend of Mum's has very kindly offered to germinate some other dyeplant seeds for me so hopefully that will be a success. But what I have managed to grow is some woad!

If you recall, this is how it looked in early Spring...


And this is it a now!


Well, of course I realise now that I should have harvested the leaves last year but my little plant looked far too tiny and delicate so I thought I'd wait - oops! Anyway, the flowers have now almost finished and it is producing lots of seeds so I'm going to collect some and see if I can get these to grow for next year. I may harvest the leaves anyway rather than let them go to waste. I'm determined to make my own woad balls so these might be good for practising the technique even if they don't produce much colour. Watch this space.....