Kitchens, Gardens, Dyepots and Knitting

Since I have only blogged infrequently of late, there are many things to update about (again).
Sorry about that.
Dying
Yes, I did some more dying. Orange Kool-Aid on lace and pink and green food colour on aran. Both were done using variations of dip dye. I did the pink and green in two plastic pint glasses. I did the Orange by putting one sachet of Orange Kool-Aid in some water, adding all the lace, then lifting some lace out and adding some more Kool-Aid, and so on. I think that the Orange is very good, but I’m less sure about the pink/green. I guess I’ll defer judgement until I’ve knitted it up!
1. Orange Kool Aid Lace, 2. Food Colour Pink & Green… Created with fd's Flickr Toys


In the Garden I’ve been growing things! Ok, so I’ve been growing things for a while, but now I’m starting to see fruits (and veg) of my labour! I’ve harvested the sugar-snap peas, and also (as pictured) I’ve harvested some of the beans. There is a marrow growing (woo!) I know it looks like a courgette at the moment. I’m still trying to find out whether they’re actually different plants or whether it’s just when you harvest them. And, the monster is my Pumpkin plant. All those flowers will eventually be pumpkins. I don’t know how big they’ll be – I think I’m meant to wait until late September or October to harvest them. 1. marrow, 2. beans, 3. pumpkin Created with fd's Flickr Toys


In the Kitchen We’ve been making progress in the kitchen too. We’ve selected from 9 different shades of green (amazingly they’re all different and also not all what we expected!) – ended up with the Homebase “Lime”. And then cracked on painting the wall. The ceiling finally dried out enough for me to put some coats of white on there too! It needs another coat, but that has to wait… 1. green testers, 2. green wall phase 1, 3. wires for lighting, 4. green wall phase 2 Created with fd's Flickr Toys

…because today the “floor man” came to put the self levelling stuff down for the floor. All being well tomorrow it will be ready for laying the lino on. Even though it is a straight forward room, no jutting out bits, we’re getting the lino fitted.


Knitting There isn’t masses going on, on the knitting front. I’ve started a new shawl from knitters’ magazine. There’s information about it here - you need to scroll down a bit for the pictures, it’s the red one (not that they’re very different). I’m concerned that it’s not going to be as long as in the picture (or indeed long enough) so I’m working out how many extra rows to knit. I think as long as it has multiples of 6 then I should be fine (that would be the number of edge stitches I need to pick up for the ruffle!)