Dyeing day

You got ugly yarn?  You got boring yarn?  Groan... how do you start a decent blog post?  Well, whatever.  Last Saturday my aunt and grandma-in-law came up from their Lethbridge homes to dye some yarn under the watchful eye of my textile-artist mom.  Mom had picked up a bunch of super cheap, plain white pure wool at Value Village, so we could experiment without worrying about ruining any nice yarn, because frankly I, for one, suck at 'colour'.

The process was surprisingly easy.  We used synthetic dyes, which my mom buys in powder form and mixes up into primary colours.  She stores them in whatever plastic bottles she has lying around.  These dyes are TOXIC, though, so nothing used in dyeing should be re-used for any other purpose, and you should use gloves (see her using gloves????).  Under my mom's arm in the pic below, you can see the plain white yarn soaking in a mixture of water and vinegar.  That preps the yarn for taking on dye.

This is my mom.  On the table there is dye in different containers, yarn soaking in water and vinegar, a water pitcher for diluting the dye, and latex gloves.

To mix up colours, you can combine the dyes to make new colours, you can change the hues of those colours by mixing colours in different proportions, or by diluting them to varying degrees with water.  The possibilities are endless!  I had no idea what to do, so I mixed up some blue and pink and diluted them into three different concentrations each.

Prepped white wool, and three different concentrations of pink and blue.  Who thinks this will work out???  I did not have much faith.

 When we were ready to go, we put a plastic bag in a microwaveable dish and pulled up the center of the bag so that it made kind of a reverse donut, and we put the skein of yarn around the donut.  Then, you just kinda... go for it.  Pour and smush and blend and try not to make it super ugly.

Pouring and smushing.... hoping to god it's not awful.

Once you have poured and smushed etc.... you pull the bag up around the yarn, poke holes in the bag, close it, and throw it, dish and all, into a (dyeing-specific) microwave.  Don't use this microwave for food after!!  Microwave on high for four minutes.  The dye is heat activated, and won't set until it's been heated.  After four minutes, carefully open the bag and check to see if the yarn is still bleeding dye.  If it's not, pull it out, do the big reveal, cool it, wash it, and hang it out to dry. 

Me doing the big reveal.  "OH MY GOD I MADE IT HIDEOUS, I SUCK AT THIS"

Washed, dried, and hung out to dry.  Hopefully when I knit it up it actually looks like this was intentional.

 My first dye was a multi-colour dye, just for fun.  But we also did a plain one colour dye on an ugly old bunch of yarn (pic below).  The ugly old colour is the scrap on top.  We over-dyed it and made it vibrant and new!!

Much better now!

 Now... I will throw in some more misc pics to make this a really long blog.  Here is another round of dyeing in some totally different colours, as done by my aunt.

Adding the dye....

The big reveal!

Much nicer than plain white!!

Our resident artist for the day (aka mooman).

Mooman and poopap getting in the spirit. 

And of course, you couldn't possibly have a dyeing day without help from the resident mooch-face.

Dye, ready to go.  

The fruits of our labours for the day. 

And.... I made this at the Science Center (where I volunteer) that morning, so I just had to throw it in here. 

Decided to Make Tea

my garden

Bee Balm: Robbed from my moms garden. This smells yummy, I hope it is not poison.

bee-balm

The other day I looked at the ingredients of my $10 Starbucks "calm" tea. It contains camomile, lemon grass and rose pedals. No magic precious plants from obscure tropical islands I have never heard of. Yah, so... I am going to make tea now. I tried making tea last summer. I picked a ton of wild mint. I washed it and laid it out on a sheet out side to dry. Then when I packed it away it was covered with ants. Although dried boiled ants probably wont kill me, I still never tried it.

Lemon Balm: It just smells amazing. Like a lemon-minty smell. 

lemon balm

So I went out yesterday and scavenged through the old dried up herbs at the local garden center. I bought lemon balm (it looks a lot like catnip), camomile, more mint and lemon grass. I have also been picking linden flowers in the park like a crazy person.

Camomile: Is ugly and scraggly.  I read that you can make a camomile lawn.. that would look terrible.. The person who wrote that probably has a car parts and gravel lawn. Also after purchasing these plants I noticed that they are growing wild all around the gravel driveway :(

camomile. Not a pretty plant

Mint: I feel like a chump buying mint (getting my mom to buy me mint). It gowns wild around here. But its a perennial and will come back next year.

mint

Lemon Grass: this could be scotch grass and I would not know the difference. That being said, I hope it is lemon grass.

lemon grass

What I like about tea and jams is that they last for a year. Right now ALL of my green onions are ready and I have no use for them. If I leave them in, they fill flower. If I put them in the fridge they will slowly die.  What can I make with 50 green onions? The same thing goes for herbs. I never use oregano or savory or sage. And if I do I just use a pinch, not a bucket full. That is why I am excited for the onions, garlic, sunchokes and potatoes. They store well and will last me a long time. Plus I eat all of those things often.

DIY Plant Marker (attempt #1)

I have been thinking about making plant markers with polymer clay and dollhouse food techniques for a while. This is my first attempt. It needs a bit of work! ...

I used Sculpey polymer clay and brown and green chalk. You can find both at an art shop.

 

Step1. First I started with the plant marker base. I tried to make it look like a plastic cutting board.  

I rolled over the surface with the textured part of my scalpel.

Step 2. Next I made the acorn squash to go on the "cutting board". For the squash I used a little ball of green clay and a tiny piece of yellow.

rub the yellow into the green to create a smooth transition of colors.

use a toothpick to widen the segments and open up the top for a stem.

attach a stem and dust the squash with some dark green chalk.

two dollhouse sized squash.  the one on the top has been brushed with dark green chalk. I think it makes it look more natural.

Step 3: attach some other details like leaves. I immediately regretted dusting it with brown chalk (dirt).

ready to go in the oven.

Step 4: write squash on it (I did a terrible job) and put a little glaze on the squash (you can use clear nail polish).

Plant marker for an acorn squash.

I also need to work on the sick. I should get some metal ones and bake them into the clay. Also making an opened squash would look good. And a wooden base. and I need a new idea for writing the plant name.

squash plant marker

Calgary

I volunteer at the Calgary Science Center, aka "Telus Spark".  It's pretty cool, and I'll make a post about it some other day.  But anyways, tonight they had a special screening of three shows for their staff and volunteers in the new 'HD Dome Theater".  The last show we watched was called "The Last Reef", and to summarize it, it went like this:  "Fish are cute and pretty and humans kill them when they drive their cars!".  Basically, as you may or may not know, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing the oceans to acidify, and causing les fish and les reefs to die.  It's le science.  At the end of the show, in an homage to PM Harper's recent attack on any and all environmental protection regulations, I yelled out "foreign funded environmental radicals!  Harper is going to shut you down!".  It was a joke, but I don't think the moderator got it because she said "Uh... ok that's one opinion.  Anybody else?".  So that was a bit of an Elo humour fail.

Anyways, I normally feel pretty bad about how we are killing the earth and all that, so today it was fortunate that I rode my bike to the science center, so I could ride home feeling very self righteous.  It was late in the day, so I wan't able to take awesome pictures, but I wanted to write a post promoting cycling in Calgary to commute.  I'm sure I'll write more.

People complain about the $5 parking fee at the science center, but how many bikes have I EVER seen in the beautiful new, privately donated bike racks out front??? One, two at most.  And why?  There is a beautiful network of Nose Creek/Bow River/Elbow River bike paths that run along behind the science center, that will connect you North, South, East and West on any of Calgary's 900+km of bike lanes and bike paths.  Personally, I can get from home to the Telus Spark bike racks with only about 50m of road.  The rest is all bike path.  So, I'd like to contrast my commute home to the commute of people who drove today.

This is the science center.  The bike path is on the right.  It is close, see??  And pretty.

When you drove home today, what did you see?  A fat man eating a cheeseburger?  Well, I saw J. Beaver, in the flesh!! And took a shitty picture to prove it.  Mr. Fuzzy Pants.

 I also saw a bridge.  A nice one.  Look how high the river is.

On the way home I cross the bridge by the zoo (you can see tigers and lynxes if you are lucky) and you get a great view of downtown.

This is what it looks like when you are riding your bike on the bike paths.  Bet you could never have pictured it yourself.

I also get to go right past the saddledome.  Basically, I hit the science center, the zoo, get some great views of downtown, and go right past the stampede grounds.  It's a pretty nice tour, all in under 30min.

One more shot across the stampede ground towards downtown.

Now it's too dark out to really take any more nice pics.  But you get the gist.  Today I got to see some views and some nature and burn some calories and not kill the fish and the coral reefs.  And so I think that's a pretty good thing.

Bentwood Trellis and Garden Update

My garden, week 3 , year 2

I love low maintenance plants like garlic and herbs. I am trying to move away from pesky plants that need my attention. My lettuce always bolts... aka tastes bitter and terrible. I dont even try planting it any more.  This year I am growing:

• bunching onions
• onions 
• garlic (scapes are almost ready)
• tomatoes (a variety)
• potatoes  (gold fingerlings and red)
• herbs (perennials: thyme, mint, oregano, savory, sage, parsley and annuals (or ones that die in our zone 5 area): cilantro, dill, basil, rosemary, camomile)
•  sunchokes
•  squash
•  goji berry (wont be producing fruit for years)
• cucumbers
• kale (purple seems to be pest resistant)

Pests

I stole my moms arbor with the promise to build her a new one. So far I have only dug holes where her imaginary arbor sits.. oops. Anyway, the arbor in my garden attracts birds, which is not great because they just sit there, ignoring the bugs that eat my potatoes and poop on my beans. I need to get some of those bus station spikes that they put in the rafters. That should look good.. . So the sparrows are a little pesky but what I am really concerned about are these flat bugs that eat my potato leaves (just the yellow fingerlings).

A bug that likes eating my potatoes... I hate!

Next year I will only grow red potatoes. The red potatoes are unscathed.  My parents (and my garden) live 10km outside Alliston Ontario. A town that grows potatoes and has a Honda factory. In fact, it even has a Potato Festival every August (rolls eyes). I have heard that it is really tough to grow organic potatoes around here. I was also told that burring garlic in your back yard will cure warts, so you cant always believe what you hear. What i did hear was that if a potato field is planted near you, after it gets sprayed all the potato bugs will migrate over to the closest garden and murder it. This however (above) is not a potato but. It is a.....Golden Tortoise Beetle maybe????

moving on...

Bent Wood Arbor

Bentwood arbor for a squash

I cant tell if this looks cute or just crummy. This is how I would construct all of my forts when I was little. Take miss matched pieces of wood/twigs and bind them together using whatever I can. My mom bought me a squash plant that I do not have room for. I can't throw out a potential yummy plant, so I cleared an area in my spill over garden and built a little fort for it. To build a nice, classy bent wood trellis you should look elsewhere. Like in a book. To build mine, keep reading.

You want some bendy wood. We (my mom and I) used linden branches. The saplings are the bendiest. Also willow is a good choice. Actually, willow is so good at rooting, your branches may turn into trees some day if you are lucky, or not careful, depending on how you see things. I think you can make tea out of linden flowers. This tree always gets infected by a bumpy leaf fungus looking thing, so I think I will not be making tea from it.


Step 1: Find two bendy branches (linden, willow etc. ) and cross them at the top. Then secure with wire. do this twice for the front and the back of your arbor.

Step 2: Reinforce the top with an extra branch.

Step 3: Stick the two sides in the ground and connect them with some side branches. I started with the very top.

bent wood arbor for a flying saucer squash.

Some minor updates

The scapes are almost ready. In June/July the garlic plants produce these yummy fellows.

Garlic scape

garlic

My favorite way to cook scapes are grilled on the BBQ with some olive oil, salt and pepper. YUM!

gooseberry

wild blackberries

The gooseberries and blackberries are forming. They will not be ready for at least a month though. When Elo comes to visit me in August we will make jam.