I see that Cat Bordhi has put previews to her new book, A Treasury of Magical Knitting, up on the web. So, in celebration, I’m going to show off some of the stuff I made during/after my workshop with her.
Clockwise from top left:
mobius basket: made during Cat’s workshop;
arrow lace: shown on page 15 of her PDF;
pencil basket: my own design based on her techniques.
Sorry, please don’t ask for patterns. It’s in her book. I haven’t seen the book yet, but if the rest of the book is as fun as the few that I’ve worked on, it’ll be well worth the price. I can’t wait to try the cat bed. Cat is such a neat lady and has wonderful insights to share, you’ll love reading through the book. I’m sure of it. And if you ever have the opportunity to take a workshop with her, do it. You won’t regret it.
I tried my hand at dyeing the Lincoln x Corriedale fleece that I bought earlier. I put the alum directly in with the cutch bath, and let it sit in my crockpot on low for 2+ hours (after it came up to temperature). Then I left the wool to sit in the crockpot until it cooled off. I wanted a dark brown, so I used a little more cutch, as per instructions. But it’s not turning out as dark as I wanted it to be.
At first, I thought it was because I didn’t fully remove all the lanolin in the fleece. So I did the full hot water and lots of soap scour on a small handful of fleece that had already gone through the cold scour earlier. Still no joy. It turned into a light brown. As Martin puts it, the sheep is a dishwater blond. I know I can darken it with an iron dip, but I just don’t want to mess with iron right now. (So far, everything has been food grade.) Perhaps after I get back from my vacation.
I was going to comb this with the dark grey fleece to darken it anyway, so it might not matter. Stay tuned.