greenolive

Ixchel hand dyed fibres & yarn

 

Indigo laceweight, Australian Cashmere/Merino (30/70)

Do you know about Ixchel?  

I discovered Charly's gorgeous (no other word for it!) fibres and yarns at the Red Hill market in December 2008. I couldn't resist her lovely colourways and luxurious fibres – and they are such good value too. I bought some roving and hand dyed yarn on the spot. 

Seduced by the colours, it was only when I spun her roving that I realised just how beautiful her work is. That first purchase included some grey roving, Wallaby. It was a merino and angora blend. It was so easy to spin with, it almost spun itself. And the resulting yarn is so very soft. I haven't knitted this up yet, I'm waiting for a very special project for this yarn. Its one of my favourites.

Wallaby roving spun into a two-ply yarn

Another roving purchase is Machiavelli. Another merino/angora blend, this time the colourway includes plums, purples and blues. Once again the spinning experience was sublime and the yarn is so, so, so soft. This handspun yarn is also still in the stash, I think I'm scared that the knitted or crochet final product won't do the yarn justice!

Machiavelli roving spun into a two-ply yarn 

Have you fallen in love with Charly's colours and fibres too? 

Don't dispair if you aren't a spinner. She sells beautiful hand dyed yarns as well. Her flickr sets will get you drooling. Something there is bound to catch your eye!

little boy blue baby blanket

I have a real thing for baby blankets. Whenever I have a new baby to knit for I go for the baby blanket. Actually, even when I don't have a new baby to knit for I still go for the baby blanket. 

I find them so comforting to knit. I just cast on a whole bunch of stitches, knit away, and Bob's your uncle, a baby blanket. Relatively quick, easy knitting. A case of the sum being much greater than its parts.

Most of the blankets I knit are made from stash yarn. Yarns I've bought on a whim because the colour or texture appealed. At the time I just bought whatever quantity of yarn was available, sometimes one single ball, others a few skeins. I'm not sure if its inspiration or pure luck, but the motley collection of odd balls magically turns into a lovely baby blanket:

> pink bubblegum baby blanket was knitted for a little girl

> sea green baby blanket for a little boy, though at the time I didn't know that.

Little boy blue was knitted without a specific baby in mind, I just felt like knitting a blanket. I had two 100g balls of an English yarn I'd bought on sale at Wondoflex. The wool/cotton yarn had been in the stash for about eight years, and every now and then I'd get them out and wonder what to do with them. Too little yardage to make anything out of just one ball - unless you cast on a scarf - but with two balls...I thought the pale blue and grey looked nice together, and the yarn had the same quality as other yarns I'd knitted up into baby blankets. So a baby blanket it was. And now the blanket is finished, I think the yarns look great, they were a perfect choice.

If you are feeling so inspired, here are some suggestions for the perfect baby blanket:

1. pick a soft, textured and fairly airy yarn – this gives you warmth without bulk, and visual interest via the texture

2. knit it in garter stitch - this makes for a very quick project

3. don't be too hung up about size or gauge - I tend to just cast on about 80 stitches with a 6mm needle, I find a looser tension works better for the blanket

4. use circular needles – much easier to knit with.

In no time at all you'll have a beautiful, handmade baby blanket that is bound to become a treasured favourite. And, if you don't have a baby to knit for, why not make the blanket a bit bigger and give it to a young child? It makes a great "security" blanket too.

better made up

Do you have those sorts of yarns in your stash? You know, the ones that look much better made up than they do as a ball of yarn. Well, this yarn is one of those yarns...

I didn't take a before shot, I seem to forget about this and am too impatient to cast on and get started, but the yarn is Patons Jet. A wool and alpaca blend, the colour is a crazy blend of yellow, orange, pink and blue. Quite bright really. Not my thing at all. I bought it on sale at Kmart of all places. It was intended as a knitted gift, but I think I was put off by the colours and it languished in the stash for years. But that 30% alpaca kept calling out to me...

Anyway, wanting a bit of mindless crochet while watching DVDs in bed, I ferreted it out and started chaining. The result is an extra long, simple crochet scarf of treble stitch. The length of the rows allows the colour to build, merge and change in long elegant stretches.

Now made up, the yarn colours remind me of an intense sunset. What a nice surprise.

What yarn has surprised you lately?

lifting one's spirits

yarn as comfort food

 

It wasn't my fault. Mr greenolive encouraged me. He insisted even. It's not often I find myself in a yarn shop  with my husband, but that's the situation I found myself in a few weeks back. 

I've been having an uphill struggle lately. Life has stepped in and taken over, as it seems I wasn't doing such a great job of it! I'm having to deal with things I've tried not to deal with, change habits that haven't served me well, redefine what my life is about, and stop and take stock. 

I've been presented with a chance to completely change my life, but its a big, scary change that requires a big leap of faith and a huge slice of trust. It requires me to let go and give up control, to let things happen and evolve, trusting that what does happen is good for me, no matter how hard and difficult things seem.

A co-worker used to have a quote pinned to her cubical, something along the lines of: when at the edge of a cliff, leap, and wings will appear. Well, I'm at the cliff. But I want to make sure those wings are there before I leap.

So the spirits are in dire straits. In great need of lifting. Hence the yarn. Much healthier than chocolate, lamington fingers, or a bag of chips. 

The vital statistics:

> Noro Kochoran

> 2 skeins = 320 metres

> 50% wool, 30% angora, 20% silk

> it was on SALE!

Its so soft and lovely, just looking at it makes me smile. Maybe that's why he insisted we buy it.

organising your stash

a how-to guide

A BEFORE shot, before optimal stash organisation.

Hey, that's a coincidence isn't it? 

Organising your stash is the title of my latest Crafty 101 column for mixtape. Issue 5 that is. For optiminal organisational and reading experience you really MUST read them together.

So, why don't you pop over and get a copy of mixtape right now. And then, come back and read this. It's ok, I'll wait for you, I'm not going anywhere.

Better yet, why not get all the back issues of mixtape too? They are full of lots of interesting stuff, including a column called Crafty 101...

Why not subscribe? Then you'll never miss an issue.

So, I'm assuming you've got issue 5. Let's get started. This involves three 'doing' words: consult, organise and catalogue. 

The mixtape column covers all three, but I'll focus on organise here. (I love the catalogue part but I'm assuming you aren't all as weird as me. If you are, send me an email and I'll fill you in on cataloguing.)

The approach you take depends on:

1. the size and variety of your stash

2. your penchant for categorisation

3. the amount of space you have available

4. how much existing storage you can commandeer for stash organisation.

In my particular case this means:

1. bigger than I realised

2. very strong (to get a sense of how strong, read this blog post!)

3. quite a lot (why not take a peek inside the studio?)

4. whatever I could.

And after about four weekends worth of unpacking after the house move and organising my stash to within an inch of its life, here are the results:

Fabrics neatly folded and stacked in piles. They are starting to look a bit wobbly in the photo, but they were very neat and ordered in the beginning. Sorted by fabric type, so plies of patterned cottons, silks, linens, knits, wool, cord, denim, etc. 

I went for piles because we had these open shelves and I wanted to be able to see ALL my fabrics. I have three plastic tubs of slippery chiffons hidden down below because no matter how hard I tried they just wouldn't sit still in their stack. I think I need to point out that each shelf is 5m wide, so that's 10m of fabric stacks people. And I folded every stack!

Brown cardboard boxes (from Ikea) house all the little bits and pieces such as notions, ribbons, wool and fabric swatches, packing stuff – and there is a whole row of them too.

Wool and yarn stored in plastic tubs near the bottom. A mix of open tubs and boxes with lids, because that's what I had. Yarn sorted by colour mostly, however some of the "special" yarns are sorted by type: linen, silk, cotton and last but not least, nice wools I'll knit one day.

Buttons in glass jars – a practical and stylish solution. But you already knew this.

Trims wound onto card and secured with a pin to stop them from tangling.

Now I took awhile to get to these lovely AFTER shots. But that's because I'm very anal and I had a lot of stash to organise. You probably won't take that long. (And if you take longer, can you let me know so I can let Mr greenolive know that my stash isn't as big as some?!)

Just a word of warning before you start: be careful that organising your stash doesn't become such a diversion that you stop crafting and creating!

Let me know how you get on.

open studio

Have a peek inside

The exterior of the studio. The window and the big red door are mine. All mine.

You've probably been itching to see the studio. I've certainly waffled on about it enough. 

Remember when I asked you how you organised your stash? I was looking for practical suggestions and solutions for optimal stash organisation. I promised to let you how I got on. And to share with you how I ended up organising everything. 'Cause one of you might be moving into your very own studio very soon.

Now, before I show you any pictures I must advise you that the WHOLE studio is painted a jacaranda blue. Yes, the whole studio. All 10 x 5.5m of it. Walls and ceilings!

It makes for a rather dark interior. What possessed the Landlord's wife (a painter no less) to paint the interior this colour?

And here's a shot of the other end, the front of the studio, looking out the two big barn doors, showing the old sink which is now plumbed in, and the door to the toilet.

So these are the shots BEFORE the stash moved in. Now some of the DURING shots. And the during phase took more than six weeks. It was as much about the unpacking as it was about optimal furniture layout and finding homes for everything.

Now for an AFTER shot so you can see that is sorted, kinda.

And a shot of Mr greenolive encroaching on my turf. He tries to do some furniture restoration in the studio while I'm not looking. He's polishing an old wooden mirror and shushing me away while I take his picture.

So now I have my own studio I can highly recommend them. I have the space to store my stash and create stuff and the luxury of closing the door and leaving the mess behind. Bliss.

The only trouble is I only manage to get into it on weekends. After a hard day at work, the drive home, dinnner, etc I just can seem to be bothered to pop in and do a spot of sewing. The fact that the open fire in the lounge room is roaring and crackling might also have something to do with it. Curling up by the fire with a cup of tea and some knitting is quite appealing on a cold winter night.

mulberry mohair

inspiration strikes!

 

This lovely mohair yarn, that has been sitting patiently in my stash for about two years, has finally got a place in my knitting basket.

It looks like a bunch of mulberries has been squashed onto a skein of cream mohair goodness – the mulberries staining the fibre with colour. The variations in colour range from very subtle pinks to intense, rich purples, the exact shade of the stain that mulberry juice leaves behind.

I normally don't do mohair, but I have fallen in love with a particular pattern and these mulberry shades so it seems that I'm going to do mohair after all.

The pattern in question is an asymmetrical wrap vest, one that was featured in a recent Zhivago pattern book. I have previously knitted it in a Jo Sharp Aran tweed but found it too bulky. That original vest has languished for six months, unblocked and ends dangling. I was quite disappointed with the finshed vest and have thought of ripping it out more than once. It used 10 balls of yarn so I really don't want to waste that much yarn. Maybe a really severe blocking will help...

Luckily while at Wondoflex on one of my many visits I spied a sample of the same vest pattern knitted in a mohair. It was so soft and light as air. I knew I had to knit one.

Fingers crossed this version will live up to expectations and I'll actually WEAR it!

my uber stash

accepting the stark reality

An initial sorting, pinks from greens.

I really didn't think it was that big. Maybe bigger than normal, but not big in a bad, obsessive way.

Well at least that's what I naively thought until some of you left comments on this post, and until I actually started unpacking it on the weekend.

Storing it away out-of-sight-out-of-mind in boxes, and separating it, and hiding it around the old house actually made it look smaller than it actually was. Once you get it all out in the open and see it in the clear light of day – then it hits you: Oh, my, God! I have so much stuff. Then I realised that he's been right all along – I have enough yarn and fabric to last a lifetime, I really don't NEED anymore. But that's not really the point is it?

I've alluded to this before, but I don't think any of you realised the seriousness of the situation I am in.

I really do have a problem and I need to stop buying and start making. (At least til the end of the year, then I could re-evaluate the situation).

I might even have to resort to a de-stash. But with my "letting-go" issues this might not be as easy as you think.

As I continue to unpack, sort and re-evaluate my stash I'm discovering stuff I had forgotten I even had. I hate to think of the dollar value of my stash...

blood, sweat and tears

the aftermath of the move

Self-portrait of Mr greenolive's bloodied hand. He's right handed which means he took this photo with his left hand. He emailed it to me at work along with some work-in-progress shots of the layout of the studio so I could give him feedback on where I wanted things to go. He knows me so well! He's set everything up so I can just unpack all weekend.

The evidence of the blood (Mr greenolive's). The sweat was his also. Mine were the tears.

This move totally overwhelmed us. It was our seventh and it was just around the corner (literally).

I don't know what tripped us up - take you pick from the list below:

a) not enough moving boxes meant we had to pack stuff, move it to the new place, unpack the box, then repack it again.

b) my sister and two of her kids (The Inventor and The Button Master - read her blog!) came to stay the weekend before we moved which meant no packing, sorting and cleaning, and no moving the small stuff.

c) the move was literally around the corner (about 800m east of where we use to live) so we didn't factor in the driving time to and fro and totally underestimated how long it would take

d) we did the move ourself with the help of Trent, the father of Jack (our favourite dog)

e) we now have a studio to put all my crap, sorry, stash in and once that was moved (15 car loads - a hatchback filled to the brim) we thought we had broken the back of the move (we hadn't!)

f) if you don't factor in the studio (9m x 5.5m) the actual house is smaller than the one we were moving from which meant packed boxes actually got in the way of walking to the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, anywhere...

g) the completely anal wife who needs stuff to be sorted and placed in its new home just so

h) the fact that it rained on the big move day

i) that I'd only taken two days off work and if you consider f and g above that was woefully inadequate.

Actually, now I read this list, all of the above is the correct answer.

I will stop boring you with the details and pictures of the move and the chaos. I'll concentrate on unpacking and organising and then show you some lovely AFTER shots of the studio and the sorted stash.

Don't hold your breath, it could be a while...

Photo of one of the tidier bits of the studio. Don't be fooled, it isn't all like this.

organising one's stash

any suggestions?

Shades of grey, a very small selection from the very large yarn stash.

Now I have my own studio I have the space to organise my stash properly. And I can't wait!

No more stuffing balls of wool into vacuum-packed space bags. No more shoving fabric into plastic storage cubes. No more hiding buttons and notions in non-descript brown cardboard boxes. No, I plan to store my stash in plain view so I can locate the perfect yarn, fabric, thread, button or trim for the project at hand!

At least that's the plan. But all this space and unlimited possibilities presents some challenges. What is the best way to organise my stash for maximum efficiency and visual impact?

Do I store yarn in clear storage boxes, grouped by colour?

Do I fold fabrics to sit on open shelves (so they can flop all over the place) or store them in drawers (someone wrote about their fabric storage drawers awhile back and I thought it was a great solution to floppy piles)?

Do I store my buttons in old glass jars arranged in a rainbow of colours on a shelf?

Do I store my rolls of ribbons in a drawer so they don't roll all over the place?

Now for the categorisation...

Do you group your yarn by colour, type or some other criteria?

What about your fabrics? By fibre type: silk, linen, cotton, wool, knit?

As you can see, I am in danger of losing sleep over such questions, and I only have six more sleeps before we move!

And what about furniture and room layout? I need to store greenolive goodies ready for sale. I need a desk to do admin-y sort of stuff. And somewhere for the sewing machine. Somewhere where I can cut out stuff, sort stuff into piles and wrap stuff. I also want the largest pinboard wall for all my inspirational tear sheets, graphics, photos...

I need suggestions. I need your advice. Let me know how you organise your stash. And how you organise your activities and furniture.

I promise to share the best suggestions, including photos of my perfectly organised stash with you in a later post.

HELP!