Sunday morning is my favorite time of the week – starting with walking the dog and enjoying the silence in the neighborhood and continuing with some quality time reading a new book, knitting or crocheting or making photos for a new pattern. This Sunday I am spoiled: I got to do all the above!


But, I am the most excited about the new craft book that I got! Maybe some of you remember that some (long) time ago I participated (and won) in a contest organized by Freubelweb in collaboration with Mollie Makes and Tirion Creatief. I then got to meet Loes Verhoeven who is the brain behind the Freubelweb – a very extensive platform for Dutch DIY projects of all kind. Now, after more than a year she has published her own book about … crafts! Easy to read (unfortunately, only for Dutch readers), full with beautiful images and cute projects, it is the perfect companion for the beginner or for those that want to learn the basics of a new craft. Me for instance, I am not very proficient in felting. But now I have a good resource to get me started :)

Still! Before beginning with a new craft I will first write the new pattern to be featured on Moeke Yarns website. For this week I thought of a crochet project that is particularly welcome during autumn: boot cuffs and matched hand warmers. For this project I used Elena wool dyed with leaves from the quince tree. And if all goes well the pattern will be online today :)

Read all about how to knit a wool shoulder bag and how to crochet an IPhone 5 case :)

One of the many reasons why I love living in The Netherlands are the creative people. They are everywhere if you know how and where to find them! Two examples: first, take me - one lonely blogger until a month ago when I joined a Stitch&Bitch knitting group that meets in the Neighborhood center where I live. And the fun part is that I found out about this group from Ravery, which, in case you do not know, is an international online community for yarn lovers. Another reason why I love internet and how it can connect people with similar hobbies and interests :) 
But back to my knitting group: what a joy it is to spend time with other women that have the same hobby and are so incredibly talented! I cant even begin to describe how exciting is to be part of such a creative community. What I can do is to add to my blog links to their personals blogs and websites so you can see for yourself who they are and what they do :)  
The second example are the hobby fairs among which, my favorites are the ones dedicated to wool, yarn and all done by hand. Like the fair that just took place in Rijswijk: 3 days dedicated to all crafts, organised in a former bread factory and bringing together over 120 participants. This year I visited the fair with an alternative reason: to make contacts with some potentials partners for selling my wool. The outcome of my visit are uncertain but I enjoyed every second - I met very interesting and nice people that showed interest in my story and also gave me some nice suggestions. Among the memorable companies that I had the pleasure to visit were "Textielwerk Wol en zo" (great lady leading the shop, with incredible interesting stories), "Zij maakt het" (I met there a very young courageous women that just finished her studies while also having a small business) or "Stof tot verven". After such a nice day at the fair I cant wait for the next one: a fair dedicated entirely to knitting!!! 

I did it! I mean, we did it! Me, my brother, my family in Romania and lets not forget my husband, we all worked hard this year in order to start a little family business producing... wool yarns! And these yarns are special because they are just like my grandmother would make them. She would use wool from sheep that graze on natural pastures. She would use only the best part of the fleece. She would not use harsh chemicals to wash or dye the wool. She would spin the wool by hand or at a local spinning workshop. And she would make this work with love and care for the animals and for the wool. This is what we also do. 
After a long and laborious process here they are - our first two types of yarns! We named one type Elena in honor of our grandmother - this is the genuine traditional type of yarn that she would have use to make us socks to keep us warm during those cold Romanian winters. The other type we named Stela - the name of our mother, as a symbol of the heritage that is transmitted from parents to children and further.
Of course we also set up a website (www.moeke-yarns.com) and there we told our story, we described our methods of production and we will offer tutorials and free goodies. For starting, I wrote 3 tutorials: on dyeing wool with onion skins, on making herb satchels that can be used to protect wool garments from moths and a free pattern for a knitted pillow cover. 
So I guess this is a kind of goodbye - I will not have time to update this blog so often and I will concentrate all my energy in the wool start-up. But if you are searching for some free patterns then I invite you to visit the site some time and who knows, maybe you will find something inspiring :)

Autumn is around the corner: you can find berries everywhere and the leaves started to change their color - a perfect opportunity for new dyeing experiments! This time I tried eco-printing, that is, using natural material to create beautiful (or at least interesting) patterns on textiles. My victim: white new linen that I got to make some herb satchels. My ingredients: some leaves, some berries (elder, blackthorn and some others), some purple flowers (milk thistle if I'm not mistaken) and some oak galls and some dried dock seeds. How did I do it:

• First, I left the linen in hand-warm water for 30 minutes. After that I put the dock seeds and around 10 oak galls to boil and added the linen to the dye bath. The tanin from the oak galls acts like a mordant, helping the colors to print onto the linen. The dock seeds can be used to dye yarn, they give a nice light camel color on wool. I did not have enough galls or seeds to actually produce a strong color, but my aim was just to dye that bright white linen into something more natural. I left the pot to simmer for about one hour and a half, I removed it from the fire and left it to cool overnight.
  
• Meanwhile, the berries, the flowers and the leaves went into the freezer for about 24 hours.
• Next day in the evening I removed the linen from the cold dye-bath and rinsed with only water. I unfolded the linen on a towel (it was still wet) and I started to play with the frozen plant material. On half the linen's length I placed the leaves and covered with the other half. The flowers went on top, again on half of the length and covered with the other half. The last layer were the frozen berries that I pressed with my hand to help release the color. 
• Gently I pulled the corners of the linen to the middle and over the berries. Using a rolling pin I pressed and crashed as much of the berries into the linen. I made a bundle and I firmly tied it with rope. 
• My first plan was to left the eco-bundle into a plastic bag outside for some sun dyeing. I forgot that Netherlands does not have sun, has only sun between the clouds. After 2 days of hoping for some real sun I gave up and, since I dont have a steamer, I improvised one. I left the bundle to steam for about one hour and after that I left it to cool without removing the cover. When cold I unpacked and rinsed in water with some salt added.

And than, after all that waiting and hoping for something beautiful, here it was: my first eco-printed linen! Not bad for a first try! I like the fact that some of the leaves managed to imprint on the linen and the purple spots from the berries. The color is probably not very light-fast but herb satchels are not meant to stay in the sun, are meant to stay in the closet, between clothes, so I don't really worry about that. 
I still have some linen left... and I saw some blackthorn berries some place around here ...

Do you like to learn new stitches? Why don’t you learn AND make something pretty? Like… a swatch blanket! Some time ago I posted some pictures with the swatches I was making. And I made a few: P Now I am imagining new projects for these swatches. The first one, a new baby blanket for my future nephew! I am very happy with the result! Winters in Romania are pretty harsh, so a cozy wool blanket like this one is going to be very handy :)

The steps to make a swatch blanket are very easy: choose your yarn (in my case pure natural hand-spun Romanian sheep wool), choose the right size needles (size 6, European measure) and pick your stitches. You should best pick stitches that result in about the same size swatches for the same number of stitches and rows. I casted on 40 stitches and knitted for 40 rows, and the resulting swatch was not perfectly square. If you want, to can knit some more and make square swatches. When I had 9 pieces, I washed and blocked them, stitched them together and made a crocheted border (3 rows of half double crochet). I washed and blocked again. And that’s it! My simple and fun to do swatch blanket!

If you want to do this blanket and you want to use the exact stitches that I used, I uploaded photos and add links to websites where you can find diagrams / tutorials. The middle piece is just plain knit :)

After all that experimenting with natural dyes I thought I could also try solar dyeing. Seems fun and easy: get some plant material, water and some mordanted wool. Mix all the above in a jar (I have a 3 l one) and let it in the sun for at least 2 weeks or how long your heart desires. This is the basic recipe, but in my case, I did things a bit different. 
I had some avocado skins and pits in the freezer and 100 gr of un-mordanted wool and enough alum solution for it, so I said, ok, let’s do this! I first left the avocado skins and pits to ferment in a jar for about 2 weeks. Then, I added the alum solution and the wool to the jar and left it on the balcony. Then I forgot about it *ups* That was about a month ago.
Yesterday I saw the jar and noticed some mold on the surface of the dyeing bath. Bad!!! Very bad! Mold can influence the colors that you get. So, I ended the experiment, retrieved the wool, wash it and dried it. Theoretically, from avocado skins and pits you should get pinkish, peachy shades. And what did I get? A mix of shades that were anything else BUT pinkish and included also some neon-yellow! I have no idea why this happened but it is in the end not such a bad result. Unexpected ... yes :)

This is my treasures' chest :) Lots and lots and lots of wool that has a very special origin. It was hand-spun by my grandmother 16 years ago. It is still in very good shape so I decided to rescue it and started working on some swatches. I made quite a few by now and I will still make some more. I figured I can always use them as the building blocks for a nice blanket :) 

Dyeing with plants is not only unpredictable but sometime very disappointing. Still, it is always fascinating to see what you get. My last experiments involved red onion skins, nettles and coffee. For those interested in objective facts and recipes here are the quantities of plant material to wool. For the red onion skins experiment I had 20 grams of plant material for 50 grams un-mordanted wool. For the coffee experiment I made strong coffee from 50 grams coffee beans for 60 gr un-mordanted wool. For the nettles experiment I had a 10 lt bucket 3/4 full with plant material for 150 gram wool and 35 gr merino, both mordanted with 10% alum. After the first dye I continued to use the exhaust dye baths (except the nettle dye bath) as there was still enough color in them - see the comments on the pictures in this post for explanations. 
And what are my impressions so far after these experiments? Nettles - disappointment. The nettles I used were already old so that might have been the problem. The color was just not strong enough :(. Red onion skins - works good both on un-mordanted or mordanted wool, and you can get a nice color even with not very much  plant material. As for the coffee experiment - hm... I am not very impressed with the color I got. But of course, that is just a matter of taste.