candleholder makeover

After reading this post from "skreytum hús" about a candleholder makeover, I got so inspired that I really wanted to do something similar. I went to the thrift store to look for a candleholder to spray, and got really lucky. I found this beautiful golden candleholder, just waiting to get a makeover. I found it a bit hard to make the colour look nice and even, but after many layers of paint, it turned out fine. This is the result - you can see that I´ve been using it a lot! Too bad I forgot to take some "before-pictures"!

Dandelions

I dyed wool with Dandelions (Fíflar, bara blóm) last week. I just love how those flowers look in the pot - almost to beautiful to cook! :-)

One of the best parts of wool-dyeing with plants is the picking of the plants - it´s just you and the nature all around and in your hands.. and then you take this feeling with you home, and in a way, you put this special feeling along with the colours of nature, in your wool. This time I picked the flowers with my two sons and we had so much fun - now I´ll always think of this beautiful moment, when I see this yarn.

As always until now, I love the way the colours turned out - an earthly-yellow (can´t really see them on the pictures).

Springtime Bandit nr. 1

It was quite tricky starting this shawl because I really didn´t get the first 7 rows! But after meeting RodPrjonar in a small Café in Álafosskvos, who showed me how to do this it was really simple! Thank you RodPrjonar! :-) The pattern is really nice: simple and quick but at the same time really beautiful. It took me about 2-3 days to finish it and I was not knitting all day and night.

Of course, I used my own hand-dyed yarn for this project. The 2 orange shades come from onion peel and the yellow (at the end of the shawl) from Rumex longifolius (Njóli). I really love how the colours look in a shawl and now I´m totaly hooked on knitting shawls with this yarn - I´m afraid everybody I know will be getting a shawl next christmas!

Icelandic knitspiration

When choosing colours for a lopi-sweater, I normaly get inspired by the colours of icelandic nature. Since I started a 2skein-unspun-lopi-sweater (tvöfaldur plötulopi) for my son Bidenam yesterday I needed some inspiration for my colour-choice... think of a lopi-sweater when looking at those pictures:

Shawl in a day

Yesterday I realized I had to frogg a shawl ("Kyrrð"), I´ve been knitting day and night since last week. This shawl, which I really LOVE, has a hood that was far too big for me because I had not been knitting tight enough.
This was soooo frustrating, that I had to knit something else, before I start all over again. I decided to make a birthdaygift for a friend of mine, who had birthday last month - there are three of them but I wont tell here which one will get it! I started knitting a new, really simple but beautiful shawl, called "vinkonusjal" (Book: "Fleiri Prjónaperlur").
I did expect it to be an easy and fast knit - but to my big surprise, I managed to finish this shawl (which I started at about 13:00) at 23:00 yesterday... I can´t believe I was able to finish a whole shawl in just one day... (I must say, that I really was knitting all day long). This really gives me hope, that I will finish my frogged "Kyrrð"-shawl in the next few weeks...

I used my own, icelandic, hand-dyed einband-yarn for this project. The mossgreen comes from Lupina, and the yellow from Rumex longifolius (Njóli):

Salve for a dear friend

One of my best friends, has got Psoriasis. That´s why I´ve been searching information about what herbs and plants can help her with that. I found out, that birch (birki), Iceland moss (fjallagrös), Rumex longifolius (Njóli) and yellow bedstraw/Galium verum (gulmaðra) are recommended for Psoriasis.
I was really lucky to have some dry Galium verum and Iceland Moss at home, but I had to go out and get some birch and Rumex longifolius - I found both in a beautiful place called "Heiðmörk".
The plants have been lying in olive-oil since 25. mai, so I have to wait for at least one more week to make the salve out of the herb-oil.

This time, the oil has almost no smell at all. I was hoping the birch would give it a nice scent - but no. I´m thinking of using some ssential oil to "fix" that. I think lavender might be the perfect choice because:
1. It is supposed to have a calming effect and because of that, it´s recommended for skin-problems
2. Just love the smell, who doesn´t?! :-)

This is what the oil looks like at the moment:

Lupina

This weekend, I dyed some yarn with Lupina-flowers. I´m getting more and more fascinated by yarn-dyeing with plants, this is like magic! The flowers looked so beautiful in the pot I just have to show you some picures of them:

After cooking the flowers, the water got purple - and because of that, I really didn´t know what to expect when I pulled the yarn out of the water, after cooking it for about an hour or so. I´ve read, that the yarn should get neon-green or really yellow - but I got some beautiful moss-green colour out of it. I´ve always wanted einband-yarn in this colour so I´m LOVING this result and really happy that it didn´t get neon-green :-) Just like I told you in the last post, it is almost impossible to see the real colours of the yarn on pictures, but here you go anyway:

The Lupina-yarn is on the left side:My dyed-yarn so far:

Wool, rumex longifolius and onion peel

I´ve been dyeing wool (yarn: einband from istex) with plants for the last week or so. I started preparing some time ago: searching 2 old, big pots at fleamarkets, buying some chemicals, paddles, thermometer and some other things you need to do this. Last week, when I was coming home with my boys from kindergarten, I saw some "Rumex longifolius" and decided the big day has arrived: I´m finally ready to dye my wool with plants, starting with Rumex longifolius!

Yesterday was the second time I dyed, using onion peel I´ve been collecting for a few months now. I must say, wool-dyeing with plants is a bit messy, complicated and time-consuming BUT I LOVE IT anyway! :-) And when you have so much fun doing something, like I´ve been having doing this, negative factors like those above sort of vanish.
What I love about it:
1. It´s so fascinating, getting the colours for your wool and knitting-projects from nature.
2. You never really know, what colour you are exactly getting from the pots - every single time is an adventure and it´s a magical moment, when you pull the wool out of the pot to see the colour of it!
3. The colours you get are unlike everything you can buy from stores - much deeper, beautiful shades of the colours of nature and earth... really hard to describe and almost impossible to see on fotos.

The next thing I´m going to try out is Lupina - you can find that plant everywhere right now in Iceland. I´ve been told, you get different shades of green with Lupina - and since I´ve got 2 shades of yellow (from Rumex longifolius) and 2 shades of orange/brownish from the onionpeel I think it´s time for green now! :-) Here you have some pictures of the process:

The wool before the whole process:
Wool soaking in water over night:

Plants soaking in water over night: Cooking plants to get the colour out of them:
Cooking the wool in mordant:

Cooking the wool in the plant-colour:
And this is what I got from Rumex longifolius, 2 shades of yellow, on the right: 1. dye, on the left: 2. dye. You can´t really see the colours on those pictures:
Onion peel: on the left: 2. dye, on the right: 1. dye