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

Hálfskák

Remember this post about me, knitting lace-shawls? Well, I reached my goal and I still can´t believe it! Rodprjonar, Jóhanna and knittingmydayaway´s beautiful Kyrrð where really motivating and helpful, thank´s to them, I managed to knit my first lace shawl, "Hálfskák" in about 4 weeks, thank you two!!! I used brown yarn from Þingborg. The amazing thing about icelandic yarn like the one I used from Þingborg, and the similar "einband" from istex is what happens when you wash it:
1. your knit suddenly looks so nice and even!
2. the yarn get´s so soft - it´s like magic!

I just loved making this shawl and I have the feeling, I won´t be able to stop knit shawls for the next few months.

I found it very hard to get good fotos of the shawl, but here you go anyway:

My boy´s loved this shawl, because they think it looks like wings!

Many things

I´ve been doing so many different things lately that I just don´t know where to start! :-) So let´s begin...

1. I´ve been knitting my lace-shawl "Hálfskák" - I´m almost done... only about 5 rounds to knit and I´m finished. Can´t believe I did it and can´t wait to start "Kyrrð" (knitting my day away).

2. I baked my own birthdaycake with Dagbjört (or should I say: she baked it, I watched). She showed me how to decorate cakes with fondant. It was so much fun - I just loved it and you can do almost anything with it! Thank you so much Dagbjört! We made a very girly, pink mumin-cake. My son told me, he want´s a mumin-cake for his birthday in july too, which made me really happy since I love the mumins too! :-)

3. I made a hat and a scarf for a cousin of mine, who was graduating - out of one of my favorite yarns, the icelandic "kambgarn". The hat-pattern: "Bleik og bjúdíful" from the book "fleiri prjónaperlur. The scarf: my own design.


4. I LOVE garlic, you can´t believe how much! :-D That´s why I made some persian, pickled garlic yesterday. You heat up some vinegar with black peppercorns, put some garlic-cloves in a jar (without the skin) and then you mix the two things together. Then you have to wait as long as possible- the longer, the better. A persian friend of mine told me, her mother waits 7 years - I tasted this 7 years old, pickled garlic at her home and I can´t describe how good it was - the best thing ever. It was black, sweet, mild and sour. I don´t think I have the patience to wait so long...



5. I´ve been preparing and buying everything I need to finally start dyeing yarn with plants: flowers, trees and other things from nature. I´ll start with onion peel because that´s what I have at home - and einband because that´s what I need for "Kyrrð".

Mothersday and some knitspiration!

Last sunday, on mothersday we went to a beach at "Seltjarnarnes, Grótta". It´s on the other side of town and we used to live there for a year, 2005-2006. We really like this place because you are in the nature, looking at the ocean - in the city! A special thing about Seltjarnarnes is, that they have many different species of birds.

Well, anyway... on mothersday we went there and spent some hours sitting at the beach. We built some sand- and stone-castles with the boys, threw some stones in the ocean, went for a walk, enjoyed the sun and I knitted a bit - and of course I found some "knitspiration" there. I also found some knitspiration this week, visiting a farm with my boys and their kindergarten... here you go!

Me and my boys on mothersday:

Seltjarnarnes, Grótta:

My boys and their castles:

Knitspiration:

Knitspiration:

Knitspiration at the farm:

Knitspiration at the farm:

Mittens for my dear mum

I made these mittens for my mum. I really wanted to make her something special that reminds her of me and something "very icelandic" because she spends a lot of time abroad. The mitten-pattern is created by me (yarn: léttlopi) and fits perfectly for my mothers hands. I wanted to use a embroidery-chart out of a book, but ended up making up my own (yarn: einband), which makes these mittens more personal. I´m happy with the result, but next time I make mittens like that, I´ll use "kambgarn" for the knit and I´ll start with the cross-stich-pattern on the top... I can´t wait to give them to my mum!

Inspiration

One of my most favorite mountains in Iceland and one of my biggest knit-spirations is "Esjan". From my flat, I have a great view over to Esjan and that was one of the things that influenced me and my husband when we got the flat! The colours of this mountain are always different, depending on the light and you always know winter is not far away when you begin to see snow on it´s top.
This morning, Esjan was beautiful as ever, but the colours where so special I decided to show you some pictures of this great inspiration of mine, even if you can´t "really"see the colours (white/blue/gray-shades), on these fotos. I must admit, I was thinking of knittingmydayaway when I got this Idea, since she seems to love "Esjan" as much as I do - I hope this brings you a bit of Iceland to NY! :-)

Chamomile-/fjallagrasa-oil turnes into salve/lotion

The big day has come... no, I´m actually not talking about prince Williams and K.M´s wedding - even if it was really beautiful... I´m talking about my herb-oil that I could finally turn into a salve/lotion. I´ve been looking so much forward to doing this!

This is what I did:
1. I started by filtering out all the herbs
This step was a real mess but the smell of chamomile and oliveoil was so nice and it was such a great feeling, having those herbs in your hands and squezzing the oil out!

This is how the filtering looked like:


and some more filtering:


and some more filtering:


2. Melting the beewax in a saucepan.
The smell of the melting beewax is really special!

3. Finally I mixed the oil and the beewax together - and my curative and healing salve/lotion was ready!



I decided to call it "Seiður" (seidur) - this word was used to describe an old way of nordic magic, that people believed to be very powerful (you can read about the meaning here: http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiður)

What am I going to do with this: maby I´ll give some lucky friends a little bit on their birthday, I´m going to use it on my boys dry and sensitive skin - for my own hands that often get too dry and my husband is going to use it for his very dry hands and feet - I'm sure it will be useful for some other things too - we´ll see. One thing is sure: I´m going to make a lot more of this kind of thing, in different versions, out of different herbs, I just love doing this!

A really good blog with infos on homemade cosmetics (and a lots of other things) in icelandic is this one: http://seidkona.123.is/Blog/Cat/3683/