Happy food

Where is Spring? It has gone missing.......

It has been a long winter. Not so much like European or northern American winters where there is snow and freezing temperatures. It has been gloomy and wet. Don't get me wrong. I am thankful for the rain but it is the greyness that gets to you after a while.

I read somewhere that yellow food makes one happy. This winter, I have been trying that out. Not sure that it is so effective as a long term solution but certainly satisfying at times. Here is my all time favourite yellow foods.

I stocked up on mangoes at the end of last summer. I scooped out all the flesh and froze the purees. During the year, I made mango sorbet. Easy recipe: equal quantity fruit puree with 1:1 sugar syrup and churn in the ice cream machine. Beautiful sorbet at the end of 50 mins. with no effort! I do the same with apricot, plums, persimmon, etc.

My other all time favourite is this lemon syrup cake, grilled. I used to love it fresh, on the day it is baked. However, a friend of mine has introduced the grilled version. Now, I can't wait till it is ready for that.
I cut up the slices, freeze it and whenever I need a fix, I can get a slice out and put it under the grill or in the toaster. Just make sure it doesn't get burnt.
Beautiful with ice cream for a after dinner dessert as well.

And last of all, my lunchtime staple. zucchini slice with farm fresh eggs. One of my other friends has moved to the country. She has established a orchard with all sorts of fruit trees and has her own chickens.Whenever she comes to town, she always bring me some eggs. They are delicious!

Mixed frills

My shoulders have been playing up and the last item of machine knitting I finished was the purple frills. This piece was full of frustrations as the colour was perfect but the yarn was not of great quality despite being pure wool. It was made to go with 'Curly' and they were birthday presents for 2 little girls. In the end, it turned out ok. There were lots of broken ends to weave in, which is NOT my favourite task!

I was also keen to try out this version of the silk/stainless steel yarn and wool. However, I was also aware that more machine knitting is not a good idea. In the end, Christine had very generously offered to knit this up for me!

She is a real champion of the craft - generous with her time, equipment, enthusiasm and most of all encouraging with novices. I admire her energy at the MAKV stand, promoting machine knitting at craft shows, demonstrating alternative styles of knitting with simple shapes and interesting yarns.

This was knitted with some Avril grey silk/stainless steel yarn and a merino(70%)/cashmere(30%) variegated shades of grey by 'the bunny lady'. This is her nickname by another friend and I have adopted it. Once I remember the 'real' name, I will let you know.

She makes wonderful spaced dyed yarn in this mix and also beautifully dyed fleece for spinning and felting right here in Victoria (Australia)!

Weave juice

A little while ago, this beautiful parcel arrived in the post from Kaz. She had made up these cards called 'Weave Juice' to help inspire designing weave projects. (I think that most of them can equally be used for knit projects!) They are exquiste. They also came in this origami box that she had folded as well.

There is only 12 weeks left of this year. A few friends and I are planning to weave in the new year. We are going to set up the looms at my house and start weaving something on New Year's eve, through midnight and into early morning. (well, that is if we don't fall asleep)

We thought we can start planning to that the looms are warpped up ready to go. We can use these cards for inspiration and come up with various designs for each warp.

More to come as we progress........

Excursion......

Spring is a month late in arriving this year. Last Saturday, there was lovely blue sky and the temperature just crept above 20C. Perfect day to get out of the city.  Shipbuilding and I took a drive here to see this.

It was well worth the 2.5 hours each way!
There is something about seeing things in real life rather than just in photographs or in a book. The textures, the colours, the drape of the cloth. It was beautiful.
So if you are anywhere near Ararat, it is worth a visit.

Shibori with Yoshiko Wada: III

There were twelve of us at the workshop so we took turns at the dye vat, making sure that we did not get too much air into the vat while agitating the bundles of fabric. I don't think we did that very well as the indigo dye did not survive well into the second day. Yoshiko and Colleen Weste revived it and we tried to be more careful.

While we took our turns at the dye vat, Yoshiko demonstrated the capping techniques using some special tools.

There was a 2-dollar shop downstairs and some of the others wrapped their fabric around strings of plastic beads. It was a simple and quick technique but very effective. Yoshiko was encouraging minimum effort, maximum results! I can't agree more.

We wrapped the fabric around the PVC pipe, tied with string and pushed each section up as tightly as possible. In the midst of all the action, it was actually quite difficult to keep up with taking photographs.

Another technique we touched on was using the sewing machine to help create the paths of resist. We laid layers of calico over the fabric. In this case, a bit of cotton/silk off cut that I found in my fabric stash. (I knew there was a reason I don't throw them away!)

I really liked this technique as it was quick and easy. The quick-unpick tool came in handy. It is like a combination of fold/clamp and stitching but gives quite clear, defined shapes.

You can see some of the works by the others in the class. They were far more patient than I with the multiple dipping into the dye vat. I think the piece at the back, with the circles was made with the machine stitching technique. the larger piece in the middle was stitched. and then some of the smaller examples in the front still has the knots and marbles in place.

Shibori with Yoshiko Wada: II

After rinsing out, the cloth was pressed and the patterns revealed themselves.

miura - pressed out

spider - pressed out

It was a 2-day workshop. On the first day, we also tried out some folding and clamping techniques. I learnt to fold some interesting shapes.

On the second day, we learnt Arashi (pole wrapping) techniques. I used a gauze cotton, folded it in half and wrapped it around the PVC pipe. I tied it with a crochet cotton.

I love this pale indigo colour. There were a few of us wanting to dye on the last day and we only had one dye vat. As a result, I took mine home still on the pipe, thinking that I may dye it again at a later date. Curiousity took hold and I unwrapped it. I untied it carefully so that I kept the cotton in one continuous length as it absorbed some dye and resulted in something I can use, maybe in my weaving!It was so similar to the folded feint* ruled paper!

*feint 2
— n
printing the narrowest rule used in the production of ruled paper
[C19: variant of faint ]
from www.dictionary.com

Shibori with Yoshiko Wada: I

I should be stitching my homework for tomorrow's class but I am too excited and needed to share.

I am lucky enough to get a place at the Shibori workshop with Yoshiko Wada, organised by Leanne from Kimono House. There are 12 of us and today, we learnt to do fold & clamp and some of the stitching techniques.

Yoshiko and Leanne had prepared a synthetic indigo dye bath for this workshop and we all had a chance to dip our samples into that today.

What was so exciting for me was to learn how to do these tying and stitching properly and effectively.

miura (loop binding) - tied

miura - untied

Note: the top 2 rows are demonstrated by Yoshiko and the bottom 2 rows are mine. You can see how even hers are, all in a straight line where as mine are all different sizes and a bit random.

spiderweb - tied

spiderweb - untied

I would like to get a sample for ori-nui (fold & stitch) done tonight. Tomorrow, we will move on to do arashi-patterned cloth (pole-wrapped).