Bastet crochet cowl

Here's my new crochet design

This multicolored cowl is crocheted with a houndstooth stitch and picot edging

It’s easy to make and it can be worn in several different ways;

Short or double loop, close around your neck or longer like an infinity scarf.

But you can also wear it wrapped around your head as a headband.

Bastet is the famous Cat Goddess of the ancient Egyptians

As the name implies the Bastet Cowl is a warm enveloping collar 

like that worn by the Egyptian feline goddess after whom it is named.

It uses 165g organic 4-ply Poll Dorset yarn from Renaissance Dyeing

in five different shades naturally dyed with weld, madder, cochineal, indigo, acorn cups and log-wood.

Crochet hooks: 3,5 mm (US:E) and 3,25 mm or 3 mm (US:D)

Level of expertise: Easy

both written and charted stitch pattern instructions

Available as a pattern: here

and also available as a kit from:  Renaissance Dyeing

The kit includes:

- A 5 page crochet pattern IN ENGLISH with with both written and charted stitch pattern instructions, e-mailed to you in pdf form.

- 5 hanks of exclusively dyed organic Poll Dorset yarn.

...

L'explication de ce modèle est égallement disponible en français

Vous aurez besoin de : 33 grammes de chacune des 5 couleurs suivantes: 

Light Beech Green - Dark Cream - Purple - Mid Blue Grey - Orange 

(vert clair - crême - pourpre - gris-bleu - orange) .

L’explication comprends des instructions écrites et un schéma

Ce grand col multicolore est crocheté avec un point pied de poule et une bordure en picots. 

Il est facile à crocheter et peut être porté de différentes manières; court et tourné double, porté près du cou ou comme une écharpe infinie. Mais vous pouvez aussi le porter enroulé autour de la tête comme un bandeau.

Bastet - version française - disponible ici

as Fall is approaching fast...

it's time to work on warm and cozy knit and crochet designs.

As always, I prefer to work with 100 procent wool and hand dyed yarns. The Poll Dorset yarn of Renaissance Dyeing is a wonderful yarn to knit or crochet with. And the colours are amazingly bright and alive. Thanks to the skills of the very talented Andie Luijk
Here, I've choose five new colours to design a warm crochet cowl. The garment and the pattern will be finished by the end of next week. There will also be a kit available with yarn and pattern at the Renaissance Dyeing website.

LOVE these colours

In the meantime, I'm still dyeing some yarn, but I should now bring the fermenting dye-vats inside the house as the nights are getting really cold.

I found this interesting pdf on the Net about fermentend dyes, it's written in German and English:

Fermenting the Ancient Finnish Dyes

After rinsing the dyed skeins in the river next to the house, they are now drying for the last time.

left - Poll Dorset dyed with St John's Wort = salmon pink

right - Some stash yarn dyed with Alder = dark honey

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shades of dyer's chamomille

Dyer's chamomille or golden marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) is a perennial plant with aromatic bright green-bluish foliage and yellow daisy-like flowers.

It has no culinary and only limited medicinal uses. However, the flowers produce excellent yellow and gold-orange.
It has been used as a dye for a very long time, it provides the buff in Turkish carpets but in Europe dyers preferred weld instead as yellow dye.
The leaves give a light green dye.

one acidic and one basic fermented dye in glass containers

with dyer's chamomille

Using the fermentation method with dyer's chamomille

gave some light yellow on kidsilk mohair and buff yellow on lace merino

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Gitane

Meet these two wild "Gitanes"...

Introducing... My new knit design Gitane, 
a Colourful cardigan named like thus for its bohemian twist.

This cropped cardigan is knitted in a fine lace Merino and is available in two different colour versions,
the Mid Pink version and the Sea Green version.

Gitane is the French word for gypsy woman

Have a look:

with a big, big thank you to my wonderful models, Ingrid Anna and Valeria

It was great to work with you both, 

gracias - dankjewel

:)

The patterns are available here:

Gitane, the Mid Pink version

Gitane, the Sea Green version

The kits with yarn and pattern are available here

Gitane, the kits by Renaissance Dyeing

In the pictures,

Sea Green Gitane is knitted with 3,25 mm needles: size large or with a oversised look with only three buttons in front

Mid Pink Gitane is knitted with 2,75 mm needles, size small, with 10 buttons in front

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new knit design

My new knit design, Gitane, is going to be released very soon
It's a colourful cardigan with a bohemian twist, knitted in a fine lace Merino, in two different colour versions.

One version is based on the colour Sea green.
So I decided to have some photos taken at the seaside

Have a sneak peek...
the sea green version, just me and the sea as models  :)

More pictures of both colour versions will be posted next week 

The knitting patterns and the kits with pattern and yarn in two colour combinations

will be available august 15th 

...

shades of cosmos

Instead of fresh plants, you can also try to use dried ones and dye the yarn using the same method I'm describing on this blog: Fermented herbal dyes

Here I used dried Sulfur Cosmos flowers (Cosmos sulphureus) harvested last year

The yarn is Orenburg kidsilk mohair lace

shades of St John's Wort

St John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a yellow-flowering perennial herb indigenous to Europe, it's a well known herbal medicine used to treat depression and anxiety. Many people prefer this natural remedy instead of antidepressants. It is also known to relieve muscle problems and sunburn.

It is called St. John's wort because it blooms approximately on St. John's Day (June 24). But of course it was well known before the "saints" appeared in our regions. Other names are: Tipton's weed, chase-devil or Klamath weed.

The name Hypericum is from the Latin word hyper meaning "above" and icon meaning "image or symbol", perforatum refers to the black punctured little holes on the underside of the leaves.

When you crush a flower bud between your fingers, you will release a burgundy red juice, the evidence of the presence of the hypericin flavonoid.

Thus St John's Wort is a symbol from above and it has potent "blood" in his veins which can chase away bad vibes  :)

Did you know that you can also make a wonderful herbal dye out of it?

Perfect for dyeing wool and silk !

According to natural dyes experts you can obtain different shades with it (mostly yellow) but I did get a wonderful pink "old rose" as you can see here.

lace merino, kidsilk mohair, cobweb silk

The method I'm using here, to obtain the dyes I like for some of my yarns, is somewhat different than what people are used to. It's based on the fermentation of the plant materials and on the adding of some agent, like for example lemon juice or lime.

It's a very, very old technique, you don't need to work with any alum or metals, you don't boil anything and yes, the colours on the dyed textiles are permanent, they will not fade or wash out. Basically it is more or less the same technique as when working with woad or indigo to obtain blues, which also need a fermentation vat ! It is a wonderful way to dye your own yarn because it's not suited for large quantities of yarn and you don't need big amounts of plant material. Because the colours you get are always somewhat different, depending on the quality of your "harvest", the time of the year, the amount of sunrays and last but not least, the wonderful work of the little fermenting creatures who will turn your dye in something bright or dull, depending on their changing moods :)

It is magic and alchemistic and I love it because the colours are strangely "alive"  :)

You can use a lot of the wild and cultivated herbs and plants in whatever region you live in. It's really fun to do and in the process you can learn about plants and their little secrets.

one acidic and one basic mixture in glass containers

with the same fermented plant: St John's Wort

The pictures I posted here are from an experiment I did two summers ago, but at this moment I've started one new fermenting vat with St Johns wort as I did found a lot of them in my neighbourhood.

With the strange weather we have here lately, they are still blooming...