Tag Archives: eucalyptus

May 26, 2014 · 12:03 pm

Whatever became of the dress?

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Well, my friends, true confession time.  I sounded out a lot of people about the second skin frock, on and off line.  Their, and your, ideas were full of genius.  If I’d had ten of that frock I could have made ten different lovely garments from it.  But I didn’t!  I still could not overcome the fundamental issue—believing I’d wear it no matter how lovely it was.

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I turned it into a series of what India Flint calls ‘infinity scarves’, though a  little less fancy than the model we created in Melbourne.  Three of them.  Two have already gone to happy homes, in fact I saw one in use yesterday.  It had a leaf print from a white cedar (Melia azaderach var australasica) leaf, pale green, which my friend had particularly appreciated.

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One has been hand-pieced to manage the top part of the garment, and naturally it’s my favourite.  I’m surprised to find that the clean, shiny white of the silk and cotton thread stitches against the dyed fabric is pleasing to the eye.

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I’m now left with only a small pile of little scraps.  Each time I come past them, I think ‘pincushion’.  So there may still be another object to emerge from what was once a frock…

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May 20, 2014 · 8:54 am

More joy of stranded colourwork knitting

There have been two more pairs of Tingvoll slippers. Too much fun!  Unfortunately, without going into boring detail, I have also been having a great deal of trouble with photographs.  My phone  suffered a major episode while I was in Melbourne and is now on its second trip to repair.  The first visit fixed one problem but rendered the camera absolutely unable to focus.  This has meant discovering not a single photo is in focus when it it too late to take another set… having unfamiliar equipment, no equipment, or using the retired cameras and remembering why they were pensioned off!  So, my apologies for photo quality, and my hopes that my capacity to take pictures for the blog at will, and upload them with similar abandon, and access WordPress on my phone, will return soon.

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If you have been following along for a long while you might remember my dyeing project using eucalypts over grey Corriedale.  I created two sets of yarn–one where I maintained the colour changes and one where I plied different coloured singles together.  These slippers use the three ply colour-changes-maintained yarn.  Until now, I had struggled to figure out what to make with something so lovely but so chunky.

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This first pair were made with 5.5 mm needles, my handspun eucalyptus dyed Corriedale wool and Bendigo Woolen Mills 12 ply, leftover from making slippers for a goth friend.

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They have gone to a different friend who is a writer.  She said she might save them to be special writing slippers.  What an exceedingly fine compliment.

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This second pair, knit on 5 mm needles, have gone to another dear one who spends her work life assisting people to recover from trauma.

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I hope they will gladden her heart!

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Having done it three times I began to find the chart so much easier to follow… my sense of following a chart as difficult began to ebb away.  My confidence that I can do colour knitting began to grow stronger.  I began to have that sense of happy familiarity you get with a song you have listened to a lot.  I now have my first set of metal DPNs and I like them very much–I tend to use circulars for most knitting in the round–and I mostly do knit in the round.  But in this case the pattern divides into four sections in a way that I decided very much lent itself to DPNs.  Lovely!  I can only recommend this pattern.

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May 18, 2014 · 6:47 pm

Eucalyptus Polyanthemos

I’ve been curious about E Polyanthemos for ages.  I saw one on a tour of the Currency Creek Eucalyptus arboretum years back and I had already heard it was a good dye plant.  I am guessing it is mentioned in Eco-Colour.  It has been on my mental list for quite some time.  So when I found one that had been identified by a more knowledgeable person recently, I paid a lot of attention.

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I think the two trees I have been holding in mind as potential examples of E Polyanthmos might actually be E Polyanthemos on the basis of this sighting.

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It’s a lovely tree–those wide grey green leaves are truly lovely.  Evidently, they are also delicious, because this one was covered in leaves that had been nibbled by some kind of insect.

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This tiny sample went into my dyepot…

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And created very interesting prints. It intrigues me that one plant can create such different colours in such close proximity.  I have had wonderful colour from the buds of the other two trees I visit from time to time, and the tree is truly spectacular when in blossom, because the many-anthers its botanical name promises are needless to say held on many flowers which attract many birds.  Ah, the glory of eucalypts!

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May 12, 2014 · 10:41 am

These are a few of my favourite trees

The ‘Beloved tree’ banners are out in the neighbourhood.  A bunch of us put up the first couple, and I pedalled around attaching the rest on Mother’s Day.  This one is on a massive ironbark.

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It stands beside the tram bridge in Goodwood.

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This one is dwarfed by a huge E Camaldulensis in a park beside Brownhill Creek.

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This trunk has survived a lot of depredations, whether human, animal or insect.

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I’ve tried to capture a sense of its canopy…

 

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But it is hard to show all there is to see when you stand beneath its curved limbs and beside that massive trunk.  Needless to say it isn’t all about what you can see, in any case.

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This is the place where lorikeets sometimes nest.  I’ve seen them wiggling their way in through the hole they have nibbled out of the pace where a branch used to be, as well as flying out at speed like small, feathered, green comets.

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This next tree is an E Sideroxylon. It stands outside the Le Cornu warehouse on Leader St.

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I used to be able to reach its lowest leaves, but the chainsaws took off the lower limbs some time back.  It is still magnificent.

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The light wasn’t great for it, but since there is at least one appreciator of industrial buildings reading, here is a shot of the background. I oriented my banner toward pedestrians.

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Next, one of the largest E Cinereas in the neighbourhood, standing outside what seems to be a disused office in Leader St.  Perhaps people work there but are not interested in the garden!

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It has suffered the chainsaw too, losing a truly huge bough.
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Still glorious.

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Still vast.

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Finally, my old friend on the corner of Laught and East Sts.  I thought this was an E Scoparia at first, but while the leaves give amazing colour, the bark produces a different result than other E Scoparias I’ve dyed with.  Name, uncertain. Beauty, obvious.

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This time I was spared conversation with the tree hater who lives opposite this tree and can only see it as a source of litter.  I was on the bike, so picked up a bagful of fallen dried leaves.  When I have more carrying capacity I take fallen twigs and whatever bark or wood is lying beneath it in hopes of mollifying the tree hater. 

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Fabulous.  I must say that visiting all these beloved trees and wrapping my arms around each one… I did feel like a tree hugger.  And proud!

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May 8, 2014 · 9:36 am

From old garments to new bag

I have been making a bag from two pairs of old pants.  One, a pair of second hand jeans, and the other, a pair of linen pants styled for the 1980s that I found in an op shop.  Before I leaf-printed them, they were pale green.  At first I didn’t like the effect, but it has grown on me.

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As much as the print, I think what made me want to turn them into a bag was the back pockets.  They are glorious pieces of construction. I love a good pocket.  The 3/4 jeans feature unusual pockets for jeans, too.  I don’t think I ever owned jeans with a welt pocket before.

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I cut feature sections for the outside of the bag which included the button-down pockets.  The jeans pockets went on the inside panels.  Then I pieced the rest of the garments together to create the straps and lining.

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It has been a feature of my sewing career that as I’ve moved away from sewing with fabrics gleaned from all kinds of places free or as cheaply as possible out of sheer necessity–into sewing for pleasure and having the capacity to afford to buy lovely fabric…. I continue to love sewing recycled fabrics.  Shirts made from linen tablecloths and flourbags.  Quilts from recycled garments.  Bags from all manner of fabrics.  I especially love retaining beautiful seaming and details like pockets into a new application.

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Every time I make one of these my beloved makes the case for me/us keeping it.  It’s funny, but flattering!  I haven’t decided yet if this one stays or goes to a new home.

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March 24, 2014 · 5:11 pm

Never look a gift alpaca in the mouth

I have been in Melbourne at a workshop with India Flint.  It was a great three days and I can’t wait to write about it…. but my phone steadfastly refused to cooperate woth WordPress–or perhaps it was the other way round–and it turned out sharing a computer wasn’t really an option.  So, writing about that will have to wait a minute or two!

In the meantime… maybe the proverbial instruction that you never look a gift horse in the mouth (implying you are checking whether it is an old horse and not a fresh, strong young one) only holds true for horses.  I’ve had gifts of alpaca that were full of moths, smelled of mould or were terribly short and full of guard hairs.  People making such gifts are well intentioned but have no idea what it takes to transform that fibre into yarn or how many hours I’ll spend touching and smelling it!

However, the two I have started in on recently are lovely.  They’re from friends who live in the hills–the people whose community was the former home of Malcolm the Corriedale.  There’s a white fleece that I am dyeing with eucalypts (so far).

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I have found that I can take raw alpaca fleece and dye it without pre-washing.  I can wash the fleece in the same step as rinsing out dyebath–saving water and getting the benefit of eucalyptus cleansing.  The dyebath no doubt has earth in it already if it contains leaves from a gutter or bark from under a tree.

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Then there is a wonderfully black fleece.  Two kilogrammes of it.  By the way, I believe I did look into the mouth of this particular alpaca, and its teeth were mighty long!  We had enough rain weeks back that we have run the whole house on rainwater ever since.  The weather was still hot and dry most of the time until recently.  So it seemed seasonally appropriate to wash fleece.  Then I had the key thought: ‘I feel as though I could just wash half that fleece right now.  And maybe the rest tomorrow.’ If I ever have a thought like that about housework, I make it a habit to act on the impulse immediately, before it can get away!  Fleece washing is not really fun, but it makes other forms of fun possible, and it is necessary.  Alpaca is filthy because the animals roll and dust bathe, but it is not greasy, which makes washing it far simpler than washing sheep fleece.

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So now: let the spinning begin…

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March 19, 2014 · 4:19 pm

Drive-by dyeing and mending

On my bike ride home from work (about a 40 minute ride), I pass just one Eucalyptus Cinerea. Well, there are two, but one is inside someone’s front garden.  A person has to have some boundaries!  The street tree had dropped a small branch.

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I decided I’d better collect it.  Usually I carry a calico bag in my bike pannier for such contingencies, but this was what I found when I scrabbled about in the bottom of my pannier on the day, so in went all the stray leaves I could find.

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This tree has had to contend with a lot.  It has had a  very strange pruning job designed to protect the electrical wires that now pass through its branches.  The pruning took out a lot of the canopy, but the tree is still standing.  For this, I am grateful.

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Recent events have caused me to reflect on the way I think about trees on my regular routes… like old acquaintances.  I think about them as I pass, the way I think of people when I pass near their homes without visiting.  I notice what happens to them.  I check them over when I have the chance.  I remember how they were when they were younger, or before that accident befell them.  It’s not entirely unlike the way I notice people I don’t know well, but see out and about in the neighbourhood regularly.

Further along, I saw that my “thanks for cycling” bunting had been ripped and some of it was lying on the ground.  Soon it was in my other pannier headed for the mending pile.

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A few days later, the E Cinerea made it into the dye pot and produced its usual dependable flamelike orange.  I also collected some ironbark leaves that had fallen in the parklands near where we had exercise class.  Once the E Cinerea was all but exhausted I reused that dyebath with the ironbark leaves, thinking I would save water and energy, but clearly this was not E Sideroxylon–it produced that sad, damp little pile of fawn alpaca on the right.

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I have come to regard this as a sign: The orange leaves in the picture below are the E Cinerea leaves, which have gone from silver-grey-green to orange in the dyebath.  The ironbark leaves, on the other hand, have remained a robustly green shade even after cooking.

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And, I’ve mended the bunting ready to hang it again on a suitable occasion…

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March 7, 2014 · 2:36 pm

Eucalyptus Stricklandii

Eucalyptus Stricklandii is in bloom at the moment.

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There are a row of these trees growing along a main road near a friend’s place in the Northern suburbs, and I have admired them each time I’ve visited.  This time I stopped and sampled as well.  I wasn’t the only one. The tree was full of bees, but bees don’t understand about pausing graciously when someone offers to take your picture and make you famous (ahem!) on the web.

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There were also fully mature fruit:

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And fruit that were nearing maturity:

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Buds as well, since this is a eucalypt…

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And rather spectacular bark.

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Here’s the tree as a whole…

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And someone’s tenderly crafted home, fallen to the ground, neatly combining flyscreen wire with vegetation and paper that has been weathered until pliable.

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Cocoa and chocolate?  Chestnut and walnut?

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March 6, 2014 · 11:07 am

Another giant falls

I went to work yesterday unsuspecting and came home to find that a tree that stood a couple of storeys high and was one of only two really large trees still standing in our street, had been cut down without warning.  Here it is in December.  It stood on a block with a couple of E Citriodoras but I think this one was an E Maculata.

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And yesterday afternoon.

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I saw two men measuring its girth a couple of weeks ago as I was on my way to work.  I thought at the time that wasn’t a good sign (the definition of “significant tree” turns on the girth of a tree and has been changed in the relatively recent past), but I wasn’t in a position to stop and ask.  I wish now that I’d followed up.  This tree was scheduled for destruction as part of the infrastructure works that have turned our neighbourhood upside down.  But a way was found to complete them without cutting it down.  We thought it had been saved.  The infrastructure works are almost complete and the removal of this tree clearly wasn’t necessary for them.

All this on the same day as our Prime Minister declared too much of our native forest, what little of it remains, is “locked up” in national parks.  Pardon me while I put my head down on my desk.

UPDATE

I called the Council and the tree was cut down by the property owners on whose land it stood.  This is one tree in our neighbourhood not felled by the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.  Apparently the Council arborist will call back to explain.  I’ll spare you.

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February 26, 2014 · 9:52 am

Sock yarn overdyeing progress and an indigo update

Socks are one of my go-to projects.  I’m sure you’ve noticed.  They are portable and don’t require a pattern (for me, any more) and so they accompany me on public transport, to meetings and conferences, picnics and TV shows. Admittedly, I am not usually making fancy socks.

A couple of years back I acquired a lot of pre-loved patonyle (this is a wool/nylon blend and probably one of the best known Australian sock yarns).  Patonyle has been around a long time.  When I found this lot at a garage sale some of it was in 1 oz balls (Australia gave up imperial measures in 1970–to oversimplify).  I’ve been working my way through this haul for quite some time.  Today I pulled out all my ball bands.  Some have that souped up 19760s-70s styling (in lime green and purple–at top right), the pallid specimen in the top left corner is the current 100g format, the only ball I bought new–and those ochre coloured wrappers surely predate the 1970s.  And … there are quite a few of them!

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No wonder it has taken awhile to turn it all into socks.  I’ve used this wool with all manner of natural dyes, with greater and lesser success.  After the recent indigo saga began (update below), I looked at the remainder.  Some dyed with eucalypt, some with plum pine, which I now know won’t last long, a leftover black bean ball and some in the original grey.

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I decided to overdye the black bean, grey and plum pine yarn with eucalypt and made my way past one of my favourite E Scoparias, collecting fallen leaves and bark on my way back from the shops.  On went the pots. One contains the fruit of past harvests… mostly E Scoparia bark.

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The other contains what I collected the day I started writing this post: E Scoparia leaves and bark.  We have had sudden rain and wind after a prolonged hot spell, so there were leaves and a few pieces of bark from other trees in there and the smell of E Citriodora wafted up from this pot as soon as it came to a simmer, then died away.  The nearest lemon scented gum is only a few metres from where I was gathering.

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Meanwhile, I cast on with the yarn that is already in the classic eucalypt colours…

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And here are those blue, plum and grey yarns after their trip through my dye pots…

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On the indigo front, here are the yarns after soaking in soy and drying.  They are lying across a nodding violet in a hanging pot so you can get some sense of how stiff they are!

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I let them dry out really well and have since been soaking and rinsing.  The soy milk soak has meant that more indigo is washing out of the sock yarn, which is what I had hoped for.  I am reasoning that the soy has bonded with some of the loose particles of indigo, rendering them capable of being washed out (rather than coming off on my hands, since I couldn’t rinse any more of the indigo out previously).  I am going to keep soaking and rinsing until that stops… and then try knitting again!

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