Echoes of a Dream

How to tie dye

You will need:

Plain white T-shirts (I usually get mine from H&M - nice and cheap)

Dylon cold water and hand dyes (I used Ultraviolet and Bermuda Blue of the first type and Fuschia Pink and Royal Blue of the latter)

Rubber bands, pegs, string, four buckets, salt, marbles or stones and a few pairs of Marigolds (washing up gloves)

I usually just use 4 or 5 different techniques; spirals, concertina folds, sunbursts and tieing up marbles. Spirals are my favourites though. I'll try and explain in words and pics how to do all of them!Firstly, wash the T-shirts. Work on them whilst they are still damp.

Spirals are made by pinching a point in the middle of the garment and twisting this point around and around. I have taken five photographs of this procedure - they are here, here, here and here.

Once you have made the whole T-shirt into a round secure it with rubber bands like thus;

 

This one is now ready to dip.

Sunbursts are created by tieing up a huge sort of nose like pinnochio - photo here.

Concertina folds are made by folding the T-shirt lengthways into concertina folds. You can then either secure with rubber bands at intervals or pegs like this.

Spots are made by tieing marbles or stones into the garment and securing with rubber bands like this.

Make up the dye according to the instructions on the packet and dip in your garments like so, and so and so. Agitate and leave for an hour. After that take out the T-shirts, undo them, gasp at how beautiful they are and rinse in cold water until no more dye comes out of them. I usually wash them on a short wash in the washing machine then (seperate colours or they'll bleed) to make sure that all the extra dye comes out. Put on the line to dry and collapse into your seat and watch them drying in the breeze.

This is how the different folds will look:

Spiral

Concertina fold secured with rubber bands at intervals (the white lines).

Sunburst.

Tied with marbles.

This one was an experiment. I rolled the T-shirt from the top down - over a piece of string so it was like a sausage. Join the two ends of thread together and pull tight like this. Knot securely. This ruches the fabric. I like the result but should have left it in the dye pot for longer for a better colour contrast.

One other thing to try is a two colour spiral. Dip the first spiral in your base colour and then take out after 15 mins or so. Rinse in cold water and then open up the T-shirt. Re-twist a spiral over the first one, secure with rubber bands and dip into another colour for an hour. Result will be:

This is great activity to do with the children, it's fairly cheap and lots of fun. Just make sure that they are wearing old clothes and that you put your dye pots in the garden. Finally, do contact me if it doesn't make sense or if you want to show me how yours turned out.

Dye-ing to show you............

Sorry about the terrible pun - maybe I inhaled too many toxic dye fumes. As some of you may know I am organising our school's summer fair again this year. It's a small school, the teaching based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and my three children all go there. I have a great team of people who are planning everything with me and I'm going to have a little table to sell some of my stuff. The children don't wear a uniform but there are rules like no strappy tops, no midriffs showing, no logos and the like. So each year I do a batch of tie-dye T-shirts - some for my boys (Amber doesn't wear them anymore) and some to sell.

So with four days to go I decided it was today or never. A friend had Raj after Kindy so I that I had a good six hours. Fortunately or not, Amber was off school with stomach cramps and I told her the best remedy was to keep busy!  After washing the T-shirts we had a tie-ing blitz and then it was onto making up the dyes and dyeing. I love the bit when the T-shirts first come out of the colour and you open them up and smile with pleasure or wrinkle your nose with disappointment. There was more of the former but also some of the latter. The pinks and blues worked beautifully, the light blue was too wishy-washy for my liking and the purple was nice but a bit grey in some places.

I'm going to post up a how-to-do just as soon as the T-shirts dry and I can photograph some of the patterns. I tend to go for spirals, concertina folds, sunbursts and rings made with marbles. It's a great activity to do with children and fairly inexpensive - plain white T-shirts don't cost much and I just use Dylon dyes.

A damn good buy.............

It's not often that I shell out for something and then not regret it. I'll buy a craft magazine or book on impulse and then if I can't make anything out of it I feel really guilty for wasting my money. It sits on my shelves sending out a signal so that I am constantly aware that it's there and I haven't used it. I bought four Japanese craft books a while ago, flicked through them, got inspired and then realised some weeks later that I wasn't inspired enough to make anything from them. Thank goodness for e-bay because I just put them on there and they went like hotcakes. I think it's got something to do with the cost of the said items. I'm fine if I've just spent a couple of pounds on something (on e-bay or in a charity shop) but it's the £15 or £20 on new books that bothers me. I feel that I have to justify the expense by making lots of things. So glancing up at my shelves I notice that most of the new books I own are well used and others are charity shop finds. All this leads me to share a book that really was a good buy.

I knew that it had the scotty dog pattern in it and I decided that it was worth the cost just to get this pattern. I didn't know that I'd make a lot of things out of it. Here are some images from the book:

and these are some of the things I have made:

You can definately say that I got value for money with this book.

I notice that I have three impulse buys on my shelf at the moment that I would like to get rid of. They are Pretty Party Cakes, Tiny Patchworks (a beautiful Japanese craft book) and Sadi Thread Embroidery. You can see pics of the covers if you click on the names. Also the tiny patchworks book is featured on this website if you want to see more pics of it. All are brand new and unused. I'd sell the cake book for £5, the Sadi Thread book for £5 too and the Japanese book for £11 if anyone is interested. Or I could do a swap for materials like buttons, beads (that would make eyes for softies), 100% wool felt, knitting wool or toy patterns. E-mail me if you are interested. Must dash I'm teaching in half an hour.

Father's day

Poor Tom he was supposed to get a lie-in this morning and come down to a scrummy breakfast but instead he woke early and couldn't get back to sleep so he went downstairs leaving me to have the lie-in. Still he did get some nice pressies from the children and yummy Indian mangoes for breakfast. He went off to play cricket this afternoon taking the boys with him and I was supposed to go to the supermarket as the cupboards and fridge were a bit bare. But you know I couldn't be bothered. I really couldn't. I just needed a quiet, restful day. Instead I sat in my room and did some sewing while Amber lay in the hammock reading. I sewed this little kitty from a pattern in a Japanese craft book:

I'm really pleased with how the face turned out and I'm going to finally dye some blankets this week and make a few more. I did manage to get out of the house to go and bring the boys home for supper. Poor things was it worth it - all we had was beans on toast! I justified it by telling them and myself that they had a had a nice cricket tea at 5 o'clock.  I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts telling me they're peckish - better get them off to bed before they realise.

I'll leave you with a pic of Amber's amigurumi that she finished last night:

Isn't it sweet? It's made from alpaca and so soft.

A tribute to an amazing woman

Today, in this post I would like to pay tribute to my sister who flew back to New Zealand yesterday. Tom and I drove her to the airport and I said I wouldn't cry because I would be glad to get my house back to normal and because with Skype these days we would be speaking to each other in a few days time. But I did. I blubbed when I hugged her goodbye and then I blubbed all the time in Accessorize as I tried on a sunhat and I blubbed all the way to the car too. Infact I'm on the verge of tears now.

My sister is an amazing woman. When she heard that I couldn't cope on my own with my Mum she picked up the phone and booked herself a flight to London. It was midnight here when she confirmed that she was coming and by the time I got up in the morning she was at the airport waiting for her flight. She made a 24 hour plane journey with two of her children - a 13 year old and a 2 1/2 year old. Then once she was in London she got herself on a coach to get to my house. She'd been on the go for 32 hours when she arrived. We didn't tell Mum that she was coming and it was a very emotional scene when my sister walked through the door. The first thing she did was give Mum an outdoor shower and then she gave her some Reiki and then she took care of herself.

Throughout her 12 days her priority was to get Mum well enough so that she could return home. My Mum was suffering from the after effects of surgery, she was constipated, feeling sick, she was having panic attacks and not sleeping. By the time we took Mum home on the Thursday she was a different woman - all thanks to my sister.  I'm sorry to say that I wasn't at my best. I found it really hard having my Mum about all the time. Also the constant cooking, eating, shopping, Rohan's birthday in the middle of it all, the surprising tension between Amber and her cousin Pippa, organising the summer fair too - it was all too much for me. I also seemed to be a channel for my other brothers and sisters feelings too - some were sympathetic, some weren't.  We all had different ways of coping with my Mum's heart attack and being brought up by a woman who was always depressed and a distant father. Heavy Stuff.

So, they've all gone now. I have my house back to myself but I feel empty. I feel sad because my sister and I didn't get to do anything nice together, because I snapped at her a number of times, because I feel that I wasted our time together when I probably won't see her again for 5 years.  Tom says that I'm looking at it all wrong. She came to nurse our Mum and she achieved it.  There wasn't any time in the day what with looking after Mum and suffering jetlag to do anything else.

A friend said that it was different for my sister because she lived abroad and just had to be here for 2 weeks. But I don't think so because I know that I would never have flown 13000 miles and put myself through all that. I would have let the rest of the family who lived near Mum look after her. My sister is an amazing woman because she did that and because she has risen above her circumstances. She is the youngest of the three sisters (I'm the oldest) and fifth child. She has always lived in our shadows because we did well academically (and you know how Indian's prize that).  But she has proved herself she really has in all our eyes.

So I just want to say - Baksh I miss you and I love you and I'm sorry.

Topsy Turvy

I had great plans for last week. Once the children were back at school I was going to make some things to sell at the school Summer fair. Instead I ended up with my sick Mother and my sister and her two children from New Zealand. You can imagine how topsy turvey the house has been. My sister has been looking after my Mum mainly and she is doing a brilliant job. I seem to be doing endless shopping, cooking, washing up and clothes washing. Actually Amber and her cousin Pippa have been really helpful too.On top of all this was Rohan's birthday party. He had four friends over for a 'camping party'. Tom spent most of a very hot Saturday afternoon lugging everything over to our neighbours field. It was one party where I kept in the background and left everything to the boys and they had a great evening despite not sleeping much.

Even though I haven't done ANY sewing this week I have had my knitting to pick up every now and then. It was a bit of a labour of love this french market bag. Knitting 200 stitches around and round and on and on but I finished it on Friday and chucked it in the washing machine with some jeans. Here's how it turned out.

I'm not totally happy with the outcome. The colour is lovely, the sides have felted beautifully but the bottom hasn't. Also the handles are too short (even though I knitted them according to the pattern). I'm not sure whether to put it back in the washing machine to felt the bottom or to do it by hand on my washboard that I keep for wet felting. I'm worried that the sides and handles will shrink more in the machine. Might e-mail Polly whose pattern it is and ask her advice. I think I'm going to give it to my sister as she likes it (more than I do) - it'll be a momento of her trip.

Just to get some normality and rythmn back to our lives I decided to make some elderflower cordial. I spotted some trees in the fields over the weekend which are bigger than the ones in our garden. It's amazing how this tree that seems to shoot up everywhere like a weed can give us these amazing, fragrant full flowers that you can do so much with. Tom is planning to make some wine and I might just manage some fritters before the blossoms die. Here is my foolproof and perfect recipe:

                        Elderflower Cordial

• 20 heads of elderflowers
• 3 pints of boiled, cooled water
• 3 1/2 lbs sugar
• 2 oz tartaric or citric acid
• 2 sliced lemons

Put the water in a preserving pan and stir in the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and stir periodically for 24 hours.

Strain through a muslin or fine sieve into steralised bottles. I use old wine bottles that I heat up in the Aga first (and then cool). That's it. Dilute to taste. The bottles can be kept for up a year (we've just finished last years batch). This amount makes three bottles.

Knitting... but it's not winter?

I don't usually knit in the spring and summer. It's an activity that I keep for sitting by the fire in the autumn and winter months. The rest of the year I find that I don't tend to sit in our sitting room because it's not as cosy without the fire, therefore no knitting. But the weather is all over the place and with my Mum being ill and my going up to see her quite often I've started a couple of knitting projects to keep my hands busy. I also feel very guilty about the amount of wool I have in my stash. I bought quite a few skeins at Easter from Coldharbour Mill and then the Kid Classic from John Lewis that I used for the brown hottie. As if that wasn't enough I bought some more Kid Classic off e-bay for a bargain (to be made into more hotties). So I thought I really ought to start using it up winter or not.

This is the french market bag from knitty that I've wanted to knit for ages. I'm not mad about the colour combination I've used but that's all I had. Boy was it tricky to start off. I challenged myself to doing it the hard way so I do feel proud of myself that I managed to start off with two stitiches on each of the four needles. I didn't twist them at all (but I did curse a lot). We're going up to my Mum's this morning so hopefully I'll be able to knit in the car and this evening (Tom's driving by the way).

Amber, inspired by my hottie has started one of her own. She's using this pattern but as we didn't have short enough circular needles she's doing a front and a back seperately. I'm a bit concerned about her tension and therefore the size of the piece but it'll have to stretch and maybe we can make the back piece a bit wider!?

My time with my sister and her children went far too quickly. We have all had such a wonderful time. My sister went up to my Mum's yesterday morning and I had all six children. Then a friend of Rohan's popped over and I had seven but I swear seven is easier than three. They took themselves off for a picnic breakfast down to the stream in the morning and in the afternoon I took them to the park and playing field. I sat and knitted for two hours (any opportunity I can find) and they played football. Then they played on the swings and things and we came home 3 hours later. They had such fun. Then after supper all six went up the road to use a neighbour's trampoline while I - no I didn't knit - I tidied the house. Ofcoourse, they were nice and tired at bedtime but hungry again. So after a round of toast each they collapsed into bed (four in one room and the oldest two in their respective rooms). I also collapsed into a chair read 'A Room With A View'.

This was supposed to be a quickie before we shoot off. My Mum maybe coming out tomorrow and I am going to try and bring her back with me cos my Dad can't look after her (he's 87). Thanks for all your kind wishes for her recovery. Now I have to pack a little and find six children and get them into the car.