For my first couple of years of dyeing yarn using foraged local plant materials, a good true orange was the color I craved and never achieved. It took me a while to realize that the fulfillment of my desires was in the trash and the pantry. I have written about the magic transformation I get … More A Bunch of Oranges
I’m not the first to have noticed that the limitations of my skills and equipment stimulate designs that get around those limitations or turn them into design features. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Or is it “mother is the invention of necessity”? Or “invention is the necessity of mother”? Whatever, last spring … More A Panel Discussion
Q: When you’re retired, what’s the difference between everyday life and vacation? A: Packing. I’m being facetious, but that reflects the fact of my privileged little life, in which what I do every day is what I want to do every day no matter where I am. Every summer, preferably in July to escape Baltimore’s … More Continuity of Operations
Last fall, when the pokeberries were ripe, I experimented with extracting their color by soaking them in vinegar in hopes of getting a more durable dye than I had previously gotten by fermenting the berries in water. In October I collected bags and bags of this invasive species and stuffed them into 2-quart plastic tomato … More Moldy Oldies
In the last month, I have dyed a wide range of yellows, oranges, and pinks, using plants that grow wild in the park at the end of my short little street. This summer I learned about using an afterbath of baking soda dissolved in tap water at a pH of 8 to 9, and it … More Pickled Pink, Pots of Gold
July in Baltimore has my least favorite weather of the year because it’s hot and humid and you can’t wear sweaters. I dread July so much that I especially appreciate those moments when the weather isn’t so awful, when there’s a refreshing breeze, when the frogs at the frog pond are sitting out in view … More A Spoonful of Magic Powder
In my most recent post, I reported on the inspiration and thought process behind the construction of my Johanna’s Jacket: five knitters used a work by another knitter as a jumping-off point for their own very different jackets, and the others’ work informed the knitting each knitter did. Now I’m going to get very specific … More Johanna’s Jacket, The Inside Story
I have previously described my The Interior of My Brain Ravelry group as my brain trust. No matter what the question is, someone has an answer or a creative solution. We also inspire each other with projects that spark questions in other members’ minds that we want to work out in our own way while … More Johanna’s Jacket: The Knitalong
This month’s post is a show-and-tell minus the tell, because I’m up to my ears in not-ready-for-primetime projects. I try to manage my crafted production so that I have something finished and ready to blog about in detail every month, but this month threatens to go by without a post. Not because I have been … More Progress Report
A line sticking straight up. A line sticking straight out. Nothing simpler while simultaneously nothing more variable, and maybe that’s why it’s such endlessly fertile ground for the ideas that I turn into stuff. Right angles were the basis of the hand knitting I did all during the summer, and they’re following me into the … More All the Right Angles
The Interior of My Brain: A Knitting and Fiber Arts Blog 