Dangnammit it's cold!

And what a day to run out of oil. The high today has been -4 deg celsius and we have no heat and no hot water. You would not BELIEVE the hassle it has been getting an account so we can get oil and even though they gave us an emergency top up the other day, we totally ran out today: the coldest day so far!

So I sat this morning with an electric heater on my feet and my big wrap around poncho and knitted like mad. I have knitted so many hats over the last few months, but I must have given them all away and I wanted one just for me. I started it last night and wanted to finish it before I had to walk up to school for parent/teacher interviews today.

So here is my little pink number which reminds me of a cherry ripe or something (Aussie chocolate bar). The bright pink is from my disasterous attempt at dyeing with Indigo, the burgundy is the pink plied with a dark red fleece I had, the yellow dots (hard to see) are from my onion skin dyed wool and the blue was the already spun wool I bought in Vermont. So this is my winter ensemble...If I had have thought about it I really should have made them match! But never mind. The lopi mittens have turned out to be just as warm as I was hoping, the scarf is delicious but if I made it again I would have cast on another 8 stitches to make it wider, and the hat I love but after walking up to school in -6 deg C today I'm thinking of knitting an inner layer for extra warmth.
And these are the results of my dying efforts yesterday. The pink/salmon colour is madder and the yellow is from the lichens I collected in Vermont over Thanksgiving. The funny purpley colour on the end was alkanet bark which was blue when it splashed up onto the stove top but more purple red when it went on the wool.

You can see the difference in colours between the alpaca fleece (the thinnner curlier bits ) and the sheep fleece. The various otherr shades are overdyes and mixes. The darker reds were ones I put into the indigo when I was trying to add alkali to stop it turning pink; they came out a yucky muddy colour, but when I overdyed them with the madder they came out really nice. When I get another free day I'll have another go with the other dye stuffs I bought. I actually find it very time consuming and really messy (so I have to spend ages cleaning up afterwards). But these colours actually work really well together and I'm thinking of just spinning them all up together and I'm quite taken with this hooded poncho and I'm thinking that I might have a go at it. I'd like to make it longer though, and I have no idea how much woold I'd need. Sounds like ALOT of dyeing and spinning to be done!


And I am very taken with this gorgeous cardi on the cover of the Anthropologie catalogue. Simply gorgeous. I love all their knitted stuff they have in their catalogues, although they're not really the kind of thing that I can wear. I'm wondering if I could encorporate some of these elements into something I could knit (that one might have to be made from bought wool). I need to find a pattern for a big basic cardigan.

And just a last little thing...I'm very excited because I have a scanner again! Our last one died on our last move back to Aus and was never replaced until today. Oscar and Remi have so much homework here that I had to set up the computer upstairs for them. So we have internet access up there too (a luxury! but I have to work out where the cord running down the stairs is going to go...hmmm) and also a cheap little printer/scanner copier. YAY! So that's how I managed to get these last two images on.