New Website!

Hi everyone - I am excited to announce that I have launched the Passioned Flower website.

All things Passioned Flower including the shop and blog can now be found at www.passionedflower.com.

What does making mean to me?

A Playful Day is exploring The Maker's Year with this very simple approach - "My creativity might not look like your creativity and that's ok". Exploring seasonality and giving yourself permission to take time for all creative outlets. 

Part of developing this thought is a blog challenge, asking others to explore what making means to them.

I am passionate about having my time and space for creativity, so to think more deeply about what making actually means is an interesting step in this process.


So what does making mean to me?

Making is my outlet. My channeling of positive energy. A safe place to express myself and find ways to fuel my soul.

To me, it is using my hands and mind to create something new, or to change or improve something that already exists.

It can be as simple as weeding a path, and planting out a garden bed. Or as complex as cooking pickles and jams, preparing a handmade card or creating a new colour way of yarn.

The joy comes from the creation and achievement, the outcome and the beauty. The feeling of pride and that moment of stepping back and admiring the work.

Joy also comes from the process itself. A mindfulness. The way that the making of things switches thoughts in the brain from the external to the internal and provides the space to just be and do. To get caught up in the physical task as a form of expression and meditation.



My only frustrations come from the distractions that often get in the way. If only I could allocate more time, I would be able to achieve so much more. But, with full time work and commuting to the city along with the wide range of making that I want to plunge myself into, the energy levels and dedicated time are not always as high as I would like.

In the past year I have broadened my focus. I have gone from a knitter, paper-crafter, gardener, cook and experimental dyer and added selling my yarns on etsy, being more active on Social Media and establishing this blog.

I hope there is plenty more to come. I want to:

• continue to grow the yarn dyeing side of things as I am truly passionate about it. There is creativity not only in the dyeing itself but in the other components like Facebook posts, Instagram photo's and product packaging.
• get into the garden more. I have neglected my vegetable patch lately. I want to get my hands in the dirt, smell the soil and pick fresh veggies.
• create some knitting designs (even if they are just for my own use). I have plenty of ideas, but I have just never given myself the space to work on them.
• grow my blog and work on a full website - incorporating all aspects of my crafting life.

I am sure there are plenty of other avenues for my creativity and I hope that I can continue to learn and grow. The exciting thing with making is the infinite possibilities for self expression. 

Milk Fibre and Bamboo

I am wanting to introduce different yarn blends in to my shop. To do this I need to firstly source different blends. I am aiming to use primarily Australian and New Zealand milled and grown yarns. To do this I have been researching the limited number of mills in Australia and finding out what un-dyed products they have in their range. Next step is to order small quantities of potential bases, dye them and knit with them to find out if I like them enough to be comfortable selling them as part of my range.

This past week I purchased three new to me blends, two are bamboo & wool blends (with different percentages of each) and the other is a milk fibre and wool blend.

First a little about these different fibres:

Milk Fibre

As the name suggests milk fibre comes from milk. It is created as a by-product of processing skim milk. A chemical process is used to extract, dry and then turn a powdered protein in to a fiber. It was first used during the 1930s and 40s to make wool and cotton go further. It is said to have anti-bacterial qualities and take colour very well (the protein in milk fibre was also known to be used in early outdoor paint).

I found this blog article which was very detailed on the development and processes of milk fibre

Bamboo

Yes, the grass that Panda's eat! The insides of the stems are processed down and made into a fibre, it has a shiny finish similar to silk. It gives strength when combined with wool, while keeping a drape and breath ability.

This is what wiki has to say about Bamboo as a textile

My Experiment
In order to test out the new blends I put all three in to the same dye bath (labelled with brightly coloured yarn that would not change colour) and did two different dyeing methods.

Batch 1

First batch I dyed up in Strawberry Shortcake (a repeatable colour that I already have in the shop). This was so that I could compare how the colour takes between my current sock yarn (Gumboot Sock) and the three new bases. Look how differently it comes out across the yarns!

LtoR: Gumboot Sock, 16% milk fibre/85% wool, 50% bamboo/50% wool, 60% bamboo /40% wool

Batch 2

Next I chose to have a play. I tried some shallow immersion dyeing and squirted some dye onto different sections of the yarn, to see how the dyes would absorb and blend on each fibre. Again, some extremely varied results.

LtoR: 16% milk fibre/85% wool, 50% bamboo/50% wool, 60% bamboo/40% wool

The milk fibre yarn took up the dye a lot more than the bamboo, it is quite vibrant and dark. Of the other two, the one with the lower bamboo content seemed to take the colour better, but the one with more bamboo is a lot shinier and has more drape (this could also be due to the spinning method of the yarn as well, the 50/50 blend is a crepe style yarn, which is a bit more dense). The sheen and drape of the bamboo yarn is really lovely. I am looking forward to knitting with each of these blends to see how they work up.

Will any of these blends end up in the shop? Will have to wait and see how I like the finished projects.

Anyone who as worked with these fibres before I would be interested to get your feedback and thoughts.

New Year's Resolutions?

It's that time of year. When we reflect on the year just ending and start to plan and dream about the year ahead.

I am not one to make big new years resolution announcements, for a few reasons:

1. My work schedule in January is not conducive to starting and maintaining any new habits
2. By openly stating any new goals I feel like there is such a set up for failure - if there is any weak moments or divergence from the goal everyone knows and it is much harder mentally, for me anyway, to get back on track. I know for others this has the reverse effect and by announcing their resolutions to the world they get the motivation and accountability they need to succeed.
3. A resolution made on 1 January may not be relevant days, weeks or months after. Life moves quickly and what seems important in the moment, may not be in the long term. I guess that is why a lot of new years resolutions are "eat healthier" or "exercise more" - these are general and will always be things that are required in order to live a happy and healthy life. I'm not saying that I won't try to do either of these things, I'm just not sure that I need to make them a new years resolution.

What I like to do at this time, is look back on what I have achieved in the past year. We spend so much of our lives doing and being, that often the milestones and achievements pass us by without any thought or celebration.

2015 was a big year for me, especially in my craftiness:

My nine most liked Instagram posts of 2015

• I started this blog in March and have fairly consistently posted entries.
• I started dyeing yarn, experimented and found a true passion.
• I opened my etsy shop. AND I have had sales. It's one thing to open a shop and put my creations out into the world, but for other people to decide they want to spend their hard earned money on my yarn is an amazing feeling.
• I knit a lot; including four shawls, a jumper, one soft toy, six beanies, two pairs of mitts (including the cupcake mittens), and at least 8 pairs of socks (I have been super lazy and have not entered my sock projects in to Ravelry).

Do I have things I want to do and achieve in 2016? YES - lots!!! I look forward to sharing my crafting progress and business growth with everyone.

A snap shot of my dyeing process

Dyeing yarn has become a huge part of my life now, but when I started out I was not sure what I was doing. I taught myself through experimentation, reading blogs and forums and watching podcasts.

I thought I would share a little of what I do - especially for those of you out there who see it as a mysterious and complicated thing. This is certainly not a comprehensive guide or the only way to dye, it is just a little of what I have taught myself.

1. Start with undyed/bare yarn - I have some yarn that comes in pre-measured skeins, like the ones in the top left, but I also buy yarn in larger hanks and on cones, that I wind off into skeins myself. I add additional ties to each skein to stop it from tangling.

2. I use Jacquard acid dyes - these are a powder dye, activated by acid (vinegar or citric acid). I currently have 12 different colours. I use a dust mask to protect myself while mixing the powdered dyes and make a stock of each colour (a mix of the powder and water) that I keep in squeeze bottles. Then when creating colourways, I mix the stock dyes together to create unique colours. I write down each of my recipes in a note book, with steps for each layer of dye.

3. To prepare the yarn for dyeing, I soak it in slightly warm water and a little bit of wool soap.

4. Most of the time when I dye I have an end result colour in mind, the example above is my Fuchsia colourway. I took a photo of the flower from my garden and mixed the dyes with the end result in mind.

5. I measure out the dye, writing down my recipe as I go, and add it to the pot, along with vinegar and turn on the heat. I then add the wet skeins of yarn to the pot and allow the dye to absorb, keeping the water at a steady heat just below a simmer. Once the water is clear (or close to it) I remove the yarn and add another dye mixture. I usually then unravel, or re-twist the yarn, to expose different sections to the dye and place it back into the pot. Depending on the colour I could repeat this part of the process a number of times.

6. Once the final layer of colour has been applied I keep the heat on for a little longer and then put the lid on and turn off the heat. I leave the yarn in the pot and leave it to cool. This stage allows any remaining dye to be taken up by the yarn and provides residual heat to set the colour.

7. When the yarn is cool, I drain off the water and rinse, before leaving it to soak in slightly warm water and a wool soap. This removes any excess dye and washes away any vinegar.

8. Next is to get the yarn dry. For my superwash wool I give it a little spin in the washing machine (in a delicates bag) and then hang it over a drying racks to get plenty of airflow. I rotate the skeins to  help them dry evenly.

9. Final stage once the yarn is dry is to rewind the yarn back into a neat skein. I cut all of the ties and wind it into a skein. This realigns the colours and tidies up the skein after going through the dyeing process.

As I mentioned earlier, this is just one way that I use and I am mostly self taught. There are so many ways to dye, you can be very scientific or very relaxed and organic.

Knitrospective - 5 tips I wish I knew when I started knitting

I was taught to knit by my grandmother when I was quite young. I was given a pair of straight needles, much too long for my little hands, and squeaky acrylic yarn. The stitches were cast on for me, way too tightly and I was shown how to do the knit stitch. I was told just to knit and then had the piece bound off for me when I was done. The knitting always turned out a weird shape, had dropped stitches, or extra stitches and was a boring garter strip.

Given these early experiences it took me a while after that before I went back to knitting for myself. Inspired by an urge to be creative and use my hands to make things.

I went back to basics and taught myself, by reading blogs and magazines, searching for how to's on You Tube and watching knitting podcasts.

Over time I was able to teach myself a lot, but when I look back on when I started knitting seriously, I wish I had known the following key tips:

1. A slip knot is not required to cast on, in fact knots should mostly be avoided in knitting

2. A tight cast on is caused by the lack of space between each cast on stitch, not the size of the stitch

3. Tinking back or ripping out is not failure, it is correcting a mistake you will not be happy with in the finished item
4.Choose a project you want to knit and practice on that as it is much more rewarding than a random strip or square
5. Use nice yarn and nice needles, as this is a key part of the process and adds to the Beginners should be taught to knit with good yarn and nice needles - because we should be sharing the joy and love that we have for our craft!

Polwarth Yarn

I have purchased some 100% Polwarth yarn for the shop. I have found as a knitter in Australia most of the yarn that is readily available is either Merino or labelled as just "wool". Part of the appeal of moving into dyeing my own yarn is that I can experiment with yarn compositions, combine my own colours and knit with yarn that I have never knit with before (after all I do need to sample the yarn first!!). Hopefully as I develop my shop I can expand my bases to include interesting breeds and blends, expand my own knitting experience and be able to make it accessible to other crafters.

Here is a little summary of exactly what Polwarth is:

• developed in Victoria (Australia) in 1880s
• bred from one-quarter Lincoln and three-quarters Merino
• they have long, soft, fine wool and also are a good meat sheep

I began to work with it this weekend, dyeing up my first batch. I am excited to see how the finished yarn turns out, how it feels, looks and knits up.