My mother’s birthday was late last month, and one of my brothers gave her flowers. I was taking out the rose petals as they were slowly wilting until they were all slightly worse for the wear.

Yesterday, I finally purchased a stock pot and boiled the petals to remove the colour. Unfortunately some edges had already lost their freshness and had some pale brown bits. Also, I’ve never made dye from nature before so this is a whole experiment in what ifs.

I boiled the petals in distilled water for an hour then let the petals seep in the water overnight.

I let the rose petals sit for another hour until I took out most of the rose petals. It turned this beautiful amber brown colour.

I have a postal scale that I use on occasion and have to re-calibate it because it kept changing the weight, so it’s somewhere between 50-85 grams.

(Just for your amusement but my brain somehow assumed packages weighed in other countries goes kg mg, and have no idea why I skipped over grams. I changed it to pounds and ounces but am trying to retrain myself to also consider things in metric.)

I let the yarn soak in the leftover distilled water, but didn’t think too much about alkaline and acidic when I felt it needed more water and just added sink water, then weighed it down by filling the empty gallon container with more tap water.

I let it sit in the bucket for a few hours then squeezed out the excess water. Most of it is one of the fingering yarns from Knitpicks and I’m not sure what the other small bit is from, but probably also from that website.

I added about a half tablespoon of alum and the same amount of cream of tartar to boiled water then added that to the liquid. I made the mistake of taking out some of the liquid post adding those, for another project, but I doubt alum and cream of tartar would affect being used as a watercolour coat on canvas.

After boiling all of it for about forty minutes or so, the water turned more brownish and less amber.

I somehow expected the yarn to be dyed darker and with a bit of red, but the yarn looks pale brown. I’m letting the yarn sit in the dye overnight, but doubt it will get much darker than it already is at the moment.

I’m not sure what I will do with the end result but it’ll become something.

 

I made the top part seven inches in length and broke the yarn, then started working on the main body.

For some reason, I calculated that I started with 180 stitches, but recounted and started with 160. I was going to make the main body 120 stitches, but had to frog that and make the main body 60 stitches. At this moment, it’s around four inches or around ten centimeters, in length. The sleeves will be seven, with something between them, then the main body will be fifteen inches, or thirty-eight centimeters, then an extra bit at the bottom.

 

I’ve been wanting to weave again for the longest time and actually made two looms, but sticking nails in an empty frame didn’t hold up. I was successful with cutting out notches in the cardboard. I tried to line them up but I’m not sure they do, but it’s not a big deal in the scheme of things. I don’t mind things on the wonky side. I am used to small scale but wanted something bigger.

I’m going to use the frames and attach muslin to them and use those as canvas.

So far, I have only one part down, as I’m currently indecisive over the rest of the colours. The layout has already been determined, it’s just what colours.

 

One of my older brothers is dressing as Chewbacca this year. (And the picture proof cracks me up.)  His son’s son, my great nephew, is going to be dressed as Hans Solo. I’m sure you can tell which version by the fabric.

I took some basic measurements on Monday but basically will wing it.

 

And did a few rows of this project. I know it’s blurry. I was going to take another one then had to charge the camera battery.