Absent Without Leave

A long overdue update. I won't bore you with all the details, but there has been...

dyeing:

The little rose that was a bud for a day and a flower for eight hours:

and then the whole thing died - it hadn't rooted and had obviously used every last scrap of energy to make that tiny (1 inch across) rose.

Overtwisted and tentative attempts at spinning:


A delicious cheese fondue:



A bargainous pile of books thanks to the Christian Aid Book Sale:

(That little lot cost the grand total of £10.50.

More secondhand books (from Oxfam this time) and yarn (that's Fyberspates Faery Wool on top):

Those books were all brand new both in the sense of unread and very recently published. I wonder if there's a bookshop giving that shop a weekly donation or something.

I also love the Virago Modern Classics limited editions with their designer (and very feminine covers. I already have some of them in paperback, but I acquired these two (Excellent Women by Barbara Pym and The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield), and A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark is next on my radar:


A secondhand oriental bag (from Armstrong's Vintage Emporium:


which makes a wonderful crochet hook roll:


Actual crocheting has been mostly for a blanket project for Amanda at The Natural Dye Studio which has a time limit so I haven't been doing much of my own stuff. I have frogged my Garden Party Wrap (designed by Kim Guzman) as I was using Aurora from The Yarn Yard and although the pattern is great and the yarn is great, the result was somewhat... fussy to say the least. I think a plainer yarn (I wish I had the hard-to-find Noro laceweight that the original design is done in) for the pattern, and a plainer pattern for the yarn.

Here ends the overlong and overdue update.