WOYWW 254

Hop over to Julia’s blog (click on the WOYWW link in my sidebar) to join in the fun and see how messy our work desks are this week!

You find mine just as I was starting to put things away after making the card you can see on the left, inspired by a wonderful design by Helen Allen. I’ve done a post about this where you can see how I made it step by step.

The rest of the stuff consists of bits of card used in the project, some acrylic paints and gel mediums (including the iridescent one which is simply gorgeous), a bottle of Dylusions spray ink, some Distress Inks and a jar of dirty paint water! You can also see the gorgeous little pincushion Lunch Lady Jan made for me when we did an ATC swap with WOYWW a couple of years ago – it’s not used for sewing pins, but pins for unblocking glue bottles, and generally poking holes in things. It lives on my desk close to hand at all times! You can also see my deluxe Bosch hot glue gun, and on the left, the little cream tin bath that had a teddy and some soap in it once – nowadays I use it for bunging odd bits and pieces in, and it’s useful for keeping miscellaneous gubbins in one place.

In case you are wondering where the teabags are this week, there are some stacked up on the far right at the back, underneath a piece of tea-dyed wadding fabric. The others are stashed elsewhere while I was working on the card.

Elsewhere in my ARTHaven this week, I’ve done a bit more dyeing. The first batch I did came out too dark for what I wanted it for, so I mixed up another dye bath with the same colour proportions but this time, half strength. Here is the result – the two skeins at the back are the new colour, and the ball at the front is the old – I can use this in other projects. It’s a gorgeous colour but just not right for my current knitting project, which is more subtle. This chestnut brown is made up of equal quantities of dark brown and red dye, with half the quantity of yellow. Colour mixing is Funnnn……

Now I have got my stock solutions all made up, it’s a quick and easy process to dye any small quantities I want, of any colour. It’s great having the table right by the sink and microwave.

Speaking of my knitting – I have now started decreasing down the first sleeve, so it shouldn’t be long before the number of stitches becomes appreciably fewer and the work should progress more quickly.

Last week I said I might have some exciting news for you this week. Unfortunately it has been delayed but hopefully I’ll be able to share it with you next week! Here’s hoping, anyway.

Have a great week, everybody – full of creativity and fun. Happy WOYWW!