Widgets

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to bring your attention to the new widgets on my blog. There's a great one from goodreads that shows all the books I've read or am currently reading. It's a wonderful site that allows you to organize your personal library into categories (read, to-read, currently reading, fiction, fantasy, etc...). If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it. It's a great way to keep organized if you like to read a lot and a great place to get ideas for new books you'd like to read.

I also have a widget for my shop at Etsy. Simply click on it and it'll take you straight to my shop!

Have a great weekend!

Dye Pots Part III

Hope you all had a good weekend!

On Saturday, I dyed the pole wrapped fabric from my last post. I dyed the turquoise one purple and the fuschia one black. Here's the process:

1. I soak the pieces in warm water for about an hour. This ensures that the dye will penetrate all the fabric it can reach, not get stuck along the way because the fabric is dry.
2. I then put salt and dye in warm water and stick the poles in. I leave it for about 20 minutes or until I get the darkness in color that I'm looking for (keeping in mind that it's always lighter once it's dry). I sneak peeks every now and then to see how the color is setting:

I then add the soda ash to set the color and leave it soaking in the dye for about an hour (a bit longer for black). Make sure to set the timer!

3. This is always a good time to make yourself some tea. You've got a lot of waiting to do and since it's pole wrapped, there's very little stirring to occupy your time.

On Saturday, I chose some Japanese genmaicha. MMMM. :)

4. After having the poles in the dye bath for about an hour, take them out and rinse them in cold water first. When the water is clear (no color is bleeding) gradually rinse in increasingly warm water until you're rinsing in very warm water. Because my colors were so rich, and also because I wanted to keep them on the pole so they retained the pleats, I decided to soak my poles in clear water to make sure that all the excess dye was gone.

You can already see the water turning pink on this one!

5. After all the excess dye is removed, I wash the fabric with Synthrapol. You can also use a soft dishwashing soap like Dawn.

6. After washing the fabric, pat dry with a towel (don't use any nice ones!) and set out to dry. If you don't care for the pleats, just remove the fabric from the pole while you're rinsing and washing it and iron flat. This is also very pretty, but I wanted to keep the pleats so I have to be more patient. I checked the poles this morning and they're still damp, so I think they'll be ready sometime later this week. When they're dry, I'll remove them from the poles, take photos, and let you all see what all the fuss is about!

I can't wait to see them!!

Root Vegetable Soup

MMMMM root vegetable soup! I made it up the other day. It's really good and easy to make, so I thought I'd share the recipe.

Serves 2-3 people

Fill a 3 quart pot, 3/4 of the way full with water and add the following:

3 medium sized potatoes
1 sweet potato
3 turnips
turkey or chicken (I used frozen, already cooked, left over Thanksgiving turkey)
1 chicken boullion cube
rosemary, salt, and pepper to taste

Bring to a boil and then simmer until root vegetables are done.

Later that night I also dyed a pashmina for my sister-in-law, Kristen. She had gotten it as a gift, but it was this horrible pale pink color. I dyed it a gorgeous teal that I'm sure will compliment her beautifully. I didn't even think to take a picture of the pashmina after I dyed it (sorry!) but I did manage to take a picture of the packaging.

I send all my Tomoe goods wrapped in paper and sealed with wax. I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo, but you can sort of make out the brown string under the wax. I love that. To protect the pashmina underneath, I placed a card in between, and stamped and embossed it with my awesome new bird stamp. Kurt, my husband, helped me a bunch with this stamp. He's an illustrator and can draw basically anything you ask him to. I told him I wanted a stamp of a cute, fat birdie and TA-DAH! He came up with this adorable illustration. He transferred it onto the block and I cut it out with a lino cutter. Very cool! Maybe I'll make an owl stamp next...Kurt, can you draw me a cute owl perched on a branch? :)

Tonight, after much procrastination, we're going to take down our Christmas tree. We LOVE our Christmas tree and hate to see it come down. It's been especially hard because here in DC it's been very very warm. I'm talkin' 76 last Saturday! It makes taking the Christmas tree down extra depressing, somehow.