I wasn’t sure that the hop would survive the winter outside, even in the pot. But there’s one sprout a fingerlength long, and another just starting to poke through. I guess that means I should get around to cutting the old vines down now, and figuring out a better way to support it this year. I was thinking about putting the pot in the corner of the patio, and then stringing lines from the mast to the house so the hop could make a kind of shade over that corner; we shall see.

I still have yet to cut out last year’s dead growth. Part of it is because I’m lazy, and part of it is because I didn’t want to just throw them in the trash but I didn’t have anywhere else to put them. Branches I take to the brush pile at the recycle center, but I feel bad dumping stalks and things there; not sure why.

But I have a compost bin now— or rather, I will have it as soon as the battery finishes charging and I can use the drill again. Which gives me a place to put all my yard and food scraps, so I don’t feel quite so bad about putting them down the garbage disposal or in the trash.

Later today I plan to start some leek and chile seeds. I should have started the leeks earlier, but I can’t count. Oh well; if they’re late, they’re late. I don’t have a place to put the seedlings at the moment, anyway.

The filename of this image, which was posted a while ago to a Ravelry group that I can’t remember the name of, is “dmcseriesv_model6a.” Some googling turned up the D.M.C. Library series, which covers all sorts of thread work from embroidery to tatting to crochet and others, most of which were published in the early 1900s. I found scanned copies of some other volumes in the series, but not this one.

I want this book, if only for this image. I think it is made of awesome.

You may remember the knitting machine that I found at the thrift store a few weeks ago. I finally found the time to lay everything out and take pictures of them; the pieces, at least. The two boxes of patterns and notes I haven’t even started to go through yet.

I originally thought this was a second machine, but it turns out that it’s a ribbing attachment.

Contents of a box marked “SK 120 Bulky.” There was no bed for this machine; I don’t know how prevalent they are or how easy it would be to buy one. Also, I have no idea what all of those things do.

Contents of a bag marked “Ribber.”

Contents of a bag marked “Main Bed.”

A selection of things best described as “pointy hooky things.” I know some are for casting-on, don’t know about the others.

I think that these are supports, but I’m not sure for what.

Miscellaneous parts.

Contents of a box of accessories.

Contents of a second box of accessories. Although the envelope says “KR-850″ on it and contains extra needles, I don’t think that they’re specific to the ribber.

A third box of accessories. Again, I don’t think these are specific to any one machine, and all three will probably be consolidated.

Extra carriages. Clockwise from top left: Transfer carriage, lace carriage, no idea, linker carriage. I believe that all of these are for the Brother machine.

This color changer is supposed to be able to handle four colors. I have no idea how it works.

This is a garter bar. No idea what it’s for, but I have one.

And finally, assorted chemicals. I believe the alcohol is for cleaning (maybe?) and the lubricants are self-explanatory. The two brown bottles are freon, and I have no idea if they’re actually related to the machine in some way or just got shoved in the box.

This time, from the Greenwood Wildlife thrift store:

According to a tag on the back, this was “Created especially for you by members of Thrilled to Pieces Quilt Club, Lafayette, Colorado, 2005.” A second tag says “Autumn Evening Judy Kurtz Jan 2005.”

Also at the thrift store: A 1980-ish electronic knitting machine. No, really.

Toby checks the overhead clearance on the knitting machine.

This is a Brother KH-930 electronic knitting machine– electronic in that it has a whole 12k of RAM in which it can store patterns, and you can load up new patterns onto it by connecting it to a Tandy external floppy drive. State of the art technology, in 1980!

I originally thought that I was getting just the machine and table, but the manager said that no, it’s everything in this corner. Which was a lot– boxes of parts, boxes of patterns, more boxes of parts . . . I still haven’t been able to go through and inventory it all, but there’s a heck of a lot of stuff. Some of it seems really random, too, like the person who donated it didn’t want to go through it all and just threw everything into boxes. I feel like I didn’t just buy someone’s old machine, I bought their life.

The gorgeous magenta juice I got out of the prickly pears is no longer magenta. It’s this:

I had it sitting outside on the patio to stay warm so it wouldn’t mold. It stayed beautiful for quite some time, and then overnight the color vanished. The only explanation I can think of is that it got too hot one day, and the color browned.

I plan to try again, but I need to find a bigger container to roll the pears in so I can de-spine them faster. As much as it amuses the cat, it’s kind of a pain to only do three at a time.

In sunflower news, several weeks ago I bagged several of the heads so the birds wouldn’t get them, and discovered a few of the smaller heads missing. One of the remaining heads, a fairly large one, still had petals on it so I decided to leave it unbagged.

Bad idea. Whomever took the smaller heads came back and made off with the big one. I wasn’t entirely sure who did it, until we found chunks of the head on the ground with toothmarks in them. J said he’d seen a squirrel climbing up one of the stalks earlier, so I went ahead and brought all the remaining heads in even though they weren’t all completely ready.

I let them sit to dry for a few weeks, and then rubbed the seeds out. J’s dad was visiting us at the time and thought I was being very weird, but since I was also keeping him company while he put a cathole in one of the doors, he didn’t say too much.

I have yet to separate them from the chaff and use them. Since I only had a few heads, and only one was actually a decent size (next year, I might put them in the ground instead of in pots), I’m not sure if I’ll try to save any seeds for next year. If I get a good color, I can always order more.

It started to freeze at night a few weeks ago, so I brought the amaranth and Japanese indigo inside. They’re still going– the indigo even decided to flower– but I’m still not sure how to use the amaranth. I thought that there was some information in Hopi Dyes so I got it from the interlibrary, but then I realized that a) there isn’t anything about amaranth in the book, and b) I already own a copy. Mine is part of a double volume with another book about Navajo dyes, so the cover photo’s a little different. Back to searching, I guess.

I did start an indigo bath, but that’ll be in a different post.

Our next-door neighbor has a patch of prickly pears. He planted them so he wouldn’t have to water or mow that corner of the lawn, but he’s never eaten or done anything with the pears.

Opportunity!

In addition to the spines, prickly pears also have clusters of tiny little hairs with barbs on the end. They’re nearly impossible (for me) to see and remove without a magnifying glass and tweezers, and they’ll work themselves under the skin and be very annoying. Don’t want to eat them, don’t want to get them into the yarn.

First I tried searing the glochids off with the gas grill. It was hard for me to see when they were gone, and since my tuna were so small it was hard to hold them with tongs. There’s also a good amount of juice that came out and is now making sticky spots on the burner.

I also tried scouring them off in a jar of sand. This seemed to work well, it just took a long time. I’m wondering if it might be better to rig something up with a larger jar and a rocking chair, because rolling it back and forth did make my leg tired after a while. At least the process amused the cat.

The inside of a cactus tuna. These are pretty small– about thumb-size– and very seedy. After peeling and de-seeding them, there really wasn’t enough of the flesh and juice left to be worth the trouble! (The juice tasted good, though.) I think if I want to cook with tunas, I’ll just go get them from the Latin grocery.

Fortunately, I don’t need to peel or seed them to make dye, so I’ve been picking a few every day (that is, poking them with tongs and retrieving the ones that fall off the plant), sanding the spines off, and adding them to the jar to ferment. When I reach a critical mass– or when I get tired of sanding them– I’ll add some yarn and see what it does.

From left to right: Ammonia and pennies, vinegar and pennies, avocado peels-n-pits. These were started at the beginning of July and let to sit outside for about thirty days.

I thought I had a picture of the copper jars after I got the pennies out, but I can’t find it. So you’ll have to trust me– the vinegar jar was that nice pale blue you see, but the ammonia jars was that kind of deep saturated electric blue that jumps off the shelf and assaults your unsuspecting eyeballs with the sheer force of its blueness. It was so blue that it deserves not only capitalization, but italics as well. It was Blue.

In this picture, though, the ammonia jar looks black. Not because it’s concentrated– because there’s a mysterious black precipitate coating the inside of the jar and the pennies. I have no idea what it is, and I’ve been afraid to try and clean it off because I’m not sure if it’ll come off at all. (Not that I’ll be upset if I can’t save the pennies, but I want to save the jar!)

I strained the avocado bath though a paper towel into my big depot. This may have been a mistake.

Yarns in the avocado pot. The nice rosy-pink yarns in the top two-thirds are alum-mordanted and unmordanted skeins; the slightly brownish yarns in the bottom right corner are copper mordant.

Following an article in an old issue of Spin-Off, I simmered these for an hour on the stove– or tried to, at any rate. I didn’t let it get to a violent boil, but there were a few points where it was at an energetic simmer.

From top to bottom: two skeins each of alum mordant, no mordant, and copper mordant.

One of these sets was dipped in vinegar afterwards, and one was dipped in ammonia. I’m not sure which is which now– neither one changed the color enough for me to be able to see it. The set at the top looks a little darker here, but that’s an artifact of the way I set up the photo. In real life, they’re the same.

I am unhappy with the results of this test. It’s not that I don’t like brown, because I do (and they’re a very nice shade of brown) but I feel like this was a lot of time to get a color that is easy to get from other sources– for example, straight off the animal. I know I’ve seen alpacas in this color before.

Other people that I’ve read about have gotten shades of red from brick to rosy beige out of avocado parts, so it should be possible for me to get them also. I’m not sure what I did to not get red with these, but it could have been several things.

Things to try next time: