Finlandia Tam

I’ve been listening to a lot of Sibelius lately and I also just read Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book where she describes summers spent on an island in the Gulf of Finland. This tam is meant to try to capture some of the feel of the book and the music. It’s got anchors and pine trees and waves and I hope the colours are right. I’ve never been to Finland.
I used indigo, safflower, poroporo and a natural beige and black for the colours.

Logwood Tam

This is an experiment with the colour contrasts from the logwood dye. It gives a good background to the reds and pinks, as you would expect, but for the central wheel I replaced it as the main colour with the natural black to give more definition to the pattern.
The dyes I used are logwood, madder and red sandalwood, so it was a restrained selection.
I’ve been a bit slow with the tams lately but we’ll be shearing the sheep tomorrow and there’ll be lots of fresh wool to work with.

Woods in Winter Tam

This tam took a while to complete because of the cow going down with milk fever and needing constant care. It uses just primary colours and traditional dyes, madder, safflower, indigo and logwood. It was my first time dyeing with logwood and I was impressed by its colour and the quantity of dye from a small amount of powdered wood.
The centre wheel is an asymmetrical design of leafless trees.

Woodcutter's Socks

These socks are for a friend who is helping to cut trees in the woodlot. They’re made from handspun Romney which I’ve found to be very hard wearing for work socks. He’s cutting eucalyptus trees so the main colour - the orange - is dyed with eucalyptus leaves. The green is poroporo, a pioneer species which is growing in the woodlot. The other colours are from madder and onion skins.
Please note, this is not a self striping yarn, but a controlled mix of colours.

Shawl Collared jacket

This jacket is made from an old jumper that I knitted in alpaca about 15 years ago. The jumper had grown a lot more than I have and even with the sleeves rolled back several times I couldn’t wear it comfortably so I unpicked and unravelled it. It was hard going because the pattern was very complex and it was upsetting to undo all that work.
The original jumper was white but had got some stains on it so I dyed the alpaca with safflower and then with logwood. I found some of the leftover white wool and some red and added a couple of slipstitch patterns to the original stocking stitch design to disguise any unevenness in the dyeing.
The slipstitch patterns are from Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns. The red and white is Stripe and Spot pattern and the one on the body is called Little Birds.
The finished jacket is very warm and comfortable to wear and has stayed the right size so far.
The pattern can be found in Christina Probert’s Knitting in Vogue. It dates from 1961.

Nightfall Tam

This is a traditional tam design with the central star but I've added extra stars around the body and used minimal colours - just the natural black and white and some madder and lichen to aim for a late evening look.

Summer Season Tam

I was never a great fan of Piers Plowman, but the opening lines are lovely and have always stayed in my head:

In a somer season, whan softe was the sonne,
I shope me into shroudes, as I a shep were,
In abite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,
Wente forth in the world wondres to here,
And saw many selles and selcouthe thynges.

So here's a tam for William Langland to wear to brighten up his hermit's garb. The dyes are madder, poroporo, indigo, weld and onion skins. The top shows trees, flowers and flowering vines and the underneath has a pattern of butterflies.