Frustrated crafter at large

Headed off to my regular knitting meeting last night where we had a sewing up workshop... After much frowning at some stocking stitch squares, knitted up in sock wool I've come to the conclusion sewing up knitted things really is not my forte.

It seems weird since I definitely can sew and give me woven fabric then I'm in my element, but ask me to sew up two tiny little knitted squares and I'm all fingers and thumbs. :(

I managed it for my one and only seamed knitted project (so far at least), so obviously I can apply needle and thread in the context of knitting but last night my mojo had definitely deserted me.

The wool I dyed up at the weekend has finally dried and I had planned to reskein the hand painted alpaca, but was defeated because my house is not big enough! I set two chairs up, one in the living room and one by the back door (in the kitchen) and discovered that I needed at least three more meters of house to stretch the yarn out properly. So... I have to wait until I am home during daylight hours and have nice weather before I can get the yarn back into a skein as this is going to have to be done in the garden.

I did have a quick poke around Ravelry and there seem to be several groups dedicated to dyeing which may be worth a looksee. I've not joined any of them as of yet, because if I do, I may want to do more dyeing which would be a problem since I haven't really got the time to do it at the moment. I'm not making much progress on knitting currently (despite my best efforts) and I haven't picked up my spindle in at least two weeks! :(

I did however come across this company (Pure Tinctoria) who sell natural dyes and may be worth a future look. I'm also wondering about using normal food dyes for dyeing purposes and wondering about making up dyes from raw ingredients. Now if only I had the hours to spare to do more than wonder...