Mom and I dyed with pomegranate juice, using no mordants. Mama prepared the boucle, (which turned out to be 100% cashmere with no binding acrylic,) while I washed the NZ merino with scale on. I didn't wash the merino well enough so it ended up dyeing unevenly.
Late afternoon sun played tricks with the colors, and this is the best I could do. The undyed merino dyed pale tentative coffee-color; the originally ugly light brown merino boucle dyed complex/muddy yelllow-greeny brown.
Initially I was going to weave with one of these in the warp and the other in the weft, but after seeing more wool Mom dyed with pomegranate in the past, (above), and the scarf she wove and has been wearing a while, I used the boucle and a slightly sturdier wool, (she thinks Polwarth,) in the warp, and the boucle in the weft. I didn't wind it elegantly the first time around so I wasted quite a bit of warp (two meters on the board,) but I used the full 60cm width of Mama's rigid heddle. It's super light. I'll post pics as soon as I wash it this afternoon.
And this was the only completed piece from the last seven weeks. But...
I found the blank cutout figures in a stationary store just before I left. I didn't have the right moment to introduce it to my almost-six-year-old niece until the very last evening. It was worth it, though, because in the less-than-an-hour we had before dinner, she and I had a hoot making up these little friends.
The pack was inexpensive and cute; with no rhyme or reason I expected perhaps one link of 10 or 12 little figures but the pack contained 10 or 12 links of six little girls! I've been thinking I might go for the boy pack as it's possible to add skirts to make boys into girls; that way I can have both genders.
Dad flippantly suggested I make hair like my niece - when I did, she liked it very much she not only pinched mine, but requested a second one. So, the top row is mine, more or less completed, while the second is hers, and she was working on decorating the girl in the blue dress.
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