Start of Another Year: Maigret & Run Rabbit Run

It's New Year's Eve where I live, and I already dread of having to go back to work in 2 days. But until then, I'm taking advantage of the free time to enjoy being lazy and do nothing but knit, read, and watch Maigret.

I visited a local library on Thursday and discovered French Maigret TV series, so I borrowed 4 sets. If only I discovered it at the beginning of the holidays.

I've watched 3 Maigret adaptations, featuring Bruno Cremer (pictured above, 1991, France), Michael Gambon (1992, UK), and Rowan Atkinson (2016, UK).

I like the 2016 adaptation because of the production quality and of course, Rowan Atkinson, but equally the 1991 French adaptation because it's in the original language, French. I love the books written by George Simenon largely because of his writing style, and somehow the style comes across better in the original language even on the screens. Not that I speak or understand much French but still.

And now on the knitting front, I started a new project after finally finishing the Dunkirk fair isle vest. It's Weldon 528 fair isle jumper published sometime in 1940s, I assume. I decided to call it Run Rabbit Run, because of its delightful bunny ears fair isle pattern.

I took the colour inspiration from Home Fires. One of the characters whose name I cannot remember and too lazy to look up wears this exact jumper in this colour scheme.

This was also the first time I tried my hand on yarn dyeing, something I've been wanting to try for a long time. The original pink and blue Drops Alpaca yarns were a little too pale and baby-ish, so I decided to dye it just slightly using Wilton food colouring.

These are the original yarns.

Below are the pictures of before and during dye bath. I washed the yarn first using dish soap and then left it submerged in vinegar water overnight (1/8 cup vinegar for 50g yarn) because I wanted a really solid dye.

And here's after. The pink looks darker than it is.

I'm slightly worried that I'll run out of the pink and blue yarns and then I won't be able to reproduce it, but we'll see how it goes.

I looked up several articles and youtube videos to learn about dyeing yarns, but I found this article on Loveknitting very helpful, and this Youtube video helped me get a sense of the basics.

I love how the yarns came out and I enjoyed the process too. I think I'm bitten by the dyeing bug. I want to try dyeing with avocados next. So, here's to another year of crafting!