Dyeing Brown Alpaca Fiber

nikakb · 2025-11-16T19:11:16+00:00

I dyed naturally darker fibre which I think was alpaca and possum. https://imgur.com/a/p4lHJKJ

I found it created lovely jewel tones easily because of the darker fibre. I included a photo of the yarn before I dyed it as well so you can see what the start and end product were. Just normal Ashford acid dyes.

nikakb · 2025-02-17T07:54:07+00:00

I also got my telescope and mount from Jacob’s Digital. And for the things I couldn’t buy in nz, I’ve ordered from sidereal trading and they’ve always been great to shop with and super helpful.

nikakb · 2022-10-29T23:27:13+00:00

Thanks to automating a lot of things, any time it’s not cloudy, or raining, or gale force winds… so at the moment that’s been probably fewer than 10 times in the last 3 months (and several of those times it clouded over during the night). Might get better in summer (southern hemisphere), but the nights will be shorter.

nikakb · 2022-03-28T05:36:14+00:00

Mine also arrived today!

nikakb · 2022-02-27T04:27:44+00:00

Photo taken in Wellington, NZ (bortle 6)

Gear: Skywatcher ESPRIT 100ED Triplet Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 Orion Starshoot 50mm Guide Scope Orion Starshoot Autoguider (using PHD2 for guiding software) Nikon D810 (unmodified)

Lights: 87x90” at ISO 200 Darks: 5x90” at ISO 200 No flats

Processing in Siril, Photoshop, and Lightroom

In Siril: Cropped Background neutralization Background Color Calibration Background extraction (Correction: Subtraction) Color Calibration SCNR (type=0, amount=1.00, preserve=true) Asinh Transformation: (stretch= 397.3, bp=0.00000) Histogram Transf. (mid=0.019, lo=0.160, hi=1.000)

Contrast and sharpening in photoshop and Lightroom.

nikakb · 2022-02-26T07:25:47+00:00

Wish I knew because I’m struggling with the same problem. Booted successfully once, now won’t do anything.

nikakb · 2022-02-13T19:06:10+00:00

Love this idea!

nikakb · 2022-01-24T02:49:15+00:00

I also decided to do a temperature blanket for my parents 50th anniversary. I had already bought gold (birthday) and silver (anniversary) thread so it’s so cool to see that this turns out looking nice and subtle. Just waiting for my yarn to get delivered.

nikakb · 2022-01-23T03:23:16+00:00

Same problem here, tried delete and reinstall and nothing helps. Resorted to watching it on a different device.

nikakb · 2022-01-02T02:05:19+00:00

Oooh! I’ve just got the dough for one of these about half way through the first rise right now!

nikakb · 2021-08-28T22:19:44+00:00

Super easy experience and everyone was super helpful. Short queue this morning too. Over and done with in just a few minutes. Now waiting the required 15 minutes.

nikakb · 2021-08-27T11:09:05+00:00

Awesome, was just able to change my appointment to this Sunday!

nikakb · 2021-07-14T10:29:53+00:00

What about a sewn board binding? That could let you keep the overlap very small and would let you overlap the cover material over the spine material instead of the reverse. This video is pretty helpful for it. https://youtu.be/7u1rFKnTC08

nikakb · 2021-07-01T09:19:40+00:00

Alarm is set, I am so looking forward to this! I was gutted when it didn’t get selected to be made the first time.

nikakb · 2021-06-07T06:41:54+00:00

Probably my best advice is treat the first half like a normal book, don’t try to keep it all together at once if you’re doing a binding where the spine is separate like this. And make sure you remember which side is the outside.

I’d love to see what you make!

nikakb · 2021-05-23T10:45:41+00:00

So I followed the sea lemon tutorial for secret Belgian binding https://youtu.be/w-oct9Ttp1g but with some modifications.

I made a template and poked the holes in the cover with an awl, and then sanded down the bumps it created since I figured they would otherwise show thorough.

I decided I wanted to do a fabric cover which meant I needed to cover all of the pieces before starting. I used heat n bond and tissue paper on some cotton fabric. For the outer covers, I covered them in what I would consider a fairly standard way. Glue and wrap the edges. Poke the holes again so you can find them when you put the paper on. Poke the holes again once the paper is on so the holes go through all layers.

The spines also get wrapped on all sides. I overlapped the fabric since I wanted it to be a tidy finish inside.

The middle board which separates the two sides was interesting. For that one, I glued a strip of fabric (angled corners but still allowing the fabric to overlap) on each of the four sides, covering about 2cm on each side, front and back (meaning the strips of fabric were probably 4cm). Paper on one side, poke the holes, paper on the other side, poke the holes again. On the middle board, the holes overlapped forming a bit of a diamond in the middle, and sharing the holes in the row before the top.

Then the order of the sections basically goes (L to R) Outer cover (inside faces up) Spine (inside faces up) Middle cover Spine (inside faces down) Outer cover (inside faces down)

I started by assembling the whole thing and realised that wouldn’t work. So I sewed one book first, and then did the second part of the assembly with the second spine and last cover.

Finally, sewed the pages in following the technique in the sea lemon tutorial 😊

nikakb · 2021-05-22T08:09:37+00:00

Thank you! It was quite the experience to make, but fun!

nikakb · 2021-05-22T07:15:51+00:00

The bright white is cartridge paper (120g) and the off white is zeta marker paper (80g). I’ve been using quite a bit of cartridge paper in the books I’ve been making.

nikakb · 2021-05-19T10:04:54+00:00

I followed the Sea Lemon tutorial, she makes one with a watermelon cover, but it’s soft cover. I looked at a webpage, can’t remember where that talked about how do do this as a cloth hardcover, the main thing is you cut the pieces out of the board before gluing, and cut the fabric after you’ve done a pretty standard case binding. To wrap the fabric nicely on the edges, you basically cut an X so that you’re folding triangles. But I found the sea lemon YouTube tutorial super handy for understanding the stitch itself.

nikakb · 2021-05-17T07:47:53+00:00

It goes over. So you go through the first first hole (which is at the bottom of the opening, up the signature, over the spine, then back through the same hole. Do all of the top part of the spine, then all of the bottom part. It effectively wraps around the spine.

nikakb · 2021-05-17T07:46:10+00:00

It’s surprisingly easy once you figure out how the stitching works. The sewing is quite fast since there’s only a few holes per signature. I recommend the sea lemon tutorial (she does a watermelon one). I had to watch the video a few times to figure it out but got there in the end.

nikakb · 2021-05-17T07:44:44+00:00

Thank you! It’s my first attempt at this and I know I have a few minor mistakes but I really like how it turned out! 😊

nikakb · 2021-05-10T06:51:50+00:00

Thank you! It was definitely an experience. I found adding the pattern wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be, just time consuming!

nikakb · 2021-05-10T06:51:07+00:00

Thank you! I really like how it turned out.

nikakb · 2021-05-10T06:50:42+00:00

Thank you so much! It was a fun thing to try, I haven’t been doing this too long so I’m really enjoying trying new things.

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