In Advance of Screen-Free Sunday

I'm making so-so progress on my sock. I've been sick all week (just a cold and a lot of crud in the chest) and I've been kind of spacey. I knit all night on Thursday and realized that I only knit one half of a cable round about 8 rounds back. I had to tink back stitch by stitch. Then I Friday night I knit about an inch or two past where I was supposed to start my heel. Tink. Tink. I finally finished the heel and gusset decreases and am working my way quickly to the toe.

I was stuck at home yesterday waiting for new washing machine to be delivered so I finally dyed the yarn I spun for last year's Tour de Fleece. It's a sweater's worth of Cormo/silk that's bulky and slubby. I put it on the drying rack today and set it outside. While I was at work it started to rain. A lot. Fortunately none had a) blown away or b)gotten totally resoaked. I was going for a dark reddish-brown. I think it will end up much lighter than I'd hoped.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Tacoma to see the Gee's Bend exhibit. Have a great Sunday everyone!

Spriral Baby Blanket

The baby hasn't arrived yet but my gift has. So now I get to share it with you.





Recipient: Molly (how about updating that blog, lady?)
Pattern: Pinwheel Baby Blanket
Yarn: Approximately 12 oz of Henry's Attic Kona Superwash hand-dyed by me
Needle: US5 Addi Turbo
Notes: This is the project that broke my US5 Denise needles. Don't use 'em. They're too small for the cord. This is also the project where I ran out of yarn on the edging. I originally was knitting the Twining Elm pattern from Knitting on the Edge. It used too much yarn so I had to rip it out. Then I chose a pattern called Molly's Lace. Why didn't I pick that in the first place?

Out of the Dye Pot

(I finally was able to upgrade to the new Blogger. Hope it doesn't suck.)

As I stepped out on to the porch to get some photos in natural light it started to rain so the lighting changed quite a bit from my first photo to my last.

First up are the dyeing disaster skeins. They've gone from pukey peach to screaming orangey-pink. Not really all that great of an improvement. They are also seriously underplied. I need to run them back through the wheel for a little more twist.


My friend Jill gave me a partial skein of Rowan Polar on Thursday night. It was a yellowy lentil green.


Now it's a vivid jungle green.


This is one of my class skeins. The colors were kind of weak. I juiced them up a bit and also added some black for low-lights. It doesn't look as much like the Polar skein in real life. The Polar is very vivid while this skein is more mellow.


This skein was also done in class. I had finished dyeing all my skeins and was just chatting with a friend while she was finishing up. We had a big bucket where we dumped all our brush rinse water and odds and ends of dye. The bucket usually was filled with brown, sludgy water. When I peered into the bucket on her table it was the most gorgeous rich mauve. My favorite color. I got a skein of yarn and put it in a baggie. Then I dumped in all the garbage water. I squished it around and dumped out the excess. Since the dye was very watered down I added a little more magenta and cyan. The resulting skein was very pretty but pale. I put it in the dye pot yesterday and poured mauve and maroon dyes over it. After it came out of the dyepot I laid it out on plastic wrap and drizzled some magenta highlights over it. I'm very happy with the results.


The best lessons I've learned so far are use a lot more dye than I think I need and that I can't get complex colors in one pass. I need to dye, hand paint, overdye and keep working a skein until I get a color I like. There are a few other skeins left that still need to be tweaked until they are acceptable.