Or, if you want to get really out there, it’s like saying, “You stand up, why would you ever want to sit down again?”

There’s so much to be said for dyeing your own stuff, but every so often you want a break. And, as it happened this time, I found this gorgeous braid for sale. It’s a merino/mohair mix (a blend I’ve never bought before) and the colors jumped right off the screen and grabbed me. (Yes, it was scary, but a good scary.)

Isn’t it pretty? I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. The thought of a hat or smooshy cowl crossed my mind, or perhaps a little shawlette. I could go for socks, as it’s a four ounce braid, but I don’t particularly feel like spinning sock yarn right now. Ha, well, true, I probably won’t get around to spinning this until later this year. Oh, I bought it at FiberFancy, if you’d care to take a peek at some of the other lovely stuff there.

And, along a different train of thought, I paid for not blogging recently. I skeined up this gorgeous single ply laceweight (the one I was spinning on my English wheel) and it turned out to be about thirty-five grams/440 yards. In short, a nice size. It washed up beautifully and bloomed into this amazingly soft fluffy single ply. I was so proud of it. Then I listed it on Etsy and it sold before I could tell you I had even finished it! So, here’s the picture of the now long-gone yarn.

On the home knitting front: Raveling is in the offing. Remember that purple sweater I made? The cowl neck? Well, it was far too big in the body, so about a week or so ago I raveled it clear back to the armpits and commenced re-knitting it in a smaller size. I’m now about six to eight inches from the bottom, and hoping it will somehow finish knitting itself so I can take it along to Colorado in the beginning of August. Things are looking pretty close, but I might just finish in time.

But, for spinners there is a magic about garbage bags because, when found in the right places, they usually contain fiber in vast quantities. Quantities so large, your ordinary bag won’t hold them. Sound exciting?

Well, while in Texas I was given an early birthday present. Two garbage bags full of cinnamon colored alpaca. Oh my goodness. Major fluffy soft.

And I even have a project idea for it! But, before I get to new project time, I have to overcome another project. Remember the indigo dyed merino? It’s decided to haunt me for some reason.

I had four lovely full bobbins spun and reeled off, awaiting their moment to shine. Imagine my dismay when I began plying them only to discover that something had happened. Somewhere along the line they had lost a large amount of their twist to the point of not being able to wrap around each other. Easily fixed, right? Just run them through the wheel again?

It wasn’t that simple. Because somehow, someway, I had spun every single one of those spools in the wrong direction.

AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I must have begun spinning it before I learned the proper direction to spin the singles. Technically you can spin them both ways, yes, but commercial yarns stick to one way because – according to my sources – that’s the easiest way to work with as a knitter or crocheter. Something to do with the way the yarn behaves when it’s wrapped around the needle.

Sigh.

So. I’m over five months and four bobbins into it and having to start again. I’m seriously thinking I’ll make it a three ply instead of trying to manage a five ply. That would make things go a little quicker, but it would mean a less finely plied yarn. MamaMentor, do you have a preference?

And I’m making sure! By the end of the first day (Sunday) I had thirteen batts in my possession. And I’ve got lots more fiber to take care of. The first batts remind me of Animal from The Muppet Show. They’re carded from some Romney fiber I hand-dyed in various shades of burgundy and black. Now they’re a little more pinkish.

Then I tried blending two colors of fiber and came up with these. I call them my Robin’s Egg batts.

And then for my own use, I blended up the fibers I got while visiting in Texas. Eight gorgeous batts of a Blue-faced Leicester, baby alpaca, and mohair blend. Amazingly soft and fluffy. Actually, I need to run those through the carder one more time to make sure the fibers are really well blended.

So, after doing all those batts I felt confident enough to try blending colors more artistically. This was my first time doing it, and, in short, it was . . . ah. . . a learning experience. Instead of gorgeous streaks and swirls of colors I wound up with this.

Affectionately known as the wooly mammoth hide batt.

My first pair of hand knit socks, the ones knit for me by my sister from my first handspun sock yarn, sprung holes on a dark night a couple of days ago. And not just little holes. One of them is bigger around than a quarter.

Sob.

So, now I’ve got to learn how to darn socks because there is no way I will just throw away those poor things. I cringe at the very thought! And I hope I can locate the little skein of extra yarn. It’s got to be around here somewhere.

On a slightly less tragic note, my new socks are coming along nicely. The first one is completely finished, and I’ve started on the ribbing for the second. I think I’m a whopping quarter inch into it already. The socks themselves are quite tall. Almost knee high.

Here’s a close up of the toe. You can kind of make out the creeping vine motif with those leaves swishing off to the sides.

These have been largely neglected lately, due to the custom yarn and various other projects. Hopefully I can get back to them sometime in March. Which is coming up a lot faster then I’d anticipated! Isn’t March supposed to be sock month? Or maybe it’s craft month.

I finished yet another hat! This is a gray alpaca version of the first tam I made. It’s knit from KnitPicks Andean Treasure. Baby alpaca, sport weight, great stuff!

Technically this is the second time I’ve finished it, as I had to knit the ribbing twice. The yarn just wasn’t elastic in 2 x 2 ribbing form! That, and it draped so much it would have fit Barney the Dinosaur. Enlarging the rest of the pattern has definite drawbacks. I solved the problem (with help from the knitting sister!) by raveling back — which was painful, but not too scary — and then going to size 1 needles, as well as decreasing a little more. It worked very well, and I had hoped to deliver it to the recipient at church today, but she wasn’t there.

And, lest you think the lack of recent posts means I haven’t been doing anything fiber-related, let me inform you that I have enough material for two posts now. Part B will go up tomorrow.

The spinning front had been deceptively quiet for the last week or so, and I was getting to feel like it was just lurking around the corner waiting for me to come by so it could jump out and trip me into paying it attention. In fact, I knew something was up with the fiber fairies, because my closet threw a pack of dpns at me and hit my knee with a dye pot when I wasn’t looking. (Well, I was looking, but for something else.) However, I placed a megaload of audiobooks on hold at the local library and now they are in, and spinning no longer feels neglected.

Thanks to The Book of Three audio, I wound off an entire finished bobbin of indigo merino, and now I’m halfway into a new one. I also wound off the silk laceweight I had on my cream-colored wheel. That was to free it up for a really neat special-order yarn inspired by ravens’ wings. Here’s a little taste of what the fibers look like.

And I’ve gotten started on the cowl neck sweater. Several times now, in fact. The first surprise came when I learned that, just because the pattern calls for worsted weight, you should still look at the numbers for the gauge swatch before ordering. Come to find out it would take a pretty beefy worsted weight to make three and a quarter stitches an inch on size ten needles. I ordered worsted from KnitPicks, which tends to run a little thin anyway, so I am now getting five stitches an inch on size eights. Care to do the math, anyone? Thankfully my knitting sister came to the rescue and knocked the first bits of the pattern into shape.

Then I got my usual miscalculations on how long the yarn needed to be for the cast on, and then I got it twisted, but fixed, and then I started putting in too many increases. So, two tries down the tubes. Then my sister taught me the cable cast on, which is my new friend. I don’t have to guess how much yarn to use and it’s just like crochet! Turns out I had been casting on the wrong amount of stitches anyway, so it was all for the best.

I’ve learned two new knitting things now. The cable cast on, and KFB. I had to ask about the KFB. And I was greeted with “Of course you know how to do the KFB. Everyone knows how to do the KFB. It’s knit front and back.” Well, excuse me! Although everyone does now, because I have been enlightened. And once I figured out to keep the working yarn well away from the needle while going for the back knit, it worked pretty well.

I shall leave you with a photo of my official gauge swatch. I knit it carefully, bound it off, and washed it, thus bowing to the rigorous standards of the higher order of knitters. However, I kept my own flavor in there and knit a three and a half inch swatch instead of four, just because I didn’t know any better.

Picture of the finished Blue Baroness Beret tomorrow, as well as sundry other fun things.

Then there was this yarn. Another two skeins of the bulky weight. Nice? Pretty? I love the jewel-like tones.

But this yarn was supposed to be purple with green and yellow flecks, and a few spots of brown. Do you see purple? Anywhere at all? I see blue, but not purple.
Every so often the carefully mixed dyes decide to separate and become new entities. The “red + blue = purple” combination separated.

So, we had two really good finished colorways and one that was still nice, but unplanned.

Fast forward a couple of days. We decided to dye some more yarn. Two skeins, this time. The DK weight turned out beautifully in pink, chocolate, white, and butterscotch.

The other skein decided to repeat the bulky weight’s quick change act. This was originally intended to be dark gray, light gray, and red. I didn’t have black, so I mixed brown and blue to get the gray tones. Guess what? The brown and blue separated.

Why is it that I’m only having trouble with it on someone else’s yarn? It must be the Bermuda Triangle of dyes. Mixed dyes usually behave just fine! Has anyone else had trouble with mixing colors?

I had the perfect pattern picked out for this. I downloaded it from Ravelry and everything, and then I opened it up and found that it was all in German.

Stunned silence.

Thankfully my sister stepped in and found me a German/English knitting terminology translator thingummy online, and I got to work deciphering the stitches. The pattern is in a chart, but the explanation of the symbols is in German. And things have come to a screeching halt.

I really wanted to make these socks. Really really really. But the pattern has defeated me. At least for now. There’s a possibility that it will be released in an English version sometime in the future. I’m going to stash the yarn away and hope for the best.

In the pot:

Goldenrod and Hydrangea after the simmering: (Hydrangea in the background)

The red flowers made this:

After being simmered to within an inch of their lives, the red flowers didn’t have much pigment or giddyup left. Kind of pathetic, actually. Oh, and I found the cheesecloth works great for straining out dyestuffs. Don’t try coffee filters unless you want to stand there forever.

Once the dye had been properly extracted from the dye stuffs, in went the alum and cream of tartar. I stirred it well, then stuffed in the wool, pre-soaked of course. Back onto the stove went the whole caboodle, and I had to distract myself for another half hour. Twiddle. Twiddle. Twiddle.

Here are the results.

Not very stunning, are they? Clockwise from the top left they are hydrangea (basically no color shift), first batch of goldenrod (some goldenish colored tips), the one dyed with red flowers is kind of hanging onto the bottom the goldenrod fleece. (You can barely tell in the photo, but it turned a pale rust in spots.) And a hopeful second batch of goldenrod (pale yellow in a few places). Not very exciting. Nor encouraging after an afternoon of work. Ah well. I got some experience out of it.

On reflecting, I think the main thing I did wrong was put the alum and cream of tartar in with the dye before adding the fiber. Some people can make this work, but others have trouble with the mordant adhering to the dye stuff and not the fiber, which gives you lovely colored water and untouched wool. From now on, I premordant. End of discussion. I also think I cooked the red too long.

Well, I’m battered but not crushed. I’ll be doing more in the future. And hopefully the near future.

Needless to say I promptly forgot about wool washing (although I did get the next batch in the degreaser) and switched to natural dyeing. You can imagine my excitement. A whole new world of discovery opened up! In two minutes flat I was picturing myself discovering an as yet untried dye stuff and bursting on the natural dyeing scene on Ravelry with an amazing revelation. My blog stats would soar, I’d walk on air for days . . . and I was getting carried away. I reeled myself back in and did the obvious. I picked the flowers.

I only had five flower heads to work with, not enough for a whole pot of dye, so I decided to put a glass jar in a larger pot of hot water and heat the dye that way. But one jar doesn’t take up the whole pot. I had room for two more jars. That meant that I got to come up with two other things to try! The goldenrod was a no-brainer, but I got stuck for the third. Then I thought about trying out hydrangea leaves and smashed one up to see what it did. It left nice yellow green stains on a paper towel so I picked about an ounce of leaves and trundled them inside.

I wound up leaving the flower heads in cold water to see if that affected the color any (and to float out any bugs that were hiding.) This didn’t seem to help color-wise, but I did get rid of some little white bug that could float.

I put my new mortar and pestle to use and smashed up the two fresh dyestuffs. Oh, and by the way, it worked superbly. I had to be very careful not to go on a “things to crush up” rampage. It was so much fun! But anyway, back to the dyeing.

The red flowers affected the water at once. As did the goldenrod. Here’s what it looked like.

The recipe I have calls for simmering the dyestuffs for 45 minutes to an hour. I obeyed, trying to distract myself so I wouldn’t hover over the pot…

(to be continued)

Sweetheart Yarn

We laid it out next to the potential coordinating yarn and discovered a bit of a problem. They don’t go well together.

Maybe Not