After a lovely time together, my “Rondel” base laceweights are retiring. These are the lovely alpaca/silk blends with a unique construction, lots of drape, and a little touch of fuzzy halo. It’s been lovely having them, but it is their time to go.

All that being said, the skeins of Rondel left in my laceweight store are now on sale. So drop on by if you’d like to adopt one before they go away. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

~ Rebekah

June is LaceweightYarns‘ anniversary month, so I’m running a free shipping sale on U.S. and Canadian orders, starting tomorrow night (Sunday) and lasting one week. Other countries will receive discounted rates.

And blog post wise, well, I have lots to share. Hopefully I can snag an hour or two and get you caught up. Gravel roads, fording creeks, a drum carder that won’t keep its claws to itself, and knitwear idea that morphed into five or six items.

Spinning and general crafting levels have been down as we’ve had lots of wonderful house guests for the last several weeks, but now things are grinding back towards normal and I can get back to spinning. And dyeing. Lovely dyeing.

Here’s my first stab at dyeing some mohair/silk laceweight in my Blackberry Jam colorway. I still get the yarn quivers whenever I look at this. Gorgeous.

I also managed to get way too much purple on a batch of Dawn Treader lace, and it turned out amazing. My only problem is that now I’ve got to come up with a name for the new colorway.

And then there’s the two-skein set of bulky weight that I just amazed myself with. How does one go about naming a combination of black, emerald green, and purple? I may wind up having to put a picture up here and run a name contest.

Spinning-wise, I’ve been working away on some merino/mohair fingering weight. I decided to spin it as a single-ply yarn, primarily for quickness of spinning, but (to make it legit) also for color separation purposes. But that sort of undermined my idea for using it as sock yarn as, supposedly, socks of single-ply don’t stand up to wear and tear as well. (Although I do have a pair knit from Mini Moochi, and they’re lovely and squishable.)

I have a project in mind for the yarn, believe it or not. Really.

Be amazed.

What happened to the days of just spinning at random and letting the yarn fall where it might? I don’t know, but if they ever stop by again I hope they bring some ideas with them, because I don’t think my yarn bin can hold much more. You see, I’ve discovered the problem with spinning. You end up with two stashes. One of fiber, and one of yarn. Trying to get rid of your stash is like trying to have all the laundry clean at once.

But, back to the pattern. While wandering around on Ravelry I came across a very fun scarf/mini-shawl pattern called The Hatter’s Party Scarf. It’s knit from tip to tip, going back and forth across the shorter way, so it’ll help keep my yarn colors from mushing together.

I’m very pleased with how this yarn turned out. Fiber Fancy did an excellent job on the dyeing—not one dye leak when I set the twist—and I love the colors. Ironically enough, they’re not my usual diet of reds, blues, and greens. How did that happen? At least it isn’t a mid-knitting-life identity crisis. I’m just broadening my color horizons.

(Like I need that.)

But, I have made some rather good progress on my second alpaca sock, and I have found the secret to finishing a never-ending pair of extra-tall socks! The key is to go and stay in a rather chilly house for a few days. Take the sock knitting, and just barely enough pairs of regular-height socks. By the middle of the first day you’ll find yourself huddled on the couch watching old, instant-stream TV shows off of Netflix and knitting for your life in the hopes of warmer toes.

Unfortunately this knitting streak didn’t cross over to the other pair of unfinished socks I brought along, or the Emily Dickinson shawl that I had hoped to start again. However, I did have a lovely time resting, reading (three whole books!), and movie-watching.

If I’d been thinking I would have taken along the Fall Shawl and a large needle for “weaving in the ends” purposes. Oh well. It’ll get done eventually.
As you may be able to see, I didn’t quite finish the pattern. Due to my scandalous “departing of the text” and “altering,” the final project was smaller than I thought. So, I stopped knitting a ways from the end of the neck and left myself a handy little notch out of the middle. That way it actually stays on for the most part. I think a really interesting shawl pin or button will be in order for this. The best way to wear it is with the two edges meeting in the front like the front of a cardigan. It keeps my shoulders and neck warm and doesn’t look half bad—once you learn to ignore the gazillion and three little bits of yarn dangling off of it.

Yes, I think a button and loop would be the best way to keep it on in the front. I know of some rather fun buttons at JoAnn Etc. They’re wooden, and not quite square. Or I could purchase some from this interesting shop - We shall see what comes.

Speaking of buttons, I still don’t have them for the Sky Pirate gloves! They shall have to languish under my desk a while longer.

But, on the bright side, here’s one of my more recent yarn creations. It sold right away, but I will definitely be making the colorway again.

When I first made it, I didn’t keep track of how I did the colors, so I thought it was non-reproducible. Then a good friend asked me to pretty-please try again for her sake, and I tried, and (praise God!) it worked! So, it is now fully reproducible. Allow me to introduce, the Dawn Treader yarn!

Shortly after I recreated that, my friend with the drum carder came for a visit. We had to cut things short, due to the threat of impending snow, (Yes, snow here in the Southeast. Lots of it.) but we still got ten batts of the Iowa fleece all carded up. I have some interesting plans for these. Hopefully it will work out.

And, as a fun note to end the post on, my knitting sister (who is also my amazing yarn photographer for the Etsy sites) put together a collage of all the products I made and listed last year. Quite a few, eh?

Speaking of, I’ve been very busy dyeing things since I got back from Colorado earlier this month. I haven’t done this large of a dye batch in a long time.
It stretched over two or three days. The first day was all sorts of fun, ha ha ha. I dyed four batches of various things, and of the four, none of them came out the color I was aiming for. God was so gracious in that they were still usable. They just weren’t coming out as intended. Rather frustrating at the time. I actually found myself not wanting to dye again. Ever. (Scary thought, no?)

But I took a day off from dyeing and tackled the rest with renewed vim, vigor, and some free choice in regards to colorways. In short: I got to play! Well, play with most of it.

I’m contributing to the September Phat Fiber samples, so some of the fibers needed to be inspired by “Farmers Market.” I actually wound up doing four or five different things I could send in samples from, but one of them is this Blackberry Jam superwash fingering weight.

Gorgeous! I dyed two skeins worth. One for the shop and the other to chop up into little 15-20 yard samples.

A couple of other highlights from the dye run, all alpaca laceweights—

And some more big news, I won a batt! It’s pretty and pink, and I have no clue what I’m going to do with it. I have been stalking Ravelry hat and cowl patterns, though. (I figure they’re something I can knit with stashed stuff, wear often as the weather gets cooler, and they won’t take long to knit!) Perhaps I can spin this up and turn it into a nice tam.

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.

To explain. In the natural course of events, I ran out of my Crimson dye about a week ago.

Now, I’ve used two red dyes before. One is Crimson (my favorite) and the other is Fire Red. I had always preferred Crimson because of the deeper color tones. (The Fire Red tended to go orangey.) Well, when I ran out I hastened to order more, but the place I was buying from didn’t have Crimson! Against my will, I wound up trying the Scarlet dye.

A few days ago I gave it a trial run, not expecting much success. I aimed for the brightest, most intense, luminescent shade of red I thought I could get away with. And it exceeded my expectation. Wow! I’m so excited.

For the record, that’s a merino/silk laceweight that will be going up on Etsy in the next few days. Along with its friend. My lovely cobalt blue and purple version. (Which is already up.)

Spinning wise, I’m plying the Willow fingering weight. It looks like it will be a less dense of a yarn than I had originally envisioned, but still quite nice.

As my wonderful aunt is here visiting, we got to go to the Yarn Garden again. And I definitely splurged. I’m afraid I have been bitten by the knitting bug and will never fully recover. I didn’t buy a single skein with crochet in mind.

This brown yarn is alpaca fingering weight, which I plan to use for a glove pattern I found on Ravelry. It’s called Knotty Gloves and has some beautiful cable-work on the wrists. I think they’re cables.

Then I wandered back into the bargain closet and found this skein/ball of laceweight.
You can’t really see all the light blue in it, but it’s there. The colors make me think of sea foam and beaches and summery days and . . . Ahem. I’m thinking it should become an airy sort of scarf/wrap/cowl when it grows up.

And, speaking of wraps, while we were there I tried on a beautiful Braided Wrap. It’s knit in worsted weight, and the front is actually braided as you knit. I really want to make it. The pattern is available as a download. Now all I need is several skeins of turquoise yarn.

And, as I’ve had the sock itch even worse since the lack of translation on a gorgeous pattern, I bought sock yarn. Two kinds.

Here’s the first. It’s a gorgeous single ply. Very smooshy and soft, and the colors are amazing.

I got two balls of this, since they were only fifty grams each, and because I like having tall socks. Or, at least I think I do. We’ll find out once they’re done. I like the idea of having tall socks.

Then I got this hundred-gram batch, which is a lot darker and subtler in the color shifts than the above sock yarn. It’s sort of a charcoal with pale blue, brown, and gray streaks.

I wanted an almost solid because there’s a pattern (on Ravelry again) that is a pretty version of all over ribbing. The yarn is a little darker than I’d like, but it should knit up nicely. There’s no real problem with dark socks.

Then I was going to dye the superwash sock yarn with browns and greens the way I normally do (pouring the dye over the top), but I really wanted a softer look.
I decided to kettle dye the yarn green, then hit it with the brown once it was done. Halfway through the cook time I pulled the yarn out and instantly decided that adding brown would be like adding garlic to an ice cream sundae. Both nice, but together—no. Thus, the superwash has remained a beautiful limey green.