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.
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Okay, so I dyed the Rebecca yarn teal, and that felt like enough of an adventure, what with too much dye powder and all. How could it get worse?
Well, for starters, I suddenly discovered that I’m not up to creating a garment of this importance without a pattern. And I found this out after crocheting a good-sized section of it. I did, oh, maybe four rounds of double-crochet stitches on the “hem” of the sweater and thenstopped to try it on. It was about four inches too big around. I’d have been swimming in it, if I didn’t run out of yarn before the end.
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The results are back on the latest dyeing escapade. Feast your eyes on this!
Hand-dyed Lotus
It’s two hundred and forty-six yards of what we think is a merino worsted weight. It’s a commercial yarn, and the label got separated from it and the other yarn. (Note to self: don’t try to do weights that are too similar at the same time!) So it might be a superwash DK weight.
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Carnival Yarn
I have finally settled on a name for the Fall/Crayon yarn. Well, three, actually. Carnival, Hot-Air Balloon, or Renaissance. Carnival seems to be sticking. The colors darkened a bit and then blended into all sorts of amazing combinations. I really should go through and write some of my favorite mixes down so I can re-create them later. You can see some of them in the picture, of course, but there are tons more.
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Look what arrived in the mail! A pile of yarn skeins eagerly waiting to see what color they’ll become. The possibilities are endless.
Blank Yarn Knit Picks
That’s two skeins of merino worsted weight, a skein of merino lace weight, a skein of superwash merino DK weight, and a skein of superwash merino worsted weight. Fun fun fun! I’m eager to try out some new color combinations.
My aunt bought me 220 yards of worsted weight (at least I thought it was worsted weight. Closer investigation revealed it to be much closer to sport weight), Superwash Merino before she left, and I just finished dyeing it. (And some washed wool that happened to fall into a pot.)
Pink and Blue Merino
The colors turned out much brighter than I thought it would, but I like it. This was made using the colors Sky Blue and Pink. We got the yarn at
The Yarn Garden. A very nice shop.
Then I wanted to do the wool in brown, tan, cream, and turquoise.
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