The Skinny One

Who's as happy to proceed as Stan Laurel?

Shaft!

Nope. It's me and It's I--whichever you prefer.

Because I just wasn't comfortable with that pale green color for socks, I finally decided to re-dye it after doing many swatches with different combos of yarns, needle sizes, etc. I wanted to go a little darker and a little duller. I reskeined the yarn and put it in the giant pot to soak. I mixed up some kelly green Wilton's. Then for the dull I went to the strawberry Kool-Aid I'd used last time. I'd only used a bit before and had saved the rest in the envelope. Figuring that I had about 2/3 of a pack left, I dumped it into my dye mix. To my horror, the whole thing turned a terrible greenish purplish brown. It was putrid! Here comes the wtf? . . .wait for it. . . I poured the evil fluid into the bath with the yarn. Pour it down the drain? No sir! Stan Laurel and I both know it'll be just fine, if not better.

OK, I'll leave it in a brief time only, thought I. Again, wtf? because I left it in too long. It's now olive green withbrown streaks. The brown is beautiful actually--You can't get that on purpose. In the mean time I think it will be too dark to use with the forest green I have for the socks. We'll see how it is when it's completely dry, but I knew right away that it's back to the drawing board for a new light green yarn. Get a load of what happened.

In the meantime there was a lot of dye left in the water and I decided to reskein the KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud laceweight I had earlier wound into a ball and put it in the bath. (Yep, that's what I was doing while I was leaving the other yarn in too long.) So I dropped the hank in and after awhile it was a sort of a tan, almost metallic looking. It was actually a very nice color if you're into tans, which I am not. Therefore, I decided to add more red. The only red Kool-Aid I had left was black cherry. It wasn't my first choice, but hey, what the hell? I used 2 envelopes and got a very nice mauvey-burgundyish shade. It dried much more brown and I like it a lot. I don't like working with yarn finer than sewing thread (for real) but I think I know where it's going to go if I can manage to wind it yet again.

There is still a lot of dye left in the dyebath. So now I have 2 hanks of yarn hanging in the bathroom and a lot of lovely dyebath. So I boiled it down for a while, but then I had to go to bed. I want to be able to use it for painting skeins, so it needs to be less dilute. I'll see if I get a chance to boil it down some more tomorrow.

I have already ordered new yarn. Brown Sheep Wildfoote in Mistletoe. <—Look! In the road, a pun!

Ravishing Other People's Knitting, Part 2

Here it is again with a better seam, more suited for public view. I still don't know if I will felt it. If I don't, it'll be a pretty large bag. It is approx. 14 x 48 inches laid out. There is nothing that says I have to use the whole piece. I can hack it up some more and make other things.

Here is a link to a fabulous and hilarious example of true Frankenknitting: Brouhaha's Blog. There is also good writing there.

I tried to show where I crocheted a rough straight line across the edge. I had earlier sewed across the edge of each panel with a needle and handy sock yarn. Despite my best efforts at measurement (sometimes called "folding things in half") knitting is a living thing and refuses to conform. This knitting especially is a living thing. It's very lively and sproingy. This must be what is causing me to have second thoughts about felting. Even in the center pull ball I wound you can appreciate the loft of this yarn. This piece used three strips and I still have two more plus a skein & a half or so.

Solicitation

of Opinions

Would you wear socks in the color of the light green background in the picture? If it doesn't look very bright on your monitor, look at this, more accurate picture:

A Day in the Life of a Ram

The paper this ram is eating says

Ram for Sale

Not a good day

Tempted by the Fruit of Another (Knitter or 2)

That to which I am up lately is FrankenKnitting. Maybe it's n0t FrankenKnitting in the strictest definition because I'm only remaking the objects, not cobbling disparate parts together.

Seiding made these gloves that didn't fit her right. She's had them for a long time. They are one of her very first knits. (?Como se dice "over-achiever"?) In a brief moment of exasperation with the October hot/cold weather and how to dress for it, she offered them to me. They didn't fit me either. Now here's my kind of challenge. I'm attempting to alter them so that they fit her better. Naturally, I've already frogged my reknit twice.

The pink stuff isn't really pink pink. It's more of a mauve pink. I would call it rose. Dang! I had to write "rose." Now I've got La Vie en Rose stuck again. You know where. It is the product of a swap with Elizabeth from our knitting camp in August. She didn't knit it. She acquired it in this condition. It's very nice vintage, very classic worsted weight wool yarn. No label. There are 4 cable strips, aproximately 6 feet long and two skeins to boot. I'm sewing them together in order to make a bag. At first I was planning to felt it. In fact I hauled it out because I wanted to do some felting this weelend and it fights against my fiber to felt just one or 2 things at a time, it being so fuelish. Because I wanted to felt it, I sewed the seams very loosely. But now I'm thinking maybe I won't felt it. The seams then are too sloppy by far.

Stitch Markers

Here are some stitch markers I made the other night. Red is for stop. Green is for go.This is the container in which I keep my stitch markers. It was a long ago present from my Auntie June. It waited for years before I discovered its true use.This is the inside. I especially like how the impromptu yarn stitch markers cling to the inside of the lid. This is one of my favorite objects. It has reached high levels of both form and function. Who could ask for more?

Stopping for statuary

Things up to which I've been.

Wound one of my big hanks of Cherry Tree Hill Super Sock Mill Ends. So who knew it was discontinuous? I know they're called Mill Ends, but I thought I was only buying one end. (Why they would make an end 1200 yards: not my business.) I ended up with seven "balls." I apostrophized balls because one of them only barely qualifies for that definition. Pissed as I was at the time of the winding, I have now come to accept it. Choose your battles, eh whot? I'd rather have the seven "balls" than one ball with all those knots.

Indeed, if you count there are only six. Number seven is actually the unwound strands in the picture. A total of five grams worth.

Stitch Markers & Felting: I made a bunch of stitch markers yesterday and I am learning to needle felt. I can't show you all the stitch markers or the front of the felting project. They are secret. I will upload pictures later when Blogger cooperates.

Ripple/feather and fan/old shale stitch shawl. An emergency project for a dear friend who recently lost her sister. The death was unexpected and my friend had already been going through the wringer. She needs a lot of hugs, so in a way, this is like a prayer shawl. (I really know nothing about the prayer shawl ministry. Please excuse my ignorance if there is a particular definition or use which I have just trampled.) I broke out my Schaefer Marjaana in the Eleanor Roosevelt color. It's 550 yards, a 50/50 silk and wool blend. To it I'm adding (after lots of other choices were started and abandoned) a soysilk ribbon by South West Trading Company. I think it's called Phoenix. I bought it at French Knots just for the project. It goes very nicely even though it doesn't match any of the colors of Eleanor Roosevelt. My friend definitely is a green girl. At least in my mind if not in hers. She doesn't wear green come to think of it. Well, I know I'm right. Naturally the colors in the picture are off. The green in particular came out poorly. It is much less dusty and pale in person. I've tried to show both the front and back because I think I like the back better. I reduced the multiple of the pattern to 12 stitches instead of 18. I'm trying to keep it from looking like an afghan and I was hoping reducing the scale of the pattern would help.

I also love

October roses.

123 is Six

The assignment:

3 things I love + 3 things I hate = 6 things

1. COLOR. It's a pet peeve of mine that most of the cars around here don't have vivid colors. I usually say that they don't have a color. They almost exclusively come in various shades of silver & gold, black, and white. Red & blue are the only real colors you get to see much at all. I especially dislike the silver ones. I saw a fantastic hopped up irridescent car the other day. We were next to each other at 2 stop lights in a row. The colors were really bright and strong. It was wild. It had a fatal flaw however. The hubcaps kept spinning after the rest of the car had stopped. I can't handle something like that.

I can kind of understand the lack of color that we tend toward when painting the exteriors of houses and buildings. We want them to fit into their environments or we want to showcase the natural materials, though I'd prefer to paint them fuchsia and other good colors. But you'd think we'd want our cars to be stand-out bright colors that would aid in being able to keep them from being cracked up.

You can play with color on your blog if you know the html hex codes. Here are a couple of links that tell you. (That's not how I made the picture. That's from MS Paint.)
http://www.december.com/html/spec/color4.html
http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/big.html

2. Cucumbers. I hate them. They are my most hated food. They can make me throw up. I went looking on Google Images for a picture of cucumbers. I found the ad below. I don't think I would enjoy that kind of cucumber either! But I did enjoy the ad. Link to original ad.
"Sea Cucumbers Ready to Cook
Detailed Product Description
Sea cucumber is a famous nourishment amoung the Chinese. What we servered is not The trditional sea cucumber which is dried and the consumers have to dip them in Water for a considerable period of time. Our sea cucumbers fead for cooking are Handpicked from local sea cucumber and processed carefully to make them maintain Their protein and nutrition maximumly. Customers have no need to dip them in Water any more but just to uppack to cook. Their taste and feeling in mounth is Better than the dried one dipped in the water."
3. Yarn. I love yarn. Duh.

I'm In Love With My Car part 2

I'm In Love With My Car part 1

Words, music & vocals by Roger Taylor,
from Queen

The machine of a dream
Such a clean machine
With the pistons a pumpin
And the hub caps all gleam

When Im holdin your wheel
All I hear is your gear
When my hands on your grease gun
Oh its like a disease son

Im in love with my car
Gotta feel for my automobile
Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar
Such a thrill when your radials squeal

Told my girl Ill have to forget her
Rather buy me a new carburetor
So she made tracks sayin
This is the end now
Cars dont talk back
Theyre just four wheeled friends now

When Im holdin your wheel
All I hear is your gear
When Im cruisin in overdrive
Dont have to listen to no run of the mill talk jive

Im in love with my car
Gotta feel for my automobile
Im in love with my car
String back gloves in my automolove

I've been taking pictures of my car off and on all week, but it wasn't until I had a meeting with a financial planner and he asked me how much my car is worth and I was obliged to say, "Nothing" that I realized I love my car.

It's--She's--14 years old. How much is that in car years? We can give it the equivalent of dog years. Let's see now, commencin to cypherin .... carry the one, ought, ought, ought, that's 98 years old. Then we can knock off 10 to 15 years for low miles. What we have here is an old car. It doesn't look it. Until you get a little closer, that is. We have loose moldings and rear door sills nearly eaten through with rust. (I have a bad habit of leaving the windows open in the rain.) It's a good thing that a lot of the body of this car is plastic. The driver's side visor is scraped up and showing it's innards due to being swung over to the side position when the automatic shoulder belts activated. The bit of elastic there lost its stretch many long years ago. There are cricks and cracks and stains all over. We got into an accident last fall and the insurance company paid 2500 dollars to repair it when the mechanic told them it wasn't totaled because I got all sentimental and choked up when I told him "It's a been a good car" as if he were the vet and my horse had a broken leg.

Hello? Hello in there!!!

Just what is it about "Meow" that you don't understand?