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.