Monthly Archives: April 2010

Blocking Day

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Blocking

My internet access was out most of last week and I was just too frustrated from dealing with the cable company and all that entailed to bother posting.  I just didn’t feel like messing with it.

However, I did a ton of knitting.  I finished all the knitting on the Minimalist Cardigan and it is all pinned out and blocking right now.  The pieces may never dry since it’s so humid here, but it’s a start.  I spent most of my week playing the Sims, since I don’t have to be online for that, so I cast on a pair of socks to knit on while I played.  I cast on Angee, from Sock Innovation, in the purple and black yarn I dyed a couple weeks ago and I’ve knit most of the cuff of the socks, I have about ten rows until I start the heel.  I spent a lot of time playing the Sims last week.

And I think I’m about to lose my connection again, it’s getting really slow so I’m going to pop this online and try again tomorrow!

A Dye Day, Finally

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I’ve been itching to dye some white sock yarn I had, so I can knit some pretty socks, and I happened to have the house to myself today so I decided to have a big dye day.  I spent quite a bit of time this morning skeining the yarn, I ended up only having enough for two pairs of socks, made me a little sad.

Then I decided on colors.  I knew I wanted something green and brown and something purple, so I set off to begin.

Green yarn mosaic

Here’s the first skein I dyed.  I put these pictures backwards by progress, so starting from the right I took my skein of yarn and laid it out on a piece of plastic and sprinkled it with some orange dye.  This color is mostly yellow with a touch of red and it looks much brighter before the dye is set.  I let that sit for about ten minutes and then put the yarn in the dye pot with some avocado green dye, the dye was leftover from the bright green I dyed for my mittens.  I sprinkled some black and brown dye powder on top and let the yarn simmer for about half an hour and the left picture is how it looks when it was done. 

I have to admit that I was pretty scared while this was dyeing, it looked really dark and muddy and I thought it would be too dark, but once all the dye had soaked up and it dried some, it looked much better.  I’m very happy with how this came out.  I love the variation and depth of color and I think I’ll find a sock pattern to cast on as soon as this is dry.

Purple Yarn

Next was the purple.  With this I wanted a semi-solid purple with areas of very dark and lighter purple colors, the black just sort of happened on the fly.  I took a dowel and laid it across the top of my dye pot and laid the skein of yarn on top of it, so only half the yarn was immersed in the dye.  I left it like that for about twenty minutes and then put the other half into the dye and left it until the water was clear.  I then decided it was too bright, so I mixed a three parts black to one part sky blue and squeezed it in spots on the yarn, heavier in places and lighter in other places and then I let the pot sit until the water was clear again.  I got the black dye too heavy in a few places on the yarn and I’m afraid it’s going to pool, but I like how it looks, there’s a lot more subtle variation than the picture shows.

Orange Yarn

This, well, lets just say I got bored and felt like experimenting.  I had a ton of leftover orange dye after doing the green yarn and I didn’t want to save it since I don’t use much orange, and I hated to just pour it out.  I decided to experiment.  I took a ball of Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool and I put it in the pot with the orange dye and sprinkled some brown powder on top and let it sit until all the dye had been absorbed, it took almost an hour.  On the left is how it looks now.  The yarn is still really wet and I’m going to wait for it to dry more until I skein it but I think it looks pretty interesting.  The dye took darker on the outside and lighter on the inside of the ball and the brown didn’t penetrate into the ball at all, so it gradates from darker to lighter in the ball, as far as I can tell, anyway.

Today was fun, I really need to dye more often but I never have the time to do it.  I’m not home alone much anymore and it’s just too hard to try to dye around someone else.  I wish I had a dedicated workspace.

It’s Something

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Cardigan Front

I’m a little tired and grumpy today, so bear with me.  So, the day before yesterday I finished the back of my Minimalist Cardigan, cast off, laid it out flat and thought “Hmm, this looks kind of big.”  I grabbed my measuring tape and took a quick measurement of the width and it was a couple inches wider than it should be.  “Well, I’ll try blocking it out, maybe when I wash it, it will shrink.”  I soaked the piece in the sink for a few hours (I forgot about it), I laid it out on the floor, measured again and found that it had grown a couple more inches.  It was about four or five inches too big.  I just decided to let dry and then I’d frog it.  In the meantime, I went down a needle size to a US6, swatched and got gauge.

So what went wrong?  Well, I’m a test/sample knitter for KnitPicks, right?  Part of my job requires me to get gauge with their yarn and the needle size in the pattern on everything I knit, no exceptions.  I either have to adjust how I knit, or block the project to gauge.  So I didn’t bother swatching, thinking it would work itself out.  I had planned on knitting a few inches and then checking my gauge and it totally slipped my mind.  I even thought the sweater was looking a little big but didn’t bother to check the width.  Ugh.  The moral of the story is to remember to swatch all the time.

Like I said before, I went down a needle size and my gauge is good, it’s about a half stitch (per four inches) smaller than the pattern gauge but I laid out my completed front and pinned it out and it should block to the correct width just fine.  So I finished the front today, I’m making mine a little shorter (a half inch), since I’m short, and things are looking good. I’ll finish this second front and then re-knit the back and then do the sleeves.  I’m going to shorten the sleeves a little too, I have short arms, so I’ll knit both of them at the same time so I can make sure they’re both the same.

Now, I’m about to pass out, so it’s coffee time.

Wave & Dimple Kimono

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Wave & Dimple Kimono

I promised I would eventually post a picture of the kimono and here it is.  When I saw this picture the first thing I thought was that I need a haircut.  The second thing?  Damn, I’m freaking pale.  I had no idea my skin was almost the exact same off-white color as the shed or I would have found somewhere else to take the picture, the black dress and dark (natural-color) hair are throwing me back to my goth days, that I never totally grew out of anyway.  Also, my allergy medication makes my face puffy and I need to put my camera up higher when I take pictures of myself and not slouch.  So, anyway, here’s the kimono.  This is what I had planned on wearing to the party I went to Saturday night but I decided I didn’t want to wear a dress, and this one is a touch short, it hits about two inches above my knees which is really odd considering I’m only 5’2”-ish and everything is too long on me.

I’m not going to post all the little details about the sweater again, you can see them on Ravelry if you want, and that’s a public link, so you can look at it even if you’re not a member, which you should be anyway.  I am quite happy with this little sweater.  I made the body an inch longer than the pattern called for and I should have made the sleeves a touch shorter, but they’re fine.  I made the middle size, the 53.5” bust, which has a ton of ease, like seven and a half inches, and I’m really glad I resisted the temptation to make the bigger size because I like the way this fits just fine.  And instead of wet blocking this, I just gave it a quick shot of steam after I did the seaming because I didn’t want to flatten out the cables.  It’s purty.  I love it with this dress and it looks good with jeans and a t-shirt, too.  It will be nice and warm next fall, I probably won’t get to wear it until then, it’s 80 today and not supposed to cool back down for a while.

So, later sometime this week if I feel like blogging again, I’ll have an update on the Minimalist cardigan (the back is done and I think it’s sitting in water in my sink, crap I forgot I had decided to go ahead and block it, whoops!) and Madli’s Shawl (I’ve been knitting on it, a tiny bit).

Sleepy Progress

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Madli's Shawl

I’m going to make this a quick one today, I’m really tired.  I have terrible allergies and had to break down and take some medicine for them today and it’s just wiped me out.  Plus I haven’t been sleeping good and I stayed out until 4am Saturday night and had a few drinks and I still haven’t recovered from it, I’m not used to that anymore.

Anyway, two repeats down on the body of Madli’s Shawl.  The color is way off here, it’s much brighter.  This is kind of hard to work on since I really have to pay attention to what I’m doing so I haven’t knit much on it.  My eyes have been too blurry and watery (thanks, pollen!) to do more than a few rows at a time while I’m watching TV.  It’s okay, though, I’m not in a hurry to finish.

Cardigan back

Bigger yarn on bigger needles is definitely called for right now.  I’m about three inches from finishing the back of the Minimalist Cardigan.  This thing is just flying off the needles.  This sweater is completely brainless.  But I somehow managed to flub the ribbing, it’s supposed to be 2×1 and I knit 2×2 but I really just don’t care, the 2×2 works with the stitch count (and if it doesn’t on the front and sleeves, then I’ll make it work) and it looks fine.  I’m not ripping out the entire back of a sweater to redo it.  I don’t care.

Party Nails

Since I went to a party, I decided to do my nails.  They’ve been bare for a long time.  This is Rimmel Steel Grey with Rimmel Purple Rain stamped with the zebra print on the Konad m69 plate.  This polish is chipping off pretty easy but I vaguely remember trying to pry off a beer bottle cap with my bare hands, so that probably did it.  I had a great time, though.  I haven’t done much since New Year’s and it was good to see all my friends and get dressed up and drink a little too much and just talk and laugh all night.  It was so fun.  I need to do that more often.