Whew..That's Done!

I finally, just a few minutes ago, finished my Christmas knitting. No pictures, sorry, as it needs to remain a surprise and some nosey recipients might come here to see ;) Stitching up is not my favorite thing to do, and neither is weaving the ends in, so I'm well and truly stoked that that is over and done with. Now, I have the articles in the wash, and will block them later to night. I now have lots of wrapping to do, and will hopefully get everything mailed out early next week. Hopefully!

BUT, now I can get back to my spinning, which tickles me to no end. About the only thing I've done in the past couple of weeks (other than Christmas knitting) is to dye up some lovely white merino I purchased from Jane at Mosely Park using Koolaid. I wanted to try and go for my apple blossom colors, and I'm pretty happy with the results.





I also got some lovely RAOK gifts from one of my forum buddies on Ravelry, in a little special Christmas RAOK we had. Much love goes out to Clairberry for the lovely pacakage and the extra little something that came shipped from the supplier, Jolly Jumbuck.




The sock yarn is a blend of merino, cashmere and nylon, and is so soft and pretty! The colorway is magnificent! Now, it's been almost a month..maybe more...since I finished a pair of socks, and my fingers were itching to cast this on. So a few days ago, when I finished all of the actual knitting I could do on my Christmas knitting, I cast these onto a pair of extra long knitpicks.



They are a toe up version of the ever popular "Monkey Socks" called "Los Manos Locos", and the link to the download can be found at Knitting Sutra. It's a BETA pattern and I'm hoping for the best. I'm making them using a slightly larger needle than required, as they are sized a ladies medium, which made strictly by pattern can be a bit tight in the heel on me. I may have to modify the heel, but we'll see about that down the track.

I made a trip to The Walking Wheel studios a while back and bought some more handspun, plus about 500g more of the Corridale roving that's just so well done and easy to spin. Besides all that, I decided to try some new adventures in dyeing. I bought the Earth Pallettes Dye Kit, which are made right here in South Australia (Gladstone to be precise).


I haven't used them yet, but I'm excited to try them once I get the chance. It requires mixing all of the base colors at once and then storing them, so I still need to find jars and such to store it in.

Well, that's all for today. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I've been doing this Christmas knitting for so long, and rather ignoring my posting, that I've had a bit of catching up to do. Ah well, it will all come up at one time or another.

Happy Knitting (and dyeing, and spinning)!!

Weekend Fibre Warrior

Now, what the world has asked for! Damn the Olympics! Everyone..I'm sure..is waiting with baited breath to see what all I've gotten accomplished on my hubby-free weekend, and I just couldn't disappoint everyone!

I have, of course, knit more on the "Socks Ahoy" sock project, although really not enough progress has been made to warrent a picture. I have switched off to my last two "half balls" of Koolaid dyed Patonyle, and have added another pattern repeat to either side of each sock (that would be two pattern repeats per sock) to compensate for my fat calves. I expect to have them finished in the next few days, although as we all know...anything can happen.

Finished or not, I do plan to cast on for another sock (or something small) project before next weekend, which is "State Titles" in Western Action shooting. I'm off work Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and we have a cabin over near the state shooting park for Friday and Saturday night, so I will need a small project for the event. The Socks Ahoy are just too close to completion to last thru that. Trouble is, I haven't settled on anything yet.

I also managed to get some dyeing done. I had 3 50g balls of white 8ply Heirloom superwash that I'd bought heaven knows how long ago, so Saturday morning, I put the wool on the skein winder and got it ready to dye.



I tied green cotton yarn around each skein, and then tied all three skeins together, so that (hopefully) they would stay together during the dying process and match fairly well.Then I gave the whole thing a good 24 hour overnight soak (ok, maybe 22 hours..but whose counting?)



I wanted something this time that wasn't quite as pastel, or as bright, as what I've made before. Something a bit more earthy...colors anyone would wear. So I got some ideas from this article in Knitty and from my Twisted Sister's Sock Workbook (which is, by the way, more about dyeing than about knitting socks)and went to mixing Koolaid colors.

I sat up the "dyeing lab" (the dyeing lab meaning old bowls, aluminium baking pans and a mismatched collection of jars) and I did a heap of experimenting. I really wish that I could tell you how much I used of what, but in the end, I really couldn't. I had decided that I was going to "dip dye" this lot, and that I wanted a yellow base and brownish goldish colors (that was the plan, anyway) I took a few packs of yellow koolaid and disolved them in water in a bowl. Then I looked at the color wheel. Purple was on the other side, so I added a few drops of purple to tone down the yellow. That was going to be my base color.

Then I took yellow or orange and added either blue or purple (those "opposite" colors on that wheelie thingy) and made a few other shades I wound up fairly happy with.



I took the skein out of it's soak, squeezed out some of the excess water, and dunked the whole bit into the bowl of toned down yellow. Then I took it out, set it aside, dumped the clear water left in the bowl and took the next lightest color, the more orangy one, and poured it into the bowl. Once again, I dunked, but this time only a part of the skein. I did this twice more, going from lightest to darkest shades, and leaving a gap of plain yellow for good measure.

I stuck it in the microwave for two-ish minutes and then lay it out to cool for about an hour (although it was probably cool in 10 minutes...but I had other things to do).



Then I gave it a bath in sudsy wool wash and rinsed and hung it in the utility room sink.



I'm pretty happy with the colors so far, but it's yet to dry, so I'll have to get back to you on my final verdict.

Now, on to other things. I had the intention of spinning something over this weekend, and having the "poodle trauma still fresh in my mind, I though perhaps a change of fibre would be in order...to give me new incetive...a new zest for the spin.

Not too long ago, my friend from Moseley Park Shop had sent me some silk caps that she had dyed with some Koolaid I had sent her (aren't we knitters a sharing bunch??!!??), so I though..yeah...silk..that's the ticket. I'm not sure what exactly I had expected. When the package with the silk caps had arrived, I had looked at them, even taken them out and felt of them, but I guess I hadn't examined them all that much. When I took them out this weekend with the intention of working with them, I discovered all sorts of things I hadn't counted on.

For instance, did you know that silk caps really do look like caps? Well, I didn't. But when you open it up, it does look like those little paper caps I used to make in grade school. Cute, but what on earth do I do with it?




Faced with this delimma, I consulted the Google Gods, and found this website with pretty dang good instructions on how to make rovings out of your cap.

So I separated the layers and came up with very very filmy stuff.



Then I poked a hole in the center of that and stretched and stretched and stretched until I had this HUGE circle of silky roving.


(that's a two dollar coin in the picture)

And came up with what looks like the right thickness..although I think the thickness is optional depending on how thick you want your yarn to be.



But now, I can't find any good advice on how to actually spin it. The fibres are so long...and ordinarily I would say that is a good thing, since I cannot handle shortish wool fibres...but these are so long I'm not sure how to draft it. I've read that you can't get silk to be smooth, that is, it will have texture, but I don't want it positively bumpy.

So, I've requested help from some spinners I know on Ravelry, and I'm awaiting thier advice at this point.

That's pretty much how my weekend went. Hubby is due back sometime this afternoon, but by then I suppose I will be in bed sleeping, getting ready for work tonight. Meanwhile, I'll play around on here trying to work out what my next sock project will be. Must cast on...must cast on..

Who says life aint fair?

Yesterday I was determined to get some spinning done, but I must admit, I didn't get to that until late. What I really wanted to do was dye some of my fleece I have around here, particularly the white alpaca, but when I saw how much work preparing the fleece was, I shelved that for another day.

Instead, I picked up my socks and go the heel turned. How fun was that? Ok, not much, but it's done now. I sat at the computer and did it, with the tutorial on the screen in frount of me, and an audio book playing on WMP. Using the Magic Loop 2 socks at once technique, you do have to do the heels one at a time, which I did. I think I did a much better job of picking up the wraps neatly following this tutorial. The results certainly look neater than my last heel turning effort.



The socks on the tutorial are anklets, so I'm on my own for the leg part, and I still haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with them. Some type of rib I suppose, or maybe a cable. I'll figure that out today.

But speaking of audio books, I had promised myself that during my extra free time this week I would figure out how to get audio books online onto a CD I could play in my car, or, well, anywhere. I love listening to audio books on my drive to work, or when I knit, but they are so expensive. You can get some audio book downloads online for free, and granted they are mostly classics and such, but until I can find some people that want to trade around with me, it will be perfectly fine. I like classics really, and I found a good site that has some of the best in classic romance..jane austen, the brontes, etc. I already knew how to download off the site, of course, but librivox had really clear instructions about which download served what purpose and a GREAT guide to get them burnt to CD properly using iTunes. So I downloaded Itunes and to my amazement, all my other saved libraries showed up on there, which I though was an awesome timesaver. I took a book from there that I had already downloaded, and whaaa-la, getting it burnt to disc was easy peasy. Mission accomplished!

My dye job from the day before I dryed, and the colors have came out exactly as I wanted them. I was afraid, once dry, they would become too light, which is always a chore, trying to guess the color once it dries, but these batches came out exactly as planned. Yippeeee!




Around 8pm I FINALLY pulled the spinning wheel and fiber out, and started up a new bobbin. I realize that this is heaps easier with the proper roving, done up in the proper way. I haven't paid much attention to the fleece preparation part of things..I just wanted to hop right in and get to spinning. I'm seeing now that it might have been worthwhile to investigate. I'm thinking though, I might start buying a few tops and such rather than fleeces, at least until I get the hang of the spinning thing.

I spun on and off for a couple hours last night, using some rovings a workmate gave me. There's a lovely grey, and a brown. I'm thinking I will spin a bobbin of each and then ply them together, although frankly, I'm not at all sure how much yarn I can get out of each roving, so those plans may change. As it is, I started with the grey, and did get some results.




The trouble I'm finding with spinning is keeping the singles a consistent thickness, but I hear that's common with new spinners, so I'm not too fussed. The big trouble though is that spinning hurts my back after a little while, and I find I have to get up, take a break, stretch, and do other things and then come back to it. I'm going to try shifting where I sit today, types of chairs, that sort of thing to see if it helps.

This morning the long anticipated knock on the door came! I could have kissed the AusPost van driver, but I was afraid she would run screaming and not drop the package first. Couldn't risk that, so I just grabbed my package and gave her a grinning ear to ear thank you and closed the door in her face, parcel hugged to my chest like a precious newborn. My Peace Fleece was here. I ripped it out of the bag, I held it, I looked at it carefully, noticing all the little nuances of color, the lovely pastel flecks in the Zarya Fog



the bright cheerfullness of the Chick Masala,


and the subtle but powerful hue of the Sheplova Mushroom.



I fingered its texture, feeling the yarn slide between my fingers, the sleekness of the wool and the prickly feel of the mohair. I put it to my nose and smelt that distinctive clean wool smell. I breathed in deep, then sighed. I'm in love. Again.

So I took my yarn up lovingly, color by color, and posed it for the inevitable photo shoot. For this, I opened the curtains of the bay window to give my new babies the proper lighting. Still, it's hard to capture the true glory of the colors on camera. Particularly the Sheplova Mushroom, whose closeups, even after several tries, failed to satisfy me.

I have enough Zarya Fog for a jumper or cardi, enough Chickie Masla for a shawl or a bolero perhaps, and enough Sheplova Mushroom for a hat, scarf, and mittens. Rough ideas of course. I have no concrete plans. Of course, it will have to be something big for the Zarya Fog. Having that many of the same dye lot begs not to be broken up, but really, the small possiblities are endless with the other two.

I'm on cloud nine! My house is a mess. There is wool flung everywhere. My open plan living/dining room has knitting and books on the couch, wool piled in chairs and on the floor, dry dyed wool hanging from the backs of the kitchen chairs ready to be wound, rovings and spinning wheel in the middle of it all. It truly looks like a mad crafty person lives in it now.



Chris would have a heart attack, but then, he's not due back until late tomorrow. It's just such a timesaver for a crafter if you can leave everything put, ready to pick up again when the whim takes you there. Or at least, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Now, I go to fix up a few things on Rav, figure out what pattern I want to do the leg of my socks in, and spin till my fingers fall off. Aint life grand???

Mourning Dyeing

TUESDAY: I've had a very productive morning on day 2 of MY week. Today was officially designated "dyeing" day, and that is precisely what I did.

I did a bit of knitting early this morning. I threw the curtains open on the bay window because I was expecting a package I DID NOT want to miss. The girl who runs the wool coop I belong to said she was mailing off everyone's Peace Fleece order Monday, and if she did that, being she is in SA too, it should have been here today. Larger packages (and this one should be pretty darn large) usually come by postal courier, usually before 10AM. No such luck. If it's not here tomorrow, I will email her and see if there was a holdup. At any rate, massive dissapointment on my part. This is what I spent the money Chris' mom gave me for Christmas on, and I'm STILL waiting on it.

On the positive side, when the mail did run, at around noonish, I had the book I ordered from Colonial Lake books in the post. THAT was a nice surprise! Socks Soar on Circular Needles by Cat Bordhi is a book I've been wanting for quite some time, and had almost given up finding it in Australia, but her site has lots of cool knitting and crafty sorts of books that are hard to get elsewhere in Oz.




Anyway, between all the online ordering I've been doing, and the lovely RAOK's people have sent, I'm disappointed if a day goes by and I don't get something knitty in the post. Hopefully, tomorrow will be covered by the Peace Fleece.

So now, down to business. I had thrown my TeAwa wool in to soak yesterday afternoon, so I reckon by this morning it was good and wet.



I had also started winding my white Patonyle into skeins (although I don't think my skeining method is much good) around the dining room chair backs as well, and left the last ball about half wound over night (now THAT sight would have garnered a few smirks from the DH). I finished winding it this morning, tied it off, and when my head had been cleared with enough coffee, I set to work. It was going to be a circus act, balancing two dye job at once, and I needed all my wits about me.



I pulled out the TeAwa Natural wool, which was good and soaked, arranged my pots and jars and bottles and dyes and went to work.




(Wouldn't Chris LOVE seeing ME playing with DYE in HIS kitchen. I think NOT!)

I was NOT going to make a rainbow effect this time. My idea was to go for something more subtle with shading. My original vision was to do it in shades of blue, dark at one end of the skein and gradually getting lighter towards the other end, but I wasn't sure I had enough blue koolaid to pull this off (the skein being 200g). After I pulled out all the packets of Koolaid, for some reason, the yellow caught my eye, and a second vision was inspired. How about I start with dark blue, gradually add yellow to make turquoise, then green, then yellow-green and then yellow at the opposite end of the skein. I got started with this concept and started mixing colors. I wound up with 6 shades of blue to green and scratched the yellow idea. I just didn't want that "loud" of a color contrast, and I THINK I made the right decision for what I wanted to do today, although I think the yellow idea would be a good one down the track.



I dyed away, which went off with only one hitch. One of my gloves split, and I've wound up with one very blue/green right hand. I then stuck the lot into the microwave and "cooked" my yarn. While it was cooking, I took the opportunity to throw my Patonyle into the sink and start it to soaking. Then I took a break for awhile, letting the TeAwa cool and the Patonyle soak.

When I came back to my work, I first set up a pot to boil, put a frying pan screen over it and sat a steaming basket on top of the screen. Then I carefully wrapped the TeAwa up into the garbage bag it was lying on and laid it on the washer while I got the Patonlye out of the soak water, gently sqeezing out the excess water. Then I threw some soap into the soak water, worked up some suds and threw in the TeAwa.

I took the Patonyle to the table. My vision on this one was clear. I was going to "spot dye" this batch, using only one color, Koolaids Black Cherry, a deep red. Off I went, splashing dye here and there. What fun! And I love the way it looked afterwards. Can't wait to see how it looks to knit up. I particularly wanted some socks to go with my boating outfit, which is a red and white crew style shirt with white capri pants. I had thought of solid red, but knew it would be hard to exactly match the shirt. I had thought of red and white stripes, but I really am not a fan of stripes. The spotty dyeing seems the perfect answer. I suppose I'll know for sure once it dries.



When I finished the spot dyeing, I threw the skeins (one at a time due to lack of room) into the improvised steamer, and set the timer for 8 minutes. I kept the pot of water underneath at just a simmer to keep things from getting too hot, and flipped the skein halfway thru.



Meanwhile, while the Patonyle was steaming, I took the TeAwa out of the wash water, drained it, and ran the rinse water. Then I put it in, rinsed it well, and hung it in the bathroom over the bathtub faucet.





By then, I was letting the Patonyle cool down to room temperature, changing out the wash water and then washing, rinsing and hanging the Patonyle.




Everything looks pretty darn great, if I do say so myself. More or less just as I'd invisioned. If I have one complaint, I wish I had used a bit less red on the Patonyle. But then again, we'll have to wait and see how that goes when I start knitting it up.

Now, what to do this afternoon? Well, I'm for sure going to knit more on my sock project. I might even pick up the jumper and do a few more exhausting rows. But absolutely, no excuses, I'm going to practice my spinning. I want to spin up the rovings a workmate gave me a couple weeks ago, but I want to get the feel of the wheel again before I give the good stuff a go. It's been almost a month since I've touched it. I really should do more spinning. I'm sure I will love it to peices if I can only get used to the process.

"My" week begins

I finished the socks last Thursday! What a journey! I love them, they fit like a glove and they are ever ever so comfortable and snuggly warm. I'm wearing them now, in fact.




I've started another pair. I wanted to do socks using the magic loop method. I wanted to knit two socks at one time. I wanted to knit some toe up socks. Then I found a pattern...well, no, it's really a tutorial. which is what I need anyway, since I had no idea how to do any of those things. I'm using the yarn I dyed, with a few alterations to compensate for the dyed yarn having a smaller guage. Things are going fine so far. The hardest part was casting on. A fiddly "figure 8" cast on, which felt like you were knitting stitches into thin air...in fact, I reckon I was from time to time.





Which brings me right up to today. Monday! I woke up at 3:15 AM to see Chris off. He's left today for his geograpy camp, a working week away in the Flinders Ranges with about 35 Year 11 students. Tonight and tomorrow night they will be staying in a relatively modern campground at Wilpena Pound, but Wednesday, they seriously go bush, with no toilets, no kiosk, no conveniences of any kind. It's a wonder how he ever gets any teenage girls to go!

And here I am. On my own! Boy, am I stoked! I love Chris, I really do, but I really really really was needing some serious downtime! Which, now, I have. I have so many knitting, dyeing and spinning things on my TO DO this week list that I almost don't know where to start. But start I did, at 3:15 this morning no less.

After seeing Chris safely off at 4:30 (I even did the Aussie stand outside and wave till they're gone thing), I came back in, put a tape in the VCR and started knitting on my jumper. Yes, the long neglected Fringe jumper..the one I mentioned WAY back in the Alpacomplete thread. The one I've put aside in the quest for a finished PAIR of socks. The one with the really big needles and the obscenely long rows that hurt my hands, forearms and even shoulders. Ahhh, what we do for our craft! Well, this morning and on and off thru the day, I got a bit accomplished. Quite a bit really, but it doesn't really look like it because the thing is soooooooo long!

I came and got online at around 7:00AM and saw my youngest son on here. We got on the webcams and phoned over Yahoo messenger, and I got to wave and blow kisses and talk to the grandbabies, which was certainly the highlight of my day. Then I made a quick trip to the grocery store before the crowds showed up.

I mentioned in the last post how I had gotten two black balls of Patonyle, and should have gotten 3. Well, I decided to get any big drives behind me, so at a bit before 9AM I left to go to Stirling to pick up the other ball. I wound up getting 4, the last 4 they had, but now I've gotten enough for 2 pair of dull black conservative socks. Ah well, it will justify my much needed trip to the optomitrist if nothing else, trying to SEE the stitches in all that blackness.

On the way back, I decided to check out a little shop in Hahndorf that carries some local homespun along with regular commercial yarn. It was off the beaten path, but only by a little, so I went. I got there to find the shop didn't open until 10AM. I had 10 minutes to burn, so I went in search of a toilet, which happened to be a bit over a block down the main street. On my way back, I passed a candy store, but what caught my eye was not candy.

Mom, if your reading this, you'd better be sitting down!

There, right inside the doorway, on a shelf, was a pile of cans of DR PEPPER. My mother had almost refused to come visit me when she found out that there was no DR PEPPER in Australia. I had searched everywhere locally. US Foods in Melbourne had them, but cans of soda pop are not light, and never mind the steep (by US standards) price tag...the shipping costs made it prohibitive. Anyway, I felt like I hit the jackpot. Maybe, just maybe, she would come back to visit her loving daughter now.

She wasn't here now however, so I didn't bother buying any, but I did decide to go inside and look at what other treasures this store might offer. To my utter Shock and Awe...they had...yes, that's right...Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. My food group of choice! I bought as many as I could afford, which wasn't nearly as many as I wanted (and sent one off later to a fellow expat). But now that I know where they are, I WILL go back. I've eaten only two cups so far, which certainly attests to my strength and fortitude. I want to savor them slowly. If you can make out the price tag, you will figure out why.




There were lots of pretty things in the wool shop, but nothing I could afford after buying the Reeses, so I made my way home. Since then, I've messed around on Ravelry, mailed off my RAOK to my fellow US expat, knitted on the Fringe jumper some more, knitted on the Magic Fruit Loops socks, watched a couple of programs I had on tape, retied (with cotton) some more TeAwa Natural wool I'm going to dye tomorrow and threw it in the utility room sink to soak, and skeined two balls of the white Patonyle that I plan on dyeing tomorrow.




Not bad for day one. Tomorrow I WILL pull out the spinning wheel. I WILL dye the TeAwa and the Patonyle and maybe, if I feel particularly froggy, some of the white alpaca fleece.

I'm on a ROLL!