Well then, my decision to only update with finished work has proved that it's forever and a day between finished pieces for me. On the other hand, I just finished a beast of a skein of yarn - positively huge, I tell you! I give you Bonfire:
Dyed with Red Hot, West End, Lousy Tip, and Bastet from Fyrinnae and at 241 yards, it wouldn't even fit all on my spindle!
I finished another yarn this weekend, it's pretty small at 33 yards but quite pretty I think. I'm calling it Robin's Egg:
I used wool that I dyed with Japan and Romeo.
As far as knitting, I've been barreling through the Lizard Ridge for my mom and I only have five (!) more squares to finish. Yay!
Phew, well I've finally finished my first plied yarn, and it's called (big surprise) Milky Way. I used wool dyed with Nightboat for the grey and Dragon's Wing for the light green-ish. The silver thread was easily the worst part because I ran out of single ply thread, and the craft store where I work only had two ply, so I laboriously unplied some (never do this, ever! it's not worth it!) after I had taken my yarn off my spindle temporarily. So here it is:
It's 100 yards and I'm very happy with it.
Puns? What?
Anyway, now that I've recovered from my pint on Saturday (giving, not receiving) I'll post about what I did while I was keeping hydrated and maintaining my blood sugar, namely knitting.
Last week I went to Woolcott & Co. to get some yarn and I ended up buying twelve skeins of Highlander by Alpaca With A Twist to make the Militia Coat from Sensual Knits by Yahaira Ferreira. So far I'm loving both the yarn and the pattern. The Highlander is a really lovely tweed in merino and alpaca with a little microfiber and viscose. The colorway I'm using ("Blackthorn") is a dark grey with cream and tan tweedy bits. Yummy.
They've also got a new electric winder at Woolcott and the owner was nice enough to wind all of the hanks into center-pull skeins so that I didn't have to spend hours rolling it into balls. Plus I got a really nice canvas bag with the Woolcott logo on it. Score!
So I've actually frogged two projects in as many days. First, my Wisp which I had been working on when a bunch of the stitches just fell off the needles. Since I was only a few rows in and I kind of wanted the needles for something else anyway I decided to just pull it apart. I also frogged my Welig gloves because I could already tell that they were not going to fit. I was working them on a smaller needle size than I should have, and they were absolutely going to be too small.
My spinning has stalled a bit, since the project I'm working on requires single ply silver lame thread and I could only find two-ply at the craft store where I work (!!!), and since my spindle is occupied with the yarn it's meant for, I'm going to have to unply it the hard way, which I've been avoiding like the plague.
More later, I'm late for a blood drive!
So about trying to make this blog a daily occurrence... *anyway* I've been somewhat busy over these past two months (I'm rounding up a little to make my return seem more epic) and part of it has been due to the activities mentioned in this here blog. I did finish the FDP, and as for individual reports on each color as it's dyed, well that ship has sailed. But there are still individual reports on each color as I spin with it! Which reminds me...
That's a yarn I'm calling 'Cake Frosting' that I spun up using wool dyed with Ancient Mirage and Queen Mab. I also spun up all of some grey that I dyed *I think* with Bastet into a very thin single, which was upleasantly tedious, but oh, I have plans for it.
On the knitting front, I've been getting a bunch of lovely yarn over at Woolcott & Co. in Harvard Square for several different projects. I cast on for Knitty's Wisp in some light pink Rowan Kidsilk Haze (I think the colorway is called Grace). I did a few rows and although I'm not a huge fan of working 'airy' lace I like the finished product enough that I'm sure I'll get through it.
I also cast on for the Welig gloves from Knitting New Mittens and Gloves by Robin Melanson. I love this book and have tabbed off a bunch of patterns in it. I'm using the book recommended yarn which is Nashua Handknits Julia (mine is a light sage green) and I have to say that it is both really lovely to work with and very nice for the pattern.
My mother/daughter Lizard Ridge project is fairly steady, if slow, and I've currently got fifteen squares done out of the fifty that I need (ugh). I've mentally nicknamed the pattern 'lizard rudge' for no reason that I can fathom.
First off, I have given up on the Knucks. I remade them three times and no matter what I tried, there were massive gaps between the fingers. So feh, I'm taking a break and then I'll try another pattern for fingerless gloves that isn't finger-down.
I spent most of today dyeing even more roving. I think I might just name this the Fyrinnae Dye Project (FDP) since it's most of the dyeing I'll be doing for a while. To make life simpler (maybe) for me I'm just gonna hyperlink each eyeshadow color to its page on the Fyrinnae site, thus no hyperlink on a color name = a discontinued color.
Lousy Tip and Anasazi from yesterday are done and unpredictably as always Lousy Tip produced a light brownish tint and Anasazi went from golden ochre to a burnished orange with strong hints of red. (I swear I'll take pictures of all this soon)
Last night I did two more dyebaths with Ancient Mirage and Bastet, which are now done drying. Bastet turned out a medium to dark grey and Ancient Mirage a peachy pale taupe.
This morning saw another four dyebaths, which are now drying: Black Plum which produced a dark dusty rose color, Bloodmoon which was a muted red and produced a bright orange, Chameleon which was very dark burgundy and produced a light ashy grey and Changeling, which also produced a light ashy, but different from Chameleon grey.
Right now I have dyebaths of Day-Glo Fantasy, Dirty Boy, Dragon's Wing, Dryad and Fall From Grace cooling overnight to be rinsed tomorrow.
I'm starting to realize just how long a process dyeing is. I'm doing a half hour presoak in acidulated water, I've decided to aim for a 15-20 minute cook and then an eight hour cooling/setting period and then another day to dry. And to think, I still have 25 (!!!) pots of eyeshadow that I haven't used yet. FDP looks to be a lengthy endeavor.
Even more dyeing today for me, still using loose mineral eyeshadow from www.fyrinnae.com. I started with Elf-Struck, which is still in production and got an antique-ish pink from an extremely purple eyeshadow (???). I'm starting to think that half the fun of dyeing with these is how unpredictable they are.
The roving I dyed with Queen Mab yesterday has finished drying in the (ridiculously hot) sun and along with the Elf-Struck I've got about an ounce each of roving being dyed with Anasazi (discontinued) and Lousy Tip, respectively. Since I've got more sunlight for a while, I may do a few more dyebaths today after those.
Sunday night I decided to rip out the one Knuck I'd finished because, well, it sucked. I also frogged my Sayuri sweater on Sunday because it was too big. I have yet to decide whether I'll remake the Sayuri a size smaller or in the smae size on smaller needles, but either way it might wait for a while because I'm so taken up with Knucks and Lizard Ridge. I was hoping to get one square a day done for Lizard Ridge, but since each square takes me five hours, that probably won' t happen.
To get the Knucks done, I've decided to do one CD worth of Lord of the Rings of work on them each day but of course, I'm already behind so we'll have to see how that works out.
So a few days ago I recieved three pounds of corriedale roving from www.midnightskyfibers.com, not only did I get it for a song during the birthday sale, it's super super soft.
I dyed about 50g or five feet of that today using loose mineral eyeshadow from www.fyrinnae.com in the now discontinued Queen Mab color and got a lovely pink although there are a few spots that didn't see dye and are still creamy white. A while back I overdyed some grey yarn with the also discontinued Oil Spill and got a nice green, and failed to do the same with Androgynous Hue and Soot because I didn't let the dyebath cool enough. Hopefully I can get some pictures of my dyeing efforts. I've got stockpiles of this mineral eyeshadow from when Fyrinnae was Bombshell Bath/Shadowfae so I'll probably be able to dye all of the roving I have now and then some.
I'm hoping to make this blog a daily occurrence, so we'll have to see.
Okay. So. Blogging. Not my strong point but yeah. Right now this I think will be my knitting blog, good for tracking things since even though I'm on ravelry.com, I cannot for the life of me get flickr to work. Right now I've got half a set of knucks done in Knit Picks Elegance that went by the wayside because it is simply one of the most difficult items (or pair of items?) that I have ever attempted to knit. Since I have successfully and fairly enjoyably completed Latvian mittens on size 0 needles and an entirely lace skirt, maybe I'm just super dumb at this particular thing? If they weren't for someone who I love very much and had specially requested them, I'd be tempted to frog the one I've finished and use the yarn (very very soft and lovely) for something else.
I also recently frogged an askew that I had all but blocked and seamed since even with size 9 instead of 7 needles to hit gauge, the pieces were far too small to block into the size needed. Luckily I had at least half a ball of Noro Silk Garden let over, so I'm pretty sure that I can remake it into the size needed.
Also in Noro, I've started a lizard ridge that I'd love to be able to take to college with me. So far with some math and editing, I've decided to make twenty five blocks each that repeat the twelve row pattern five times, instead of twenty four that repeat it four times. My gauge is naturally quite small, so this hypothetical blanket of mine would be the same as the one depicted.
Upon showing my mom the pattern and the two squares (rectangles, really) that I had, she declared that she absolutely had to have one for the living room. After a bit of confusion on my part, embarassingly enough about compensation (I was a little worried cause it'll be A LOT of repetitive work, especially to make two) I may end up financing my blanket by knitting my mom's, if my hands don't fall off sometime in the process. Working on another square tonight I got the first tendonitis flare up I've had in a long time (my solution, go and type of course!).
I've also got shoved in a bag on my floor a very nearly completed sayuri sweater from Sensual Knits. It's my first sweater/shaped garment and I'm worried because the fit in the back is a little drapey and large, but overall I'm quite pleased and now I just need to motivate myself to finish the damn i-cord edging.
