Dye Workshop with Nancy Finn

Over this last weekend I got to take a dye workshop with Nancy Finn of Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks. It was quite an eye opening experience. I wasn't prepared for how difficult it would be to find the "right" colors. I don't even know what that means! I took the Second workshop first and skipped the First workshop, the one where you learn about the color wheel and make a sample book of colors. I'm really really in to this color thing, so in a few days, I'm going to start another fundraiser to take the first workshop. Even though I went into the workshop thinking I knew what I wanted, what colors I was going to try and achieve, when I actually sat down with the dye liquid, all my wants got confused and flew away. The results are, I think, amazing. I'm spinning the silk we did the first day, which I thought was going to be awful, but now I'm spinning it and I love it. Love. One of the harder parts of the whole thing was dyeing the the fiber I have left over from Helen, my first and most inspirational spinning teacher. I've been holding on to some of that stuff for years, in its natural colors. The color has inspired me to spin is, which is I think, what she would have wanted.

This is the silk dyed the first day in class. This is absolutely not what I was going for, but I love it!

Day 1 and morning of day 2. I've gotten pink down, K will be so pleased.

The purple is about half the merino/mohair blend I did over the weekend, and all that blue is the alpaca/mohair blend I got from Helen a few years ago. 

Lunch day 2, I realized I hadn't brought enough of my stash to take up a whole day. This is the whole class at lunch when I rushed home, grabbed what I had left behind and rushed back. Yay! 

This was a fun experiment... I spun both of these, on the left is a single spun grey Corriedale and on the right is a 2ply out of the (purple, above) mohair merino. I put them both in the same tray and lay them out together and painted them the same colors, and they look so different. Duh, though... they were totally different colors to start out with, plus, the way they each are spun totally reflects light differently... any way, those will be photographed again in better light and posted for sale in my etsy. someday. eventually.

One of the pink (surprise!) braids was commandeered by K who has possessed a fascination with the drum carder since it came into our house. So, I showed her how to separate the braid by color, then... we referred to the latest issue of Ply Magazine for the article Lacey (MoonRover... mmmm MoonRover...) wrote about how to card striped batts. Somewhere in the middle we snapped the band, and while waiting for it to cool, K became distracted by some dinosaur something and went off to play with Z.

Spinning the silk outside between rain drizzles and 10 second storms. 

The alpaca/mohair blend will be the primary fiber in a thank you sweater I'm making for my brother. When I took the spinning class awhile ago, he drove all the way here (3ish hours) to watch the kids for a day. Then, last weekend, while I was at the dye workshop, the family went to visit him, and he took the kids on a "playground crawl" while my parents were at costco. He deserves a sweater. The next step is find a suitable blend fiber to stretch this out enough for the whole project. 

Jane Austin, Zombies, and Ginny's Yarn Along

This week, again, I'm joining Miss Ginny over at Small things sharing what I've been reading and knitting. There are always some really inspiring links, so you should go over and check out the whole list...

Now we all know about my latest pattern book obsession, Jane Austin Knits Summer 2012. But did you know about this book? Pride and Prejiduce and Zombies. It's amazing. So, I've been knitting out of Jane Austin Knits, reading a Jane Austin inspired zombie book, and drinking tons and tons of Organic Darjeeling Tea out of my very fancy tea pot with matching cup and saucer. Enjoy...

Knitting needs more access to Zombies. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be prepared to knit you warm garments and gracefully behead the unmentionables.

This book is rad. Much of the dialogue remains the same as in the actual Pride and Prejudice and a lot of the plot points are the same, but there is awesome dialogue about unmentionables and samurai training and then zombies bust in in the middle of the ball at the beginning of the book and oh my goddess, I can't wait to get further in the book. 

My beautiful hand spun, hand knit, lace collar, shown here with with the handspun silk I'm hoping to use to make the matching...

Mitts! I totally love this pattern, but there is a huge problem. Massive. The stitch gauge for the mitts and the gauge for the yarn are different by 10 stitches. So since there are no thumb holes in this pattern, I was thinking I'd just remove 1 of the 12 stitch lace repeats and go from there...? Maybe maybe?

Here's the Hat. It's done. It's wonderful. It makes me head look like a Penis. But the girls at knit night were all nice enough to say it doesn't. But it does. They can't fool me.

This pretty pretty lace weight yarn will become that beautiful shawl which for some reason they designed in the horrible horrible orange. Problem with this pattern? It calls for beads, and I'm not sure I have enough yarn, or even the needles I need to get started. 

Pretty, yeah?

My reading stack, it includes Elizabeth Zimmermann for good knitting measure.

Knitting Update.

Here's what I've been working on:

The EZ Baby Surprise Jacket. I'm concerned that I might run out of yarn (Lorna's Laces Worsted in 912 Kedzie, lot 1747... in case you have it). Hopefully, I'll be able to find more soon.  This is what it looks like so far, I added a panic thread, in case I have to pull back to incorporate a new dye lot or something. I think I marhed the pattern where I place the thread, so I don't something twice, or not at all. It Looks really funny to me but ...

This is the drawing I've been presented with in the book. Helpful.

The Paternal Twin Shawl A is coming along quite nicely. The rows are getting longer, at this point there are 11 repeats in each row, then there will be 12 then 13 until I run out of yarn. Honestly, I love it. I was frustrated with everything, wait till you see what I have next, so I picked this back up and finished a whole section in 1 day.

It turns out that you can use a gram scale to make sure you have the same amount of yarn per Mitt. LeAnne from knit night brought her scale (and cupcakes!!!) so I could divide my hand spun for the Jane Austin Mitts. LeAnne asked me if I had my own digital scale last week and I looked at her for a long moment before responding "no...? I'm not a drug dealer...?" The whole table started laughing so hard I thought we would get kicked out. LeAnne replied, "neither am I, they are useful to knitter too!" huh, learn something new every day!

I seriously was having way too much fun being the human swift. The yarn kept pulling off and then I'd laugh and look a little bit manic. It was awesome.

All my balls on LeAnne's scale. I'm trying to tell you, Knit Night is so much fun, I'm surprised Huz lets me leave.

That's Wanda in the back enjoying her cupcake a lot, the Las Vegas Spin Fairy and I love her. She brought me the yarn featured in the bottomest photos. LeAnne brought them because I was came to knit night the week of my birthday and no one knew and she needed an excuse for cupcakes. I provided said excuse. They were from a place here in Vegas called Nothing Bunt Cakes and they were the most amazing cupcakes I've ever had.

This sweater went from here...

...to here...

...by way of her. Lol. KaBean had a lot of fun helping me frog the Borealis Sweater. It felt really good to get that yarn back...

...there was a whole lot of it, and I love it, and it's too pretty to be stuck in a UFO that will never get finished.

 

I just thought this was too cute. Love this girl!

Wanda gifted me with some gorgeous, custom, hand painted yarn in my perfect colors. Probably a little less than 250 yards of beautiful. I chose to do a really neat Moebius Lace pattern, but as I knit along, I realized that I really really hate the purl side of the pattern and need to rework the whole thing.

I LOVE the top, the lace pattern shows really nicely on the knit side, but I feel quite sure that there has to be something that will look better for the bottom section. If you don't know anything about the wonder that is Moebius Knitting, stay tuned, I'll have a whole bunch of posts about it coming up, it's the most amazing, frustrating, tricky things I've learned in a long time.

Knitting...

The Not-Noro-2 Row-1x1 Rib Scarf. This was a blast to knit, but I don't think I'd choose it on purpose... It's good for using up large amounts of leftovers. Although, I don't know when else I would have so much left over coordinating-ish, color changing yarn.  

I know I said there would be no pictures of the finished Martinmas? Well, there won't. This picture is not a picture of the finished Martinmas, this picture is a picture of 2 unblocked projects made out of the same yarn. This picture is a picture of the really cool colors and the frequency of the silk blobs in the Mushishi. I would use this yarn again, but only if I had the perfect pattern for it first. Next time I use this yarn for something, the ends would be woven in almost immediately, not quite at the beginning, we all know how often I have to frog and start over cough*everytime*cough, I noticed that the longer the ends were left exposed, the rattier they became. Not a good look. 

My 4 year old daughter picked out the purple sparkle yarn. She really needs a purple-sparkle-fluffy hat to make the world amazing. That's all.

This is the Borealis Sweater. I thought I would love it. I thought it would be amazing. I thought that using a baby sweater pattern with much larger yarn than called for would produce and interesting, proportional adult sweater. I was wrong. I don't love it, it got boring. The colors make my brain hurt. The sleeves look fat and stupid. This might be my first real UnFinishedObject.

Jane Austin Knits Summer 2012. Go now. Buy it. You really need this knitting book. I love it. I actually pick it up to read it. Everything in it is beautiful. I think I will actually end up knitting more than one thing out of this, and that's saying a lot.

This handspun yarn and this pattern, in Jane Austin, fell in love with each other in my mind and when they met in person, it was destiny. Problem: What the hell is a Provisional Cast On? This, this is not easy. Enter Sin City Knits, the Las Vegas knit night I found on Ravelry. I took the yarn and the pattern and the question and left with a simple explanation and demonstration of the crochet method and the first row cast on and knit.

Saturday sees the whole first section finished and blocking so that I can more easily see the 20 stitches I have to pick up and knit at each end of the Provisional Cast On. Problem: The pink cotton waste yarn and the blue/green wool kind of mated and didn't want to part from each other and refused to come apart gracefully.

In the end, I am victorious and today, Monday, sees me on the very last lace row before the Cast Off. Then the final blocking and finding a button and yay! I might get to bring it to the next Knit Night!

This odd little thing is more stash busting my handspun. I gathered all the little puffs of wool leftover from my first spinning projects and carded them together and spun it out into and interesting single. There is silk and orange and super wash and tons of blue and red and wool and rabbit (not fancy rabbit, just very very very special rabbit). It looked flimsy so I spun out a bunch of the practice wool Helen gave me and then plied them together and got this. Turns out I was just short having the same amount of white as of blue. So instead of spinning more white, I pulled out the blue, bent it back on itself and let it ply. There was just enough for a little stripe of blue and I love it.
The pattern is based on the technique Susan B. Anthony uses to make the petals on her Flower Pacifier Clip. I've modified it to be much bigger, to hold my new camera!

And look at that, finished in 2 days, very simple, really neat how the K1, Sl1 back and forth makes a hollow piece of knitting. After knitting on for a while, I flipped it right side out and bound off half the stitches and then just kept the stockinette stitch going until the flap of the pouch was 2 times longer than the pouch itself. I'm going to use some more of this yarn to crocket in some reinforcment then slightly felt the whole thing to make it a touch smaller and the fabric a bit thicker. This was a really interesting practice project and I think I'll be keeping this technique tucked in case I need to pump out any more little pouches. Yay, for easy knitting.

A Shawl Update/Love Fest and Other News

I"m almost afraid to finish the shawl, this beautiful concoction of wool and silk and time. I almost didn't spread it out in my lap to fondle count the remaining rows and see how it looks all spread out. OK, well, I didn't spread it out, but I did count the rows. I have no new pictures of the progress, so I thought I could take this opportunity to show off the hand spun, hand knit hat I just finished for The ManChild and the new lace shawl I started...

wait, he's fast.

says his shirt.

maybe almost 2 year old little boys are not the best to model mommy's knit wear.

oh, that's better. this is spun out of some of the polwarth I got last summer's Boonville Fair plied with some merino left over from Helen and the plain white stripes are some home spun super fine merino. This is my first hand spun, hand knit project. unless you count the cowl i did when i started, which i don't... Any way, I love it and I am very proud of it.

And the very beginning of a new lace shawl. Pattern and details soon, but I'm going back to the Shawl, because it needs me and I love it. But I don't want it to end, but I want to be done so I can block it, and it seems like this garter stitch section just goes on forever.............

Hit the Ground Knitting?

As soon as we got home yesterday, I unpacked my yarn and roving that had accumulated in my trunk some how while visiting the coast and driving back to the desert. 

In that pile you can see some Lorna's Laces, Mohair Laceweight, and new sock yarns. yum. Also pictured in the back is a 1 (or 2, it's too late to be climbing stairs and searching tags) oz baggie of hand died curly locks... again with the label searching. Not pictured is several ounces of mystery wool that has been died a beautiful shade of purple. Lily brought it back from her family adventure. I tried to comb it as soon as I could. My combs are broken. We're not talking about that.

What we are talking about is the new size 11 DPNs I got to finish the Misunderstood Hat.

The only thing standing in the way of this stupid hat being done was that set of needles. I'm simply not magic-loop awesome and really could not do the decreases on a large circular so the hat waited. I took it to mendo with me to visit the Mendocino Yarn Shop and procure said needles for much less than previously found here in Vegas. Our trip was so whirl wind, we were busy...

Looking at Lily's pony eat his lunch...

Picking alllll of Grandma's flowers...

oh, um... yarn... that's some of my very own homespun from months ago getting measured so I can find an appropriate pattern

Ridding the mountain board down the big hill will Uncle Brian.

And of coarse...

The beach with friends.

So now, armed with the size 11 DPNs, I have finished the Misunderstood hat. And very anticlimactically, do not have a picture. It's too dark for crappy phone pics of nice knitting. tomorrow.

ps- i have some great crappy phone pics of our trip to share son too, but for now I have to go do the dishes left in the sink by Huz and Nephew before they left. nothing says welcome home from your solo trip with the kids like a sink full of dirty dishes.