Remember this yarn from my last post? The one I said I fixed?

Well, this was waaaay too much pink for me. So I tied off 4 equal portions and re-dipped it in black….and got the yarn on the right, below.

I like it! And the black ended up being a dark purple. It will make a stunning shawl. I think knitted up it may actually have a tweed effect, but we’ll see.  And I actually love the yarn to the left of it as well…on my computer screen it is looking a bit washed out, but the color is like chartreuse. It’s a lovely wool/silk blend that will go into my store, as soon as I get it started. I couldn’t wait to see what the dark one would look like wound into a cake, so here it is!

I’m going to have to start researching what shawl pattern might look best with this.

Last weekend I had plans to go to NY on Saturday to hang out with my sister (Shelly) and come home that night. We were going to take a dye class together. But on Friday, my little sister (Liana) got into a bad car accident and was in the hospital with lots of stitches in her face and a broken orbital bone and broken nose…among other expected discomforts. So I didn’t come home Saturday night, I stayed with her to see if I could be of any help or comfort. As sad as I was for her, I was just so happy and thankful to God that I still have my little sister. Last weekend could have been a LOT worse.

Dye class was fun though. I don’t really feel like I learned anything new, but I DID learn that I don’t really like dying yarn in a microwave, which was a method I hadn’t had a chance to try yet. Here’s a picture I stole from my sister’s blog showing all us ladies in the process of pouring the dyes over our yarn. We were in a super cool room above a bar in Chatham NY. That’s me in the back right corner, and my sister is in the front right.

All the women there were so friendly and fun to hang out with. But I was not happy with the results I got for my yarn. (If you’d like to see Shelly’s yarn results, click here.) First I had this:

It was bulky yarn dyejob gone horribly wrong. My colors turned to mush as we were told to squeeze out all the liquid before putting the yarn in the microwave, so in an attempt to save my skein, I threw on some red and purple, hoping for the best. When I saw it hanging here I thought…hmmmm…maybe it’s not going to be so bad…almost cool? I was wrong.

I don’t like it. It looks like a color blind monkey dyed this. I call it Muck.

Next, I thought I’d go for a purple and red skein. I love purple and red together. But again, when we squeezed out the excess water and dye, I ended up with this:

That’s a whole lot of raspberry and purple, and when I spun it into a skein, the pinkness of it was overwhelming…just too…raspberry. So today, I could not bear it anymore and I took that skein of raspberry vomit and tightly tied off 4 even sections and threw it in a pot of black and boiled 90% of the raspberry right out of it. The result is hanging in the other room right now, drip drying on the rack, and I got exactly what I wanted. I will post a picture of it here tomorrow or Saturday, as soon as it’s fully dry and wound into a skein or a cake. I think you’ll like it. Yes, you.

My third skein also made me unhappy.

Now, I’ll admit, it doesn’t look all that bad in this particular picture. But it was actually blue, teal and white. Is there a worse color than teal??? It’s just offensive really. I was not having this in my house, so a couple days ago I made a pot of what I thought was brown…a yellowish brown, I guess….and look at what happened to this blue/teal skein!

Good Lord! It’s fabulous! Now the above picture isn’t showing just how rich the mix of colors appeared, and it’s actually much more green than this. Try this one:

That’s a little closer to the actual color but still not as rich, and it’s hard to make out just how many hints of different colors show through. It’s a mix of different greens and hints of brown. I’m finding the hardest part of this whole yarn dyeing endeavor is trying to get a picture that’s accurate. I don’t think I’ve been successful once yet, and that’s frustrating, since I want to sell my yarn online and this is the only way people will be able to see each skein. But anyways, I’m seriously happy with it. What do YOU think?

Next, I have some of my hand spun yarn to show off. Can you even believe that fluff turned into the skein you see in front of it??

Now that is one ply of Blue Faced Leicester wool and right now I’m working on spinning the rest of it into a second cake. When done, I will ply them together to end up with a real skein of (hopefully) finger weight yarn. I will be sure to show you when it’s done. It’s a slow process, as I spin on a drop spindle, but I love it. My sister is learning to spin on a spinning wheel and she let me try it out this past weekend and it was sooooo HARD! It always looked so easy when you see other people do it. Nope. Not easy. She tried my drop spindle and felt the same way about it! Ha!

So I’ll do my best to post a picture of how the raspberry skein turned out as soon as it is dry. Make sure to check back in a couple days!

Ok, so it wasn’t a total surprise. My sister figured out the surprise was for her BUT she didn’t know exactly what it was. And what it was, my friends, was the Vernal Equinox Shawl and the free pattern can be found here.

As you will see in this picture, I tried blocking it with 2 different edgings, to see which I preferred. One side has the pointy edging, and the other has the more scalloped edging.

I decided I liked the scalloped edging best, so I reblocked the pointy side. Oh, and I chose to knit the edging with 3 or 4 rows of garter stitch. Most people on Ravelry seemed to use the crochet edging…but I can’t crochet, and I think I like the look of mine better anyways. Below you can see it with a 4 year old cutie beside it. That gives you a good idea of the size.

I started the shawl in August and I finished it a few days ago, but I didn’t work on it every day…in fact, there were whole weeks I didn’t touch it.

I used Cascade Yarns Heritage Silk…which was a wool and silk blend. The yarn was very nice to work with and had a nice drape and feel to it. I’d definitely consider using it again.

I gave the shawl to Shelly on Saturday, when I traveled to NY to take a dye class with her. It’s her Christmas gift, but in this family, none of us can ever wait so Christmas gifts often come early. I took pictures of her in the shawl, but her pictures came out way better than mine, so I’m stealing hers to show you.

How’s that?! It looks like it was made for her….Ha! I kill myself. 

Oh, and yes, she did love it. She blogs about it on her own blog here.

Next up, I have another sister in dire need of Bella mittens for Christmas…I think I’ll start those next. (They’re the mittens Bella wore in Twilight.)

Ok, well, not really. But I’m getting closer. My friend asked me to make her a hat like the one I made for Evan, (remember the hat knitted on toothpicks?), but she wanted it to be charcoal gray with a lime green stripe and a white stripe. Now, this hat is made with sock yarn, and 3 different colored skeins of sock yarn would be pretty expensive, so I offered to dye the yarn myself from one bare skein. So I guess starting from scratch would be actually shearing the sheep, carding the wool, spinning and then dyeing it. I’m not quite there yet. But I can dye, and I’m learning how to spin too!

So here we are, looking like a tangled mess, right after coming out of the pots.

Above we have all 3 colors waiting to turn into balls, and below we have 3 beautiful balls waiting to be made into something special. They stare at me while I work on other things….I can see their patience wearing thin.

It’ll be a great project to work on during the long ride we’re going to take this Thanksgiving. They’ll just have to wait a little longer…or maybe I’ll start earlier. After all, I did finish THE SUPER SECRET PROJECT and it’s blocking right now as I type! It’s quite lovely and I don’t know how I’m going to restrain myself from posting the pictures before I give it to its recipient. Must. Hold. Back!

Well hello there! Just checking in to see if I’ve posted? Well, sorry to disappoint you, and I promise a productive spurt is on the horizon, but the flu knocked me down, and I just couldn’t get back up. The flu lasted a week, then the inevitable bronchitis came, along with gurgling weirdness in my lungs, and chest x-rays. Turns out I don’t have pneumonia (Yay!) but after a week of antibiotics and Claritin and Flonase and an inhaler and prescription cough pills…I’m still coughing. (I coughed as I typed that.)

But fun has still been happening. My son got to go trick or treating twice, once with friends and once with Nana. He’s the scary ninja below….

The other cutie is not a shark, nor is he a Klan member…he’s an…..

…..airplane! My friend Maiya actually made that costume.

So I’ve been knitting on the super secret project, and I’m almost on the last chart! I’m going to see if I can finish it next week. That is my big goal right now. I’ve also been spinning wool into yarn on my drop spindle. I must say, it’s coming out very nicely, and very thin. I’m working on some BFL top right now, and I promise pictures in the next post.

The dyeing has stopped temporarily. Being sick doesn’t make for a desire to stand around the kitchen in front of pots of boiling yarn…too much like cooking. But I’m feeling much better and this coming week I’ll dye some more, and I will take pictures of some of the yarn you haven’t seen yet. My husband is working on the graphics for my logo, and as soon as that’s done, I can get some skeins up on Etsy. I’m even going to a yarn dyeing class with my sister this coming weekend!

Well, I must now get back to the super secret project. At about 400 sts per row, each row takes me almost a half an hour to complete. Sigh.