Contest at Colleen's

Mint green, pink, and brown Falklands wool, dishwasher dyed.

Pale green and olive domestic wool roving, dishwasher dyed.

Merino roving dishwasher dyed in beautiful blues and greens! YUM!


Hey! Colleen is having a contest over at her blog! Guess the number of bags of sheep fleece she has crammed into her car, and win some roving!

I think there might be a follow-up contest to see how many bags of fleece I took off her hands!

Cuff 1 from Kepler, knit in GORGEOUS (like, I want to ROLL naked in this yarn!) Kathmandu Aran in #115, a beautiful deep olive tweed.

This is a crappy pic of the bottom of Soliel from Knitty, which I am knitting for someone for Christmas (don't know if she reads this blog or not) in Elann Endless Summer Luna, which is a nice cotton/rayon blend. Christmas knitting also includes finishing a sweater for someone special (one more sleeve to go!), a fair isle hat and mitten set for my daughter, and a scarf for someone special, too! I'm hoping that's it!

Dishwasher Dyeing

Why is is that Blogger seems to have only a 5 picture limit? It seems that whenever I try to load more than 5, Blogger says no way. Now I remember why I don't blog that often - between having to load pics on my computer, clean them up and crop them if necessary, and then wrestle with Blogger for an hour, only to post and have it disappear into the ether, I realize I'd rather spend my time getting cavities filled or something. Oh, well, we'll try to make lemonade out of this.

This is my first foray into dishwasher dyeing, a la Natasha (who got it from Shannon, if I remember correctly). Let me just say, it's AWESOME! If you want to dye a ton of fiber at once (and I only did about 4 pounds, just in case I bulloxed it up royally!) this is THE way to go! I learned a few things - a little bit of fiber in a quart bag will not dye all the way through, leaving white areas, which don't really bother me, but still. So next time I will be armed with more gallon bags than I had. Oh, and definitely leave the bags open to vent (thanks, Natasha!) but not too much - I had one bag fill almost entirely with water during the washing process, and had to run the dishwasher empty with just soap the next day to get the dye water sitting in the bottom out. I just threw in enough water to cover the fiber, added about a cup of vinegar (more for bigger bags, less for the quart bags) and threw them in!

Here are only a few pics of finished fiber, because that's all Blogger would allow me (you'd think with all the complaints Blogger bloggers make, they would improve the system - it's not like we're quiet about our complaints! I see them in just about every Blogger blog I visit regularly!)

This is BFL dyed with pale chartreuse and emerald green. There's the random, occasional splash of a pale olive-y color, too. Don't you just love the way BFL crimps? I love BFL - I think it's my favorite fiber to spin!
Here's some more BFL in reds, turquoise, and white - too "red, white, and blue" for me, but I may just list it to sell in my Etsy shop.
Ok, this IS a different pic, I swear! It's more BFL, and it has some green in it, too, in addition to the red and turquoise. I definitely need to squish the fiber around more when I put the dye in the bag, but I was afraid that the dyes would moosh together too much and would just turn out like mud. I need not have worried.
Well, I've tried three more times to post more pics, but that appears to be all I'm allowed. Another post to follow!

More FOs!

Here is the Corriedale pencil roving from Kat all spun up into a pretty 2-ply yarn, probably a chunky/bulky yarn (I haven't checked the WPI yet). It's soooo pretty and the pencil roving was a dream to spin, just pre-draft and let it glide through your fingers. I only used one hand, it was that easy! Must. Get. More. Pencil. Roving. Here is a closeup of the cabled sock. I figured the other pic didn't really show the cabling, so how were you to know I wasn't lying?! Please forgive the blurry pics, for some reason my camera has decided it doesn't want to work too well with knitted things lately. Stupid camera. Hey, Santa! A new camera would be nice!
This is a baby hat knit for little baby Nate (welcome Nate!!!) out of a skein of Rowan Summertweed yarn. I knit this from the Last-Minute Knitted Gifts book, which called for Mission Falls Cotton, but I couldn't find it at my LYS and didn't want to have to order it. The Rowan Summertweed was GORGEOUS to knit with and knit to gauge. Very cute hat, quick knit, I will definitely knit some more of these hats!
This shot is for Colleen. This is the Irish Hiking Scarf. I started this scarf last summer when I first started knitting. She had been knitting one, too, and I thought it would be great as my first cabling project. Especially when I found this gorgeous chocolate milk colored alpaca yarn at AC Moore, called Alpaka (I have NO idea who makes it, and haven't found any info on it online - but it's still available at AC Moore). I LOVE THIS SCARF! I am completely besotted with cables, so this scarf is sheer perfection. I didn't block it yet, because I'm trying to decide if I want to or not. I kind of like it just the way it is.
Here's another skein of yarn I spun up. I just grabbed a bunch of fibers out of my stash with about 2 ounces of white merino roving, and went to town. There's natural brown llama, some yellow and pink bunny crack (angora), some pale blue and pale purple blended superwash merino batts, and some navy blue merino. Kinda neat, huh?
Oh, and just a note, my yarns at Purple, Pink, and Orange (I'm the featured designer on their homepage, too!) are on sale 10% through October, and my yarns in my Etsy store have all been marked down. My yarns at Yarn Rescue are selling quickly, so check them out, too - and there will be new yarns there in the next 2 weeks or so (and check out the cute banner down the page for my yarns - so cool!)

Before you throw something at me...

I have FOs! I swear! Summers are so freakin' busy around here, with DH being home from school and trying to cram as much as possible into the days before he has to leave us and go back. Hurricane Ella and I spent 10 days down in Florida (before Hurricane Ernesto hit - I think Ella did more damage to my parents' house than Ernesto did!) and then were down the shore for 4 days for Labor Day. But now we're back, football season has started, which means I go back into football widowhood (those ladies out there with football fans got nuthin' on me! DH is a coach, so football season starts in early August and continues through November, with games, practices, scrimmages, scouting, etc. Little cards with plays sketched on them, breaking down videos at all hours, watching coaching DVDs, grass-stained socks, Sharpie markers going through my wash...it never ends! And while that leaves me wrangling a toddler ALL DAY LONG, it also leaves me plenty of time to knit and spin!) I was pretty productive while in Florida and since I've gotten back. Here's some FOs I have...

Up at the top there are legwarmers and a hat for Ella knit on the fly from yarn I got from this Etsy seller. It's Merino and Falklands wool yarn plied with strips of blue, pink, and white paisley fabric! SO cute and as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to make something for Ella out of it. Totally random cast-on and everything, the legwarmers are just knit tubes, and I threaded two of the scraps of fabric through the tops to hold them up a little better if the ribbing doesn't work (she's a VERY ACTIVE toddler!)

This is a baby surprise jacket from EZ. I used 2 200-yard skeins of handpainted lambswool yarn from Blue Ridge Yarns that I got at MDSW. I actually ran out of yarn and had to cut the pattern short 3 rows, and then seam the shoulders with a beige acrylic yarn I had on hand. So we squeaked by on that one, let me tell you! But what a great, easy, fun knit! I will definitely be knitting this for my girlfriend's new little boy for Christmas.


This is a pair of cabled socks I knit out of Trekking XXL 108 (I think!) I love how the Trekking doesn't match - they're like kissing cousin socks instead of identical twins. Don't look at the right toe, please don't! No! Damn...ok, so I was knitting the toe as from the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook (get thee this book!) and read the directions wrong (plus just didn't get the natural way a sock would decrease - along the OUTSIDE of the foot!) so I decreased in the wrong place, meaning my decreases happen at the middle of the foot instead of the outside edge of the foot. I HATE frogging, especially with decreases and such, so I just left it. It's not uncomfortable, and I figure no one's really going to see it but me. Ok, I'm lazy and just wanted the damned thing done! I finished the first sock in Florida in April, and the second one finally the beginning of August. SSS? So? Actually, I've got some of the new circs from Knitpicks and am going to teach myself to knit 2 socks on 2 circs.
This is the Celtic Cap that I knit for myself out of Classic Elite Skye Tweed yarn that I picked up from my LYS. I LOVE this yarn, and I love this hat. I started it with the picot edging, but don't like the way it's the knit side up against the purl side of the pattern, so I am leaving it a rolled edge with the holes. Who cares? It covers my ears and keeps me warm! I would probably knit this again on smaller needles...oh, wait, I am! I am knitting one for my MIL, she picked an acrylic that blends from a greenish to a bluish to a white and back again - I can't remember the brand, but it's knitting up nicer than I thought it would. I'm about halfway done with it.