2 out of 3

Two of the skeins of yarn are dried and balled up.



I'm thinking of making Sophie with the yarn. It should work out just right. The only problem is as usual, I don't have the right needle size.

Dieing to dye

Last night I finally did something I’ve been itching to do since forever. I dyed yarn with Kool-aid! It was a lot of fun. Although it was also messy, takes a lot of water and Kool-aid only comes in pastel colors. Having said that, I need more Kool-aid.

I used Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, worsted weight in natural. Here’s the before picture:



Step One: Soaking. This step is surprisingly hard since wool likes to float. It’s hard to get all of it under water.



Step Two: Dying.





Step Three: Nuking. I’ll get shots of this next time.

Step Four: Cooling.



Step Five: Rinsing.



Step Six: Drying.



Step Seven: Waiting. I’m still waiting for the yarn to dry. Then I’ll ball it up and knit with it. I’m really looking forward to it. What can I make with 220 yards of worsted weight yarn? A hat? A scarf?

Lesson One: Next time I’ll use gloves.



I wonder who has the best Kool-aid selection in town?

Back Home

We got back home Thursday safe and sound. I spent yesterday morning getting all of my photos from my camera to my computer. Then I had to look at all of them. I took me awhile since I have around 1900 photos. I started uploading them to flickr last night. Then this morning I realized I should do the most important ones first, the photos of my shawl.

Here’s a photo of the wedge one completed. I finished it on the train from Madrid to Sevilla.



And here’s a shot of it in my seat. It’s a bit bleary. For some reason at the time I thought it’d be funny to get a shot of the shawl in my seat. You should have seen the looks on the other passengers’ faces (we were in first class).



And here’s a shot with wedge two completed. I had to stop here since I lost the pattern. I really wished I’d had the pattern with my for the 10 hour plane ride home.



Now that I’m home I’ve started working on the shawl again. Yippee! I hope to have photos of wedge three up soon!

Oh yes! I bought some yarn in Amsterdam. I'll take photos later and get them up on the site.

Branching Out Sucks!

Okay, I'm sure the problem is with me and not the pattern but right now I think the Branching Out scarf on knitty.com sucks! I can't get row 5 to come out with the right number of stitches! I've tried almost ten times (I'm not kidding). The worst part is that I have a ' hour train ride tomorrow and nothing to knit. :(

Other then that, Paris is great! I haven't seen another yarn shop but I'm keeping my eyes open.

French Yarn Shop

Today I went into my first yarn shop outside the US. I saw two shops in Madrid but I didn't go into either of them. We were walking down a street in Avignon when I looked in a shop and saw yarn. What a surprise!

The yarn shop was Phildar. They only sell their own yarn. I look a quick look around and then settled on two pattern books. I hear there are online knitting dictionaries that will help me figure out the instructions. I almost bought some mohair but decided against it.

Tomorrow we are off to Paris! If I find another yarn shop, I'm getting some yarn.

Bonjour!

We made it to Frqnce! It was quite the day! It took us 4 trains to get from Barcelona to Arles, France. The travel wasn't so bad. What was bad was that I left my knitting pattern on one of the trains. I have no idea where it is right now. That means once I'm done with the second wedge, I'm done with the shawl until I get home. I do have a spare project to work on but I'm not that interested in it.

Oh well, I should just be glad I still have something to work on.

Greetings from Madrid

Hello everyone!

Well we got into Madrid on Friday. I didn´t knit as much on the flight as I would´ve liked. The seats were cramped and uncomfortable. It didn´t make for good knitting. That and I was tired so I kept making mistakes.

I did work a few rows on my scarf during the bus ride to Avila yesterday. I am almost done with my first wedge. We are taking the train to Sevilla tomorrow so I may be able to get in a few rows then.

Preparing for our trip

As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting much lately. Greg and I are leaving for Europe on Thursday and I've been busy trying to get ready. I will try to post while on the trip. If I'm able to there probably won't be any photos.

I will leave you with these photos. I've been working on the Perfect Pie Shawl from the Weekend Knitting book. The stitch pattern is pretty easy once you figure it out. The pattern itself is not written very well and is really confusing at first. I read a bunch of posts on knittersreview.com aboout people giving up on the shawl.

This shot is half of a wedge. The pattern has 5 wedges. I'm using the recommended yarn, Berrocco Classic Mohair.



Here's a close up of the stitch pattern. I think it looks kind of like alligator skin.



I'm going to take this project with my to Europe. I think three weeks is too long to go without knititng. Also the balls of the mohair are pretty small and lite. I think it's safe to say that I won't be able to finish it before we get back.