Lesson Learned

Not all Cushing dyes are created equal. Actually I already figured this out when I used the apricot and the robin’s egg blue. The apricot was a lot stronger even when I added more water. What I hadn’t learned that one color could completely overwhelm another color. This roving here is supposed to be apricot and turquoise green.



Do you see any apricot? Me neither. I now have a camouflage colorway. It’s not the bad really. I’ll just save the turquoise for another time and try to find a lighter green to go with the apricot.

There was so much turquoise green dye left that I was able to dye these two skeins of yarn...



The skein on the left is the original left over turquoise green dye and apricot. The blue in the skein on the right is from the waste from dyeing the skein on the right. The green is lemon lime kool-aid. I’m going to have to think real hard before I use the turquoise green with another color.

Sheba prefers to keep an eye out over the back yard.

It has begun

This week I spun half of my self dyed roving.



I actually like how it came out. It's preety close to what I had imagined. Now I just need to finish spinning the wool from class and ply it and get it off the bobbins. Then I can spin the other half of my roving.

Dyeing Roving

Well, I think my first go at dyeing was a success. I won’t bore you with all the photos. I’ll just show some highlights. You can see all the photos at my flickr account .

I’ll start with the final product. I was hoping for more of a peachy color but I think it'll lighten up when I draft it.



Here’s the roving just after I added the dye.



Here’s the roving the morning after, washing.



I learned a lot from on this trial run. The big one is to mix the dye first so that it can cool off before you apply it to the roving. Also I shouldn’t be afraid of making the colors too dark. More is better.

I’m hoping to spin up this roving this week. And, I can’t wait until Friday night to dye again!!

Sheba prefers it when I just sit around and knit.

Why I'm not a perfectionist

One thing knitting has taught me is that it doesn’t pay to be a perfectionist. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted about this before. Sometimes the problems that arise are out of your control and sometimes you just make mistakes.

First, the problem that I have no real control over. You can clearly see where the second ball of yarn starts (they’re from the same dye lot). That’s part of the problem with using hand dyed yarn.



Then there are the times when you make mistakes...



There’s no reason to be polite about it, the mistake are there.



I am comforting myself by reminding myself that’s how you can tell its hand made and by eating crème de leche ice cream.

Clapotis

I’ve been bad. I’ve put aside my Beginner’s Triangle for a little while. In its place I’ve started the Clapotis . I think it looks like a giant thong.



As you can see, I’ve been working on it for awhile. I’m using Araucania Nature Wool color Rust (#33). I only got three skeins and I’m starting to think I’m going to need some more.

Here’s a close up of the dropped stitches. It feels weird to let them go. Dropped stitches are usually bad.



This is a test project. I’m thinking of making the Clapotis for a couple of fall birthdays. I wanted to try it out first to see if I liked it and how long it would take to make. So far so good but I’m still only in the Straight Rows section.

New Stuff

Yippee! I got some new toys! My order from hello yarn came yesterday. It was a nice surprise since I was home sick with a summer cold.

I got some new roving. It's called "Smoky".



And some new yarn. It's called Grasshopper and is a superwash merino. I'm going to make a pinwheel blanket out of it, eventually.



Adrian also included a couple extra things. First is a sample of a silk/merino blend roving. I'm really looking forward to trying it.



And a really cute button.

Look!

It's my first skein of yarn! Last week I plied the all the fiber that I spun during the first month of spinning class. There are all sorts of fiber in here including several types wool and silk, camel, buffalo, quivet, flax, soy, angora, alpaca, mohair and even possum. The instructor swears that possum is considered a good fiber in Australia.



I washed it this weekend and I now have 64 yards of thin to bulky yarn. I think I'm going to make some sort of wall hanging with it. I think it's too fragile to make anything that would be worn.

I'm retaking the class so that I can play with all the fun and unusual fibers.

Nothing to do with Knitting

Last weekend I broke my third teapot lid.



I can’t say that I was too sad. It’s a plain old teapot that we’ve had for awhile. I’m not even going to try to fix this one. It’s going into the mosaic scrape box.

But breaking an old teapot means that I get to buy a new teapot. Yippee! Here’s what I got...



And here’s a close up of the extra cute bee on the lid. It’s a bit blurry, for some reason I couldn’t get the camera to focus on the bee.



And one last shot of the teapot with my honey pot...

knitting in public

We went to the Mariners game on Saturday. Greg's sister caught me knitting. I look surprised.