Emily’s Knits

On Hold

I’ve been on the Secret of the Stole III list since the end of July, and am partway through Clue 3.  I recently joined the Mystery Stole 4 group, but haven’t chosen yarn or beads yet.  I’m waiting to see how the rest of the pattern turns out, since I don’t have much time to devote to it anyway.

I set aside the baby blanket I was working on – I was uninspired, and the fish edging was harder than I had originally hoped.  There are a few easy solutions to that (create the border pieces separately then join, forget about the fish) but I don’t want to think about figuring it out right now.

Current

Right now I’m working on the Festive Fish blanket I started a while ago from Lion Brand Homespun in blue and green.  It looks like 2 balls of yarn (one in each colour) will come close to making three rows of five fish.  I’m very pleased with the way they’re turning out, though a little worried about the ultimate washability of the yarn.  I’ll take some pictures of the fish and post them soon.  I also have several thoughts of making the small daisy pillows quicker by using the same Homespun for those as well, and maybe some flat coasters in addition.

In projects that I need to finish off there are the final touches on Rosemary’s prayer shawl and then the rest of the SotSII-inspired shawl I started for Irina.

I’m tempted to stock up on Koolaid tomorrow when I go shopping – Safeway currently has the small packets on sale.

Future

I’m looking for a nice shawl pattern that will only require around 880 yards of fingering weight yarn.  The beautiful teal and blue wool that Jess and I dyed needs to be used!

My freshman roommate from CMU Jess was in town this weekend.  On Sunday we played around with dyeing some yarn with supplies from Knit Picks.  This was my first effort, but Jess had done some previously.  I ordered some Jaquard acid dyes (Vermillion, Teal, Sapphire Blue, and Purple) and we made a trip to the grocery store for handfuls of Koolaid packages.  We both lean instinctively towards blues and greens, but Safeway’s lack of beverages in a family other than red forced us to experiment a bit.

The first try was just to get a feel for the process.  We kettle-dyed a skein of 75/25 sock wool in purple Jaquard dye.  It’s a little muted, but it should make a nice pair of socks.

Hand-painted Koolaid all-wool sock yarns from KnitPicks.  The first one is striped in yellow, orange, and 3 colours of red – you can just barely see the darker colours peeking around the back and bottom.  The second randomly was coloured with yellow, orange, and strawberry.

Next came a more complicated acid dye combination.  We had four skeins of Peruvian fingering weight wool and decided they’d look nice as shawls.  That meant pairing them so we would have around 880yds per shawl.  The first two we wanted to try as a combination of blue and teal.  Dye the blue half, simmer some more water, flip the skein, and dye the remainder teal.  We overlooked physics in the first step however, and quickly noticed that the blue dye was siphoning up the skein into the white part!  That’s what happens when you wet the entire skein and then put the remaining end below the water level in the kettle.  We fixed the height issue and carried on.

<<Unfortunately I can’t get a picture of this to upload at the moment, the warning says the max file size is 2M, but iPhoto says the file is 1.4M.  I’ll try again later.>>

There are plans to dye the second set in the same manner, but with vermillion and purple.

Finally, we decided to use what we had learned about uneven heights and dyeing portions of the yarn to create a self-striping sock yarn that changes from dark teal to light across the skein.  We wet the entire skein of a 75/25 sock blend, put half the yarn (the dark end) in the kettle, and left the other end sitting in a ziplock container below the water level in the pot.  The dye gradually siphoned up the skein to pool in the second container and dyed the yarn it held.