Box o’ yarn

I was cleaning up my fiber room (and, no, I didn’t finish) and took this lovely picture of my handspun yarn.

It’s one of two boxes of handspun I’ve filled up. This box is about 24 inches deep (too deep to fit on my storage rack). I just love all the colors–most are dyed, but the one big, dark brown skein is natural colored Coopworth from Hatchtown Farm. It’s Bergetta’s hoggett (first) fleece from about five years ago. I’ve got enough spun to make a sweater, but I haven’t actually knit anything yet.

So, what do you do when you’re knitting? If I had more people to hang out with, I could talk with them, but the times I can knit (usually late evening after the kids go to bed) are not condusive to haven’t company over. I could listen to audio books but I find most of them to be . . . slow or not well-read.

For most of my knitting I can both watch tv and knit at the same time, so I choose to watch tv. What’s on my watch list?

–We got Freaks and Geeks on Netflix. It’s a ton of fun, but some of the more painful moments hit too close to home. I got beaten up in HS gym class too many times to count. We’ve watched ep 1 and 2.

–Andy Barker, PI, is available for d/l at NBC.com. It’s laugh out loud funny, even upon a second viewing. The first two eps are a 10 on the funny meter, the third is a 7, but still worth watching.

–Bones is available on Fox.com and is best “watched” while knitting. The gory, gross, or boney parts are easily avoided by paying attention to your knits and purls. I love the characters (Angela and Hodgins are just *so* cute together) and the stories are interesting, even if a bit bizarre.

–Gray’s Anatomy is available at NBC.com. Gray’s is good for knitting, since it occasionally has blood and surgery, but the people are so beautiful, you’ll need to look up often.

–Blood Ties on Lifetime (also available to d/l on iTunes) is dark and a bit weird, but the people are beautiful.

–Friday Night Lights (at NBC.com) is a new find for me. I’m only on ep 4, but it’s good stuff. It’s especially good if you like football, but I’ve been told my my non-football-watching friends that they like it, too. Many, well-written characters and a compelling story.

Here are things in my to-be-watched queue. I don’t know if they’re good for knitting yet or not.

–Oz (HBO), the DVDs are in the queue.

–The Tudors (Showtime), starts this weekend.

–The Riches (F/X), I taped them and will get to them sometime.

–Eureka (SciFi), the first season ended last summer, with a second 13-ep season ordered for this summer. I’ve been told it was excellent, and will tape it when it reruns (which I’m sure will be before they start the second season).

Not much yarn, but a whole lot of tv.

I hope Felix’s parents aren’t reading my blog because here are the booties I made for him.

These little beauties are made out of naturally colored, organic cotton. I boiled them for 30 minutes and when that didn’t bring out the color as I was told it would, I boiled them for 30 minutes with baking soda. That didn’t do anything either. So, with this cotton, boiling did nothing for the color. But they are a light green and are very soft. I hope his little feet enjoy them.

BTW, the I cord is now laced into the booties, but the booties were still damp when I took the picture.

Welcome to the world Felix!

Dyeing for fun

I’m getting ready to teach a rainbow dyeing class, so I’ve been ordering roving, dyes, and supplies. I also wanted to put a display up at the store to entice people to sign up, so I did a little dyeing to share.

I’m NOT putting in dye warnings in this post. Be smart when you dye, so you won’t die or make anyone sick.

I broke out my dyeing supplies and discovered that I had a bunch of dyes already mixed up. I’m lazy and cheap, so I just used those. That also means I don’t know the names of all the colors that got used, but hey, that’s the way it goes.

Superwash merino roving is an excellent choice for a dyeing project. It is bright white, strikes dye clearly, and it won’t felt even if you muck will it during the process. It also makes nice socks. I tore the roving into eight ounce lengths–plenty for a pair of socks after spinning it.

I soaked the roving in water, a bit of Unicorn Fiber wash, and a glug of white vinegar over night. I then drained the fiber and squeezed it out.

My dyes were already mixed up in squeeze bottles, so I put down long sheets of plastic wrap (the commercial brands are MUCH better than the store brands), put out the roving, and started pouring the dyes.

I try different layouts with the roving for the fun of it. The shape makes a difference if you’re dying yarn, but there’s still so much processing with roving (spinning and plying) that it’s just for fun here.

“Don’t dye too much”. To make sure you don’t end up with muddy color, I leave open spaces between the colors the first time I pour on dyes. Then I use my fingers to massage the dye into the white areas. If the white areas are too big, I add more dye. In the end it looks like this

More plastic wrap goes over the top of the roving, then I roll up everything like a big burrito, sealing the edges. If I haven’t dyed too much there won’t be dye dripping out the sides and the roving will be colored all the way through to the bottom. The burritos are put on a steamer basket in a deep stock pot. I put about an inch of water in the bottom, pop the top on, and put it on the stove on high.

When it comes to a boil, I turn down the stove so the water simmers, and check on it in about 10 minutes. When the burritos puff up with steam, I turn the stove off, and leave the pot to cool with the lid on. The next day I rinse the roving out in the sink (another great reason to use superwash roving) and spin out in the washing machine and hang the roving to dry.

After a day you hang it up to display and hope to get a chance to spin it someday.

So, wanna dye? Sign up at the store.

I’m almost back from the dead. And, not the Grateful Dead either.

I haven’t done much over the last two weeks, with the flu and a cold one after another. You know that you’re life is sad when anti-nausea drugs make you joyful. And, when that was done I became enamored of faux-sudafed. I’m better now. It’s tough to attend two town budget meetings and a Planning Board meeting all in one week, while taking drugs, but I survived!

Additionally, I worked a bunch of days (and more in the coming two weeks, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute), found a great new tv show, and did some knitting. I’m behind on dyeing, but, hey, I couldn’t stand the smell while I was sick.

First, here are the Great Adirondak socks I’ve been working on. Please note the way the colors “pooled” or swirled.

Please note that this project is 100% complete in my progress bar. I’m very proud. I love this yarn and have started another pair.

Next, I continue to work on the cowl for the store. I love the way the colors play. No pooling in this yarn, but I think the colors are lovely.

The continuing saga of my very own handpainted socks continues. This is the third sock from the same skein. This is the yarn I’ll be using to teach my rainbow dyeing class next month. Email me for more info (the yarn and roving has already been ordered!)

Because I never have enough to do: I heard through the grapevine (specifically, one of my sisters got a message through her husband, from our cousin that his sister (also our cousin) had a baby boy on Saturday). Given that the message passed through two men, neither of which is the baby’s father, I have no further info. No name, weight or anything else. But, in celebration of the big event, I’m making organic cotton baby booties for said baby. Ecoknit cotton in light green knit in a generic baby bootie pattern.

I’ve been told that boiling the cotton will make the color deeper. Here’s the first bootie, pre-boiling:

To make sure I’m busy enough, Unique One is having two back-to-back knitting weekends here in Camden, ME. Three days each of knitting, knitting classes, shopping in Camden, great food and a discount at the store. Because we’re hosting a bunch of nice people from all over the country, it’s all hands on deck and I’ll be working full days Friday, Sat, Sun and Monday for the next two weeks. In case you want to join us for this fun-filled weekend, give the store a call at 1-888-691-8358 and/or check out the info page here. There are a few spaces still available.

Now that I’ve rambled about knitting, I’ll move on to tv. I watch a lot of tv. Sometimes it’s more than others; lately it hasn’t been much. I tape what I can and download other things. Here are some things you should catch (if you don’t already):

Rome–It’s nearing the end of the second season, so I bet it’ll be out on DVD by summer. It’s a short (12 ep) season and the first season was especially good. The second is ok, but not as spectacular. I’ve heard that in the name of authenticity they considered having all the costumes handspun. They couldn’t afford it, but the production values are spectacular.

Blood Ties–It’s a brand new show, available by the ep on iTunes. The two hour pilot was excellent–great writing, acting and production values. There’s enough depth to the characters to keep them interesting for a long time. Oh, and there are vampires, though that wasn’t why I found it worth watching.

Tonight I will sit and watch the second ep of Blood Ties and knit. The wind is whipping tonight, but I’m snug and happy!

For the last 10+ days I’ve been sick. First with the flu (for about a week) and now a cold. That makes for not much knitting, spinning or dyeing. I have three bumps of superwash Merino roving soaking in the basement sink, ready to dye, but have no energy to do so. I’ve got three knitting projects within arms reach, but no inclination to pick them up (though, I have updated the progress bars to the right–I’m not completely out of it .

I ordered roving and set up the venue for the dyeing class I’m teaching in April. If you want to come and dye sock yarn and roving in rainbow colors, this is the class for you. I’m ordering dyes soon. Since it’s March, there’s a 20% discount on greens. Too funny! Contact me or Unique One if you want to come play in the dye with me.

When I recover from illness and survive my civic meetings (two budget, one planning) this week, I’ll be back to knitting and dyeing. My goal is to have pictures of completed items this weekend.

I don’t have babies any more. My youngest is 5 years old. But, people come into the yarn store looking for baby projects all the time; mostly for grandchildren or nieces/nephews, and occasionally their own children. It’s fun to knit for babies. The projects are small and knit up quickly. You can try out a new yarn and knitting method without worrying about a big project.

What kind of things do they look for?

It varies. Somedays it’s intricate fair isle sweaters, patterns from Dale of Norway, and other days it’s gansey’s, like the ones from Yankee Knitter. Last summer it was a lot of baby blankets (we have our own patterns that you get with purchase).

The one thing that makes the biggest difference is the presence of a sample. We’ve got dozens of sample items knit up at the store. Sweaters, blankets, hats, scarves and socks adore the walls and countertops. Often people will bring a specific item up to the counter and ask for the exact pattern and yarn. I guess the sample makes it real.

These samples are the reason I’m making the Frog Tree Alpaca Handpaint cowl I’ve been writing about. But next I want to make something for a baby. I’m considering this pattern:

It’s Minnowknits’ China Doll pattern.

Here are my questions.

• Would this be a good boy’s sweater? I would put it on one of my boys, but other people have different feelings about what boys should wear.
• Is organic yarn important? I’m considering O-Wool. (click on the “Hand Knitting” link in the left sidebar to see the colors)
• What color would you choose? For a boy or girl? I love garnet, but the oatmeal looks so . . . organic.

Answer away, peeps!

It was absolutely lovely yesterday. Here’s Guinness, our lab/shepherd mix, playing in the snow. He weighs about 75 pounds.

And, here are the crocuses that were bravely blooming yesterday.

Today is a different story. We’re expecting a foot or so of snow, followed by sleet this afternoon. The kids are all home from school and I’m paying far too much attention to my computer. So far this morning, I’ve shoveled 300 ft of driveway with T1 and T2, started dinner, and made this:

You can link it back to me from your own page. Email me if you need help doing that. I think it’s a cute little button. When I was joining webrings the other day one of them asked for a button, so I whipped this one up (please note the two, new web rings in the sidebar . If you know of other web rings you think I should be part of, please drop me a line.

Here’s the driveway:

One more pic from yesterday. We tap our maples and make about a quart of syrup every year. Here’s T2 in his hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-knit hat, tapping in a spile.

Now, I will sit, play games with the kids and knit. Stay warm, all!

I’ve added a bar to the progress table. One for the lovely cowl I posted about yesterday. The colors are wonderful and I continue to be thrilled at how it’s coming out. I guess I need to watch more tv–then it would get done faster.

I’m still working on socks. Here’s a progress pic so you can see how the handpainted colors are pooling.

The k3, p1 rib is obviously using a lot less yarn than the k1, p1 ribbing I used in the completed sock. Therefore the “ribbon” of purple goes around many more times with the k1, p1 ribbing. I’m going to do the foot in stockinette, so the ribbon should be similar in both socks.

It’s an interesting study in yarn usage as well. Stockinette is not only faster to knit, but uses less yarn. That could be a consideration when knitting a particularly large pair of socks or when worried about not having enough yarn.