Victorian Lace Socks KAL

Last month I decided to join the SixSox KAL group, but I lurked through the one they were knitting, the Horcrux socks. I hope to do them at some point but I knew I had to do the current one as soon as the pattern was posted. I debated about ordering some plain yarn but decided that I really should try to use up some of the yarn I have in my stash.

Here's my progress up to yesterday afternoon:

And here's my latest on my Shetland Tea Shawl:

And here's a pic of my chart and scribbling, just for the heck of it:

I've got 12 of 36 repeats finished.

I also managed to dye some yarn that my friend Rori is going to use for the Mystery Stole 3:

I used KnitPick's Paint-Your-Own yarn (the precursor to Bare) and Pro-Chem dyes. Here's a shot of how my yarn is usually drying: Not sure what the neighbors think, but it doesn't happen all that often and I don't know that they really care. They already know I'm a little weird.

My contest for what's different about my Swallowtail shawl is still going! I'll draw from all of the correct guesses on Friday, June 29th so leave me a comment with what you think is different about my shawl. Just in case you need a refresher about what it looks like:

And here it is pre-dyeing, modeled by Judie Overbeek:

The other project (well, one of many, truthfully!) has been tearing down the old front porch railing, ripping it apart, and rebuilding it about 12" lower (and building it better, of course!). Here's a before pic:

And here's how it looks now:

We need to prime and paint, preferably without "help" from little hands (which is why it isn't already done). It may not be all that different in the picture, but what a massive improvement! We can now sit there and not have the top rail going right in front of our eyes. We always felt like we were hiding. And just for the heck of it, here's a beautiful lily in our mailbox flower bed: Tomorrow night is KnitWit Night, which I always enjoy. Eight hours of eating, knitting, and chatting! You just about can't beat that. :-)

More dyeing adventures

Round Two of the dyeing adventure for PFD #50 (dye recipe #50 from Primary Fusion Dye book) went a little better. The color is more even, but not totally even--still have some redder spots and some greener spots, but it's much better than the first attempt. Yarns on the top and top left are the purchased skeins, and the one on the bottom is the first dye attempt. The hank on the right is yesterday's dye session result.

Here's a closer-up pic:

It was hard to capture the variation in the yarn because it's subtle, but it's definitely there. It's not yarn that will be used for this project, which is an afghan, so I'm thinking about making it into an Old Shale stitch pattern scarf.

So while I'm getting closer to the right color, I'm still not there yet....

And in closing, I leave you with a picture of Fred, who likes to talk me through things outside in his very loud Siamese-type voice.

Dying Misadventures

One of these things is not like the others....
The two on the bottom and right are the two Delores is going to use for an afghan. I was attempting to dye the top skein (and two others) to coordinate with them. Unfortunately that particular dye recipes is a very very tough one--the red/magenta strikes (absorbs) much more quickly than the yellow or blue, so the red sucked in at once, while the yellow and blue made green in the rest of it. GGRRRRRR

While I love the resulting yarn, it's not what we were going for.

I'm going to attempt to dye the yarn in stages; first the blue dye, then the yellow dye, and last the red dye. So I'll effectively be triple-dying the yarn instead of mixing the dyes in a cup the way I usually do. We'll see--I've got some other things that must get finished before I start playing again.

Dye adventures

Today I mixed up a new batch of dyes and had a good time!

Gillian (DD, 5 years old) helped me with my first project. Unfortunately the color wasn't even close--it's about 5 shades too dark, but that's O.K.--if I don't use the yarn I can always try selling it on eBay. :-)

The first project was three skeins of Alpaca Cloud, which started out as "sunlight," which is actually beige. It's a great color for dying, but I'm trying to help out Kristina, who hated the KnitPicks yarn as it came. The one on the left is close to the original color, and ignore the one on the right; I can't quite get the color balance right for both skeins. There's a more accurate picture below.

And here's the soft yellow I finally ended up with (the one in the front):

That orange-color skein behind the yellow one is more accurate, although they're both just a hair strong compared to the actual skeins. Colors on a monitor are so hard to get exactly right!

That yellow is MUCH closer to what's pictured on the KnitPicks site than the actual yarn.

I think I'm either going to dye the orange a dark red or try selling it on eBay--I'm not sure which yet. :-) I already have my Kiri shawl that's similar to that orange color, although the Kiri has splotches of yellow/gold/red/orange like the dappling of light through leaves.

I'm also dying my Lucy Bag. It's huge and hard to dye, so I decided to spread it out on a trash bag, pour the dye on and play around a little, then roll it up and put it in another black trash bag and leave it in the sun to cook. Since it was only sunny in that part of the yard for about two hours yesterday, I'm going to leave it for most of today as well. I'm going to try to felt it this afternoon, although I don't anticipate it being finished very quickly! The swatch took SIX trips through the washer to felt to the point I wanted it to, but then that was with warm water on regular cycle, just with the regular wash, not hot water.