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.

Gillian's doll is finished

It took me three tries to get the socks finished (swatch? Who needs to swatch?), but they're on the doll!

And the full shot with DS:


The boy wanted his clothes off, and I obliged thinking, erroneously, that he was going to nap. Ha!
The socks are cute enough to merit a close up:

I also finished the Shape It! Scarf from Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch book. The pictures leave a lot to be desired, but I don't seem to be able to have photo opps during the day in natural light--too much "help" from little fingers.


And a so-so picture of the fabric.


It's kind of a neat scarf, but I think I'd like it a lot better in a different yarn. I paid less than $1 a ball for this stuff, though, and full retail is close to $9....

Hanging Garden progress

I've been working quite a bit on my Hanging Garden Stole, and finally blocked part of it in preparation for my talk on lace that I'll be giving tomorrow evening to the local knitting guild.

You can see that it's still on the needles (because I'm on the 5th repeat of the 12 I'll be doing), but I wanted to show how it doesn't look like much where it hasn't been blocked, and then where it has, it's beautiful and lacy.

It's pinned out on a portable ironing surface which is nice for lining up things, although I wasn't being too careful about how even the lines are. It kind of plays with my eyes because of the red lines of the grid but it's handy to have around.

My plan is to pick up stitches all the way around, do a plain round, do a round with a lot of yarn overs, then a plain round, then some beads, then a sideways edging. All that being said, if I get totally tired of it I can just bind off after a couple of garter rows and call it done. :-) But I really want to add beads and do a sideways edging, so we'll see.

I'm using KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud, which is one of my favorite yarns. The needles are bamboo size 2.5mm (between US 1 and 2) that I got through eBay. The pattern is from KnitPicks, Sivia Harding's Hanging Garden Stole.

Swatching and scarfing

Last night at our weekly Sit N Stitch at Panera I started the Shape It! Scarf from Sally Melville's book The Knit Stitch.



It's going very quickly, and I'm pleased with the way the yarn is looking. I used this same yarn for a drop-stitch Mobius, and I'm considering ripping it out and using it for something with a tighter gauge.

I also did some more swatching for the Rose of England (ROE) KAL, which starts the 9th of this month, I believe. I'm not going to be able to start then, but hopefully soon.

Here are the swatches:

And some more close-up pics:
The big one is on size US3, the top is on 2s, and the bottom is on 0s. I'm strongly leaning toward the 2s because I'm not seeing a lot of definition between the stockinette and stitch pattern in any of the sizes, and if I use the 3s the shawl will be huge. Be sure to click on the pictures to see them big.

Another pic of Doily with Spiral

I've got a miserable head cold so I'm dumber than a post, but I do have a beautiful picture of my Doily with spiral Tablecloth from my friend Delores.



It's spread out on a table at Panera.

I also finished (at long last!!) a pair of socks that I started months ago. They've been languishing on the needles for not really any good reason, so I pushed through and got them done. Wore them last night and they're pretty good--could be tighter around the ankle, but each sock is still a learning experience.

I'm giving a talk on lace to my knitting guild on Monday night. The hard part is figuring out what not to talk about. I could go on for days. I finally got a short outline and I'll keep working on it once my brain is a little clearer.