Dye Days

Well, I redyed the yarn, and I like it a lot more. The color is somewhat dark for summer, but much more flattering for my skin. When I took it out of the pot, there was still quite a bit of dye left behind in the pot. What to do, I hated to waste it! I suddenly remembered the cashmere/silk turtleneck I'd purchased online, so I didn't see it before I bought it. The color was a dark brown, but a cool brown. I'd planned to overdye it, but was still trying to decide what warm color to use. Bingo! The sweater is now a beautiful warm brown, much nicer for my skin tones. I forgot to take a before picture of the sweater, so there wasn't any point in taking an after picture! I should take an after picture of the yarn for you, but I stepped on the broken side of the foot while I was dyeing and it has complained ever since. So, please accept that the skein of yarn is pretty close in color to the swatch I'd dyed earlier.

Dye Job

Okay, I said I was going to write and ask for opinions. The cone on the right is the cotton/acrylic/wool yarn in the original color. The little sample on the left is what I originally knit up as a gauge swatch and then dyed in the same stock solution. The back is how the dyed skein turned out.





I used less dye for the skein, because I thought the sample turned out a bit dark. I forgot to stir the dye solution before I poured it in, I think the brown dye rose to the top and the yellow sank, don't you? My whole plan was to take the coned yarn to a warmer color. Do you think I succeeded? Or should I mix up the dye solution thoroughly and dye it again? Thoughts? This is supposed to be a summer top for me.

Rats!

I don't know if it is the foot or asthma, but it is hard to post right now. I'm not getting any knitting done either, which leads me to believe I need to be checking my asthma a bit closer. I see the doctor tomorrow about the foot. I'm supposed to be using an Ace bandage to wrap it, but that hurts so much! grump! I would think that after 2 weeks (as of today!) it wouldn't. Poor Howard tries so hard to wrap it without causing pain. As he said tonight in frustration -- it doesn't do any good to wrap it, since it is so loose it won't hold it in place! I am not able, so far to wrap it myself -- I tend to get it too tight, which isn't pleasant.

The sweater that I frogged has gone all of 2 rows. I suspect I need to make it in something other than garter stitch because I just plain get BORED if I don't change colors or something to break up the monotony! Sad but true! I managed a couple of rows of the socks and stopped them too. sigh This is how projects become abandoned! I need something fun but fairly simple to knit. Ideas? NO endless knitting, as in a felted/fulled project. Something that will keep my interest without requiring a lot of thought.

I' ve been chatting about spinning with someone on
Sparkpeople.com and my interest is becoming piqued again. Maybe I'll take the acorn support spindle and the lovely merino from Australia with me when we go to the doc's tomorrow. That will be something fun and different for them to see! LOL Too bad the staff knows me so well there! What is nice, they like to check out what I'm doing! I've thought several times about spinning on one of the wheels since I managed this stupid idiocy of breaking the foot, but am worried that it will hurt too much! I should just DO IT (thanks to the sports commercial!) and see, instead of wondering!

Still not skeined off the yarn so I can over-dye it. Can you say "chicken!" Or is it "lazy!" I think the best idea would be to knit several samples then try different dye solutions to see which works the best. The idea of so much work just to get the right results stops me. Silly me! It isn't going to become a summer shell if I don't! Perhaps it would be a good idea to have more than a warm brown and a gold on hand when I start that off! I have a cool taupe yarn, do I need more colors to change it to the warm spectrum? Since the yarn is linen/cotton/wool, I know that acid dyeing will only over-dye the wool. I'm hoping that will be enough. What do you think? Yeah, I know, sample! I'd still like opinions!

On a completely unrelated front, we've started buying washing soda for laundry. Yesterday I spilled something on my linen shirt. I'm amazed at how well soaking it overnight in washing soda/water did to eradicate the stain! Not to mention my poor hand-knit dishcloths that were so badly stained. Actually, I forgot about them and it went more than 18 hours before I washed them. The stain on the shirt had disappeared, and the dishcloths were so much improved, I was amazed! The dishcloths were knit by a dear friend from New York who has since died of breast cancer. I think of Edie every time I use them. She was getting on in years when we met her, dishcloths and lap-robes were the only thing she knit by then, as she felt anything else was too hard. She sold most of her dishcloths as a supplement to their Social Security and retirement funds. We were honored to receive them as gifts. So, I'm delighted to be able to get the stains out. She would have been hurt if we didn't use them as she intended. But the sad truth is that they will stain as they are used. The color of Peaches and Creme fades. But they were knit with love, and I appreciate that so much!

Howard stayed home with a cold today. I have to be honest and say I'm really hopeful that I don't get it! The poor guy is miserable!

Ack Spit!

My laptop is having issues. Right now it won't talk nicely to the camera. Among other things. Even though I have it instructed to save the pictures on the camera to my hard drive, it insists on trying to save them back to the camera, which doesn't appreciate the "gift."

Which means that the lovely pictues I wanted to show you of the dye job I did yesterday won't show up here until after the computer guy figures it out -- at the earliest tomorrow. There are enough problems that he wants to research all of them before taking the computer away from me.

I want to do the "Heere Be Dragone Shawl" "Heere Be Dragone Shawl" and thought I had the perfect yarn on hand, it matched yards per pound, but it was white. Helle had spun up a beautiful wool/angora yarn for me, and I truly thought that would be perfect, if I could get the dye job to work out "just right." Unfortunately, I forgot to take the nature of angora into account (my fault, I'm still really new at dyeing.) The yarn wound up with subtle variegations of tone within the skein. Enough that I'm afraid it will obscure that pattern, which would be a disaster with this shawl!

I also dyed the lovely skein of Gotland Florence my "Spin Me A Treasure" spoiler sent to me from Belgium. The grey tones were a bit too cold for me, so I also dyed it the bronze/gold in the same dyebath. It is gorgeous! I'm really looking forward to knit with it. ,