Sunday, January 28, 2007

Fixing to Get Ready

I had two things that I wanted to get done yesterday. One project was to dye up a pound of handspun yarn that I found in a bin upstairs. I woke up thinking about it – that’s scary. I had six skeins and ended up dyeing five colors. The purple and lilac were Gaywool dyes in Hibiscus and Mulberry and the rest were hybrids that I couldn’t possibly reproduce. The gold is simply school bus yellow dye stock that Amy left here with a glug of black to sadden it. I’m still undecided on whether to purchase more Gaywool dyes or Landscape dyes. They’re both products of Australia. I like the Gaywool because it’s measured at one capful to 4 ounces. That fits well with my math skills.



These are ready to be knitted into hats. I was out of hat yarn so am glad to replenish my supply.

After my foot surgery on Wednesday, I’m not going to be mobile for a while. Anticipating that, I decided to get knitting projects together and evaluated my stash and patterns until I had three projects. One project will be from the Blue Sky Organic Cotton which I bought from Amy. It didn’t work for the baby sweater for which I had bought it, but after seeing the Jimmy Beans buttons and putting one together with one of Diane Soucy’s vest patterns, I had one project down. The second one was harder. The yarn is a worsted weight, rag wool from Bartlett Yarns that I bought when Diane was still running the wool room at the Truckee Variety Store – oh, about 15 years ago. It’s dingy and not all that interesting, but it takes up a ton of space in the studio. I made a pattern from Sweater Wizard and melded it with one from Vogue. Two down. Should it need a third, I made a side-to-side pattern from Sweater Wizard to knit from superwash Merino, in my stash that I bought from Diane’s stash – oh, 15 years ago. That’s three. And of course, there’s that box of one-balls of Shetland jumper weight that I bought from Allison's stash in a moment of temporary insanity. I found a pattern for it today while I was at work. So no spinning, just lots and lots of knitting – and books.

2 comments:

Leigh said...

What gorgeous colors. I wouldn't have thought to use those colors together but they really work well. Thanks for mentioning the dash of black. I'd forgotten about that.

Beryl Moody said...

I like to use Lanaset dyes. Since I don't usually worry about the color being absolutely even, I omit all of the auxiliary chemicals and just add acid so that the dye bath is about 4.5 to 5. They exhaust totally as long as your pH is OK -- just leaving clear water to dump or reuse. Their color fastness is great, better, I am told than Gaywool or Landscape. Also, I can mix up a stock solution and not use it for several years and have it be perfectly OK when I do decide to dye with it.

Good luck with the foot surgery. I suppose it wouldn't be appropriate to say "break a leg" would it:-)