Category: Dyeing

Happy Scary Day

Posted by zyllah – October 31, 2007

Long time no blog. When last we all spoke I was in the midst of pet tragedy…anyway Darcy found a fantastic home that did not have feline terrorists who wanted to drive him away.  So after that I fell deep into martha mode. I redid three rooms of my house. For ‘redid’ read organized and moved stuff around. This entailed building a bookcase so I could have one dedicated just to knitting/crafting and buying lots of pillows so I didn’t have to get a new couch. I also got new tables for the living room. Anyway I think it looks fantastic (or as good as its going to get).

Close up of the knitting/netting/tv spot, the bookcase behind it has my knitting books:

Why yes I do have to fight her for the chair.

I did do some dyeing while all this was going on though. I’m trying to break out of my wine comfort zone so I did some more greens and ventured into rusts/oranges. All of these skeins are Kona by Henry’s attic.  I was playing around with different techniques and I must warn you they are not yet reskeined.

I think I’m getting better. If you want to give any of these a new home let me know. I can’t possibly knit faster than I can dye.  Which brings me to another topic I have a tentative offer for a wholesale situation. I keep going back and forth on it. I like dyeing when its me just futzing around but dyeing for other people to buy? That makes me incredibly nervous.

Anyway all this led to little knitting and thus little blogging. Besides lets be brutally honest, thermal is not a good blogging project.  It’s like oh boy another inch that looks exactly the same! Besides it looks a mess now with all the stitches being held on extra needles. Oh one funny thing did happen, the other day I was working on it and watching tv and completely messed up one of my previously finished back shoulder pieces. So now I’ll have to frog back and refinish it. But the good news is that I am on the front so hopefully before the end of this century I’ll finish it. The thing is I do still enjoy the sweater. Its not like other simple patterns where I’d be gouging my eyes out by this point. I also frogged the scarf I had started because I decided it was too narrow so velvet grapes will have to become something else. I did start a sock just in time for the end of socktober;) I’m using shibui sock on 1′s and I have to say I love this sock yarn. It might be my favorite yarn yet. Like more favorite than STR even. I mean the base. It’s just at the toe hat stage and I’m looking for a stitch pattern to plug into my sock recipe. I did attend a fiber fest this past weekend but I’ll try and blog about that tomorrow since I have loads of pictures and stuff.

Pron for Friday…

Posted by zyllah – July 27, 2007

Ok I was being incredibly optimistic when I thought of doing a weekly review and a weekly heresy so…now they’ll be here when I’m inspired and when I need to test a new technique. However this week I do have something for you. I made some blocking boards this week and wrote up a tutorial in case anyone wanted to make their own.

I pinned out a piece of the zipper cardi on it and I have to say they block like a *dream* So my wips…well I am past the heel of the sock and I finished the two fronts for the zip cardi and I made it to the waffle stitch on thermal. Things at chez zyllah have been sort of sucking and when I get stressed I read. Since last week I’ve read HP 7 twice and two Phillipa Gregory novels. I also finished off an audio book. Anyway needless to say that has taken up knitting time:) But now that I’m on the waffle stitch I get to use the fantastico row counter Sarkasmo made for me.

So not all of this was bought recently but I finally got a chance to show it off. I got this jitterbug from fleabay for a fairly good price, I will admit the copper beach is sort of meh to me but they’ll be gift socks I guess.

Jitterbug Copperbeach

Omg I love this yarn. I am not sure what to do with it but it just makes my heart happy.

This is some Malabrigo lace weight I traded some unused needles for.

Finally we have the wollmeise I snagged at the last loopy sneak up.

This is Granatapfel.

This is Wilder Mohn.

The base yarn for this feels really unique. Sort of cottony. It’s dense but not as dense as str. (I sound like a wine snob) Also the yardage is fantastic. I should easily be able to get two pairs out of each skein.

This is something I dyed a few weeks ago.

Colorway: Peacock

Yardage: 550 Yards

Base Yarn: Henry’s Attic Kona Superwash Fingering that I got here.

Techniques: just basic hand painting.

Notes: I am not 100% pleased with this. However it isn’t awful, its just not quite what I had envisioned:)

WIP updaterie and Yarn Pron

Posted by zyllah – July 14, 2007

So yes I have been a sucky blogger this week. Lots of stress about the future makes me feel rather unlike blogging. I am working on the knitting heresy for the week and I hope to have that up before the end of the day. Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing something, I still have to go through and pick the technique of the week. I also have been so stressed I’ve been reading rather than knitting all out so progress has been slow. So on to the wips and no photos yet cause I was being all lazy.

Slip Stitch Rib Socks: I’ve got about an inch and something to get to the heel. I didn’t really work on these too much this week except for at SNB. Still loving the colorway and the pattern.

Zip Cardi: Back is done and I’m a quarter of the way through one piece of the front. I apparently dropped an edge stitch at some point but I was able to work it back up. It’s rather neat to see the pieces come together. Claire and I were talking about how the finishing on this sucker is going to take a while. It has a lot of crochet finishing and I’m not very good at crochet. I did find a neat online crochet school though so I plan on sitting down with some crapcrylic and working through that. In fact perhaps I’ll make that my technique of the week and kill two birds with one photo.

Thermal: Well I made it through the cast on last weekend. That was a sucky two day procedure. I do have to say it was worth it the cast on edge is stunning. Now that I’m getting into the rhythm of the twisted rib I’m enjoying it. I’m almost half done with the ribbing, so depending on how the weekend goes I hope to get to the actual stitch pattern by Tuesday.  I love the yarn I’m using (ryc cashsoft 4ply) so I just hope it holds up well.

And now for the yarn pron, I dyed this last week but I was trying to space out the yarn pron so that’s why you’re hearing about it this week. When I took it to SNB they wanted to auction it off to the highest bidder so I guess I’ll have to attempt to recreate it next time I dye.

Colorway: Elphaba

Yardage: 550 Yards

Base Yarn: Henry’s Attic Kona Superwash Fingering that I got here.

Techniques: I had several smaller remains of earlier dye mixes that I wanted to use up.  So I had some extra Kelly green and Spruce. I took the Kelly green and added some black to try and tone down its St. Patrick’s day flavor. The spruce I left alone and then there was the Chartreuse. I knew it would turn out acid bright which wasn’t what I wanted.  I added some black to also tone it down.  Then I painted t on in short repeats cause I much prefer how that knits up for me.

Notes: I had better be able to recreate this since I’ve had a bunch of requests for it. I’m so pleased with this one I wish I had done it in Louet. So perhaps when I recreate it I will and give this one away. Although the kona did puff up nicely after it was dyed I just prefer the louet in general.

Random Updaterie and the tubular cast on

Posted by zyllah – July 7, 2007

I know I promised more knitting heresy but until I finish this stupid freaking cast on…I have not the heart to mock the knittish gods. Perhaps if I am a very good sort of knitter tomorrow. So when I had last posted I had swatched for thermal. I really was being overly picky about my cast on and decided to teach myself the tubular. This has prompted me to decide to randomly do this once a week so I can get more familiar with various cast ons and bind off’s etc. Sort of nona swatches but more like zyllah grumbles… Anyway the tubular was fine and dandy and I decided to use it. Not really considering the problems of it being in the round and such like. So at one point you go back and pick up the purl bumps every other stitch. Yeah turning your work every other stitch is a real freaking blast when you have 154 to knit and 154 purl bumps to pick up. I worked on it a fair amount yesterday and I’m maybe half done. Anyway here is the review:

Tubular Cast On: Gorgeous edge. Love the way it looks, be prepared to have your knittish faith challenged by the pain in the ass it is.

I have more done now but I’m too lazy to take an updated photo. Now the prepicking up knitting and the stitches on the right needle represent more time of my life than I want to admit to.

Moving on to vastly more pleasant things…. I do not have updated pics of the zip cardi or the sock since they look the same just you know longer. Thus makes for boring blogging…however Soxia continues to smile upon me and depending on the cast on idiocy I can assume I might get to the heel of the sock before the weekend is over. I also have delusions of finishing the back of the zip cardi.

So Thursday because I had leftovers to serve for dinner I decided to dye a bunch of yarn. I actually dyed more but I’m saving it for future blogging material and cause I don’t want to fight to wind it. The whole lack of wanting to wind it will be made clear in a second. So first up we have a quarter pound of Louet gems goodness…

Colorway: Iced Wine (feeling uninspired and lame)

Yardage: 430

Base: Louet Gems Pearl that I got here. Fantastic prices and Customer Service.

Techniques: So not like I’m sundara or anything but I find is frustrating that so many people treat dyeing like its alchemy in the 17th century so I figured I’d talk about what I did. First off I dyed it pink. My original plan was to dye it and then hand paint the darker sections on. So pink umm yeah try some weird inbetween pepto and neon. So I thought about how to tone it down and decided a dilute black mixture was in order. So at this point it was very uneven and over dyed like which pleased me so I painted on burgundy before setting it. In the end I got some nifty tiny bits of icy lavender and pink and burgundy. I am really pleased with it.

Notes: So anyway I really need to figure out a better way of not getting slightly tangled when winding and yes I do have a swift and winder…so after I got everything straightened out I am winding it for the second time and the ball comes FLYING off the winder and hits me. So I wound it ummm 3 or 4 times.

So Next up is the crockpotted junk I did to use up leftover dye.

This is the roving that came with my learn to spin kit. It is crapalicious. It doesn’t even come close to soft and I hated spinning it. So in the interest of not wasting it and not letting the dye leftovers sit I decided to dump it in the crock pot and see what happened. Not terrible looking…However I had way too much dye in there and it wouldn’t exhaust so I went rooting through the stash and came up with the alpaca I used for husbands scarf. It was natural colored before I tortured it.

Its very kettle dyed looking. No clue what I’ll do with it but hey at least its something I would consider using for myself now. And now I have procrastinated enough and must return to my cast on hell.