Transformation!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Why Dyers Reskein
I thought my new self-striping yarns looked pretty good yesterday. I twisted them into fake skeins to photograph them, but the yarn was still really in those ultra-long loops I dyed it in. I could have left it that way but I didn't know how long it'd be before I dyed all of it, and I was concerned about potential tangling. So I dug out my old inkle loom and wound the yarn into standard-sized skeins.
Transformation!
Transformation!
Friday, June 25, 2010
It Is A Good Day to Dye
Last Saturday Sarah and I had our first annual dyeing day. Sarah's good enough to store all our dyeing junk in her garage, so when I got up there around 11 AM I started hauling it out and setting it up like a whirlwind because I had about eight skeins of yarn I wanted to dye.
We ordered a bunch of new acid dye colors from the Dharma Trading Company so the first couple hours was consumed by making stock solutions, but by about 1:30 or 2 I was ready to begin. As it turned out, I was only able to get four skeins dyed, but I'm extremely satisfied with my results, and I was so pooped I could barely move on Sunday, so I guess I worked hard enough. (Sarah managed to dye three sweaters' worth of yarn! I don't know how she did it.)
I keep thinking I should learn to love some of the more random techniques, so I "jar-dyed" my first skein. I hadn't done this before - I picked up the technique off a Ravelry forum called "Love To Dye". You take your dry skein of yarn and stuff it in a quart size canning jar, then toss in small amounts of several colors of dye. Then you fill the jar with a mixture of vinegar and water and microwave it until the water is clear. It's pretty cool when you pour the water in and the colors *poof* into being down the sides of the jar!
Here is the resultant skein:
The yarn is Knitpicks' Bare Sock Yarn and I used little spoonfuls of Dharma's Caribbean Blue, Deep Magenta and Strawberry Red plus Jacquard's Scarlet. If I use this technique again I'm going to layer in some dye powder while I'm stuffing the yarn in the jar, since very little color migrated to the inner layers of the skein. I sort of like the white-plus-color look I got here but I'd been shooting for a red-and-purple skein. I name all my colorways even though I have no intention or ability to go into production and sell my skeins, so this one is dubbed Surprise!
The other three skeins were somewhat fiddly handpaints, so that's why they took me so long. I like knitting patterned socks in semisolid yarns, but I also LOVE knitting plain socks in self-striping yarns. I wore last year's favorite pair of hand-dyed self striping socks
clean through the heel in just under three months. (Cue sad, sad face.) This particular yarn was 100% superwash merino, and clearly I am too hard on my socks for this, which is why I'm switching back to yarns that have some nylon in them. Enter my new favorite: Sheila's Gold from Wool2dye4.com! This yarn is a blend of wool and nylon, and it's tightly plied so it looks like a string of beads when you get close enough. It's light and fluffy, and the only drawback from my perspective is that it's thinner than the sock yarns I like best, which can only be described as "beefy". I love the ones that are right on the edge of Sport, about 360 yards per 100 grams, while Sheila's Gold is listed as 400 yards to 100 grams. Still, that's why they make little needles, isn't it?
Prior to dyeing day I wound three long skeins, about 25-30 feet around. I tied them in a bunch of places, chained them up like a warp to keep them from tangling, and soaked them over Friday night. I wanted the socks to end up with two highly contrasting ~1/2 inch stripes sort of like Dorrie the Little Witch's stockings, or maybe Pippi Longstockings. I dyed half of each skein solid black and then painted the other half in a variegated colorway.
Here's the first one:
I love, love, love the pale apricots and pinks and yellows I used on the colored half of this skein. They remind me of Valentine's Day cookies or petit fours or tea cakes. The black half of the skein is actually black-brown because the dye stock I used had been in storage for a year and the color sort of went off. It fortuitously works out, though - I think of it as devil's food cake and that goes with the tea cake/petit four thing. The colorway names for this set of yarns come from book titles (I'm getting my librarian geek on), so this skein became Sympathy for the Devil.
I mixed new black dye stock for the other two skeins, so they have true black as their dark half. For There's Something About St. Tropez,
I used Dharma's Caribbean Blue and Jacquard's Sun Yellow. The skein really makes me think of ocean waves and beaches.
The last skein is my favorite, though. I called it Vampire Kisses,
and it's got all the rich juicy reds I love.
Now I have a terrible problem: I can't decide which one to knit first! I think I'll put them in a bag and pick one at random: that's the only way to be fair!
We ordered a bunch of new acid dye colors from the Dharma Trading Company so the first couple hours was consumed by making stock solutions, but by about 1:30 or 2 I was ready to begin. As it turned out, I was only able to get four skeins dyed, but I'm extremely satisfied with my results, and I was so pooped I could barely move on Sunday, so I guess I worked hard enough. (Sarah managed to dye three sweaters' worth of yarn! I don't know how she did it.)
I keep thinking I should learn to love some of the more random techniques, so I "jar-dyed" my first skein. I hadn't done this before - I picked up the technique off a Ravelry forum called "Love To Dye". You take your dry skein of yarn and stuff it in a quart size canning jar, then toss in small amounts of several colors of dye. Then you fill the jar with a mixture of vinegar and water and microwave it until the water is clear. It's pretty cool when you pour the water in and the colors *poof* into being down the sides of the jar!
Here is the resultant skein:
The yarn is Knitpicks' Bare Sock Yarn and I used little spoonfuls of Dharma's Caribbean Blue, Deep Magenta and Strawberry Red plus Jacquard's Scarlet. If I use this technique again I'm going to layer in some dye powder while I'm stuffing the yarn in the jar, since very little color migrated to the inner layers of the skein. I sort of like the white-plus-color look I got here but I'd been shooting for a red-and-purple skein. I name all my colorways even though I have no intention or ability to go into production and sell my skeins, so this one is dubbed Surprise!
The other three skeins were somewhat fiddly handpaints, so that's why they took me so long. I like knitting patterned socks in semisolid yarns, but I also LOVE knitting plain socks in self-striping yarns. I wore last year's favorite pair of hand-dyed self striping socks
clean through the heel in just under three months. (Cue sad, sad face.) This particular yarn was 100% superwash merino, and clearly I am too hard on my socks for this, which is why I'm switching back to yarns that have some nylon in them. Enter my new favorite: Sheila's Gold from Wool2dye4.com! This yarn is a blend of wool and nylon, and it's tightly plied so it looks like a string of beads when you get close enough. It's light and fluffy, and the only drawback from my perspective is that it's thinner than the sock yarns I like best, which can only be described as "beefy". I love the ones that are right on the edge of Sport, about 360 yards per 100 grams, while Sheila's Gold is listed as 400 yards to 100 grams. Still, that's why they make little needles, isn't it?
Prior to dyeing day I wound three long skeins, about 25-30 feet around. I tied them in a bunch of places, chained them up like a warp to keep them from tangling, and soaked them over Friday night. I wanted the socks to end up with two highly contrasting ~1/2 inch stripes sort of like Dorrie the Little Witch's stockings, or maybe Pippi Longstockings. I dyed half of each skein solid black and then painted the other half in a variegated colorway.
Here's the first one:
I love, love, love the pale apricots and pinks and yellows I used on the colored half of this skein. They remind me of Valentine's Day cookies or petit fours or tea cakes. The black half of the skein is actually black-brown because the dye stock I used had been in storage for a year and the color sort of went off. It fortuitously works out, though - I think of it as devil's food cake and that goes with the tea cake/petit four thing. The colorway names for this set of yarns come from book titles (I'm getting my librarian geek on), so this skein became Sympathy for the Devil.
I mixed new black dye stock for the other two skeins, so they have true black as their dark half. For There's Something About St. Tropez,
I used Dharma's Caribbean Blue and Jacquard's Sun Yellow. The skein really makes me think of ocean waves and beaches.
The last skein is my favorite, though. I called it Vampire Kisses,
and it's got all the rich juicy reds I love.
Now I have a terrible problem: I can't decide which one to knit first! I think I'll put them in a bag and pick one at random: that's the only way to be fair!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
What a DAY!
Today my friend Sarah and I met up with my other friend Chrissy and her family at the Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster. This is the 15th annual show, but today is the first time I've gone. We had a fabulous time!
There are getting to be a lot of these fiber shows around - I'm not sure if there are more these days because knitting, spinning, etc. are getting more popular, or if I'm just noticing them because now I knit (and I've dabbled in spinning although I kicked the habit some years ago.) This show had a competition for handspun skeins of yarn, and for fleeces, and a sheep auction.
They also had VENDORS. Four barns full of vendors.
I went in with a certain budget in mind, and I came within fifteen dollars of staying inside it. I feel pretty proud of myself! Oddly enough I did not come home with a bunch of sock yarn; there were some really pretty skeins of it there but I ended up not buying any. What I did buy was two enormous skeins of worsted weight Corriedale from Briar Rose Fibers - enough for a sweater - in a lovely hand-dyed purple-and-goldy-brown combo. I'm going to make an Every Way Wrap, although I am going to change the cable section to something else because cabling? Not my favorite. Love the look, hate to do.
Now, I forgot my camera (KICKING MYSELF), but interesting sights included
* an entire wall of Createvely Dyed yarn - they had an ENORMOUS display.
* A number of adorable alpacas, all newly sheared, so their wooly heads looked like big lollipops on skinny curved sticks. A couple of them didn't mind being patted, although alpacas generally are shy and don't really like petting.
* An adventurous sheep who slipped his leash and ran off through the crowd. He was a black sheep, and maybe he felt he had to live up to it, but he (or she - I really couldn't tell; he was in swift motion) eluded one set of would-be captors by leaping five feet in the air and landing well beyond them. Then the idiot animal dashed into one of the vendor barns and was causing great consternation in there when somebody closed the sliding door we were watching through. I heard later that the sheep was caught and returned to captivity so someone must have grabbed it before it escaped to the other end of the barn. It strikes me that there is a reason Scripture refers to humankind as sheep a lot, and it isn't a compliment.
* An enormous ram being auctioned. I'm not that expert in sheep anatomy, but no way was that an udder.
* Some very cute sheep waiting for auction, who liked having their ears skritched. My skin liked their lanolin, too!
By the time we had seen all this I was tired and hungry and a bit fried by the sun - Chrissy (the well prepared Mom) had given me some sunscreen, but it was HOT today. Our group was too big to keep together; we kept peeling off and meeting back up with one another, but by early in the afternoon everyone was done. As in, stick a fork in me - I'm done!
We all went our separate ways. Sarah and I ate a late lunch at Matsos, a Wooster eatery we'd often gone to in our college days, and then we drove slowly up through campus toward home.
That's when it got weird. We stopped in the street in front of Wagner Hall, our old dorm where we roomed together, and were reminiscing about college, and then I went to pull away. I had the horrible sensation that something was wrong with the car, and there was this sort of suck-WHUMP sound. Turns out that I'd stopped the car with the left rear tire right on a big, gross road patch and when I went to drive off it pulled right out of the street and went with us. Naturally it couldn't fit through the wheel well, and there we were, gooped tight.
Sarah ran across the street where there was some decorative stonework, to try to find a flint hand-axe to scrape the tar off. She made some progress with the scraper but soon ended up pulling at it with her hands. I tried, too, and soon I was even further be-tarred than she was; I had it thickly plastered all over both hands, including over most of my fingertips and nails. Giving up on sanitation, I just pulled the worst of the goop off and dumped it back in the pothole it came from.
Now what could I do? I had to drive us out of there, but if I even touched my steering wheel, I was never letting go again. I probably should have looked for sand or dust - that's what Sarah did - but I had the bright idea of layering the tar with grass so I could touch my steering wheel without adhering to it. Green furry paws is what I ended up with, and to add insult to injury they were still tacky. I gripped the steering wheel around some paper and drove gingerly northward.
We decided to try the Speedway gas station on the North end of Wooster, hoping that they'd have some kind of solvent. At first they sprayed us with some kind of scrubbing-bubble cleanser, which helped a tiny bit, but it wasn't looking good. Then Sarah, who is still working in chemistry and who therefore has a more recent grasp of solubility and solvents than I do, had a brain wave and grabbed a bottle of fuel-injector cleaner, which worked like a DREAM! I have hands again!
For the rest of the evening I refuse to do anything more strenuous than push the button on the remote control. I deserve some rest, after my day of rest!
There are getting to be a lot of these fiber shows around - I'm not sure if there are more these days because knitting, spinning, etc. are getting more popular, or if I'm just noticing them because now I knit (and I've dabbled in spinning although I kicked the habit some years ago.) This show had a competition for handspun skeins of yarn, and for fleeces, and a sheep auction.
They also had VENDORS. Four barns full of vendors.
I went in with a certain budget in mind, and I came within fifteen dollars of staying inside it. I feel pretty proud of myself! Oddly enough I did not come home with a bunch of sock yarn; there were some really pretty skeins of it there but I ended up not buying any. What I did buy was two enormous skeins of worsted weight Corriedale from Briar Rose Fibers - enough for a sweater - in a lovely hand-dyed purple-and-goldy-brown combo. I'm going to make an Every Way Wrap, although I am going to change the cable section to something else because cabling? Not my favorite. Love the look, hate to do.
Now, I forgot my camera (KICKING MYSELF), but interesting sights included
* an entire wall of Createvely Dyed yarn - they had an ENORMOUS display.
* A number of adorable alpacas, all newly sheared, so their wooly heads looked like big lollipops on skinny curved sticks. A couple of them didn't mind being patted, although alpacas generally are shy and don't really like petting.
* An adventurous sheep who slipped his leash and ran off through the crowd. He was a black sheep, and maybe he felt he had to live up to it, but he (or she - I really couldn't tell; he was in swift motion) eluded one set of would-be captors by leaping five feet in the air and landing well beyond them. Then the idiot animal dashed into one of the vendor barns and was causing great consternation in there when somebody closed the sliding door we were watching through. I heard later that the sheep was caught and returned to captivity so someone must have grabbed it before it escaped to the other end of the barn. It strikes me that there is a reason Scripture refers to humankind as sheep a lot, and it isn't a compliment.
* An enormous ram being auctioned. I'm not that expert in sheep anatomy, but no way was that an udder.
* Some very cute sheep waiting for auction, who liked having their ears skritched. My skin liked their lanolin, too!
By the time we had seen all this I was tired and hungry and a bit fried by the sun - Chrissy (the well prepared Mom) had given me some sunscreen, but it was HOT today. Our group was too big to keep together; we kept peeling off and meeting back up with one another, but by early in the afternoon everyone was done. As in, stick a fork in me - I'm done!
We all went our separate ways. Sarah and I ate a late lunch at Matsos, a Wooster eatery we'd often gone to in our college days, and then we drove slowly up through campus toward home.
That's when it got weird. We stopped in the street in front of Wagner Hall, our old dorm where we roomed together, and were reminiscing about college, and then I went to pull away. I had the horrible sensation that something was wrong with the car, and there was this sort of suck-WHUMP sound. Turns out that I'd stopped the car with the left rear tire right on a big, gross road patch and when I went to drive off it pulled right out of the street and went with us. Naturally it couldn't fit through the wheel well, and there we were, gooped tight.
Sarah ran across the street where there was some decorative stonework, to try to find a flint hand-axe to scrape the tar off. She made some progress with the scraper but soon ended up pulling at it with her hands. I tried, too, and soon I was even further be-tarred than she was; I had it thickly plastered all over both hands, including over most of my fingertips and nails. Giving up on sanitation, I just pulled the worst of the goop off and dumped it back in the pothole it came from.
Now what could I do? I had to drive us out of there, but if I even touched my steering wheel, I was never letting go again. I probably should have looked for sand or dust - that's what Sarah did - but I had the bright idea of layering the tar with grass so I could touch my steering wheel without adhering to it. Green furry paws is what I ended up with, and to add insult to injury they were still tacky. I gripped the steering wheel around some paper and drove gingerly northward.
We decided to try the Speedway gas station on the North end of Wooster, hoping that they'd have some kind of solvent. At first they sprayed us with some kind of scrubbing-bubble cleanser, which helped a tiny bit, but it wasn't looking good. Then Sarah, who is still working in chemistry and who therefore has a more recent grasp of solubility and solvents than I do, had a brain wave and grabbed a bottle of fuel-injector cleaner, which worked like a DREAM! I have hands again!
For the rest of the evening I refuse to do anything more strenuous than push the button on the remote control. I deserve some rest, after my day of rest!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Ah, the exciting life!
People think of libraries as peaceful, sleepy places where nothing much happens.
Hah.
There I was, about 12:30 this afternoon, peacefully eating my lunch and playing Sudoku on the web, when a loud voice rang out from the PA: “Everybody please evacuate the library immediately!”
Well, we have regular fire drills so we knew what to do: starting from the back of the library we swept all the patrons before us, out the front door, and chivvied them over to the far end of the parking lot. It was cold, and drizzling, and everyone hoped against hope that some kid had just pulled the fire alarm and they’d allow us back in shortly.
Then we noticed the fire department had the street cordoned off. Someone told us there was a bomb scare: a suspicious package had been found at the gas station on the corner, and we should all to go home for an hour!
I figured it’d turn out to be a false alarm – Stow is a pretty small target, after all – so I went peacefully home and took my dogs for a walk. Sure enough, an hour later my boss called to tell me I had to come back to work. But still nobody knew what had really happened.
Turns out that the whole center of town was paralyzed by a duct taped box of used kids’ toys!
Hah.
There I was, about 12:30 this afternoon, peacefully eating my lunch and playing Sudoku on the web, when a loud voice rang out from the PA: “Everybody please evacuate the library immediately!”
Well, we have regular fire drills so we knew what to do: starting from the back of the library we swept all the patrons before us, out the front door, and chivvied them over to the far end of the parking lot. It was cold, and drizzling, and everyone hoped against hope that some kid had just pulled the fire alarm and they’d allow us back in shortly.
Then we noticed the fire department had the street cordoned off. Someone told us there was a bomb scare: a suspicious package had been found at the gas station on the corner, and we should all to go home for an hour!
I figured it’d turn out to be a false alarm – Stow is a pretty small target, after all – so I went peacefully home and took my dogs for a walk. Sure enough, an hour later my boss called to tell me I had to come back to work. But still nobody knew what had really happened.
Turns out that the whole center of town was paralyzed by a duct taped box of used kids’ toys!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
I love my department!
I work with some great people at my library. For example: one of my colleagues thought we needed a little morale booster. So she ordered us some custom M&Ms!
Ref rules? We rock? No, Barbara - YOU rock! (I think it worked!)
Ref rules? We rock? No, Barbara - YOU rock! (I think it worked!)
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The pitter patter of little feet...er...paws
It's high time I announced an addition to my family!
He's been seen before, briefly, but this post is entirely about my newest baby: Winston!
I've been looking for a new dog since I lost my beloved Stormy in 2008; some of you were with me during the Great Princess Debacle of 2009. Late last fall I applied to Ohio Pug Rescue and in late January I got Winston!
He had a sad story: Winston was in the pound, where he'd been taken after being picked up as a stray. I don't know if his original owners were feeding him caramels or what, but he had such advanced periodontal disease that the pound had classed him as "unadoptable". Pug Rescue pulled him out of the pound in September and spent the rest of the year getting his teeth back in shape - the remaining teeth, that is; his foster mom was calling him "Gumby"!
(I renamed him for obvious reasons.)
Of course, this sad story has ended happy. He's well embedded here.
Like most pugs, he likes it best on the sofa, and good luck keeping him off it, though he learned pretty quickly that he's not supposed to go on the love seat. He's a veteran snuggler, cuddling beside me while I watch TV and knit, helping me type on my laptop, and keeping me warm at night. (During the last cold snap he developed a new tendency to go under the covers, which I think is hilarious.) He snores and snorts, and when he sleeps with his head on my leg he sort of whistles through his nose. I also think this is hilarious. There may be something wrong with me.
Despite these respiratory issues, Winston is quite active, and likes to go on long brisk walks with me and Buster.
Of course, the first month or so there was easily 14" of snow on the ground. Winston has about an 8" ground clearance. That was fun.
He's also a big sweet kisser.
He's been seen before, briefly, but this post is entirely about my newest baby: Winston!
I've been looking for a new dog since I lost my beloved Stormy in 2008; some of you were with me during the Great Princess Debacle of 2009. Late last fall I applied to Ohio Pug Rescue and in late January I got Winston!
He had a sad story: Winston was in the pound, where he'd been taken after being picked up as a stray. I don't know if his original owners were feeding him caramels or what, but he had such advanced periodontal disease that the pound had classed him as "unadoptable". Pug Rescue pulled him out of the pound in September and spent the rest of the year getting his teeth back in shape - the remaining teeth, that is; his foster mom was calling him "Gumby"!
(I renamed him for obvious reasons.)
Of course, this sad story has ended happy. He's well embedded here.
Like most pugs, he likes it best on the sofa, and good luck keeping him off it, though he learned pretty quickly that he's not supposed to go on the love seat. He's a veteran snuggler, cuddling beside me while I watch TV and knit, helping me type on my laptop, and keeping me warm at night. (During the last cold snap he developed a new tendency to go under the covers, which I think is hilarious.) He snores and snorts, and when he sleeps with his head on my leg he sort of whistles through his nose. I also think this is hilarious. There may be something wrong with me.
Despite these respiratory issues, Winston is quite active, and likes to go on long brisk walks with me and Buster.
Of course, the first month or so there was easily 14" of snow on the ground. Winston has about an 8" ground clearance. That was fun.
He's also a big sweet kisser.
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