We Dyed

That’s a “Y” dyed, not an “I” died.

For the third time, my knitting gang descended on my house and we dyed yarn. This year we purchased undyed yarn from a more local company called Acme Fibres.  The yarn was lovely. I did have to wash it before my friends came to get rid of the spinning oils which was a bit of fun as we had 18 skeins of yarn total, but we had 7 types of yarn total.  Keeping them separate, untangled, and knowing which skein was which proved a challenge, but in the end, we all ended up with what we wanted.

Once again, we sed the jacqurad acid dyes from Knitpicks. We have a setup of squirt bottles, a steamer, tongs, spray bottle of vinegar, plastic wrap and lots of plastic gloves. All of this other stuff besides the dyes was purchases at a thrift store (roasting pan for steaming) or dollar store (everything else). I think we’re going to upgrade the squirt bottles next time as the dollar store ones started leaking and that’s really frustrating.

I dyed two skeins. One was the Bamberino Superwash sock. For it I used an extra squirt bottle and diluted a few colours. At first it was a pastel clown barf, but then I overdyed it all with diluted silver grey and the end result is lovely.

The second skein was a thank you to D for letting us take over the house with dyes and yarn. This will be socks for him. It’s the Cashmerino superwash sock. So soft after washing. Again, lots of grey and black with a hit of red and green.

The past week has been a writeoff. There’s a back to school cold going around and I’ve been on the couch since I caught it on Tuesday. I had no idea my body could use so many tissues. Garbage pails full. Boxes empty. I moved on to the lotion ones because my poor nose was raw.  Hopefully I’ll get better soon, but the combo of smaller lungs from baby taking up my torso and inability to breath from the cold has me on the disabled list.

Speaking of baby, we’re taking donations for orthodontics. Both D and I had braces growing up and according to our latest ultrasound baby is a thumbsucker. We opted out of knowing the sex so you (and we!) will have to wait.

(psst. if you don’t like ultrasound pictures, go somewhere else now!)

 

 

 

 

20 weeks down, 20 ish to go!

 

I’m back

It’s been a while. Where was I. Oh yes, Chilton Pullover knit-a-long.  That’s not going so well. I had to back out. I have no idea what size I’ll be by next summer. I’m already up a few sizes…

Apparently it’s not just food, it’s a baby.  Due early February, we will not find out the sex and we’re excited yet shocked in a good way – is this really happening?

Knitting wise it’s been an OK summer. I finished a Rock Island Shawl and it’s gorgeous. I used a small part of a skein of Auntie Boo Laceweight (I have nieces and nephews that call me Auntie Boo, so it’s weird to have that be the name of Claire’s company!).  The colourway is Clockwork Orange and it’s GORGEOUS yarn. Not solid, but not too variegated.

The colour is more accurate in the first picture. Must go back and tweak the second photo to get the colour right.

I also did some SISC (Self Imposed Sock Club) knitting, but the socks turned into armwarmers. They just wouldn’t go over my ankle and I’d been knitting for so long!  I need pictures for them and a few other projects.

What else. Been to France, been camping, been cottaging, avoiding storms at cottages and camping… a typical summer.

We have been biking, but the midwife allows only 1 hour of exercise at a stretch – 15 minutes warm up, 30 minutes at 140 bpm max then 15 minute cool down.  Not the 2-3 hours averaging 175 to 185 bpm that I’m used to. We’ve found a few short flat loops for me, then D does some rides on his own or bikes home while I drive over the hills. The interesting thing is that these short slow rides are really improving his fitness. He’s noticed a big change in his harder rides from the slow rides. We’ve been reading that low heartrate training really helps for years, but it was really hard to do. This was a hard lesson to learn, but we’ve learned it. Definately a slow and steady wins the race kind of thing.

I have no kitten pictures, but I might have to start referring to them as cats now – they are 5 after all. They both seemed to know I was pregnant before I did. Fred has become uber-snuggly and Ginger is fascinated with my belly. I can’t wait for the day my belly punches her back!  Fred has let us try swaddling him in blankets we were given. He’s so mellow!

 

The Chiton Pullover KAL

When I saw Knitscene’s winter 2011 issue, I really liked the cover sweater. It doesn’t really scream “WINTER IN CANADA!”, but summer maybe!  Then I read about the suggested yarn – a cotton alpaca blend. That’s not a happy blend for my wrists.  That stopped me in my tracks.

A few months later, I was at the Knitter’s Frolic in Toronto and one of my knitting group friend (H) mentioned that she has never knit a sweater and liked the same sweater. It actually took us a while to figure out that it was the same sweater as we were pronouncing the name (Chiton) in very different ways. We all read it with an l in the middle, when in fact it doesn’t have an l at all.

H doesn’t have wrist problems and we found the suggested yarn at the frolic for a good price. She bought that and I bought 2 skeins of Viola Merino Fingering in the Sea Storm colourway.
AS H has never knit a sweater before, I told her we could do this as a knit-a-long (KAL) and I realised this is a good chance to show what I do when I knit a sweater and to have other suggest ways I can improving my knitting.

First I wound balls of my skeins.

Next was gauge swatches. For a sweater, I always knit a gauge swatch AND WASH IT!

These are two gauge swatches, knit on US5 and US6 of my Denise interchangeable needle set. Sorry W, no metric on here.

I measured them before washing – US 5 was 26 st to 4″ and 17 rows to 2″ and the US 6 was 25″ to 4″ and 17 rows to 2″.  After washing the US 5 was 24.5 st to 4″ and 19 rows to 2″ and the US6 was 23.5 st to 4″ and 18 rows to 4″.  That slight change in gauge doesn’t look like much, but that means the fabric GREW when it was washed – so if I knit the sweater to fit, the first time I washed it it would grow – for each 24 inches around, it would grow an inch – that is enough to really change the fit of the garment. Also, now I know that if the pattern asks me to knit for 2″ I should knit 18 rows instead of the 17 rows that the unblocked gauge gives.

I hope that makes sense.

The gauge swatch not only ensures I get the gauge the pattern wants after washing, but that I like the fabric that I’m knitting. Initially I thought the US6 was too loose – it was like netting, but after it was washed it filled in and had a really nice hand. The sweater needs a drapey fabric and the US5 fabric was too stiff. It would be great for something cabled as the cables would really pop, but the US6 is much better for this pattern.

Now, I get to start the many many inches of garter belt. Well, I’m going to wait for H to catch up and do her gauge swatches. I have 3 other projects on the go (well, more like 4, but one is on timeout!).

I got MAIL!!!

I like getting mail. Fun mail is better than bill mail, but I even like getting bills because it’s a form of communication with the outside world. If something’s really urgent these days, I get an e-mail or a call, so mail is gentle.

Recently, I’ve had really good luck with the mail.  All the presents I ordered online showed up in time for Christmas and I was able to intercept them before D found his (some of the mailing labels were very descriptive!).  I also got a box ALL FOR MYSELF!!

I joined a secret swap on the knittyboard and was paired with FoodieKnitter. She sent me a box full of goodness.  I want to try crocheted amigurumi and she put together quite the kit for me.  I got a lot of odds and ends of yarn.

I  know – who sends odds and ends of yarn? Well, amigurumi uses small amounts of yarn, so I can use all sorts of colours and weights in these projects.  She also included a bunch of patterns to get me started. I also have my eye on a few books at the library. They’re what started this idea off.

With a name like FoodieKnitter, she also baked biscotti and spiced nuts. I’d show you a picture, but they are all gone.  They were delicious.

I’m doing a SISC (Self Imposed Sock Club) this year. A friend went through my stash of sock yarn and paired up patterns from my Ravelry queue with yarn. She then printed out patterns and put the yarn and patterns in sealed envelopes. I know which yarns are used, but not which patterns were chosen or what is in each envelope. Foodie Knitter added a pink skein and pattern to the club, so I took a picture of the skein – I haven’t looked at the pattern though.  The colour of the yarn is gorgeous. Very me.

I don’t have many crochet hooks, so she also sent hooks, needles and stitch markers to get me started. The little maroon bag is eyes and noses for animals.

The cats also recieved presents – a whale and a mouse stuffed with catnip and alpaca. They are hits!

Note the tongue in the last picture!

Thanks FoodieKnitter! That was AWESOME!

The importance of buying yarn

We went on vacation. I bought yarn. The yarn saved our vacation.

Let’s step back.  D and I went to Italy last week.  Midweek we rented a place in Tuscany with my BIL and SIL.  When we got the keys, we were told that we should keep the doors locked at all times as there had been some crime in the area.

To get an idea of what happened, here’s a view of the apartment. We were in the upper apartment in this view, the window with the curved top was the apartment we rented..

One morning, I went out to take the compost out to the compost bin and to look around.  It was early, D was in the shower, my BIL and SIL were asleep.  I locked the doors behind me as instructed, and went wandering.  On my return I realised I had a problem. I couldn’t get the outer door unlocked.  The key had to be rotated 4 or 5 times to unlock all the deadbolts. There were deadbolts in both sides of the door as well as the top and bottom.  I turned and turned and turned the key, but it wasn’t opening.  the problem is that I had also locked the inner door, so there was a hall with locked doors on each end between me and D, BIL and SIL.  What to do?

I called out, but D was in the shower, so he couldn’t answer. BIL thought the Tuscan birds had very weird calls – they were calling his name!  Took him a while to realise the birds were also calling his wife’s name.  Hmmm. Maybe he should investigate.  Finally the window opened and I explained the situation.  I had the only set of keys, they were locked in behind two doors, and I couldn’t get the first door opened.

The view from the window was like this. How do we solve this problem?

The yarn came to the rescue of course.  I had purchased 1500 m of fingering weight yarn in Florence.  BIL and SIL thought I was crazy when they saw it, but boy were they happy to have it at this point.  A bag was tied to the end of the ball and the keys were hoisted back up to the apartment.  Doors were opened (turns out I wasn’t strong enough to make the final 1/2 turn), we were reunited.  The one casualty was the ball of yarn. It tumbled out the window.  I had to either lower myself out the window onto the tile roof, then climb back in or reball the yarn. I chose rewinding as the attendant paramedic and neurosurgeon (aka. BIL and SIL) told me they didn’t have their equipment handy and they aren’t licensed in Italy.

The saviour yarn is Trilli Merinos Extrafine Baby Irrestringibile  by Campolmi R. Filati. I purchased it at the factory store in Florence. It was a very cool experience, very different to shopping in a Canadian yarn store. The yarn was all behind the counter and I had to ask to see a ball, then the saleslady found the balls I wanted.  Doing this through a language barrier was a challenge, but it worked out. The yarn is very soft and a lovely olive green.  There is one very big ~1000 ball and three small 150 m balls.

And our saviour ball, up front and centre.

We all DYED!

I started a post on Ravelry in March suggesting my friends and I get together and try dying our own yarn. Everyone responded positively, so I ordered yarn and dye and prepared our house for the invasion.

Yesterday we were met with a beautiful day – sunny, 23 degrees C, a very light breeze and low humidity.  We set up in the backyard and played with yarn and colour. I forgot to get my camera out during the day, but here are my results.  The base yarn is knitpicks bare superwash/merino fingering weight.  The dyes were the Jacquard acid dye starter kit.

First, I rewound one skein into a much longer skein and dyed sections about 1.5 feet long in primary colours and black. I had a shorter section left, so I mixed all the colours on it.

Winding it took a while as it was way too big for my swift.  It turned into whole family entertainment. D and I winding, F&G messing it up.

A ball was finally wound and the colours show up really well.

Today I cast on for Jaywalker socks and I’ve named the colourway “Circus”.  Originally it was called “Crayola” but it reminds me of a big top now.

I have a second skein that is very different. I started dying the whole skein yellow, then I massaged in some red and black and came out with a campfire skein.  This will be made into something very special.

One of my friends posted a flickr set of the day here and another blogged about it at the end of this post to see another view of the day.

Supermodel

I finished a baby vest.

I had to find a model.

Fred to the rescue.

Actually, I think this calls for his full name.

Modelling Debbie Bliss’ Cable Tank Top in Baby Cashmerino is Fredward J. Snugglesworth III.  I think he has a future in modelling.

I needed more than the 2 balls I had to finish the vest as the pattern is written. I made the arm bands significantly smaller (3 rounds instead of 6) to not run out of yarn. This was a quick knit and very cute.

The Dress

I’m crazy.

I decided to buy yarn to knit a wrap dress from fingering weight yarn.

Think about that for a minute. A wrap dress has two fronts instead of the normal one. Fingering weight – 7 stitches to the inch. I had 13 balls of Baby Ull. Over 2 kilometers of yarn. 2140m of the navy, 330m of the green.

I decided that if I was going to do this dress, it would be done FAST.

I did have a secret weapon – my friend recently purchased a knitting machine.  She offered it up to knit the stockinette portions of the dress. Luckily I’m the smallest size, so all of the panels had less than the 200 needles on her machine. Every bit of blue was machine knit, the green was hand knit.

The pattern is the Wrap Dress from Knit So Fine.  The Yarn is Baby Ull from Dale of Norway.

I don’t know what else to say. The seaming took forever. The mattress stitch made the seams lovely. The colour isn’t showing up well because the sun went away as soon as the hockey game started.  I finished my Olympic project during the Gold Medal game. I’m glad I’m not knitting right now as the tension would be all wonky.

Knitting Olympics

Last Friday, the start of the socks that will kill me in Sock Wars V paid me a visit. They’re off to the States now, but I have a bit of breathing time… just enough time to start another speed knitting contest.

This time it’s the knitting olympics. Pick a project that will be a stretch to complete during the Olympics, cast on during the opening ceremony and start knitting.

I picked the wrap dress from knit so fine. A dress knit in fingering weight yarn.

Yes, I’m crazy.

A friend has recently obtained a knitting machine and I asked her if I could use it to do the miles of stockinette. She said yes, so I’ve been visiting her house to do the knitting of the large panels.

I thought I was off to a great start the night of the opening ceremonies, only to find that I’d missed a second set of increases, totaling 48 stitches. That meant the skirt would be a hobble skirt! Then I found a second error and that I was doing the increases in a way that made large holes in the selvedges of the panel. It got ripped and I restarted. Try two was better, but still not 100%, so yesterday (day 5 of 17!) I finally got the largest panel done. I have 8 panels to do, 2 of which need hand manipulation after completion, and a very long tie/collar to hand knit. Then the sewing – I’ll be sewing forever on this one.

We had a cast on party at my friend with the machine’s house. There are pictures…

Vaedri started a pair of knee socks with cables on the purl side to start. I hear they made it through security for a long flight, so hopefully they are getting worked on.

I cast on with the machine. I have a lot of red eye in the pictures from last friday. I swear I’m not a vampire.

L was scrounging to find the right needles as the National Anthem was butchered. TV screen shown to prove we didn’t start early.

Knitted Squirrel is doing socks (I think). I know they  started with I-cord so we were having a discussion about that.

I didn’t end up with pictures of V or Knitted Piper. I don’t know what happened there.

I do know that Tiger had the best seat in the house.

I swear he’s smiling.

What to do?

I’m at home these days, since well before Christmas. There’s not much I can do at school, I’m waiting for comments on thesis drafts and papers. I’m doing nothing, then when the comments come it, I go from 0 to 100 in no time flat. I’m hesitant to start new things because who knows when the comments will come back, but it’s horribly defeating.

So I’m sitting at home at 2:55 on a Monday afternoon trying not to nap. There’s been a bit too much nappage lately. The cats aren’t helping with that as they seem to nap all day and send inter-species contagious yawns in my direction. Who knew that even typing the word yawn could make me yawn? That’s twice now.

What else have I been doing? Last week I was knitting like crazy. I entered Sock Wars V at the urging of a friend and finished my socks in 5 days. Not the fastest, but I did finish a thesis draft, go biking and live for those 5 days. I did the Jekyll and Hyde pattern, which was the slowest (I believe).

To start off sock wars, I had a cast on party for 3 of the 4 of us in my knitting group who were doing sock wars. Cast on was at 8 pm, so at 7:30 the knitting group met in our living room and started in on the cake and other yumminess in preparation. We knit until about 11:30 and then dispersed. Some pictures from the night include:

Don’t we look diligent? The three with me in the centre (green vest on couch) are the sock wars knitters, the rest were cheering us on and snuggling with the cats.

I knit the Jekyll and Hyde socks using Araucania Ranco in a lovely deep red. The variegation in the colour was gorgeous and showed up really well in the twisted stitches of the Jekyll and Hyde socks. I suppose you really want to see them right? Look for the red socks in the Gallery above. I finished them after dark and had to run them to a friend to mail, so the colour is a little washed out. Envision a deeeeeeper colour!

After my socks, I finished a project I’ve been working on since December. It would have been done in December if I hadn’t knit a scarf for my brother for Christmas and promised my dad a pair of socks for Christmas. It’s the 22.5 degree scarf done in Cascade Heritage Handpainted sock yarn. Instead of the YOs in the pattern, I did M1 because I misread the pattern. I also finished after 369 stitches instead of 389 because the Cascade Heritage doesn’t have as many yards as the Wollmeise the pattern calls for.

If you’ve seen this on Ravelry, you haven’t seen the photoshoot outakes! One of my Rav friends tells me I’m very photogenic… she didn’t see how many pictures we took to get the two I put up there!

The big pick sweater is just that – a big pink sweater! Finished in December, there are still 4 ends to sew in before it’s 100% done, but I think it might remain unfinished for a long time. It’s Mayer from Berocco in RYC soft tweed. Big and comfy, it’s knit much tighter than the suggested gauge to prevent it from pilling and stretching too much.