Cattywampus

Sockapalooza Socks - Complete!

HAH!  I have finished my sock pal's socks FINALLY.  I wasn't really in danger of not finishing, I just didn't exactly hurry.

You may or may not remember, but I dyed the yarn myself with jacquard dyes.  I'm not exactly a scientific dyer, so I couldn't repeat it if I tried and I'm pretty hit or miss with the dyeing, but it's FUN and when it works it's REALLY fun.  When it doesn't work, I just dye over it.  ;-)  The yarn is henry's attic kona fingering superwash, which I think takes the dye really well, but it is REALLY fine, almost bordering on a heavy lace weight.  I easily got 10st/in on size one needles.

This is the Sieze Diamondback pattern except, of course, I knit them toe up b/c I wanted to make them as tall as I could (my pal likes the high leg) and I had to add a bunch of stitches & I did some increasing up on the calf.  Define bunch?  Okay, I think I did the foot with 70 stitches for a large woman's foot and then increased to 80 inches to accomodate the curve of the calf AND make up for the slipped stitches.  I decreased down to 68 stitches to do the ribbing on the top.

So now I just need to decide what else to put in the package, I have a few goodies, but I was thinking about maybe including something else...

Dyeing again

Well. I tried to fix the pink yarn.  I think it looks exactly the same.  I must have toned it down a tad because it's no longer one solid color. 

Note to self:  before trying to dye yarn for an entire sweater one must own a pot big enough to actually dye yarn for an entire sweater.

Duly noted.

Additional note to self: Neon pink is no longer in, the 80's are out, hopefully forever...avoid anything called 'hot fuschia' without first blending it with another color.

Duly noted.

I did also dye some sock yarn, we have some before & after pictures here.  Before - very orange and very mauve.  After - red with peachy bits (red is SO hard to photograph) and holy crap that's dark purple.

Also included - a lovely periwinkle & 6 oz of spruce - all sock yarn.  I'm not so sure about the spruce, I wanted it bluer...I might go back & overdye that one, tho I'll try not to be quite so enthusiastic as when I turned the lackluster mauve into Holy Crap That's Purple.

And that's my fourth...

Glow in the dark yarn

Well, my mother was visiting this past weekend I wanted to give her a chance to dye some yarn, I had enough merino bare for a small scarf, so I set her down with some books to look through & then we got started.

See her yarn?  And here is the proud lady holding her yarn cake!  Tho you can't see the colors really well here, it came out quite pretty.  So pretty that I did some sock yarn with the same dye mixes.

(my sock yarn)

Now on to the glow in the dark yarn.  My secret pal 9 pal gave me some acid dyes to complement what I already had, one of those colors was fuschia, I hadn't used fuschia before but I had some licorice twist from henry's attic that I wanted to make a cute lightweight cardigan out of - and what color is better for cute cardigans than pink? 

So I threw in some dye, and not all that much, actually.  It looked good...but looks can be deceiving...it turned into the same color as that paper you can buy that it hurts to look at directly, and I am soooo NOT exaggerating.   OMG.  Seriously - What was I thinking?   

How about a close up? Are your retinas burned out yet?

And after 4 go rounds with a deep red to cut the pink without turning it purple it looked like this.  And yes, if you were wondering, it is actually partially felted.

It doesn't look that different on screen, but trust me, it is.  So I obviously can't make a cardigan out of this.  I don't think anybody older than 8 could get away with a cardigan out of this...maybe some house socks, mittens, hats & so on? 

Soooo, if anybody needs some sport weight hot pink yarn, get in touch - I have 1100 yards.  seriously. 

In other news, I got the Calmer for Fifi from Janette's Rare Yarns on ebay - great service, I highly recommend her!!

And just for fun, here is one of the cross stitch pieces that I did when I was all into that.  I am particularly fond of this one with the color contrast on black.  I also think it's kind of funny that you can see my entire reflection in the photo - unintentional of course.

Dragons rock. 

Oh & castles rock too.

I am now going to go & get started on the Mystery Stole 3.  Sign ups are open until friday!

Sunday Dyepot

I decided to dye yarn for my sockapalooza pal because the pattern I want to use requires more than one skein of yarn and I wanted it to be a hand dyed yarn, but I wasn't willing to fork out the $40 that would cost to buy it.

I had a half pound skein of Henry's attic kona superwash, which is about 1100 yards, so half of that, about 550, should be plenty for the Seize Diamondback pattern.  I figured I'd need more b/c this pattern is written for heavier sock yarn than I'm using, but I can put the cable pattern on the back regardless, I just adjusted the numbers for light fingerweight.  And I'll keep the other half until I'm sure I have enough, then I'll probably sell it on etsy.

I wanted a nice blueish blend of colors, not distinct blues, but all blendy to make a sort of color fade through the sock & allow the cable on the back to show up better, so I decided to try kettle dyeing.  It was fun - though I need a wider mouthed kettle if I continue to do this b/c I had to stir it a bunch to make sure the whole skein was dyed.  I couldn't duplicate these colors if I tried, I didn't write anything down, I just mixed & poured & mixed & poured until I was satisfied with the variety of blues and purples on the skein.  I did it that way on purpose, I wanted a one of a kind skein for my sockapalooza pal.

So voila!  Here it is - I'm quite happy with it.  I don't know if you can see the purples in there, but it's a lovely turquoise, blue, darker blue & purple color fade.  Too bad I didn't write it down, eh?  lol

And since I had out the various dyeing implements...

These will be up on my etsy shop later in the week.  They are still drying & then I need to reskein them & get some good photo light.  The red & green are both lace weight, the blueish one is sock yarn.

Pretty Socks!

My secret pal 9 spoilee, Jen, made socks with the yarn I dyed for her - check them out here - aren't they insanely red? 

There are supposed to be two different colors of red in there, and she says there are, but it's hard to tell in the picture.

I love the socks, that pattern is next on my needles.  Of course, I'm on the toe of the RSC socks right now (see post below), so it's gonna be a while.  I'm not the kind of person who finishes socks in a matter of days - most likely we're talking 3-4 weeks.

Of course, I'm REALLY VERY ANGRY with the other project that's on my needles right now (angry enough that I'd rather not talk about it), so maybe the socks will get done a bit faster this time. 

New skeins for etsy

 

okay - I like the blue/grey, but I'm not so sure about the cotton candy pink - and I LOVE the crazy colored sock yarn.  one of those is for me.  ;-)

which one?  the one with more pink in it, of course.

Weekend Adventures

Sunday night, and we're getting ready to watch The Devil Wears Prada and sit down to Rachael Ray's Mega Meatball Pizza.  YUM.

So far this weekend has been good, the weather is absurd - in the 70's.  Yesterday I got out early and hit the grocery store while their were still good parking spots and managed to pick up some half price filet mignon.  again -YUM.  we had that for dinner last night with roasted garlic mashed potatoes & asparagus.   DH said - You didn't tell me we were ordering in - what restaurant did you get this from.  ;-)  cute isn't he?

We watched Flightplan, which was - weird.  We also watched Grendel on Sci-fi saturday night.  Oh boy I just ADORE those really bad sci-fi movies.  It did not disappoint.  There's nothing like predictable horror movie stupidity with some really bad special effects to bring joy to an otherwise uneventful saturday night.  I think the sci-fi channel should have a tagline that goes like this:  Made for geeks - by geeks.  I think it would work.

Today we took my good ol' couch out to the curb in anticipation of the new one arriving this week.  Poor old couch, nobody wanted it!  It served me well.

I did a bit of dyeing today.  I'll post pics tomorrow, but what I think is  this - I should stick to superwash.  enough said.  okay - here's a pic of them drying.  The blue & pink ones are lace weight and the others are fingering.  I liked the colors so much I made two different variations with the same coloring.   I'm not sure about the laceweight.  It's not all the way dry yet, but the colors are a bit more intense than I intended.  hmf.

I've also been knitting along on Wicked - I'm almost to the bottom hem, so I have to decide soon whether or not I want a pocket.  Again - pics tomorrow. 

Saving the yarn

Trying to prevent the yarn disaster that would mean I would be knitting my next pretty thing in a drab and ucky mauve I decided to overdye the icky color with some true red.  I'm actually quite pleased with the results.  There are some darker spots & some lighter spots and the whole thing is definitely not one solid color, it changes back & forth from lighter to darker shades, and that is exactly what I wanted - now I just have to hope that it looks good on the Wicked sweater!

Alright - I just looked at the post from friday with the ucky yarn and I realize that you can't tell the difference b/c of the flash - but TRUST ME the first pic is of an ucky greyish mauve color and the second set of pics is of this lovely bright raspberry color.

Ah, here we are.  With a little color editing, now it actually looks MUCH closer to real life, some of the depth isn't coming through, but the redder color is much more accurate.

BAD dye, BAD.

So I'm dying yarn to make Wicked and what I was looking for was a lovely dark pinkish red kind of color.  What I got was this: 

It's virtually purple.  I think my best option is to overdye it with more red to bring it back to a color range I like.  The only major problem with that is that the dye pot I was using had very small holes in the bottom - small enough that I didn't notice while the dye was in the pot for an hour, I didn't notice until I tried to wipe down the stove and I noticed a pool of red water in the burners.  um - okay.  that's odd.  very, very odd.

Anyway, it pretty much means that unless I want to try to stuff into a smaller pot (don't put that past me!) I need to get a bigger pot SOON.

And I need to remember that the blue dye has more impact as it soaks into the yarn than is evident in the liquid dye.  hmf.

Playing

I decided I should see what the yarn I dyed 'did' when it was knitted up, so I decided to try the red & black one that I have dubbed 'Rising Pheonix'. 

I realize the pic would work better during the day b/c the colors are not showing up true to life with the flash, they are really a deep scarlet red, an orange red & a charcoal grey/black. 

Turns out it is self striping after all.  Pretty cool, I say...now I need to pay attention to how long the dyed color strips are to get those repeats, in case I ever want to do it again.  So much stuff to write down!