FO's, Glass, and Dyeing

I reeeeally hate doing this......a post with no pix........ :-( ....but let me explain.

Bart (number 2 son) is a glass artist in his own right, but furthered his glass journey this weekend in classes taught by Steve Sizelove. (I can't urge you enough to follow that link for some breathtaking glass.) So before classes began on Friday, Bart borrowed my camera, thus no pix today. I can't wait to see Bart's pieces and the pix he took. His classes included many of the goblets and vessels you'll see in the link as well as the human figures. I promise pix from the class as well as pix of Bart's work as soon as I get my camera back! :-)

As for FO's...I finished the Petal Cardi as well as the Zippered Vest, Drops 0-399, I'll explain all pros and cons regarding the petal cardi and the zippered vest when I can take pix.

I have now found myself with an intense need to begin something else. Um, let's just forget all the other things on the needles right now OK? And since Sillian called the other day requesting a multitude of scarves for herself and friends I began searching for scarf patterns. I started a totally mindless garter scarf in a tweedy purple with a fuzzy carry a-long, while I was at my guild meeting on Saturday, but, I also need something that has a little bit more to it, but still somewhat mindless. So I decided that this was going to be the next, somewhat mindless, project on the needles. Problem is, I don't have a decent yarn with the proper color spacing, so I dyed some today.

Dang, I really wish I had my camera, but..... oh well. I made a skein about 17.5 yards long, and I dyed it with various blues, and greens, a sections of purple, red, and yellow. I used both the "regular" as well as the neon food colorings. I just took the yarn out of the microwave, and I'm not that thrilled with it. I wanted to do it on the stove top with a bunch of dye baths in my big pot, but I didn't have enough glass jars......sigh. I'll see how it looks when it's dry and maybe I'll overdyed it a bit.

I made the skein (reclaimed lambswool) in the same manner I used when I made the 9 yard skein for the spaced bleach experiment with a couple of improvements. Using one of those adjustable free standing needlepoint frames, I stuck 10-penny nails up through the holes, ran a strip of masking tape along the heads and wound up the skein zigzagging around the nails. It's a quick easy set up , that is totally adjustable for whatever length of skein you want to make, although I imagine 19 - 20 yards is about the max length, unless you add another frame or two, but I can't imagine wanting a skein longer than 60 feet, but who knows. :o) Another nice thing about this "skeining board" is that it breaks down into a few strips of wood and a handful of nails. I won't break it down and I'll take some pix as soon as I can.

As for the scarf, of course I'm not going to follow the pattern exactly. I'm going to widened the scarf as well as do the center portion in a plain ribbing in the manner of a seaman's scarf as the designer (Kim Salazar) muses in her notes/post about the scarf.