Is This a Redundant Post?

Just in case the post in limbo never shows up I guess I'll try again........sigh

First things first, I gotta tell ya, you guys sure do know how to make a person smile. Dang. I'm really glad the whole Obama / Knitting thing was so well received. Believe it when I tell you, the smiles and giggles were sent back to me more than 10000-fold. Thank you.

It's going to take a while to get through all the comments and emails, and visit all the new-to-me blogs. Please know that you're comments/emails were and are greatly appreciated.

Now on to the fibery stuff. The post in limbo was a quasi tutorial of my latest attempt to dye a Noro-type color gradient. I'm not going to go through all that again, at least not at this point. I want to give Blogger some time to resurrect the post in limbo, but I will post a few pix of the experiment.

I began with this KnitPick naked WOA. I'm calling it "Naked WOA" cuz I bought this stuff eons ago before they started calling their natural fibers as "Bare".




This poor pathetic yarn had seen better days. Ummm, like the days before I began experimenting on it lol. As the victim of not one, or two, but three grossly unorthodox experiments in dyeing, this fiber has been through hell.

The first assault was in the form a dry wool half-ass dunk in a bath of nearly exhausted dye. Classic Colors blueberry.

The second atrocity was a sprinkle/zap method with (oops) pre-sweetened Kool Aid berry blue. I know it is possible to use sweetened KA, but it's not a good idea to do it in the sprinkle/zap method I was using at the time. The fear of the heady aroma of burnt sugar contributed to a less than stellar dye job. (For those of you on Ravelry, checkout the great results MissVicki is getting with dyeing with pre-sweetened KA in the group "What a Kool Way to Dye")

The third attack was just one day when I had inadvertently opened too many pkgs. of KA lime while I was preparing for something else. Rather than trying to store open KA pkg I randomly sprinkled it on this much abused yarn.

Throughout all that the yarn had tried it's damnedest to be pretty. It never quite got there. It has hung on my drying wall for well over a year, and while it has been considered several times for projects it just never made the grade. I decided to do something about yesterday.

I wound it up on my skeining frame and took another look at it.....sigh...it didn't look half bad this way.



I began to have second thoughts, but considering I had just spent an hour winding a 54-ish foot skein, I persevered.

I divided the huge skein into 4 approximately equal parts, and bundled it up for ease of handling during the dye application stage. I'll untie each section one at a time when I'm ready to dye.



I used the paint/wrap/smooch/zap method, using KA lemon lime, and berry blue twist and Schnook's brand of flavored drink mix cheery cherry and giggle n' grape.

Just out of the zapper and still cooling.




I think I'm in love.




I think something mitered or multi-directional is called for here, or perhaps something mosaic with this yarn and another solid. I'll play around a bit and let you know how it works out.

I need to expand my skeining frame, 54-ish feet isn't near big enough for what I want to do next.