Weaving and Dyeing

OK first things first, pic of the impetus for my posting today.


Yes, I'm into the blues and greens. Yea!

Next up, yarn barf.a.k.a knitted lace.

It's going pretty well. Yes I've had a few oops. Primarily forgotten YO's, but I caught them soon enough. 6 more rows of the edge chart and I'm done. Wonder how many oops there will be that I didn't notice! :o) Oh, and can I tell ya how much I despise working on these pole vault worthy length needles?!? UGH! I went merrily along on my convert vintage dpn needles clear up to the middle of the last repeat of the chart for the body. Then I couldn't cram anymore stitches on the needle....sigh Couldn't find my vintage circs in this size and didn't dare switch to use metal ones. My gauge is out the window when I use metal needles, so out came the needles whose length is akin to the proverbial 10 ft. pole. Again I say UGH, but I must give them their due, cuz if I didn't have them the yarn barf would stagnate until who knows when.

I loath metal needles. We just can't see eye to eye. Pity that, I have 100's of them. :-/ If anyone out there is looking for some metal needles any length or type, circs, straights, dpns, any size email me. I'd love to see them go to an appreciative home. Conversely so I'd be thrilled to give a warm and loving abode to any of those vintage needles that were made of nylon, casein, (sp?), or that plastic like stuff from way back when. Any length and type would be loved and cherished, even those of the pole vaulting variety. Anyone? Anyone? BTW if you have any made from Bakelite do yourself a favor and sell them on ebay they get a pretty penny.

Let's see what else is there today, oh yeah, I tried a new-to-me KA dye technique. (I've never seen anyone else talk about this, but I'm positive someone out there has done it before) IMHO I think this has great potential.


Yes these are the same skein. I'm thrilled that I can now take pix in a decent size and they aren't bleary, correct coloration will have to wait. The true color is somewhere between the two of these. A new friend of mine, who seems to be a long lost sister, posed the question about how to get a pink/orange mottled/heather/tweedy yarn with KA. This skein is the result of experiment #1.

I used my standard sure fire mottling method with pink lemonade first. Big pot on the stove, 6 pkg of pink lemonade KA, with a dash of vinegar (I don't like to wait) and quickly throw in a hank of DRY yarn. I let the air bubbles in the fiber itself do the work for me. The only cautionary tales regarding this method is that you must act quickly to get all the yarn submerged or run the risk of a graduated skein or large splotches. I've never had any problem with felting the yarn as I manipulate it in the pot to make sure it stays submerged, the water isn't that hot yet, and I don't really agitate it, I just keep pushing it below water level so it's not floating. With particularly lofty yarns this can take a while. To remedy that problem, (I do things quickly, and I don't like to babysit yarn) I purchased a round cooling rack. You know the kind of wire racks you'd cool a cake or cookies on after baking. I snipped one outer ring of the rack which gives me enough play in the ring to be able to wedge the rack into my pot below water level, thus holding the more lofty fiber submerged.

After the dye was exhausted I removed my nicely mottled pink skein and let it cool enough to handle easily. I'm using "pink" here rather flippantly, I would have called the color pink salmon or perhaps peachy melon, not really a true pink. I know/have heard to add a bit of grape or some other blue based KA to make it more pink, but I wanted to see exactly what color I'd get with just the pink lemonade.

Now comes the new part. I took a small 2 oz fine spray mist bottle, put about two tablespoons of vinegar in it, with 2 pkg of orange KA and then filled the bottle with water. I laid the skein out in the bottom of my sink spread out as much as the ties would allow and spritzed the orange on it. I continually turned , twisted and fluffy the skein, sometimes even shaking and fluffing it in the air while spritzing. (No, I did not wear gloves, and yes my hand was completely orange.) After the entire contents of the bottle was used, I placed the skein in a steam bath over my big pot and let the color set. As for the orange hand? No problem, a sprinkle of baking soda and all was well,

All in all I'm pleased with the outcome, there is great potential here. I would rather have had a truer pink, but up against the orange it did "pinken" up a bit. Experiment #2 will use the same procedure but with colors not so similar. I'm thinking yellow and green, maybe blue and yellow that could produce some nice greens within the skein too. hmmmm.....

Earth Hour

Today is Earth Hour day. So what are you going to do in your hour of darkness??

Me? I know what I won't be doing. I won't be working on this:




My first real lace. If you consider a pattern that does have a resting row "real" lace. I've heard that some don't. Anyway, it's light, airy, made on #3 needles with thread-like wool, and has deliberate holes in it.....sounds like lace to me. I have nearly 6 repeats of the second chart done. The scarf that is shown in the pattern pic is 9 repeats, but I'm not familiar with the yarn and not really sure if the author even mentions what size needles she used. I might stop soon, I don't really want anything too big. When I run another lifeline after this repeat I'll take it off the needles and measure.

The pattern I'm using Zetor Scarf by Jatta Saukko.

The yarn is Knit Picks Bare Merino Lace wt. Obviously it is no longer bare. This yarn has been dunked in countless dye baths over the last year or so. It was first abused (lovingly so) in my solar dye experiment, a center pull ball, in a can, in the sun. :o) For the life of me I can't find a pic of the finished yarn but it really was a pretty robin egg blue as clear and beautiful as the sky that day. A nice color but not a "me" color, so it became one of the many "orphan" skeins I have hanging around, literally. Orphan skeins are those that I'm not thrilled with colorwise, but have potential. (don't they all???) When I begin a new dye project, I gather a few of the appropriate orphan skeins to cover any oops contingencies. What's an oops contingency you may ask, oh, anything from the unintended color mix made or perhaps a dye bath that hasn't been exhausted. Rather than pouring the unwanted/non-exhausted dye bath down the drain, I throw orphan skeins in it. Oh hell, I even use the orphan skeins to wipe up the occasional spill! Eventually there comes a day when I really like the look of a orphan and he/she is adopted for a pattern. The day before last was adoption day for this skein. She's happy and so am I.


I really am enjoying myself. I knew that I would. So why has it taken so long for me to finally get around to knitting lace?? Cuz of this:



That's my working copy of the pattern and charts.....sigh One note card per row, not including the resting rows. It's not that I don't like charts. And it's not that I don't like written text. (I don't and won't get in to that argument it means nothing to me.) It's cuz I have problems with my eyes. I can't depend on them. Some days I can see, others not so much. It's all part and parcel of the migraines, "visual disturbances". Don't bother suggesting post-it notes, magnetic boards, highlighted portions, huge photocopies, etc, believe me I've tried them all. They all do work and I can use them on "good" days, but often times good days are far and few between, so I came up with this. It works for me. It's very portable, and long term, it's nearly impossible for me to lose my place even if I put the project down for months. I use this method with anything that is complicated or involved, and with colorwork too. Sure it takes time to write it all out like that, but I can get all the chart work done on one good day and then have plenty of not so good days of relatively mindless, somewhat sightless knitting. It's a good trade off for me. If there are any others out there thinking about doing this whacked out thing too here's a little tip.....clamp or rubber band all the card together tightly (in both directions) and use a drill with the 1/8 inch bit, or smaller just big enough for the ring, to drill the hole. If you put the stack of cards on top of a cardboard box one bore through the stack and back out in reverse will make a really nice hole for the ring. Oh and you could also use little pocket notebooks and do the same thing, they work just fine, but aren't as durable and may not have enough pages.