Mossy Cottage Knits

Ryan and Tommy's Excellent Adventure

For the last couple of weeks, my kitchen has been smelling rather rank, in fact rotten and "green" enough to make one's eyes water. Assuming the smell was coming from the sink drain, I threw everything I could think of down there: degreaser, baking soda, vinegar, and a special bio-cleaner with sludge-eating critters. I even squirted some perfume into the drain but, take my word for it, perfume and "green rot" is a loathsome combination. Nothing worked, so Saturday morning Tommy Da Plumbah arrived. Well, quel adventure we had! First he snaked the drain, then he used high-pressure water to clean it out. In the process of squeezing himself into the impossibly small space under my sink, he grabbed the pea-trap -- which immediately crumbled to dust in his hands. Then, every piece of piping under my sink followed suit, falling to dust or springing holes and leaking. $500 and four hours later, I am now the owner of beautiful, new, strong, shiny plumbing under my sink.

Which would be all well and fine if I hadn't discovered the next day that the smell actually came from a pungent boxwood hedge outside my kitchen window.

Knitting Knews
Here is a picture of the finished left side of the Egg Yolk Sweater. See the little two-inch pointy part at the top? I had to frog it four times, thanks to two occurrences of the Mysterious Goober and two major fubars of the rib pattern. The pattern is still a little fubared but I give up. And now, apparently, I’m supposed to repeat the whole thing but mirrored and backwards and upside down and inside out for the right-hand side. Surely you jest!

Here's the main problem I'm having with this sweater. Maybe someone can explain how to solve it? To make the little "nubby" columns, on the wrong side, you do a yf, slip as if to purl, yb. In the main part of the pattern this works just fine because you're next stitch is a knit. No prob. BUT, when you're decreasing for the raglan, sometimes the very next stitch is a purl. How can you purl your next stitch if your yarn needs to be in the back?

Dyeing Dyegest
Purple plum leaves are a natural dyer’s dream!

First, when I poured the hot water over the leaves to steep them, an earthy dark purple color immediately started to leech out. By the next morning, all the purple color had leeched into the water, leaving the leaves completely green.

When I simmered the leaves and water, by way of a test, since I hadn’t had the foresight to soak some small pieces of yarn, I threw a three-inch DRY piece of yarn into the pot. After a minute or so, it turned a dark brownish purple. However, when I rinsed it, the purple washed away and the test piece turned a bright yellow, a truer, less-acidic yellow than the dandelion color. I was intrigued, even letting out a little “Wow!,” but I was also a little disappointed because Lord knows I can make yellow dyes, both on purpose and by mistake.

When the dyebath was finished simmering, I put the standard ½-ounce skein of wetted yarn in and simmered it. Like the test piece, it became a nice brownish purple but, when I rinsed it, the color remained! It mellowed out to a rich grayish-brown with light plum overtones, a color a co-worker called “mushroom,” the perfect description. Then, on a whim, I put some ammonia in the dyebath and, to my astonishment, the dyebath immediately turned a deep purple-green. (This turns out to be a little less astonishing than I first thought, thanks to grade school color theory. The ammonia is lemon ammonia so it's yellow. Purple + yellow = dark green.) I simmered another skein of wet yarn in this second color. This second skein turned the most astounding pine green. So, out of this one batch of dyebath, I got bright yellow, “mushroom,” and pine green. My jaw is still scraping the floor. In fact, over the course of the day, I kept revisiting the test piece and two skeins to make sure it wasn’t my imagination.

Oh, you want a picture, did you say?

Unfortunately, none of the books say anything about the light-fastness of plum leaf dye but even if the yarn were to fade completely back to the original off-white color tomorrow, this magical experiment would have been worth it.

(Poor K. I’m forever showing up at her door with newly dyed skeins of yarn. It’s her job as my partner to “ooh” and “aah” over the yarn, the same way it’s my job as her partner to be unutterably fascinated by the compost bins she built, but she finds herself stuck between genuinely wanting to support what I’m doing and yet wanting to say she thinks most of the colors are pretty day-um ugly. I think the mushroom color was a little more than her graphic designer’s sensibilities could handle…)

Posted by Ryan at July 21, 2003 10:30 AM