October 10, 2003
A New Source of Spinnable Fiber?
If you're going to be in Carson City, Nevada on November 1, why not swing on by this competition?
Knitting Knews
Below, a photo of the front of the Aran pillow blocked and pinned on my jury-rigged blocking board (a piece of cardboard cut from the side of a box, with a 16" x 16" square drawn on it as a template, and covered in plastic wrap so I could still see the square but the cardboard wouldn't get damp). The catch? All those pins stick very upside-down-porcupine-like out of the bottom. Ow, ow ow, and ow.
Still arm-wrestling with the Arboretum Sock, and am painfully aware that I'm running out of time, the Sockfest being this Wednesday and all. Let's see if I can explain the problem: The decreases and the yo's are not distributed in a balanced manner so when I divide the pattern in half, a decrease in the first half "loses" its corresponding yo because the yo lands in the other half. I start out with two halves of eight stitches each and rapidly end up with one half having seven stitches and the other half having nine, and then can't do a repeat because the repeats all start with eight/eight. My head is spinning.
Stop the presses! K just pointed out to me that Sockfest conflicts with our 17-year anniversary! But she knows that I Need (in the way that sometimes knitters Need yarn or Need a pattern or Need to knit) to go to Sockfest but, fortunately, she Needs to go to a workshop to learn how to buy and use a router so she has signed herself up for one on the same night. Are we romantic or whut?
Lastly, I've been "called up" to work on the Highly Secret Project this weekend. Yahoo!
Dye Garden Dyegest
Below is a photo of two swatches showing the results from the madrona-bark-plus-ammonia dye experiment. One, as always, is the inevitable Plain Old Brown. That one I achieved dyeing the normal way (simmering the yarn in the dyebath). The other one is a beautiful soft peach color, similar to the Crayola Crayon called "Flesh," that is, until Crayola jumped on the politically correct bandwagon, changed the crayon's name to "Peach," and started selling this instead. (Wait a sec'. How did I go from discussing a madrona yarn swatch to discussing racial bias in one frickin' sentence?)
Anyhoo, back to the swatches: The second color (which is a little more tan and a little less pink than the picture shows) I achieved by pouring dye on the skein and steam-dyeing it, using the "Twisted Sisters" method. A lot of the dye washed away when I rinsed the skein but I love the color it left behind, so much so, in fact, that, on my way from Point A to Point B in my house, I occasionally make a detour through the kitchen just to visit it. (Once again, I need to get out more...)
