A while back M. and I did some experimentation with yarn dying with kool-aid. I tell you what, if you are wanting to kick a kool-aid habit, dying yarn with it should do it for you. It's kind of creepy how well it dyes the yarn. Kind of makes you wonder what it does to our insides. We started off with Knit Picks Bare Merino Wool Fingering weight yarn.

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We did a couple of skeins of just solid. One with pink lemonade kool-aid for M. and one with black cherry kool-aid for me.

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Then we branched out into multi-colored yarns. We tried two, three, and four colors:

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I got the idea of hanging the yarn into the quart jars of kool-aid from a tutorial on the web. I thought the yarn above the jars would absorb the color, but it didn't, so I ended up with sections of undyed yarn in the multi-colored skeins. Here is the finished yarn from the first dying. It's hanging to dry outside on our patio.

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I like the white sections in some of the color combos, but not all of them. Also, some of them turned out a little brighter/more pastel than I wanted, so I overdyed a few skeins a couple of weeks ago.

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The skein on the left was originally dyed with orange and black cherry and then I overdyed it with a mixture of both orange and black cherry. The skein in the middle was originally dyed with tropical punch, grape, and lemonade and then overdyed with blue raspberry. The skein on the right was dyed with black cherry and then overdyed with grape. I'm pleased with how the over dyed skeins have come out. I have one more skein that I might overdye, but I haven't gotten it done yet.

I've started knitting with one of our dyed yarns. M. requested a pair of socks out of the pink lemonade dyed skein. This was specifically her skein.

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This was the first skein that we dyed and I sort of messed it up, but it ended up being a happy accident. I had the kool-aid too concentrated and not enough water in the bowl to fully emerse the yarn, which meant that the color wasn't evenly distributed and there were some paler and even white spots. I was really upset with myself for messing up M.'s yarn, but it actually turned out really neat.

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Just based on the kool-aid experience, I don't think I'll ever become a serious yarn dyer. It was a fun experiment, but not anything that I would want to do too much of. Plus there are so many fabulous indy dyed yarns out there for sale, that I'm not lacking for yarn!

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This has already been a crazy fall and it's going to get crazier as it goes on. On the school/career front, I have started collecting data for my dissertation. This has eaten up a huge chunk of my time and has created a constant stream of things that I need to do each day. I should be done by the end of this week and I'll be relieved when it's over. I will then move directly into doing job interviews. We do everything way in advance in the accounting field, so I'll be interviewing for faculty positions that will start next fall. I've done one already and have more over the coming weeks. These interviews are all day affairs with research and sometimes teaching presentations and two days of travel to get there and then home again, so they are both fun and exhausting. Plus sometime in there I have to analyze the dissertation data and get it written up.

On to a more fun topic... knitting! I have finished up a number of projects that I haven't had time to blog about, so I'll just give quick details and pictures on each. The first up is the Wisp.

Wisp-y Scarf

Over the summer, just about everyone my LYS made this out of the pattern yarn (Rowan Kidsilk Haze) and I just didn't like it. I think I just don't like that yarn because at some point someone made one out of malabrigo lace and I just loved it. After several false starts on other patterns with my Azul Profundo Malabrigo lace weight, I decided to jump on the Wisp band wagon. I knitted this on size 8 needles. I used the square circular needles which were kind of neat to knit with. The malabrigo is smaller gauged than the kidsilk haze, so it ended up a lot narrower, which was ok with me since what I really wanted was a scarf. I did 24 pattern repeats to get enough length on it.

The second project that I finished up was a pair of crazy, striped socks:

Striped Socks 1

I made these out of two colorways of Noro Silk Garden Sock. One colorway was #252 and I lost the yarn band on the other colorway, so I'm not sure what it was. I think it was the same colorway that I made my very first scarf and hat out of. I used a basic sock pattern with just 12 rows of ribbing at the top and then the rest stockinette stitch. I alternated the colorways every 4 rounds on leg and foot of the sock and every 2 rows on the heel. I did the entire heel turn and toe in the non-#252 colorway. These turned out great. They are extremely warm and dense though, so I haven't gotten to wear them yet. I look forward to wearing them on some dreary day this winter when my dissertation and job search has me stressed and depressed, because really how can one not be happy when wearing crazy striped socks.

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The next project was a quick little hat. I joined a Halloween Vampire swap on Ravelry. It's been fun. It's kind of like secret santa except that it's for Halloween and it's supposed to have a vampire theme. My spoilee for the swap appears to be a big Twilight fan, so I knitted her on of the patterns that were designed to replicate the hat that Bella wore in the movie on the beach at La Push.

Bella Hat

I actually didn't care for the hat in the movie, but I've decided it's just the way the actress is wearing it. I had M. model the hat it looks adorable on her. I think I'm going to knit her one now. The hat knits up fast, but it's a killer on the hands. It's moss stitch, knitted in bulky yarn on size 7 needles.

The final project that I've finished up is what I have dubbed my "Vampire Scarf":

Vampire Scarf

This is actually the Montego Bay Scarf pattern. I love this pattern and tried to knit it out of a different yarn a while back, but that yarn just wasn't right for this pattern. This time, I've knitted it in the much coveted Wollmeise Sockenwolle 100% Superwash yarn in the Rosenrot colorway. I call this my vampire scarf because I started knitting it only while watching True Blood this summer and then finished up while watching the Twilight movie and The Vampire Diaries. I love the scarf. I think my favorite part is the fringe, which is the only modification I made. The fringe was supposed to be braided with five strands folded double and I didn't like how thick the braids were, so I made them with three strands folded over.

Vampire Scarf Fringe

M. and I did some kool-aid dying of yarn a while back and I overdyed some of it just recently, but I'm going to put those pictures in another post.

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Sock Yarn Blanket - WIP 1

Behold, my "Blanket of Insanity", a work in progress. When I was looking at quilt patterns and quilting material for the quilt that my grandmother made me, I fell in love with scrap quilts. I have tried three different times to learn to sew, once as a child, once a teenager, and once as an adult, and it has never stuck, so there is no way I will ever become a quilter or make myself a scrap quilt. Then I heard about sock yarn blankets, which seem to be the knitters equivalent to scrap quilts. These are blankets knit out of leftover sock yarn. I favorited a bunch of these on Ravelry, but never found a pattern that I just fell for. They all seemed so complicated that I felt like I would need to knit it all at once or else forget how to do it. Then I found the Zig Zag Pram Blanket pattern. I love zig zagged stripes as evidenced by the quilt I did have my grandmother make me and it's a simple enough pattern that I don't think I'll forget what I'm doing if I don't knit on it for a while. The pattern was for a small baby blanket, but I wanted a larger blanket, so I cast on 361 stitches instead of the stitch count called for by the pattern. I was hoping this would give me 5' wide blanket. I measured today and it's 56" wide, so not quite 5', but close. I also decided that it would drive me nuts to try to put a solid border around it as I go, so I decided to just skip the border.

Sock Yarn Blanket - WIP 2

I bought a set of size 7 circular needles with something like a six foot cable on them that I could just dedicate to this project. The plan was to knit up all of the sock yarn scraps that I currently have and then just put the blanket aside and knit in the leftovers each time I finish a pair of socks or any other project that uses sock weight yarn. I now have all of my scraps on hand knit in and the blanket is about 19" long. The yarns included so far are (from bottom of blanket up to the needles):

·         Knit Picks Essential Sock Yarn Navy – used for garter stitch bottom border, never knit with before.

·         Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Medium weight Lemongrass – leftover from chevron scarf.

·         Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Medium weight Rolling Stone – left over from chevron scarf.

·         Colinette Jitterbug Toscana – left over from first pair of simple socks.

·         Brown Sheep Wildfoote Luxury Socks Brown Sugar – left over from second pair of simple socks (Wasn’t knitting up well with the size 7 needles, only knit a partial row with it and then switched to a different yarn).

·         Claudia Handpaints Yarn Fingering Dessert Dusk – left over from the Dickerson Park Monkey socks.

·         Claudia Handpaints Yarn Fingering Hokies – left over from the Hokie walker socks. This is the yarn that I traded S. for that turned our fingers orange.

·         Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Medium weight Farmhouse – leftover from second chevron scarf.

·         Collinete Jitterbug Velvet Leaf – left over from second chevron scarf.

·         Shubui Knits Socks 5001 – left over from nutkins socks.

·         Claudia Handpaints Yarn Fingering Hokies – left over from Hokie socks for M.

·         Misty Mountain Farms Jubilee Evergreen – left over from Broadripple socks.

·         Pagewood Farms Alyeska Fabulous Fall – left over from Fawkes Sawkes.

My initial estimate was that this blanket might take me 20 years to finish, but I'm saved by the fact that I knit short socks and thus generally have a lot of yarn left over. Now I'm thinking that it might only take me 5 years to finish. I've also been weaving the ends in as I go so that I don't have hours worth of ends to weave in once I'm done.

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I'll keep you updated on this one as I go. The only bad thing about these blanket is that now that I have all of my scraps knit in, I almost hate to finish the socks that I currently have on the needles, because that means more scraps!

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I feel in love with the Wicked Sweater a while ago. According to the pattern, the short sleeved version in my size could be made with three skeins of Malabrigo. Spring before last, thats right, Spring of 2008, when my LYS first really started carrying Malabrigo, I bought three skeins of the beautiful Azul Profundo colorway to make the sweater.

Azul Profundo

The Malabrigo laid idle in my stash while I spent the rest of 2008 knitting Christmas gifts and then spent the first part of 2009 catching up on the other projects in my queue while at the same time getting distracted by new exciting projects. A few weeks ago I found these great striped long-sleeved shirts at Old Navy that I thought would look fantastic under the Wicked. I bought 4 different colors of the shirts and finally busted out the yarn and pattern for the Wicked. The first thing that I do now when I start a new project is go to Ravelry and see if anyone has made the pattern in the same yarn to get an idea on how gauge ran with that yarn and how the fit was and that sort of thing. I immediately started getting nervous when I discovered that many of the people who made the sweater in the two sizes I was contemplating used more than 3 skeins of Malabrigo. Many of these folks had skipped the kangaroo pocket, but had made the sweater longer, so I was holding out hope that I would be ok.

I had a hard time deciding what size to make this sweater. My bust size hit right at the break between the medium and the large. Several folks noted that this sweater was a good fit with zero or negative ease and since I was worried about the amount of yarn I had, I went with the medium. I knit this on size 8 needles although I think now that I probably should have gone up to 9's as I was a little small on gauge. The sweater is definitely fitted. I was a little worried that it was a bit too fitted, but several friends have assured me that it looks good.

Wicked - front

As you can see, I also skipped the kangaroo pocket. I was worried about the amount of yarn I had and I thought it was going to hit me in an awkward and unflattering spot. I wish I would have made it a little longer and even though I was tight on yarn, I would have had enough to make it a tad longer. Unfortunately at the point that I made the length decision, I still had to finish up the arms and didn't know how much yarn that would take.

Wicked - back

In the original pattern the bottom band of the sweater is supposed to be knit in seed stitch to mirror the seed stitch border around the kangaroo pocket, but since I skipped the kangaroo pocket, I just did the bottom in the same rib as the neckline. I of course managed to screw this rib up. You are supposed to alternate the set of knit stitches that you do the crossover stitch on, so that you have a 4 row repeat in the rib, but I misread the pattern and did the crossover on the same set of knit stitches every time so that I have alternating knit stitches with the crossover and straight knit stitches in the rib. I didn't discover the error until the neckline was almost done and someone at my LYS said she thought it gave the sweater more visual interest anyway, so I just kept on knitting! I just made sure to repeat the same mistake on the rib around the bottom of the sweater and arms.

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I'm not as excited about the finished product here as I was about the pattern before I knit it, but I think it will be a warm little sweater for casual weekend wear. I'm just worried that I won't ever be able to get over the fear that it's too fitted and won't be comfortable wearing it out in public.

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I love the look of a long, gauzy, fringed scarf worn in the summer with a tank or cap sleeved shirt, but now that I knit, I'm loath to purchase a scarf, so I don't own any of this type of scarf. At the beginning of this summer, there was a rash of people I know knitting entrelac, and my love of the entrelac is well documented, so it wasn't long until I was itching to start another entrelac scarf. I decided to make one out of Noro Matsuri, which is a cotton/wool blend because I thought I could wear it as a long, fringed summer scarf. I even picked out a bright, happy summer-ish colorway (colorway #5).

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I knit the scarf with just over three balls on size 7 needles, and this time I used the pattern written by S. down at my LYS instead of the Lady Eleanor pattern from scarf style. S.'s pattern is written for a 10 stitch block, but I much prefer a smaller block, so I modified it down to 8 stitches per block. I also only did three blocks across, because I wanted to keep it narrow and less bulky so that it would be a more summery weight. Unfortunately, it didn't matter, the worsted weight yarn is just too substantial, and the entrelac stitch pattern is too structured. I didn't get the effect that I wanted. I guess I really need a sock or lace weight yarn and an open stitch pattern to pull off what I was going for.

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I still really like the scarf. It is entrelac out of Noro yarn, after all. You just can't go wrong with that. I think it's going to be more of an early spring scarf. Something to wear with a light jacket when you expect the tulips to sprout any day now, but the early mornings are still chilly. It does look pretty sharp with my linen jacket.

summer entrelac 1

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I thought this summer was going to get calmer and more relaxing after summer teaching was over, but the opposite seems to have happened. This is a beer that was actually brewed back at the beginning of July. K. and I had both hit our stashes of Raspberry Wit beer pretty hard with the stress of summer teaching, so we decided to brew something else before we both headed our own way on summer vacations. The fruity wheat beer combo seemed to be perfect for summer, so we decided to stick with it. This time though we went for blackberry and used a fruit extract rather than the marmalade. In addition, we learned our lesson from the strong flavored Belgian wit beer and went this time instead with a milder American style wheat. This is the Boundary Waters Wheat beer kit from Midwest Brewing Supply's American Ale series with a 4 oz bottle of blackberry extract added at bottling. I have gotten so lax about recording information that I took the original and final gravities on this, but didn't calculate ABV. I'm guessing it's in the 4 - 5 % range. It's a nice summer session beer. I drank plenty of it on our beach trip to Edisto Island a few weeks ago. Unfortunately after that trip I had to go on a work trip and then came down with a cold, so I haven't had a chance to drink many more. I plan on enjoying a few more on the patio before the fall temperatures roll around here, but I'm already looking forward to fall and dreaming about the dark beers that will be in season soon.

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I did a little fan girl knitting in honor of the new Harry Potter movie. This is a free, Harry Potter inspired pattern on Ravelry and is called Fawkes. According to the blurb on the pattern, the stitch motif is designed to look like a flame, which I think it does.

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This was a great pattern and I'm thinking about knitting it again out of a solid colored yarn that will really show off the stitch pattern. I almost knit these out of a solid hunter's orange yarn that I have, but then switched yarns at the last minute. I may still go back and knit the solid orange pair at some point. I ended up knitting them out of Pagewood Farms Alyeska sock yarn in the Fabulous Fall colorway. The colors in this yarn just reminded me of some of the pictures that I'd seen of Fawkes. Given the 10% cashmere content, this yarn was a bit splurgy, even for me, but it was an absolute dream to knit with. I was a bit worried about running out of yarn. The yarn requirment on the pattern was 350 - 400 yards and the yardadge on this yarn is only 360. Of course, I made the socks a little shorter than was called for in the pattern and had plenty of yarn for the socks plus a little left over for my sock yarn blanket (which I'll talk about in a later post).

Fawkes Sawkes 3

I'm trying to decide what to do next in terms of knitting. I have a lace cardigan on the needles that I really should be working on, but all I really want to do is cast on for more socks and the Wicked sweater. We'll see how disciplined I manage to be.

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The summer school session has left me pretty short on knitting time over the last six weeks, but I did manage to finish up a couple of projects in the last week. The first was the Shay Cap Sleeve Pullover from Valley Yarns.

Blackberry Sweater 3

This is knitted on size 6 and 8 needles using Knit Picks Comfy yarn in the Blackberry colorway. I chose the comfy yarn for it's cotton content and washability. Plus I just really love how that yarn knits up. For a nice easy sweater, I sure had a hard time with this pattern. For starters, I just did not get along with the cable in the pattern. I kept messing it up and leaving big holes in it. Plus I wanted something easily memorizable and mindless. I ripped it out and replaced it with a modified version of the diamond cable pattern from the Rose Tyler Wristwarmers. I'm really happy with how the substituted cable came out. Then I had a heck of a time getting the appropriate number of stitches picked up and the short rows done correctly on the sleeves. I had to rip each sleeve out and start over again at least three times. Finally, I couldn't quite get the ribbing around the neck right. The first time through, I left big holes around my picked up stitches and ended up with a bind-off that was so tight I could barely squeeze my head through it. I ripped it out, redid it and then used a sewn bind-off and it worked much better.

Blackberry Sweater 2

Now that it's finished, I'm not sure how I feel about this sweater. I don't wear sleeveless stuff and the little cap sleeves on this sweater are pretty close to sleeveless. A friend suggested that this would be a good sweater to wear over a long-sleeved t-shirt when the weather gets chilly. I like that idea. I might get more wear out of it that way. It's also a very snug sweater. I knit the size that would have zero ease and I was hitting pretty darn close to gauge, but it's a good thing that I lost 10 lbs between when I began knitting it and when I finished knitting it, because otherwise, I'm not sure it would have fit.

The second project that I've finished is the Broadripple Socks. These have been in the queue for a about a year, but I'm just now getting around to knitting them.

Broadripple socks - 1

The yarn is Misty Mountain Farm Jubiliee. These aren't really my colors, but I picked this yarn up from the half price bin at my LYS last year thinking that I would use it to learn to knit socks with. Then when it was time to learn, I magically bought new yarn for my first socks, so I'm just now getting around to knitting this yarn up. I'm not sure that I love the yarn, but the pattern is great. I especially love how these are knit on size 3 needles! It makes them go so fast. I'll definitely make this pattern again, just with a yarn that I'm more in love with.

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The only thing that I think I'll change next time I knit these socks will be the number of rows of the "garter ripple" stitch that make up the cuff. With as short as I make my socks, the number of rows called for in the pattern just seems like too much.

I turned in my final grades for summer school tonight, so hopefully I'll get some more knitting time in over the next few weeks. I certainly have plenty of projects on the needles to keep me busy and I was thinking about casting on for another simple sweater soon. Although there is a lot of traveling in my future, so we'll see. M. and I are headed out tomorrow for our annual summer trip to Missouri. I'm not looking forward to the 90 degree weather there. It might put a damper on my desire to knit.

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This is a belgium wit beer kit from midwest brewing supply that we've flavored with raspberry-orange marmalade from my favorate marmalade maker, Sarabeth's. In retrospect, we should probably have gone with another style of wheat beer for this one. The raspberry flavor has gotten lost in the banana and clove flavors that go along with this yeast. It's still a good beer, and the perfect summer beer. One of the other grad students and I made this to drink and ease the pain of teaching summer classes. I got very lazy and didn't keep very good records on this one, but I'm pretty sure that ABV was around 4.7%, so it's a good session beer. I have to admit that as the summer session has dragged on, I've made a pretty good dent in my supply of it. I'm thinking about trying to talk K. into making another summer beer to get us through the rest of the summer. That's all I got in me to say about this one. Summer teaching is taking it out of me right now.

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Baby Boy Sweater 1

I started this sweater last year as a baby shower gift, got all but one sleeve, the hood, and the button bands done, but never finished it. I had thought I might finish it for my brother and sister-in-law's child, but then they had a girl and I lost my motivation again. A few weeks ago I was invited to another baby shower where the couple is expecting a little boy, so I decided it was the perfect opportunity to finish it up.

Baby Boy Sweater 2

This is the Knitting Pure and Simple Babies Neckdown Cardigan pattern made in the 6 month size. This is the second Knitting Pure and Simple pattern that I've used and I love them. They are great basic garmet patterns. They aren't hard, and the finished product always looks great. As much as I liked the pattern, the yarn, on the other hand, I hated. I think the yarn is the reason that it's taken me so long to finish this project. I went with Berroco Comfort because it's machine washable and dryable and I think baby garmets need to be machine washable and dryable. This yarn knits up nice, but it splits like mad and it just doesn't feel good to knit with. I have since discovered Knitpicks Comfy, which is a cotton acrylic blend instead of just straight acrylic like the Comfort, is machine washable and dryable, and is wonderful to knit with. I'll be making all future baby projects with that yarn.

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 The only thing I wimped out on this sweater was putting buttons on it. I had even bought adorable little buttons, but I hate sewing on buttons and some ladies down at the knitting shop and I were discussing the safetly issue of buttons on a baby sweater, so I'm going to go with, I didn't put them on because of safety, but it was really just sheer laziness. I wanted to get some cute little khaki pants and a preppy little shirt to go with the sweater, but I couldn't find anything like that in the stores around here and I didn't have time to go anywhere that I had to drive far for. I settled for some cute printed onesies and some knit pants. It's nice to have one of the old unfinished projects that have just been sitting around done and out of the way. Maybe some day I'll get back to the tilted duster as well.

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