5 posts tagged “yarn”

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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!

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.

 

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:

 

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.

 

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.

 

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":

 

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.

 

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.

 

Mosaic got in another shipment of Claudia Handpaints in the Hokies colorway shortly after I finished the pair of Hokies socks that I was making for myself. When M. found this out, she requested a pair of Hokie socks for her. I wanted to do something a little different than a basic ribbed sock, so I looked up the instructions for a spiral rib and did a spiral rib on the cuff.

 

After getting past the cuff of the first sock, I sort of wished that I had stuck with a basic rib. The spiral rib mixed the colors up oddly and without the spiral rib they were actually striping nicely. I asked M. what she thought and she said she was happy with how the cuff looked, so I left it as it was. Beyond the spiral rib cuff, this is just the basic sock pattern written by S. down at the knitting store, adjusted in size to fit a child's size 12-13 foot. I'm actually not terribly happy with how these turned out, but M. seemed very pleased with them, so that is all that matters.

 

The other project that I've finished up recently but didn't blog about at the time because it was such a small little thing was some to-go cup cozies for the administrative staff in my departmental office for administrative professionals day.

 

I had enough of the Hokie-ish colored Malabrigo left over to make each of the ladies in the office a cup cozy. Then all of us PhD students chipped in for Starbucks gift cards to go with them. We'll be giving them out tomorrow. Hopefully they like them (and drink coffee or at least tea or hot chocolate). As much as I love the Hokie colors, I think I've about OD'd on knitting with the Hokie colored yarn for this year. I still have three more skeins of the Claudia Hokies sock yarn from the last round, but it will have to hang out in my stash and wait for a while before I knit with it.

I managed to hit yarn stores in Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Memphis while we were on our annual holiday trip. I would have liked to have gotten to stores in Dayton, Springfield, IL, and Knoxville, but we got to all of those town late in the evening and then left early in the morning. My goal was to take a picture of the signs of all the stores we visited. I got pictures of the stores in Indy. It was after dark in Kansas City. It was pouring down rain in St. Louis. By Memphis, I have just given up. Instead of posting pictures of the stores, I'll post pictures of the yarn that I bought in each store. I only bought sock yarn (that right souvenir sock yarn), and, with one exception, I only bought yarns that I can't get at my LYS. I also discovered on this trip that a big component of the quality of yarn stores for me is that it must be cozy. My favorite stores were not the ones with the biggest selection, but the ones where I thought it would be a good place to pull up a chair and knit a while.

Indianapolis

I'm going to lump the Indianapolis stores together since they are owned by the same folks. I visited Mass Ave Knits and Broadripple Knits. Mass Ave was by far the larger of the two stores, but Broadripple was the one that I enjoyed the most. Broadripple just seemed cozier. After we were down shopping, S. and I sat there and knitted and chatted with the very nice lady working there while we waiting to meet up with D. and M. for dinner. We went to Mass Ave first and I spent a good part of their time there waffling over whether to buy the black or the brown Malabrigo sock yarn. I bought the brown. Then we went to Broadripple and they had the same Malabrigo sock yarn, so I bought the black there along with a ball of Socrates by Alpaca with a Twist. I thought the Socrates was especially appropriate since I was in Indiana and it's a yarn produced in Indiana.

 

 

Kansas City

The first store I visited in Kansas City was The Studio. This store was recommended by a ravelry friend, and it didn't disappoint. They appeared to be gearing up for a class or knitting group or something, and it seemed like a cozy little shop to hang out and knit in. The staff we very friendly and helpful. They didn't have a whole lot of sock yarn that I can't locally, but I did find a Merino Sock yarn by Northwood Dyeworks, which is a yarn company that I hadn't heard of before. I also got some really great buttons for the Tilted Duster that I'll be casting on for soon.

 

The second store that I visted in Kansas City was Stitch Knitch. I guess this store is technically in North Kansas City. I chose to visit it because it would be a convienent store for my mom and I wanted to check it out for her. They were in the middle of a knitting group when we showed up and it seemed like a nice group of ladies. This store is pretty tiny, but they did have a selection of sock yarn that my LYS doesn't carry. I left with a ball of Austermann Step.

 

St. Louis

The first store I hit in St. Louis (Kirkwood) was Kirkwood Knittery. This was one of those cozy, overstuffed stores with super friendly staff. I mean really, really friendly. They chatted with my husband and daughter while I browsed and then they loaned my husband an umbrella so that he could go get our car and pull it up under the awning so that we wouldn't get drenched in the pouring rain. This is the only store place that I didn't get something that couldn't be bought locally. They had a few things that the LYS here doesn't carry, but none of them struck my fancy. They had Colinette Jitterbug on sale, and I know I like Jitterbug, so I bought a skein of that.

 

The second store that we visited was Knitty Couture. This was my favorite yarn shop on our entire trip. It's on Delmar, which is a great little street with cute shops and restaurants. The two ladies working in the shop were so nice and a lot of fun to talk to. In fact, I stood in there and chatted with them for so long that my husband texted me from the car (our daughter had fallen asleep) to make sure I was okay. This is a tiny, cozy little store with not too much selection of non-sock yarns, but they have lots of really neat sock yarns. I could have bought 5 or 6 skeins in there, but I limited myself to two. I got a skein of Bambino by Chameleon Colorworks and a skein of yarn by Ancient Threads. The Ancient Threads yarn is neat because it's all naturally dyed. I'm trying to decide is Sockittome is the colorway or the name of the yarn. I'm guessing the colorway, because I couldn't find it on Ravelry.

 

 

The final store we visited while in St. Louis was Knitorious. This was a big store with lots and lots of yarn. The yarn I bought there is my favorite yarn from the entire trip. Like any yarn, the first thing that caught my eye was the color. Then I zeroed in on the label. It had a fun name, Strong Arm Sock Yarn by Dyebolical Yarns. I love fun names. Then I noticed that it was dyed locally in St. Louis. This was obviousally a yarn I wouldn't be able to get here in Virginia, so I snatched up. When I was checking out I was chatting with the ladies behind the counter and through the course of the conversation I mentioned that I was from out of town and I picked that yarn because it was produced locally in St. Louis. The lady running the cash register laughed and said, "Yeah, you can't get much more local. I dyed that yarn."

 

Memphis

The last leg of our journey. Memphis. In my research about Memphis yarns ahead of time, it seemed many folks were very impressed with Yarn to Go. I have to say that I was really disappointed. They really didn't seem to have much in stock and what they did have seemed to be mostly novelty yarns. Maybe they were just low on inventory when we went. It was right after Christmas. This was the only yarn store that I didn't buy anything at.

The second yarn store that I check out in Memphis (ok Germantown) was Rainbow Yarn and Fibres. I liked this store a lot more. The only thing I didn't care for in this store, is that I didn't see any place to just sit and knit. The website says they have classes, so there must be a back room or something. I just like there to be a place in the main part of the store where knitters can just come in and hang out knit. There was a good selection of yarn in this store. The sock yarn selection was a little light. Or at least the store disorganized, so I had a hard time locating the sock yarn. I did find a lovely skein of Donegal Sock yarn by Hand Painted Knitting Yarns.

 

Well, that wraps up Yarn Crawl Midwest (or maybe Midwest/Midsouth). It's a good thing that it will be a while before we travel again. I've got plenty to knit and I need to save up my pennies.

Early last year (February 4th to be exact), on this very same blog, I said the following about yarn stashing:

"I decided that due to lack of room and lack of funds, that I would only buy yarn that I had a specific project in mind for."

I'm sure that if anyone who knits reads this blog, they just laughed and shook their heads at my foolish statement. It already did not bode well for me that this statement was in a post about how I had invented a project for the sole purpose of justifying the purchase of a pretty, pretty yarn. I was already sliding down the slippery slope. I was soon generating a project queue (and purchasing the needed yarn) faster than I could knit said projects.

Soon after this post came the "Souvenir Yarn" justification. When we would travel, even just on little day trips, I would search out the local yarn stores and visit them. I would then feel like it was ok if I didn't have a project for any yarn purchases because it was "Souvenir Yarn". It was about then that I bought the first rubbermaid tub for the yarn. All was not lost though because it was hard for me to buy yarn without knowing what the project would be. I never could decide how much of the yarn to buy, and I hate having an odd skein or two laying around that is not really enough to do anything with.

My real downfall came when I decided that I should learn to knit socks. The beautiful thing about socks, I soon learned, is that unless you are making really tall or really short socks, just about any sock pattern takes roughly the same amount of yarn to make, so there is never any uncertainity about the yarn requirements. Plus even though I might not have the specific sock pattern picked out, just the sheer fact that the yarn was "for socks" makes it feel like I have a project in mind. I started just picking up a skein or two of sock yarn when I needed to get up over some free shipping level on other project specific yarn purchases. Then it got reall bad, I discovered the idea of "SOUVENIR SOCK YARN" and all hell broke loose. It's so easy to pick up a skein or two of sock yarn in every local yarn store that I visit. (In fact, I have a post coming up soon about all the sock yarn I bought on our annual holiday trip.) I know exactly how much is needed for a pair of socks and sock yarn generally isn't that expensive, so if I never get it knit up, it's not that big of a deal. It's not like I dropped the cash required to make a sweater or something.

Right before Christmas, I moved my stash into the BIG rubbermaid tub:

 

Now, I know that I still have a relatively small stash when compared to many other knitters, but it's a decent sized stash for someone who wasn't going to stash as all. Plus, I've only been at this for a year. I shudder to think what it will look like if I keep this up for another 10 years. I have decided that it's time to introduce some orgainization to my stash. I just need to come up with better storage solutions first. We are pretty packed into our little townhouse at the moment. As it is, the rubbermaid tubs are shoved between the foot of the guest bed and the bookshelf in the guest room. Any suggestions?