Fiber Fill

I can't believe it's been five days since I posted last.  When I started this I wanted to post at least every other day.  Best laid plans...  Life is just so busy now that I'm not getting as much knitting time in as usual.  And the knitting I am doing is a Mobius scarf for my Aunt Ruthann.  It's in black alpaca from Elann.  I'm putting a simple Cat's Paw pattern in it with garter stitch borders.  I had more intricate lace patterns in mind but in our living room in the evening there's not a lot of light and I had to restart about ten times because I just couldn't see the stitches.  You can imagine how well black alpaca will photograph. Not.  It is so dark and grey here in Germany that I'm having a really hard time getting good photos as it is.  I'll try the scarf once it's finished but no promises.  I'll post a pattern then also.

My friend, Michelle, brought this back for me from the States:

Knitting Pattern A Day Calendar - It has an easy knitting pattern for each day of the year!  Definitely enough to keep you busy and great way to use up those small bits of yarn as most of the projects are small ones.  Very cool.

Thought I'd switch gears and share some of my dyeing and spinning projects.  I LOVE dyeing.  It's like a little science experiement every time.   I'm not one to measure.  Part of the fun is putting in a little of this and a little of that and seeing what you get.  Most of the time I get beautiful results like with these blues and browns.  It reminds me of a carribean beach.  Click it and you can see a close-up but the color still isn't quite right.  Trust me when I say it's prettier in person.  A little deeper.  The skein on the left is a softly spun singles.  It's interesting to see how much the yarn changes when I spun a finer single and plied it.  I love how soft and relaxing the colors are.  I have about two pounds of this to spin up.  I just have to decide on singles or plied....

This is what you call a screw up creative dyeing.  I had some dark blue and yellow left over.  The light colored ball came from the top of the crock pot, the medium from the middle and yea... you got it... the dark from the bottom where all the color pooled together.  I didn't have near enough liquid in this one.  The funny thing is that even though the roving is hideously ugly, I spun a little up anyway.... love the dark yarn that I got from it.  Beautiful deep greens and blues.  The lighter colored skein is one ply of each of the medium and light colored rovings.  Not crazy about it but it's not my colors.  I'm sure someone out there likes it. 

This next week is going to be a busy one.  I'm so looking forward to the boys being home from school for two weeks.  We need some down time.  I was kind of hoping that maybe, just maybe, my son Jeremy would get his two-week R&R from Iraq during the holidays but he may not get it at all.  It would have been awesome to have him home.

Comments

[bri]

Jean, This may be really dumb, but you look far too young to have a son old enough to be in Iraq!! I just thought you had the little one. Could it be that the fiber is keeping you fresh and young?!? If so, it bodes well for my future. Bri

[Heather (from elann)]

Jean I love the job you did in the dyeing! What great colors. Isn't it difficult to capture the colors on a camera? But you did an awesome job all the way around. Have a fun and busy 2 weeks and I hope Jeremy can come to visit.

[chris]

Me!!!! Jumping up and down with my hand in the air!!! Waving it madly. I love anything with the blues and the yellow, especially if they make shreky green!

[Cate]

Hi Jean, One way to *repair* colors you don't like is to top dye them. You can just put the light colored ones that didn't work in another dye bath. I also do this if I have a bunch of partial balls leftover from various projects. Even if they are all different colors, I put them all in the same dyebath and that gives them unity. Cate

[janet]

Hi Jean - not too sure about those colours but the dyeing sounds like a lot of fun. Oh for the time to do it. Days are very dark and grey here too. Haven't seen the sun for quite a while. Mosul is more in the news now and each time it's mentioned I think of you and Jeremy - hope he gets to Germany soon. Janet (in Dublin for others reading this blog)

[yvette]

Your yarn looks great, I would love to have a go at dyeing, but don't need another hobby!!! Have fun with your boys over the holidays, fingers crossed Jeremy gets his R&R soon.

[Margene]

Sorry your son can't be with you at this time. May he have a safe Holiday. Relax and enjoy the season!

[Wendy]

I just got the pattern-a-day as a gift as well. I'm planning on knitting one a day, are you up for it? ;) I am delusional, but not that delusional!

[Kim]

Hi Jean........I would go with the singles. The color looks very distinctive in the single spun skein. The color in the 2 ply skein, muddies up a bit, so you don't quite see how pretty the colors are. Very yummy! I hope that your son gets to come home. It must be so very hard for you to have him over there. I will say an extra prayer for you and he and that you have an extra special Christmas!