Stop organizing, start knitting!

My stash got out of control, so this weekend when I was in a cleaning/organizational mood I rearranged it.  I added some yarn weights, and arranged them in order from thinnest to thickest (OCD alert)--it looks the same (I'm still using the cubes seen in this post and this post), only more of the bins are labeled now.  The fingering weight portion of my stash was especially crazy, and I ended up having to put it into TWO cubes.  I need to get going on some more shawls (or maybe more socks).

Speaking of shawls, I still haven't finished my Trillian.  It's fairly close, I really just need to sit myself down to a movie marathon and finish it. I have to knit the body until I have about 10 g of yarn left, and then finish up the border; last I measured I had about 34 g left.  Power through, Jackie, power through!

In completely other news, as I mentioned in my last post, my friend Rachel has started dyeing yarn, and I went to Jimmy Beans to check it out.  Needless to say, I came away with two skeins--one in the Tahoe Skies colorway, and one in Desert Sage.  Very soft and pretty!  She's added some more colorways since I was there, so I suspect I may walk away with even more in the future.  Rachel is a fan of tonal colors (rather than variegated), so if that's up your alley, I highly recommend you check it out!

Friends and Fiber

My friend Rachel has started her own line of hand-dyed yarn, which is currently only available at Jimmy Beans Wool, and which you should all check out because its pretty: Unraveled Designs Baby Merino DK.

I love that her current colorways are inspired by various Nevada things--the Desert Sage colorway is particularly accurate.  I will make an effort to go to JBW this week to fondle it, and will report back here with an update on how soft it is (oh, darn, a trip to the yarn store!)

Jinxed

I managed to jinx myself in one of my last posts by stating that I was managing to stay caught up with my mini-KAL. I fell behind last week and didn't finish Segment 2 as I was supposed to by last Sunday, so I stalled poor Sam.  She told me she'd wait for me, even though I insisted she continue.  I have a couple of "waiting around forever" activities the next couple of days, and I know I can catch up.  Stinks to be nearly a week behind, though.

In other KAL news, the Mean Girls Yarn Club (to which I currently belong) is having a KAL that starts July and ends in August that seems like something I can manage.  We can use any pattern we want, we just have to use yarn that came from the club.  We can also do more than one project if we're feeling spiffy.  I plan on making another monster, and if I manage to get that done in decent time, I might go ahead and try to make something else (to be determined).  I'll have to start scrounging through my queue and favorites to see what could work with DK and fingering weights.  I know the fingering section of my favorites is a little...full, so there's potential there.

Color Choices

When I cruise through patterns and projects on Ravelry, I am often amazed by the colors people have chosen for their projects.  I wish I knew the secret codes of how they come up with their color combinations.

For example, one of my favorite projects EVER, is this pair of mittens by Ravelry user helloyarn (I'm pretty sure I've posted about these before, back on the Fiber Freaks blog).  Seriously.  I would never have thought to use a bright turquoise and a purple together, but it looks AMAZING.

There are several Truckee Shawlettes I adore, but one of my favorites is this one by Ravelry user Honeybee52; the contrasting colors are excellent!

And then, there's the Color Affection projects, of which I have many favorites (like this one, this one, and this one).

I understand that a lot of this (magical) ability is an understanding of color theory.  So many of my crafty passions require the use/knowledge/understanding of color theory (cake decorating, knitting, make-up), that you would think I would get it, but apparently not.  I am still constantly befuddled.

Awesome color theory poster by Nathan Bilbao.

I've read articles and watched YouTube videos all about color theory, but its still not clicking.  If anyone has any tips, I would love the help!  I'd like to (re-)try fair isle knitting again someday, and having a better grasp of color choices would definitely help.  Plus, now that I'm interested in dyeing, color mixing really does need to creep into my brain, or I might end up with some not-so-pretty results.

Adventures in Dyeing: Take 1

Last weekend proved to be very productive, knitting-wise.  I'm through the gusset and heel of my first Raphaelite Sock, and I caught up with Sam for our Truckee Shawlette KAL.  I also managed to fit in my first dyeing attempt.

I've had a cake of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in the colorway Springer sitting around for a millenia.  I had originally purchased (and wound) it with the idea of making some kind of scarf or hat for a friend's daughter.  At the time, she was too young for a scarf, and then the yarn was forgotten, and then it so happened that those folks became people I won't knit for.  So...I had a ball of pastel yarn I would never use.

After my friend Rachel posted pics of her Kool-Aid dyeing attempts, and I read a little about the process and discovered you could also use food coloring (which I have a ton of), I knew the time had come for me to try dyeing things myself.  At first I considered getting bare/white yarn from somewhere, but after reading through threads on the What A Kool Way to Dye group on Ravelry, I realized that I could dye OVER yarn that was already colored.  Light bulb moment--my first dyeing attempt could be FREE--I could just practice on yarns I already had in my stash that I didn't like the colors of. Yay!

As previously mentioned, I had Springer in a cake already, so my first job was to put it back into a hank.

Super high-tech on the legs of a chair.

Then I whipped up a dye bath.  Since I was over-dyeing the whole thing, I did the immersion method of putting water in a pot and mixing the dye/food coloring into that.  I wanted a pinky-purple, since Springer had some pink/purple tones already (plus we all know I love purple).  I used Americolors Electric Purple and Violet gels; since they're not drippy, but globby, I mixed them with a small amount of warm water in a glass to be sure all the color got mixed in before putting it in the dye bath.

Just hit the dye bath and already it looks better.

Then I cooked my yarn!  I let it simmer until the dye bath started to clear, then turned off the heat and let it sit.

Clear dye bath!  Yay!

After it got cool to touch, I rinsed it out in a colander and let it hang to dry.  At first I was worried it was too bright, but now I rather like it.

As you can see, I missed some spots, and some of the original color is still present. Happily, I think this will actually make it knit up in an interesting way...we shall see! All in all, I'm pleased with my dyeing experience. I didn't realize how much of the food coloring I'd actually use, though. I may buy some McCormick's to use rather than my fancy Americolors. Or just try Kool-Aid next time!

Of Monsters and Babies

It will come as no surprise that in the nearly four months since I last posted, I have hardly knit on anything.  I tend to go through my various creative activities in cycles, which is bad for blogging; some months I'm really into cake decorating or baking, some months into nail polish and makeup, and some months really into knitting.  It didn't help that I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by any of my in-progress projects. 

Then last week, it was like the knitting gods decided I need to get my act together.  I started listening to my backlog of knitting podcasts and immediately wanted to buy all the yarn and needles.  A fellow blogger and friend posted Instagram pictures of her Kool-Aid dyed yarn, and I immediately wanted to run to the grocery store for Kool-Aid, and order bare yarn from KnitPicks.  I had a little over a week until a friend's baby shower, and theorized that I could finish a knitted monster toy in time (because I'm crazy).

I decided to use a yarn I've had in my stash FOREVER, because its bright and kid-colored.  This is KnitPicks Stroll in the colorway Cartoons.

I hate it.  I think it looks happy and bright in its little yarn-cake, but knit up I think it looks like a muddy mess.  My friend Sam insists it will still be cute for a baby boy.

My current plan is to finish the monster (who will hopefully be ugly-cute), but then overdye the rest of the skein into something less barf-worthy.  It will give me a chance to practice (for freebies!) this whole food coloring/Kool Aid dyeing thing, as I have a ton of gel colors from my aforementioned cake/cookie decorating adventures.  I like when my hobbies magically intersect.

Creature of habit

Not long ago, I ventured into my LYS with fresh birthday money in my pocket that was just aching to be spent on yarn.  I cruised around the shop, fondling my favorites: Malabrigo, Mini Mochi, etc.  As I debated about my yarn choice, I found myself gravitating towards my favorite colors: blue and purple.

Now, I know most everyone has a favorite color, or palette of colors, and people tend to gravitate towards the colors that suit them best.  One of my friends favors earthy tones, which she always looks fabulous in.  I tend to love really bright jewel tones.  I always knew I had a thing for the color blue (especially turquoise), but my love of fuchsia, bright purple and even bright yellow did not really come to my attention until fairly recently.

I happened to peak over my Tumblr archive and Pinterest pages and noticed I had habit of posting photos with similar color schemes.  For example: here, here, here and here.  Very bright, saturated colors in cooler tones.

I took a look at my stash and saw that my tastes were similar:

What can I say?  I like what I like.

However, I did want to make an attempt to find a color of yarn that wasn't too similar to something already in my stash, but was also a color I liked/wouldn't mind wearing.

I bought purple sock yarn.  Eh, at least I can say I tried!

Mushy Malabrigo (and a partial project)

Awhile back I had started the Jenny Cloche, only to realize I was using the wrong yarn about half way through.  If you're wondering how that's possible, please allow me to explain.

I had been admiring the pattern for quite some time, so for Christmas (2010), my friend Sam bought me the pattern and the recommended yarn for it.  I finally started the project this last winter (2011), and as I was knitting the front band portion, I noticed I was going through the yarn really quickly.  I checked the yardage on the pattern to the yardage on the yarn band and realized I was two skeins short.  You would think this would have triggered some alarm bells, but it didn't.  Instead I found some more of the yarn and bought it, and plugged away on my project.

I got to the point in the pattern where you seam the band together and then pick up stitches from the edge and was having problems figuring out why the pattern was asking me to pick up 70 stitches, and I only had 45 slipped stitches on my edge.  Usually this kind of thing works out more closely.  I talked it over with some of my knit night pals, and told them how I didn't know what was wrong, I had the exact yarn that the pattern asked for!  One of them, who was reading the pattern, asked if I still had my yarn band.  I did, and she read it and then pointed out something that should have been PAINFULLY OBVIOUS:  the pattern had asked for Nashua Creative Focus Chunky (which is a bulky weight yarn), and I had Nashua Creative Focus Bulky (which is a SUPER bulky yarn).  D'oh!

Since the hat had been knitting up so densely with the super bulky weight, I decided to frog it and start over with the other recommended yarn in the pattern:  Malabrigo worsted, held double.

My friend Rachel, who works at JBW, helped me pick out the most perfect color, and I swatched it up.  I haven't used Malabrigo before, but had heard tales of its awesomeness.  However, I was not prepared to fall head over heels in love with a yarn.

It's like butter.  So soft, smooth, and easy to knit with.  And the color!  I love it.

So you would think that I would have made a little more progress on the newest version of my cloche hat.  But alas, it is not so (insert sad trumpet noise here).  I really hope I get on the ball soon, because now I have blog posts to consider!  

I've become a bit obsessed with Malabrigo and have decided I want to find a skein with which to knit my first shawl, 198 Yards of Heaven (several of my buddies already have and I love it!).  However, Malabrigo is proving to be a hard to find yarn--its sold out everywhere I look (JBW, WEBS, Loopy Ewe...)  It may be a sign from the universe that I should quit trying to buy yarn for yet another project I won't start for awhile, and instead focus on the Malabrigo and project I have at hand.

Easier said than done.