Thursday, April 12, 2007

A little dyeing, a little knitting…

Well, here I was - all ready to have a snit because we were forecast to have 6 inches or more of snow and sleet - in the middle of April!  But the weather-dweebs have cancelled the storm watches and warnings as of this morning and are predicting nothing more unusual than rain.  Mostly I’m pleased as I hate negotiating snowy, sleety, slushy roads.  On the other hand, I’ve got this really good snit all worked up - what do I do with it now?  Heheh…

I have begun dyeing the yarn for the shawl but have managed to get myself bollixed up right out of the gate :) Oh there aren’t any irreparable errors (thank goodness!) but it is humbling to realize - yet again - that my ability to count does go on periodic, unannounced vacation leaving me with a big stupid spot in the middle of my brain!

First of all, this isn’t the color I was hoping for.  I was looking for a cool, pure blue and instead got more of a Robin’s-egg (Hey - No wisecracks!) blue.  Still, after living with it for a while, I realized that it’s a lovely color and would probably fit the bill nicely.  Now I could hie my fanny to the craft store (or even WalMart, for that matter) and see if there’s a true blue in the Wilton’s icing dye line.  The only problem there is that I don’t have enough experience with the icing dye to judge quantities properly (especially for the increasingly darker and more saturated color tiers of the shawl) and I don’t want to be experimenting with this project.

Therefore, flexibility is the key :)

Second, I sat down last night to work out specific amounts of dye to use for the calculated, required amounts of yarn for each color tier.  I had already worked out how much dye/50 grams of yarn to use so with that and the calculated yardage (rounded up, of course), I started to figure out what I needed for the next dye lot...and ran straight into an unpleasant discovery.  When I had dyed what I thought was the first (and lightest) color, I had actually used the dye proportions for the second tier.  As it happens, the amounts of yarn required for each are close enough so that this isn’t the catastrophe it might have been.  Essentially, all it means is that I did the second color first and have yet to do the first color - which I will do today.

Would anyone like to come over and stand over me with a baseball bat - just to make sure I don’t keep making idiotic mistakes?

The socks are coming along slowly…

...but nicely.  I like this stitch pattern a great deal and plan to play with it a bit further to see how it will adapt to some slight changes.  In the meantime, I’m pleased with the way the sock is working up and very happy with the yarn.  This is the Gypsy Rose and the yarn is just lovely to work with - soft but with a nice spring to it - and nice definition in the stitch pattern.

One more note - I have gone back to my old, aluminum, 7” DPNs.  It’s not that the Knitpicks needles were bad - they were great in terms of working the stitches - nice, smooth finish and nice points.  It was the abbreviated length I couldn’t seem to adjust to.  There always seemed to be a needle point poking me somewhere and I finally gave up and went back to my old needles.  This isn’t to say that I have given up on the new ones - I haven’t.  But they will take time to adjust to and right now I just don’t have the patience for it.

As always, Knitting Chatters is on for this evening.

Hope to see you there!

No trackbacks yet.

1. I love that blue. I think it will work out wonderfully. I also love the socks. So pretty!

   Posted by Opal  on  04/12  at  05:27 PM
   Location : Honolulu, Hawaii



2. Opal - Thanks sweetie :) I got a little more done on the socks tonight and I’m really liking this stitch pattern!

   Posted by Robbyn  on  04/12  at  09:40 PM
   Location : Inside in the warm, watching the nor'easter...



3. I like that blue too, and the socks are gorgeous so far.

   Posted by Lisa  on  04/13  at  08:03 PM
   Location :



4. Lisa - I think the blue is going to be terrific too.  Thanks!

   Posted by Robbyn  on  04/13  at  08:20 PM
   Location : Inside in the warm, watching the nor'easter...

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.