OK, THAT was a good day to dye...

Pretty pics.

February 18th, the day my Shelridge trip didn't happen again:

That is the dried and wrapped first skein I showed you hanging sideways last week.

February 21st, just because there was more yarn and cake dye lying around:


February 25th, Lettuce Knit squeezed me into their tiny dye kitchen for a great how-to with Laura and now I know how to play with Acid Dyes safely:


For a complete chronicle and photos of all 9 dye lots, check out a new Colourplay section under my Sockumentary section in the Gallery.

In other Knits, you can also peep at the 2008 Socumentary for the latest completed pairs - Adam's spiral rib socks and my Salish Sea Socks.

By the way, if any sockknitters have strayed by - 8 of the 9 yarns I dyed were double skeins and hence 1 pair's worth of each is for sale if you're interested. I'm not set up for an online shop or anything (umm... yet.), but mail me, we can chat.

Well, I just about dyed....

So, for the second time, a road trip to Shelridge Farm for a yarn-dyeing workshop got called off.

I decided to take matters into my own hands, and did a remarkable job of not painting the kitchen in Pollack-reminiscent splatters of icing dye.

While my very first "dye jobs" are hardly masterworks, 2 of the 3 were mostly what I meant to do.


Oops, sorry about the rotation....

Here's the next:


I'm mostly happy with both of those. The first was done via a "hot pour" method in crock pot and took a second dumping of dye to get even the coverage I got. The second was a graduated dye, where I slowly removed the skein from the pot, while slowly adding more dye to the remaining skein.

This was the accident:



I'm not even going to try an explain what I was going for here, but the end result was nothing like it. Still a perfectly knittable yarn, but the colour... well, I have all kinds of names for the colourway in mind but they involve the word "bruise".

There was actually a 4th item dyed, but in the same colours as the first yarn, and it looks messy but should recover:



This is a roving, not yarn, and the reason it's hanging all over my shower like a technicolour squid is that I got worried about how much handling this fibre, though it's "superwash" was getting. So I didn't want to squish or spin it to dry it, and I just draped it there to drip away. I think I've done a bit more reading and wouldn't dye a roving via the exact same process as a yarn again - I'll go with the wool sausage method (pantyhose casing!) next time, as per That Laurie's guest spot at the Yarn Harlot blog in 2005.

Not such a good day to dye, I guess.

So, today was supposed to be a road trip to Shelridge Farm, but the sunny but cold and windy weather here is apparently snowsqualls all over the highway up to Durham. So those of us who didn't get phone calls about postponing to next week's snow date were met at our rendezvous by someone with the message that we were having a brunch'n'knit intstead. The road trip was hosted by Karen of Shall We Knit, my new favourite LYS even though it's not quite the most L of the LYSs around. She's out in New Hamburg and has the cutest shop.

So, at brunch I made a bit of progress on these:



The 3rd attempt at Adam's next socks.

Yesterday was a divided day. I had a relapse into a quilting project, and organized 102.5 of 104 hexagons into this layout:



I've temporarily titled this Wall of Confusion but I don't think that'll be the final name.


After I decided I had to leave that stew on the design wall for a while, I moved on to this:



The first of the Salish Sea Socks from the December 07 Rockin' Sock Club. This sock is designed by Cat Bordhi, based on one of her New Pathways architectures. Her book has already been added to my library, and it's a brain-twister. Everything about this sock looked outa whack until I completely finished the heel and foot, and then WOW - totally cool perfectly fit sock. Lots of fun. I only knit one at a time instead of my usual two both because the left and right patterns are different and because I wasn't sure I was doing it right and didn't want to have to rip two socks if I messed up. I'm going to start the second before finishing the leg, though, just to ration my yarn evenly. After all that work, I wouldn't want to be short by 2 cm or something.

Today's goals: get past the heels on Adam's socks, update Ravelry, and cast on for another Moebius (Karen's brunch was bad for encouraging that - everyone was wearling like, 3 of them).

... a really good thing I'm a process knitter.

... because they got frogged AGAIN last night after I concluded a) the toes were too pointy and b) due to my own lack of ability to learn from past arsing up, they were waaaayyy too BIG this time because I changed both stitch count and needles size at once. I should know better.

In better news, though - I skived off part of today with a hurt back, heading home at lunch to "work at home". Actually, I was working at home, both for real and BECAUSE... an hour after I escaped, The Management declared the office closed due to inclement weather and sent everyone home - and I have the pager so my pager shift started at 3 instead of 6. Ah well. Still nicer to sit on the couch with my laptop when my back hurts.

In even better news, the Universe sent some fun Karma my way the last couple of days. First, I got totally sucked in to helping organize Thom's Afghan, a Ravelry group and project team focussed on knitting 320 tiny little squares and sewing them all up into an afghan for Ravelry's Grandpa, (father of Codemonkey Casey and dad-in-law of Co-founder Jess) who was badly, badly injured late last fall and is still bound to bed/wheelchair, with broken bones in at least 3 limbs. It wasn't my idea but I nominated myself project manager by starting the group to organize it. Oy! Hours spent online when I should be knitting!

But here's the Karma part - I won yarn! And stitch markers! Despite having ripped out the RPM socks, those would have been my 3rd entry to the December Sockdown contest, and I had two in already. Pair #2, which was my Lenores, won in the finishers draw! I get some handpainted yarn and stitch markers. Great knitter mojo going on this week, sock mess notwithstanding. This was the biggest Sockdown to date, too, with 216 entries and I still won in the draw.

And now, we return to your regularly scheduled sock knitting, while staring out back at the heap of snow that has buried my patio. I have to finish Sockdown: January! so I can cast on for Sockdown: February!