7 posts tagged “swap”

I'd meant to do this earlier, but then Six Apart had a power failure and I forgot to sit down and type this up. Mea culpa.

Since I'm still new to dyeing yarn, I admit I shy away from dyes that are less ingestion-friendly than, say, Kool-Aid. (I have cats. One of them was once both smart and stupid enough to get into a closed room and drink bleach: A trip to the Pet Emergency Room and $500 later, I learned not to keep things that could poison my cat in the house.)
This means that I've been having fun figuring out palettes with food coloring.

For my original No Sheep buddy, I finished dyeing a skein of raw silk in variegated shades of orange: I did end up using the dip-dye method after having blathered on about it for months a good while, and I think I like the results. There's an interesting little yellow-orange splatter on the natural section, though: I forgot why I usually use latex gloves to handle the yarn. One, keeps my hands clean. Two, the ridges in my fingerprints seem to be a really good hiding place for dye after I've wiped it off. Oops.

I ended up picking up three one-ounce bottles of Kroger food coloring from the local Food for Less, along with a gallon of white vinegar so I knew I'd have enough: Two red and one yellow.
I used my Rival steamer as the yarn cooking pot, as I've personally found the thing to be useless for actually cooking food: I miss my late '70s, early '80s Rival steamer that I inherited from my Mom when she found it. (Old Christmas or anniversary present, I think it was -- and it worked fabulously, up until the seals gave out. I'm still looking for replacement parts, because that thing was WORTH saving.)

I digress.
Using my newer Rival, I set up the water and vinegar: I was perhaps a little careless with the 8 cups water to 1 cup white vinegar, but it didn't seem to hurt (and, remembering not to put the vinegar in the water for the overnight soak was helpful, too) -- and then in went one bottle each of the red and yellow.  I let the steamer come up to heat and then put all but the last eight to ten inches of yarn in the basin, swished it around, and left the white end hanging out over a bowl. Twenty minutes, tug out another six-ish inches, and set the timer for another 30.
Repeat until I've done this three times, and then add the last bottle of red food color, stirring to mix, and then continue until you're down to the last of the yarn in the pot.

At this point, to make sure all the colors set, I dumped the basin, put in fresh water, and also inserted the steamer basket: Coiled the long hank up in the basket with the darkest part on the bottom and covered it, letting the whole thing steam about 30 minutes. ...This would also be the point where my fingerprints added 'interest' to the white end of the yarn. ;)

Anyway. Currently avoiding putting the thing back on the umbrella swift to wind it into something presentable, but that's only because I'm being lazy: I may also still be remembering my last dye experiment, and the Nick-cat deciding that he'd help with the yarn... By playing with it!
I just remember stepping out of the room for a minute and coming back -- pit stop or something, I forget -- to find Nick in a little nest of blue and green and pink, with the world's most innocent "What? What did I do, Mom?" look on his face.

Felines.
But that's why I'll be setting up the swift outside where he can't assist me this time. ;)

Awww. Swap's over for me. ;)

Juni: Thank you! The Summer Linen you sent over arrived safely yesterday, and I'm quietly going mad trying to decide what to do with it -- since, as you know, I've never used linen yarn before (and I was curious about it).
I'm also endlessly amused at the term 'muggle blog' -- I'm going to have to steal that one from you.
Thank you for all your work as my upstream pal -- It's been a really fun experience for my first skein swap. (And also, one more thank you for the birthday wishes -- It's been a blast so far.)

... But, I still have one more package coming for each of my downstream pals.
I've picked up the dye needed for Pal 1's massive skein of raw silk, and now I just need to un- and rewind the hank into sections a little longer than 4' around. (I'm going with the dip-dye method and depending on how pleased I am with the results, may over-dye the whole thing with a lighter color... but if I'm going dip-dye, I think a little more length in the skein keeps things interesting.)
Pal 2's last package is just waiting on some non-wool roving I picked out for her to show up on my doorstep: She's a spinner, I asked if she wanted non-wool roving, and I am also including some yarn, so. She's getting lots o' love through the mail in the next week or two.

I've discovered that I apparently spoil my downstream pals. Another of my knitty friends once told me she's guilty of the same thing: I laughed at her at the time, but I think I know where she's coming from. I tend to overbuy and grab more than one thing for my pals as I want to make sure they've got the thing they want -- I suppose I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to giving gifts. ;)

I'm really glad to have gotten to know a few individuals in this swap... And perhaps that was the point? :)

Last week, Jaime from the No Sheep Swap put out a note requesting notification of abandoned pals: I piped up expressing my concern (and thankfully, my swap pal was just running late -- Late, I can handle! I've been guilty of that myself many, many times) but told her I'd wait a little longer and then asked if she needed any more replacement pals.
Turns out she did, so I've got myself a second downstream buddy.
We've already mailed back and forth a couple times today, and dude. She's hilarious. I think I like her already, and it may help that she's got a mischievous cat prone to messing with her projects, too.

Also means the second skein of raw silk yarn that I bought almost a month ago has a home: I'd originally bought the pair with the intention of dyeing the first one and seeing if it was fit for my downstream pal and having the second on hand in case I threw a small fit over the results -- but now, it seems fortunate as I have one downstream buddy to dye for, and the other is a dye fiend herself and will probably have a blast figuring out what to do with it left plain. Excellent!
I also have feelers out on other things to send her, and I suppose I'll see where that goes.

I'm also just glad that the fiancé ended up in a better job, as money was the main reason I'd been afraid I wasn't able to play backup swap pal -- but he took care of that nicely, and better yet, he's doing what he wants to be doing.
I may still be exceedingly proud of him, creeping toward two months later.

Anyway, point was, I've signed up to do the gift-giving pal for someone else, and I'm just pleased about it. Knitters (and crocheters, and other craft-ers) are good people, I think.

Project update: One skein of tonalita's pink zebra down, turned into Fetching -- as mentioned earlier -- and the second's still up for grabs for something, though I have yet to decide what. Perhaps I'll abbreviate a pair of Dashing and have a nearly matched set, since 100 yards seems a little short for other options -- Scarf? Hat? Really not enough, unless someone can point me toward a decent pattern calling for worsted weight.
The Simple Shrug from hell is almost finished! Note: Caron's site lies, it takes 5 skeins  for the large size if you follow their directions, not 4. Though, I suppose I'm cheating by working in the round, but I can't even imagine having enough yarn with 5 skeins if I'd had to seam the thing, too.
Two inches to go on the center ribbing, and then it's done: I suspect I can probably wear it to my birthday dinner tomorrow night without any issues.

Thirty.
I'm going to be thirty in about twelve hours.
My dad keeps joking that he can't trust me anymore -- Darn Pat Boone quote.

... It's really not as horrible as all the 30-year-olds who went before me have made it sound. ;)

This was one of those days: Too damned long for being a short week, too many times that I felt abandoned to the phones at work, and just too tired in general for a single half hour of hand-holding through using Outlook, let alone three back to back. I pulled up to the curb at home, largely convinced that I should set to making myself a margarita before I stopped to feed the cats, and then I found it.

Today was Yarn Day!

Two packages of yarn: One from my No Sheep Swap buddy, and the other from my Yarn of the Month club.
I knew the latter was coming, as Paypal told me I'd been charged for my subscription, but that doesn't make me less happy about it.

Firstly: Thanks, o Yarn Swap Pal! I've always been curious about Debbie Bliss yarns, but never really put my hands on them -- and a cotton/silk/viscose blend was definitely a good choice for me. Now, to figure out what I want to do with the 110-ish yards of Cathay. Hmmm....

Perhaps something with the Celtic knot cable pattern I've been looking at, posted by the Girl from Auntie. It seems like the yarn would have nice stitch definition for that sort of thing! I was also gifted with some recycled sari silk yarn that looks suspiciously like the yarn I buy from Stephanie at RecycledSilk.com -- and that's a good call, too, since I already know how to work with the stuff and enjoy the results. :)

I shall have to post results of what I knit. Hee hee hee. :D

So, Yarn o' the Month. I love getting the little samples of yarn, and I actually dug out my June samples so I could mark each bag with the month I received them: June brought me Lana Knits' hemp, Cascade's Luna, Nashua's June and Maraja by Ornaghi Filati -- only two producers that I'm familiar with, Cascade and Nashua. I haven't knit up the samples into swatches yet: I've been lazy, and mostly content to pull out the little bags and admire the colors. They're nice, they're just not something that I know what to do with, precisely.
July's offerings seem to fire my imagination a little more. It's probably because all the little packets are shades of red or orange or gold, and I respond so much better to those shades: I also recognize three of this month's manufacturers, familiar with Gedifra (Korella), Louet (Kidlin) and Rowan (Damask). I haven't heard of Louisa Harding, but the colors inherent in her Cinnabar rather tickle me, and she's got one hell of a blend going. Viscose/Cotton/Acrylic/Silk/Linen/Polyamide/Acetate? That's a mouthful.
Still, the Kidlin seems to be the one that speaks to me most in the July haul: I look at it, and I can only think of Knitty's cactus flower from Fall last year. It's tempting.

Anyway! I've been burning through my current projects before I can even write about them: Ball 1 of the pink zebra Tonalita has turned into a single pair of Fetching mitts: I'm a little sad that I won't have the option to wear them for another couple months. (Thank you, heat wave.)

Of course, this still leaves the last 100 yards of Tonalita up in the air: I can't decide whether I should make more mitts, a cabled scarf or a hat. Do I even have enough for a hat? Hm.

The Manos yarn is untouched as of yet, but I went and decided this weekend was an excellent time to knit up a tam in black viscose -- It was a whim, there was yarn begging to be used in my stash, and I've gotten to the point that I can quickly freestyle hats. They make me happy.

Again, I need to find my darned digital camera.

So, in general: Thank you, people that conspired to send me yarn and (however unintentionally) cheer me out of a rotten day.

You gave me a smile, and that's all I can ask of you. :)

I was contacted by my 'upstream' Secret Swap pal today -- That is to say, the person that's going to be sending me yarn. I'm thrilled -- She apologized for being late, but the way I look at it, she had 'til the 25th to pipe up so I wasn't stressing it.

Life. It's what gets in the way when you're making other plans.

Now, for something I am letting stress me out a wee bit... My tomato pots have mushrooms.
Sneaky little field mushrooms that I can't always pluck out before they open their little gills and start the whole damned process of germination and growth over again. Every morning, I'm out there, tossing out as many as I can find... And yet, there are always more.
Irritating, to say the least: I'm halfway starting to consider buying the necessary equipment to turn said tomatoes into a hanging garden... Maybe then, the mushrooms won't find a place to be.
I can hope, right?

I'm a little on the bummed side: I stopped at the new, considerably more local Whole Foods for my lunch break today, hoping to find the refrigerated sweet potato gnocchi I'd seen there their opening week: None there, and they had some interesting looking fresh sun-dried tomato gnocchi, but half the bag had been squished by an overzealous shopper and there weren't any more to be had.
Means there's a Trader Joe's run in my future for the evening, since I'm out of milk, eggs, quatro fromaggio and pizza fixings.  (After the barbecue chicken pizza I picked up from the Whole Foods pizza stand and had for lunch, I'm really in the mood for home-made pizza with unusual toppings.) Also, it would probably be nice to make another grab at their frozen meat section.

Now, to chase the cats off the fiance so we can go make that TJ's run...

I've launched full swing into the No Sheep swap: Contacted my downstream pal, and started plotting accordingly.
There have been Discussions of color preferences and the like, and I've come up with yarns to send her. The June skein is winging its way to me as I type: The other has not yet been ordered, but I know exactly where to find it.

I just hope she can read my chicken-scratch when her first skein + note arrives.

Life... Is.
I'm a little irritated at life in general for the moment. Work was unnecessarily bothersome today, and I'm cranky and tired and seem to have lost three hours this evening without noticing -- Darn those Sims 2 fansites, eating my life.  This also means that I don't have time to play Sims, since I tend to do it for several hours at a time.
Clearly, I sacrifice too much of my life to the computer and the wondrous thing that is the internet. Sigh.

I have three tomatoes in my garden, just growing to visible size in their place on the vine.
That makes me happy, at least. Now, if I could only figure out how to prevent the blasted little field mushrooms from popping up in the pots like unwanted dandelions...

Took the plunge: I'm officially part of the No Sheep for You skein swap.

It should be fun. :D

Day 2 of my Knit Your Bit project. I would be a lot farther along if I hadn't gotten bored with it yesterday: This is why I should carry more than one project at a time in my bag. I mean, I have three inches of the 36 to 40 required by the pattern before I get another color change and a break from the monotony.
It's strange. I've discovered it's more fun to knit scarves longways than the traditional short ends I'm being forced into now by the pattern -- It's different, it's immediate, and I can see how long it's going to be the moment I decide I've cast on enough stitches and turn, and then I've only got six to eight inches before I'm done. I can finish the thing in an afternoon, as the friend over on Saturday can attest.
Yeah. Turning a piece always slows me down, so having to work in 20-40 stitches per row drives me out of my skull. It's so boring.
Now, lace patterns that same width take me forever, but they're at least interesting: I get to do something other than count my stitches as they move from one end to the other -- though let me tell you, stitch markers are LOVE. Now that I've discovered them, I don't know how I ever managed my amigurumi experiments or hats without them.

So, yes. I'm bored.
I do have yarn for two scarves, what with the loden and the denim, but I've always been intending the blue one go to my Grandpa -- who also served in WWII, so. He wasn't one of the Tuskeegee Airmen, but I think he might like having something his first granddaughter made for him. (It'll probably remind him of Grandma, actually -- On thinking about it, I believe my crafting ADD comes from her. She was always on something new, trying new techniques just to see how it would come out, and she loved things like sewing for sewing's sake. It occurs to me that I don't know if she ever picked up needles or a hook in her life, but I'm willing to bet she did, once upon a time.)
... But since I'm making it for Grandpa, that means I don't necessarily have to follow the directions as written. I guess I'll just have to see if I can make shortwise stripes on a longways scarf.

I'm taking a second crack at the Convertible in a different yarn type and weight: I have about 880 yards of Gossamer yarn from KnitPicks, in the color Rose Garden that I've been saving: My original intent fell through, but now it has purpose. I also like the longer sections of color that Gossamer has, vs. the inch and a half to two inches of color inherent to the Royal Bamboo ombre I originally picked -- Rose Garden is about six inches or so per color, and it leaves these nice, gradually shifting colors along the row. Okay, it's wool -- Merino, specifically. It turns out I have a real soft spot for that type.

... Pun unintentional.

But it's turning out really lovely, though I won't be completely sure 'til it's been blocked, many weeks from now. I've also picked smaller needles, since the yarn is finer, and I'm going with eight repetitions of the pattern instead of the six I had to do to make gauge with the Royal Bamboo. (I'm also debating whether I want to do eight reps of row 1 of the pattern, or if I want to shake it up a little and do section 1: row 1 pattern, section 2: row 2, and so on. On row 2, start with the row 2 pattern and move down the line, rep 6 heading back to row 1's pattern. And so on.) Also, I think the smaller gauge will work with my quarter inch shank button 'cufflinks'. Here's hoping.