I knit, I frog, I knit again…

Someone (Hi Barb!) asked me at our weekly Stitch ‘n Bitch what my hobbies are.  Hmmm…let’s see:

Knitting
Quilting
Gardening
Photography
Web-stuff (building websites, playing with new software-Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc.)
Building Access databases (yes, it’s fun)

And for the last year or so, my favorite thing to do which can suck up hours upon hours …  Webriddler. This is a forum-based riddle with 100 phases, some of which are very simple, some of which seem impossible,  and all of which are thoroughly enjoyable! (Well, up until Phase 86, which is where I’m stuck right now…)

Oh!  Speaking of sucking up hours and hours … RAVELRY!  Raveling is now a verb (I don’t care what the dictionary says, yes it is) to describe reading and talking about knitting patterns, yarns, queuing up hundreds of projects to be knit, and just generally being immersed in fiber-y goodness.  And sharing it all with 170,000 of your closest friends.

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Since Aunt Tillie has been away for a couple of weeks, Dad decided to take himself to a movie Sunday night.  What did he decide to see?

Dad: “I went to see that war movie, you know, Something Thunder.”
Me: “Tropic Thunder?”
Dad: “Yeah! That’s it!  What a crazy movie-what the hell was it about?  I thought it was a war picture!  Stupid crap.  So I left in the middle and went to see another picture.”
Me: “Oh, what did you see instead?”
Dad: “Something crazy.  There were mirrors.  I don’t know.  Movies don’t make any sense these days.”

I seem to have quite a few!

The Must-Have Cardigan (Paton’s Street Smart booklet) is coming along.  Now that the weather’s cooler, I don’t mind knitting it.  I had 16 rows of the back done, then ended up frogging the whole thing.  I’m now at row 17, and I’m happy with it so far.

The Icarus Shawl is just sitting there.  I’ll get back to it.

Mystic Waters 2 is coming along nicely – I’m working on Chart E … only 4 more charts to go!

The socks this time are Regia … had to go down to a size 0 to get the fit right – I’ll see if I need to make any changes to the gusset because of the needle change.

One helmet liner (pattern here if you’re interested!) is done, only 4 more to go!

And the Clapotis is chugging along – I’ve left it sitting for months, and picked it up again recently.

I know there must be another project in the works somewhere…

Oh! The Selbu mittens … still waiting to finish the first, and start on the second.  It’ll get done eventually…

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or maybe Sunset Flowers is a better name?

sunflower

sunflower

sunflower

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My very first (and so far only) skein of yarn that I dyed myself…

Pic taken indoors w/ natural light

The true color is closer to the top photo, but it’s a little yellower than that in reality.

Now that I know it’s relatively easy & I’m not covered head-to-toe in dye (and neither is my kitchen), I’ll be doing this again soon!

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“shetland boobs”?

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I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at dyeing yarn, thanks to the enablers at various Ravelry groups devoted to that very thing.

I knew it was meant to be when I went to my local supermarket last week, and found some good-sized Granitewear enamel pots on sale.  They’re meant for cooking corn (hence, the lovely (?) yellow color), but at $3.75, it was too good a deal to pass up for yarn.

I have some Jacquard Acid dyes on hand, but, because I really can’t do anything the easy way, I dug through the dyes I had already prepared to do some Pysanky Easter Eggs.  No, mine did not come out anything like the ones on that website, but that’s not the point.  Since I only used a small bit of the batches of dye I had prepared, I figured I’d just go ahead and use those.  Just because they’d been sitting around for, I don’t know, maybe a year and a half, was no reason not to use them.

I followed (sort of) the directions in this book for the hot pour method, since this seemed to me to be the least-messy introduction to dyeing.

I soaked the yarn (Knitpicks bare sock yarn) and then, after about an hour, started heating it with some vinegar added:

Heating up the yarn

Once it was in the neighborhood of 190 degrees (recommended in the book),  I added yellow:

First color added

This didn’t strike as quickly as I would have liked, I don’t know whether it was too cool, or if there wasn’t enough vinegar, but, it’s a learning process, right?

Then, when the yellow was exhausted, I added turquoise:

Second color added

I LIKE IT!

After I added the turquoise, I hit the yarn with a little more vinegar, so the yellow areas wouldn’t blend completely into the green.  I simmered for 10 minutes, then put it on the back porch to cool.  The dye wasn’t exhausted at this point, and the yellow was slowly turning green, so I put more vinegar in, and WOW!  The water was suddenly clear, and I knew the colors wouldn’t be mixing anymore.  I wish I had added the extra vinegar earlier, after the green first went in, for more color changes, but I really like the way it came out.

Once it cooled, I rinsed the skein, and no color came out in the rinse water.  Here it is hanging out on the line drying:

Finished!

Once it’s dry, I’ll put up a pic of the finished skein.  With the rain and humidity we’re having, it may take several days to dry.

Overall, I really like the subtle color changes in here-it reminds me of Spring, with all the different shades of green.

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My first batch of homemade pickles!

I used Ball Simple Creations Kosher Dill Pickle Mix for the recipe.  It was very simple – Just add the spice mix to water and vinegar and bring to a boil.  Slice the pickles, put them in the prepared jars, then pour the hot mixture over them.  Then put them in the water bath for 15 minutes, and they’re done!

I always worry that the jars won’t seal properly…it was so nice to hear the “pop” when they came out of the canner and to see the lids concave.

Can’t wait for the taste-test tomorrow!

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make me happy!

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