KO 2010 day 3

This is how far I've gotten on the blanket, with iPhone for scale.

Also, I'm getting frustrated with the KnitPicks Options needles. The collar where the interchangeable needles screw onto the cable keep coming off. I know it's easy enought to glue it back on. However, the product shouldn't have failed to begin with.

If it was only one of the collars to fail, I'd figure it was just that one. However multiple collars have come off different cables and so I think it's just the quality of the product.

I'm going back to Susan Bates or the bamboo needles. Actually, I like the bamboo ones better because the size is printed on the needles themselves so I can tell right away what size they are.

falling out of love with KnitPicks options

I really liked the KnitPicks options circular needle set. But today, for the second time, the flexible cable part came apart from the metal part. Plus, the zippered pouches the set comes in keep breaking. Gah.

I think I'm going to go back to my collection of regular circular needles. I have a ton already; they're listed at the bottom of the sidebar here.

Orange dyeing

A few weeks ago, my favorite yarn shop, Knitch, was clearing out their Cascade 220 wools, to make way for Shepherd's Wool yarn. I noticed that Shepherd's Wool has more yardage than Cascade, costs more, is softer than Cascade, but not as many colors.

Anyway, it was $5 a skein, how could I say no? So I didn't.

In thinking about my new Hillary orange kick, I looked for oranges and yellows and thought if I hold them together, they might give me the color I want.

I picked Gelato (yellow) and Mimosa (orange) and this is what I got:

Uh, no.

So I took the yellow and overdyed with Orange kool-aid and got this:

Better.

I didn't have any particular cardigan pattern in mind, so I swatched to figure out gauge, see what the colors look like and got these:

Gelato-overdyed-with-orange-koolaid and Mimosa:

Gelato-overdyed-with-orange-koolaid, Knitpicks Bare undyed yarn, and Mimosa:

I really like the results. And now I have this much dye left over:

I have more KnitPicks Bare yarn, so I can dye some more but not sure that I want to have that much orange yarn. I believe this will be a case of me holding on to this until my husband gets tired of it taking up space in the refrigerator.

It's only about 3 packets of sugar-free koolaid, 2 cups of vinegar, and 6 cups of water. It probably costs a total of $2 so there's no huge cost if I toss it out, but still, I'm reluctant to toss it out.

I'm going with the Gelato-overdyed-with-orange-koolaid, Knitpicks Bare undyed yarn, and Mimosa and starting a Long Coat with Chevron Lace, referred to here.

eta: to include recipe:

• Pre-soak yarn in warm water for 30 minutes. When ready to dye, squeeze out most of the water so it is just damp.
• In large ceramic bowl, mix 3 and 2/3 packets of orange koolaid, 9.5 cups of water, and 3.5 cups vinegar.
• In glass bowl, scoop in 2 cups of the above dye mix and 4 cups water.
• Lay in one skein of the presoaked yarn, making sure that all of the yarn is submerged.
• Cover with plastic wrap and put in microwave for 2 minutes on high.
• After 2 minutes, heat for another 2 minutes on high. All the dye should be soaked up and water clear or just cloudy white.
• Using wooden chopsticks, remove yarn from glass container and squeeze out water.
• Hang up yarn to dry.

Husband's blanket update

Making good progress on Husband's afghan. The strips of blue and black Cascade 220 has been sewn together and now I just have to knit the top and bottom stripes. Progress picture:

Basic recipe:

Hold yarn double, cast on 20 stitches onto size 10US needles.

First six rows: Knit 5, Purl 5, Knit 5, Purl 5.

Next six rows: Purl 5, Knit 5, Purl 5, Knit 5.

Repeat, alternating rows so you get a checkerboard texture.

Continue until yarn runs out.

Make several strips. Sew them together so that the checkerboard is consistent throughout.

What I have left to do -- pick up stitches along the top in blue and continue the checkerboard texture so that there will be a frame of blue stripes around the black, blue, black, blue, black strips. Repeat with the bottom edge.

I did colors as strips to be knit together, so that direction of the checkerboard texture is the same throughout. Also, strips are more portable than hauling around an ever growing blanket.

The blanket is almost 5 feet wide and I don't have a size 10US needle long enough. So I finally broke down and ordered a set of the Knit Picks Options set of needles and ordered a 60 inch cable.

In the mean time, what will I do? I'm still thinking about my Rectangle of Malabrigo using the Malabrigo I have:

The colors are:

2 skeins Purple Mystery (one wound into a ball, one still in the hank) Notice how much darker one is than the other.

1 skein Buscando Azul, split into three balls -- Love. This. Color.

1 skein Oceanos still in the hank.

1 skein Saphire Green (their spelling). It's left over from a house coat sweater I made for myself last year. It's true, Malabrigo pills like crazy. But I love it anyway. So soft and cozy.

1 skein Pollen.

1 skein Tiger Lily.

What to do with all this Malabrigo goodness? I'm thinking of a log cabin afghan with green central squares. But I have more blue and purple than yellow and orange. Either I have to buy more yarn (oh the hardship) or leave off one skein of purple and blue.

I need to think about this.

Oh, by the way, the yarn I used for Husband's afghan is not machine washable. Which means I'll be washing this by hand. How could I have forgotten this detail?

For Brother Two's afghan, I did not make the same mistake. I made him pick only from the superwash (wool yarn chemically treated to withstand machine washing and drying without shrinking and felting) worsted weight yarn from the Knit Picks catalog. That yarn and Mason-Dixon Knitting should be here any day now.

Orange and Ivory

This is what I was working on during my vacation to the cottage a few weeks ago, with book for scale. And look, the colors match! Quite unintentionally, might I add. The hook is orange too.

The yarns are one skein of KnitPicks Bare Superwash worsted wool and one skein of varigated orange superwash sock yarn from Fearless Fibers. The orange is held double, the ivory single, using a size H crochet hook. The pattern is modified from 200 Crochet Blocks by Jan Eaton.

You can see from the ball of orange how much I have left. I alternate between making an orange circle in an ivory square with making an ivory circle in an orange square and will stop when I run out of the orange.

Here's a close up of the squares, where you can kind of see the varigation.

I'll sew up the squares with a skein of Bare in fingering weight that I have already Kool-aid dyed in varigated yellow.

For the border, I'll Kool-aid dye a skein of worsted weight Bare in orange and yellow to try to match the yarn from Fearless Fiber. I have a skein of worsted weight Bare that I've already dyed yellow, so I'll overdye it in orange. I've never tried it, so this should be interesting.

All this orange is quite a departure for me. For the longest time I really did not like the color. But as I began to get into knitting again, I became exposed to variegated yarn. Then I found Koigu and then indie dyers and yarns with colors I never thought about putting together. My horizons were really broadened and now I find myself really liking this orange.

So here's another picture, but in a different medium:

The clay body is raku, which fires white. While leather hard, I used a stencil to carve the blossoms in and painted with an orange underglaze. After the bisque firing, I put a clear glaze over it and high fired it to cone 6. It's about 6 inches tall and I think I started with about a pound of clay.

Next week I'm signing up for pottery class again. There's a new instructor who will be teaching us how to make big pieces on the wheel with lots of clay. So instead of coming home with 20 small bowls, I'll be coming home with just a few really big bowls.

What can I say? I have a thing for bowls.

WIPs

This weekend I was inspired to photograph my current projects:


Sister's Bicolor Cables cardigan, from Interweave Knits, in Cascade 220, not the recommended yarn.
The body is knit from the bottom up, in one piece up to the underarm. Then I finished the back.












Here are the sleeves. You can see that they are almost done, and then I decide to count the stitches and find that one has 10 more stitches on the needle than the other. I knit them both at the same time, from opposite ends of the same ball of yarn, precisely to make sure they match. And yet they don't. Another weekend of letting them sit.

This baby blanket is almost done, but here's a picture anyway. The yarn is Cascade Sierra in navy, light blue, pink, and white. The yarn in held double and that's how I got the tweedy look. Size J crochet hook. General pattern is 2 rows of double crochet of the solid colors and 4 rows of the mixed colors. There will be 2 rows of white on the sides to finish.

Husband's afghan: Cascade 220 in black and medium blue, held double, size 10 US needle. There will be alternating strips of black and blue, with a black border. Very similar to the baby blanket pattern, no? Very easy to make? Yes.

Here's a close up of each strip, knit in basket weave stitch. Each block of the basket weave is 5 stitches wide and 6 rows tall.

Last WIP, another baby blanket. Center is Mountain Colors Barefoot in Mystic Lake colorway, double crocheted. Don't remember what hook I used, but may be size F. It was started last year to be a scarf but now it will be a blanket. The other yarn shows is Knit Picks Essential Solid in burgundy, navy, and dark green. Currently log cabining one inch of the burgundy in garter stitch. When that's done, I'll switch back to double crochet. Much faster that way.