yarn love

I dyed some yarn last week. I'm very happy with the results. More info about them can be found on my Stash page on Ravelry.

First up are a couple of superwash BFL/nylon. The yarn is high-twist making it perfect for socks.

I also dyed some superwash merino/nylon in my favorite Delft blues.

And I finished some handspun laceweight BFL/Tussah Silk from a Spinning Awesome Good roving.

I've been dealing with a pain flare and migraines so I'm in a fog and haven't decided whether I will sell these skeins or keep them.

Our weather has been cool and rainy which isn't helping my pain. The forecast is for more of the same. I don't know how many more days of this pain that I can cope with.

this and that

I finished weaving the (acrylic!) baby throw. It was a lot of fun and I'm happy with the result. Here it's posing in the new little leaves of a lilac bush. Too bad the lilacs aren't blooming yet because they would totally match.

Now on to the sock update. The new pattern stitch isn't working with the yarn so I'm considering reverting to plan one after all.
The Scrolls pattern on the right is very pretty but it gets lost in the mottled colors. I'll save it for a solid colored yarn. The thickly textured lace on the left (Giotto/Go With The Flow mash-up) doesn't disappear in the swarm of pink and white.

Dan and I celebrated our 33rd anniversary on the 20th. It sure doesn't feel like it's been 33 years and I thank my lucky stars that we found each other so long ago. I dearly love the sweet man. His birthday is tomorrow and we are going to see Burton Cummings in the evening. That not only dates us but also demonstrates our Canadian-ness.

I'll end with this photo of the cool bug I noticed on my kitchen window sill last week. I wanted to set him free outside and debated how to do that without hurting those fragile long legs. I ended up putting a small bowl over him and gently sliding him over another bowl until he was trapped inside. It worked and he was set free without harm.
Life is so much more interesting when the weather warms up.

floofy

My latest weaving project is another baby blanket but this time I'm using acrylic baby yarn (!) including some novelty stuff. It was a pain to warp the loom with the acrylic yarn but I'm delighted with the weaving process.

I generally hate working with acrylic yarn but, as this will be a gift for someone who likely doesn't want to hand wash baby items, it seems like a practical plan. It's great fun to just weave random stripes of the different colors and textures. I know I would hate to knit the floofy yarn but weaving with it is easy.

I dyed some sock yarn to make girly socks for myself. I'm not a very girly girl but I want pink lace socks for some reason that I don't understand. I started Giotto for the cuff but switched to Go With the Flow for the leg because I think the Giotto stitch count would make it pretty big for me.
Quite lovely but something about this just wasn't sitting well with me. Even though the yarn is delectably soft, the lace pattern was making the sock fabric very textured and dense. I don't think it would be comfortable on the top of my feet because I have these sissy, wimpy, need-to-be-babied diabetic feet. I abandoned this sock start in favor of a new start using the Scrolls pattern. I haven't knit enough of it yet to know if I'm going to like it better. I didn't frog the first sock start, just cut the yarn, so I can go back to it in case I change my mind again.

Last night Dan and I were lucky enough to go to our second Elton John concert! It was just as wonderful as the first time we heard him live. I tried to get some pictures but most of them didn't turn out at all. These two were the best of a poor bunch.

This is actually the large screen shot. It turned out better.


And finally, in the totally random weirdness category:

If a tree falls in the forest, do more people eat pizza?
These Pizza Hut flyers were in our newspaper the other day, all 22 of them! It makes you wonder what went wrong with this plan. Good thing we recycle.

the little tea towel that could

My latest weaving project was a learning experience to say the least.

I was aiming for a baby throw and I wanted to plan the warp and weft to get a gingham effect. I used stash yarn, TLC Cotton Plus(discontinued) in Spruce and White and got this:
much more resembling a tea towel than a baby throw.

I debated crocheting an edging all around it but it just didn't feel right. This went into time-out for a while because I was disgusted with it.

Once I thought more about it, I pulled it back out and twisted the fringe then cut it very short so it wouldn't get caught in baby fingers. Then I decided to cross stitch something onto it. That turned out to be a bigger project than I thought.

I surfed the web for some suitable cross stitch patterns for a baby garment. Then I realized that my woven squares aren't square at all - they're rectangles. So I found knitter's graph paper and turned it on its side so the "squares" were taller than wide. I then had to trace my pattern outline onto the graph paper or it would have been distorted, and flip the pattern for a symmetrical match.

My first pattern of spindling sheep ended up not looking like sheep at all so it was back to the drawing board. Ducks worked much better. I tried using leftover perle cotton from my Hardanger days for the cross stitching but it didn't pop on this fabric. Splitting the TLC Cotton Plus yarn in half (two of four plies) worked much better.

The result:
much better; not what I had in mind but less like a tea towel for sure.

I've tucked this away and will pull it out when a baby gift is needed. I made a trip to Michaels and bought baby yarn to try another throw. There will be more texture in the next try. I'll keep you posted.