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04/29/2006

ANOTHER Fun Nation desaster...

Remember the ball of Regia Nation Color 'Fun' that had the specks of dark color? I haven't touched that sock after encountering the third spot, but I have been knitting on the 'good sock'. Now that I've gotten close to the top of the cuff, the 50g ball got lighter and I kept trying to figure out how many block stripes there were left when I realized that there was more purple in the rest of the yarn. PURPLE!? I was just knitting a purple stripe. I unwound 3 stripes and discovered this:

a freakin' knot! And where there should have been a light green stripe after the yellow, there's PURPLE! AND the colorway is reversed.

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHRRRGGGGHHH!

I was actually trying to make this pair a sort of test of how long a sock I could make with one 50g ball...

I'm SO not buying any more Regia anytime soon.

19:09 Posted in Socks | Permalink | Comments (4) | Email this

04/28/2006

Spring is coming, time for new mittens?

Here's a pair of mittens I finished today- I felted them using carded wool and felting it with hot soapy water and a lot of rubbing and pressing, etc. to fit my hands. Those should be great on chilly days riding my bicycle. They do look a bit like oven mitts, but they're, uh, unique;-) And they're soft enough to move my hands in them and pick up stuff. I could even handle the camera to take these pix wearing them!

I was talking on the phone when I laid out the different colors on the second mitten this morning and I messed up the sides- of course the palms as well as the back of the hands were supposed to be the same color. Doesn't bother me though, they're unidentical twins;-)

14:05 Posted in felting , Gloves and Mittens | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this

04/27/2006

mini S'nB

Yay, I met up with the girl I met at 'Pony Bar' last week. A few of her fellow students came along to hang out at the cafe and it turned out to be quite a fun round with the two of us knitting, another girl making a cute little felt strawberry brooch, two others studying sign language...:-)

And I worked on the River Rapid socks that have been neglected for a while- when I looked at it again at night, I was ready to start with the toe! I didn't realize how much knitting I got done at our meeting and on the bus!

Aah, I just love sticking my feet out of the window taking pictures of them.

11:14 Posted in Socks | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this

04/24/2006

Ef-Ohs!

Waah! I already got an e-mail from Alison yesterday giving me my sockpal's mailing info! She's sending out the addresses for international sock exchanges a little earlier in case they're expected to travel longer. But boy, that really put some pressure on me dealing with the Mata Haris that have been spending some down time at the bottom of my socks in progress basket. So I finally drew them out again last night to see what was the problem with the different-length feet. It really wasn't a big deal at all. I think I remember doing something different on one of the places where one of the YO, k2tog spiral lines stopped on one side of the foot and I hadn't realized that left me one 4-row repeat short. Ripped the toe, put in another repeat, that's all there was to it. *sigh of relief*! And look: matching feet!

Then I steamed the picot edge and got the Mata Haris all set to be mailed. I think I'm going to send them off on May 2nd as everybody else, though- mail to the US usually takes only 4 days. What do you other international pals think?

Today I also sent off the squares for Warming Grace and I'm so looking forward to seeing what'll become of all those squares. Cynthia got such a great response for this project and I hope she can put together lots of blankies for the children. Those blankets are going to be so cool- squares coming from all over the place from all different kinds of knitters hoping to provide some sort of consolation during trips to the hospital.

Oh, and it's gotten a tad warmer here and I finished this little hat for Johanna. Looks great with her new spring coat. I actually knit this hat this time of year in 2004 when I was pregnant. Unfortunately, the hem was waaay too tight and so the hat was just lying around until now. I fiddled around and kind of undid the cast-on, picked up the stitches, knit a few more rows of ribbing and did a loose bind-off. The hem doesn't look too great now and I think I used smaller needles when I first knit the hat, but it doesn't bother me much. The colors are just great for Johanna and the yarn has some cotton in it, so it's perfect for spring.

12:05 Posted in Baby Stuff , Knitalongs , Sockapaloooza , Socks | Permalink | Comments (11) | Email this

04/19/2006

New recruits for the future Hamburg S'nB

I totally forgot to mention some new fellow knitters I've met recently-

one of my mother's employees passed on a woman's phone number who was looking for someone to teach her how to knit and when I called her she turned out to be a young-sounding teacher who knew the basic stitches but wanted to learn about knitting math and further techniques. We met up 2 weeks ago and she's this really nice MATH teacher (no calculator needed knitting with her;-)) who's the same age as me and we're going to meet up regularly now. We talked on the phone last night and she's making amazing progress on the sweater she's working on and has done some great studies on gauge since we've met. She's totally got it and came up with changing needle sizes for the striping in the pattern that she has two slightly differing yarns for. Woo-hoo!

Then today I had to go to the library again to freakin' pay my overdue fees again. Grrrr. I'm REALLY trying to remember to extend the books but I screwed up the dates again. *Sigh*

Anyhow, I got to the library early and decided to go to the 'Pony Bar' to get another latte and work on the Alberta sock. Their DJ played an entire Janis Joplin album and I was mouthing along the words getting great mileage on the Albertas:-)

When three girls sat down at the table next to me, the hippie chick among them said she really wanted to knit socks for herself but couldn't figure it out and, of course, I had to jump right into the conversation and offer to teach her.

Now the only thing we need to do is figure out a way to get the three of us together and start the Hamburg Stitch 'n Bitch:-)

Oh, and here's a shot of Johanna finally modeling the Crimson&Clover sweater I knit last year. The yoke is kind of puffy when she puts her arms up, but it's still cute.

13:25 Posted in Knitting (general) | Permalink | Comments (9) | Email this

04/18/2006

Some kool dyeing and nonsense knitting

Sorry for my absence, but I've been in kind of a bad mood because I'm not getting enough university stuff done and it's really bugging me. On top of that, my stomach has been bothering me and that makes it even easier to procrastinate some serious hard-core typing. WHINE, WHINE.

Nevertheless, I've had an amazing pick-me-up on Thursday when a completely unexpected package from Steph of craftoholic arrived: KOOL-AID! YAY!! How sweet of her, eh? And check out the awesome hand-SEWN card with some incense-scented Indian silk on it- such a great idea! THANK YOU SO MUCH, STEPH!!

I'd won some Kool-Aid on ebay lately as well (not realizing it came with some 'invisible' varieties;-)) and I did my first experiments with it. Wowza, is that stuff ever so potent. The SMELL! And how incredibly bright those colors come out! I used some odd balls of wool my mother gave me which actually amounted to about 400g, so I can make a sweater for Johanna with it. I was going for longer strawberry red stripes with some turquoise/green variegation and it turned out quite well. At least there are no weird white spots. The yarn soaked up more dye than I'd expected so I had to dye the red part twice. This time I dipped the yarn in a big pot with the prepared dye, then threw it in a bowl which I put on a baking tray and painted the greenish tones. Off it went into the oven on 95ish degrees for an hour.

I started knitting this cardigan for Johanna with it because I happened to stumble across this pattern and really liked it. After about 15 cm into the pattern I realized that making a cardigan with this yarn I dyed somewhat stripey and using a variegated and quite bright yarn with a structured pattern is not a great idea. Frogged it. Loved the pattern, though, I'm going to make one of those cardigans in the future...

Then I cast on again for a sweater knit in the round and it just occured to me at midnight last night that I'd forgotten to add extra stitches to get a similar width as the cardigan's which would've had a button band. Ripped it. Now the yarn and I need some space;-)

20:55 Posted in Baby Stuff , dyeing | Permalink | Comments (4) | Email this

04/10/2006

YARN ACCIDENT!

Um, so a week ago my mother mentioned she was going to get a delivery of sock yarn at the store.

Can I hear you say uh-oh? Yeah, you're right. I'd told my mother I was on a diet, but she just looked at me and said, 'But Julia, you can never have enough sock yarn...!' Before I knew it, I was cradling these babies:

especially the green variegated and the blue/teal ones are even more intense in color than in this picture!
The blue and green yarn is a real bargain hand-dyed yarn I won on ebay BEFORE the SYAC diet, though.

Another delivey came in today, Opal solids which was ordered on March 22nd (and which I'd already included in my stash count), got lost in the mail and was generously resent with- a pretty campari red ball of yarn as a compensation, whaddayasay?

I just read that Anna already quit the SYAC after realizing she's a happy yarnoholic, but seriously, I do want to stop buying yarn and technically, I didn't buy that new yarn;-) Anyhow, the stash is growing and I am working hard at making it shrink.

Look, the first Alberta sock is done. I finished it even after I had an unpleasant accident with the blender. That was one of the DUMBEST, embarrassing household accidents I've had, but I'm lucky I didn't lose the tip of my left pointer finger. Nevertheless, after the bleeding stopped and I'd taped the finger up with three band-aids with little duckies on them, I picked up the pointy sticks again. NOTHING WILL STOP ME!

13:40 Posted in Stash | Permalink | Comments (9) | Email this

04/07/2006

Listen to me ramble

Yay! I'm on my favourite podcast again! you can listen to me ramble on the kindness of stangers in the latest episode of Quirky Nomads, 'Mystery Sound'

11:41 Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this

Adventures in Dyeing Pt II- Natural Dyes

My head's been hurting for the past few days and when I went to the pharmacy yesterday, I saw they had natural easter egg dyes- sandalwood, rosewood, logwood and mate tea. I still had mate at home, so I bought a little pouch of logwood and thought I'd try dyeing some wool with it.

You've all been extremely generous in your comments on my first dye job, so thanks for encouraging me!

Also, this sock yarn diet is really making me creative;-)

Well, I've gone on and on about this horrifying yarn I'd received from someone, and I've been thinking about selling it on ebay, but since I can't buy new white yarn, I thought I might as well use yarn that could only get better.

I wound it into a hank and prepared the dyes- I put 50 grams of each mate and logwood plus a teaspoon of the metal salt Alum in a liter of water and cooked it to a boil, then let it steep for almost 30 minutes. That's the yerba mate

that's the logwood- some POTENT stuff! Just one little spot on my stovetop was pretty hard to remove!

This is my little setup.

I soaked both yarns in the pots for about 45minutes and kept the solution close to a boil.

Then I rinsed it in warm water and then some water with vinegar, just to make sure.

Then I washed it with shampoo and rinsed it a bunch of times as there still was a lot of the purplish blue dye coming out- I could've easily dyed a lot more fiber with this solution!

Here's the yarn coming out of the dyepots- much better already

Here it is all dried and pretty- I'm so impressed with the logwood, it's a very rich purplish blue that somehow gave an extra shine to the yarn. And the mate still shows the former dye, but transformed it to more delectable colors. The white turned into a bright green-yellow and there's some aqua and bright greens, very nice! if I looked at this part of the hank VERY enthusiastically, I could say the colors reminded me of some koigu colorways.

Of course, I had to knit up a swatch in form of a sock cuff;-)

11:30 Posted in dyeing | Permalink | Comments (9) | Email this

04/04/2006

Oh Alberta!

I've mentioned it before, I'm not only a stasher, but I'm also a cast-on addict!
I cast on for these Regia Canadian Color 'Alberta' (4735) and it really brings back some road trip memories: