Hey look, it's me!

There are a couple pictures of some of my recent projects up on Liz's Yarn Shop Thoughts blog. I went for the Mythos knit-a-long last weekend so I didn't even get to see Liz!

July Stashdown Report

Well no two ways about it, July was hard. First it was hot. Then I had to have my appendix removed because it was staging a rebellion. Nevermind the keeping up with life that carries on even when the mom is sick. July was my last month of three months cold sheeping (not buying any new yarn, hardy har har) during which I managed to buy yarn every single month.

But before I throw myself a pity party for buying too much yarn - me, a person who has actually been nicknamed "Yarn" hence the name of this blog - I think it's important to note three things. One, I like yarn. Yarn makes me happy. I love the potential I see in every skein and it's a joy I feel every time I see it. Yarn is a keepsake. Yarn is a comfort. Yarn can be anything. Two, I have a spreadsheet I've been using to track my yarn in and out all year long. Spreadsheets make it easy to have graphs, and graphs make it easy to calculate trend lines (see where this is going??). Yes, I acquired plenty of yarn in May, June, and July, but it was a lot less than if I'd kept up my previous rate. I'm trying hard not to think about the fact that in this case, yards vs. date, the slope of the line is the average acquired yards per day. Three, cold sheeping makes me feel constrained. It makes me want to rebel. I know different strategies work for different people, and although I bought less I was supposed to not buy any except the monthly club yarn, and that didn't happen.

It's interesting to me to see my own habits boiled down to bare numbers. If nothing else, I'm learning a lot about myself, my crafting speed, and how long I'll cling to hope on what already looks like a rather hopeless goal!

July yarn in: 2,370 yards
July yarn out: 1,107.9 yards
Year-to-date in: 34,368.75yards
Year-to-date out: 11,568.6 yards

Only 22,800.15 yards left to break even.

I'm going to a meetup at WEBS tomorrow. August looks to be a very productive month. I wonder how it will all add up - I guess we'll find out together.

In The Pink

Last April I was planning what bigger projects to tackle over the spring term for the HPKCHC on Ravelry and ran across a free pattern that intrigued me. It's a shawl written for fingering weight yarn with a truly unique construction called In The Pink.

In order to fit a prompt category for my group, I decided to add beads and make it my Astronomy OWL. The description indicates that beads or metallic yarn should be used in a project to represent a star chart (just the overall aesthetic, not necessarily an actual star chart). For the yarn I chose a cone of grey laceweight wool and silk blend that I bought on ebay years ago without any clue what I was doing. I don't think the estimated 800 yards put a dent in this thing.

It starts with a circular cast-on in the center spiral.

Once the spiral is done, each side wing is cast on and worked until the spiral parts are the same width as the center spiral. Next, the part that goes along the back of the neck/top of the spiral is knitted on from the second wing across the spiral top. The first wing is then grafted to the back of the neck section and through part of the spiral. Then the rest of the second wing is grafted to the spiral.

Finally, all those live stitches are worked together (adding the short row triangles along the way, one of which is in this picture).

There are a few rows all the way across to set up for the knitted-on border. The border was tedious, and several seasons of Doctor Who have helped me make it through. But I made it, and I got it done in time.

This was a real challenge for me. The pattern is written out line by line, and some of my stitch counts didn't come out quite right on the setup and border (but were easy to correct as I went). I don't know if the errors were mine or in the pattern but they weren't much trouble. Doing anything with beads is a little more difficult with children around, and each bead was placed individually using a size 13 steel crochet hook. My yarn snapped a few times when it caught the interest of one of the kids, but it spliced very easily. I tested the limits of my interchangeable needles, my stitch marker collection, my grafting skills, and my patience with a fiddly bit of knitting. I can honestly say it was worth it.

My Ravelry project page (public link)

A New Lease

At the yarn yard sale I went to last May, I saw a bag of yarn marked "free" that looked like something I might use. There were a couple skeins of yarn in a light fingering weight acrylic/wool/silk blend that looked like they might be nice for colorwork.

Inspiration hit me early in June and went in an entirely different direction. I grabbed a crochet hook and started in on a free pattern that I'd had on my list of possibilities for a while, Eva's Shawl (Ravelry link - pdf here). Stripes are a tricky thing and I decided to make them symmetrical . The stripe pattern counts down then back up in grey, and up then back down in cream.

1 cream, 3 grey, 2 cream, 2 grey, 3 cream, 1 grey, 3 cream, 2 grey, 2 cream, 3 grey, 1 cream

The shawl pattern is a repeating set of three rows, one of which is the eyelet row with the decorative holes. The eyelet rows fell in different places in the stripe pattern, which I think adds a little interest.

Once the striping was complete I just used the grey until I was sure I couldn't get another row out of what I had left. I'd ended on an eyelet row and it looked a little skimpy on the edge. Rather than ripping back, I took the work in a new direction and did a row of single crochet across the top "wingspan" edge to conceal all my ends from changing colors. I had just enough grey yarn left to put a thin edging around the outside eyelet row, putting a single crochet in each eyelet space and chaining two stitches on top of each group of two double crochets from the eyelet row. My yarn conservation paid off as I had about 18 inches leftover at the end and the edge had more substance.

I wasn't sure how to block an acrylic blend, but I do believe that almost any newly finished project can benefit from a swim in warm water. Just in case, I even contacted Karin (who had this yarn before) to see if she had any blocking tips for me. As it turns out, this yarn had been a gift to her as well, leftovers from another project made by her grandmother. I pinned it out to dry on a bed and I was surprised to find the blocking did open up the pattern quite a bit! It's really clear from looking at the stripe picture above and the finished photos below how much of a difference the blocking made.

My husband insisted that I keep this one for myself, and so far I have, but then again he also insists that the grey yarn is purple. What do you think?

My project page on Ravelry.

(Yes, those are knitting needles stabbed through my hair to hold it up. Amazingly, people still talk to me.)

A little green cheer

Apparently I'm going through a green phase.

Back in May my parents were visiting for a week, and a day or two into the visit my mom scanned me up and down and said, "I never knew you liked green so much!" I'm more of a grab-what's-clean kind of dresser these days so I looked myself up and down and answered, "Neither did I!" But I was wearing green capris, green and yellow sandals from Simple Shoes, and a striped tank top with, you guessed it, a few shades of green involved.

Flash forward to about a week ago when I was back home from my appendectomy and decided there was no time like the present to order myself some yarn. Cindi at Left Coast Yarns is one of my fellow house prefects in the Harry Potter Knit & Crochet House Cup and I found something yummy over in her shop - Forbidden Forest in an 80/20 merino nylon blend that is really soft!

I knew my Alina Shea Yarn Club shipment would be shipping soon and Shannon is wonderful enough to combine packages if you buy something (with the 10% club discount!) close to club shipping time. SPOILERS AHEAD! Better stop scrolling now if you haven't gotten yours yet!

I grabbed a skein of Waxing Moon, which is the Crescent Moon base I adore but with 20% nylon instead of 100% merino. This color is Dark Pond.



I was also drawn in by the new Boomba Lace laceweight base, a washable 80% merino/20% bamboo blend. Two skeins will make a lovely lightweight cardigan.



This month's club yarn is a 65% merino/35% bamboo blend called Grassy Feet and the colorway is Summer Fun. It really rounded out my very green package.



I also got this fiber to spin (wool and firestar for sparkle!) which really isn't green at all. Oh well, something had to give.

Ten Minutes A Day

Spinning is a new skill for me, and of course with any new activity practice helps get you where you want to go. I made myself a goal to spin for at least ten minutes per day in July to help me learn. I mentioned that I was spinning up some of the Punta roving in Charlie Pace from Younger Yarn.

So far, I've spun up 0.6oz into a two-ply yarn. I'm really ridiculously proud of my 31 yards so far. I wanted to see how my spinning held up as a yarn before getting too far through my lovely fiber!

The colors are more true in the first picture on my screen.

Once I had it skeined up and washed, I decided to try out a different fiber - some wool/mohair (I think 85/15 blend) Colonial top from my LYS. I think this top may be distributed by a larger company because I've seen it or something like it around the LYS and a few times over at WEBS. It's basically blue but there are streaks of red and other colors running along as well. Whatever it is, it's pretty.

Up to dyeing!

It's been almost two weeks now since my surprise appendicitis (is any appendicitis not a surprise?) and although everything is healing, I feel good, and everybody is getting back into our normal routines, I still have to take it easy. Even minimally invasive surgery is still surgery and it takes time to recover. I'm saying this not to be Captain Obvious or obtuse but to remind and convince myself just as much as to remind everybody reading along!

The day of my follow-up with the surgeon I decided to dye some wool and celebrate my permission to lift ten pounds again. In my dyeing experiments thus far, I've only used food coloring and other edible dyes and mordants. I'm certainly no expert and sort of get what I get! So I was playing with black food coloring and trying to "break" the dye on purpose using a lot of vinegar in the pot. Colors like black are achieved in food coloring by mixing other colors together, so in breaking it I wanted to separate those colors back out. Sometimes dyes break on their own, too - I've had blue and violet break on me before.

This time I used a lot of food coloring (dissolved into hot water) and put all of the wool in the pot at once, after soaking for a few hours in water and vinegar. I usually dye on the stove top, heating the water and vinegar in the pot with the yarn and food coloring but not all the way to boiling. The color goes into the fibers and eventually the water is clear. This is called exhausting the dye. The heat sets the color in the yarn. Well, this time the wool and water was hot for a while and the water was still nowhere near clear, so I wound off some more wool, tied it into a skein, and added it to the pot dry to exhaust the dye.

As it turns out, the dye did break but the original yarn had already absorbed all the dye it could. So the second skein absorbed what was left, which was.... well, see for yourself.

This was the original skein. It's a deep purpley red, maybe reddish purple, and black.

Godric's Hollow Worsted weight 100% wool, 100g/200yards

This was the second skein. It started much brighter and greyed as it stayed in the pot. The purple splotches were an unexpected, but interesting and welcome, surprise.

Luna Lovegood Worsted weight 100% wool 63g/125yards

Yes, these two skeins came out of the same pot. Amazing, isn't it?

The dyepot of mystery and enchantment.

The names come from this month's prompts in the Inspired Dyeing group on Ravelry. The yarn actually came before the prompts in this case, but they were just right.

I haven't decided what to do with these skeins just yet. Any thoughts?