ProjectArt

Saturday’s expedition was the Seafair Torchlight 5k, where Mom, Dad, Rhys, Carol, Courtney and Aaron went as pirates, and I was the calamari that was running away from them. We got second in the group costume contest, beaten by people dressed up as the characters from Pirates of the Caribbean.

The mantle is made of tie-dyed cloth stretched over a paper and wire frame, while the tentacles are a wire frame inside a stuffed cloth tube that was also tie-dyed. Amazingly, we made almost the whole costume in one day. 

My socks are done! These are my best ever socks; they fit perfectly, and the colors are so beautiful! Thanks again to my Dye-O-Rama pal Isabella!

Ember wanted to be in the picture also; was she jealous that she had no socks of her own? No, she likes socks all right, but not on her feet! She just came to see what was going on.

Socks out of the way; I am back to my longest running project; my spindle-spun Fair Isle sweater. I ran out of the darkest shade of Black Welsh carded with purple Merino, and am using some that I spun on the wheel.

I dyed a skein of sock wool with Procion and vinegar for my Dye-O-Rama pal. I wanted to use all the colors and I wanted a good test of them so I mixed them up fresh. I found the colors were very true and bright. I wanted to test all the colors so I dyed a complete color wheel, but to make it more interesting I thought of a evening sky, clear after a storm with a rainbow. I wound one very long skein out of Wool2Dye4 Kona superwash fingering with only a few tangles and then tied off one yard sections for the rainbow. The rest I tied off at intervals to make some stars. I put the skein on a piece of plastic wrap after soaking in a 50% vinegar solution. I squeezed the dye on in sections, trying my best to shade it. The long sky portion I shaded from purple through cobalt to turquiose. I microwaved the entire package in my old “dye only” microwave and let it cool. almost all the dye was absorbed and only a little turquiose bled into the wash water (consistant with cotton and silk dyeing). The yarn is a little bright, bordering on lurid, but my pal likes it bright. Or did, as it turns out! She dropped out and I have a new pal who may not be the lurid type. Also my stars look more like dye flaws than stars. I may dye another skein for my pal, or maybe redye this one to tone it down a bit.

My Dye-O-Rama secret pal sent me some very excellent sock yarn that she dyed with Koolaid. Of course, this meant I needed to start a new project; my second set of socks! Because the last pair - my Opal sock yarn purple and orange pair are finally done! I started these way back when in the middle of the winter. It was that beautiful yarn that tempted me into dipping a cautious toe into the world of sock knitting. My first socks have many small imperfections and are a little too big. My pal’s wonderful yarn is what is giving me the courage to try a second pair!

After a couple of false starts here we are:

It seems it would be easy to use the same size 2 needles and cast on fewer stitches and get the perfect sock; but not so fast! Counting the stitches on my Opal socks for a quick double check I see that I cast on a different number for each sock. Since I started them in a K2P2 rib I am 4 stitches off! Somewhere along the way I ended up with the “correct” or at least the same number of stitches, at least temporarily.

Also the India yarn is fingering and therefore thinner than the Opal. I cast on 72 stitches for my mermaid gloves on size 1 needles with Baby Ull and that was perfect for gloves. After much confusion and several false starts (casting on an uneven number of stitches, and then losing many stitches irretrievably off the tiny size 1 needles), and considering a toe up approach, dithering with Magic Loop, I am off on my size 2 DPNs.

These are Kona superwash (red-orange) and overdyed Baby Ull. The Baby Ull was left over from the Baby Max squid hat. Baby Ull comes in pretty enough colors, but a little bland I think. I reskeined the green and overdyed it with green and turquoise Procion. I left two balls of light blue in their original skeins and overdyed them to a very dark color and a very pale color (above with purple also).

I am going to continue experimenting with Procion as I have a tie-dye project with 5th graders this week and will no doubt have some more leftovers.

Here is the sock yarn I dyed with the leftover Easter egg dye knitted up. I started the second sock with the other end of the ball and then knitted them both up together. This worked out very well; I didn’t have to guess at the half way point of the yarn. Obviously I need more yarn to finish this project; I think I will dye it the dark purple and finish in a solid color.

 I tried dyeing some sock yarn with left over Procion and yellow food color left over from the Easter eggs. The purple Procion resulted in a dull blue on the wool yarn, but when I added some fuchsia I got a lovely dark purple. The fuchsia and yellow produced a bright orange; traffic cone orange in fact. Not the color I wanted in my socks, but I did enjoy its brilliance. I overdyed with a little blue and got a lovely tangy color that I am afraid this photo does not do justice to. The other skein has the original orange and blue, but then ovedyed with fuchsia in one part and then a mix of blue and orange to mute the overall color. The result was a nice autumn foliage blend; again this photo does it no credit.

I wound the yarn into long skeins - clear across the room so that I would get broad stripes and not a blotchy look in the final sock.

Then, because its not over til its knitted; I immediately started a sock. The stripes were about the width I wanted, but the colors are a little dark. Also there is not enough yarn for a complete sock; not even one I think.

My LYS did not have size 1 metal double points so I purchased this needle and tried Magic Loop; easy to do as it turns out, but I do like double points and the little tent shape they make as you knit!

It is so much fun to dye, but it takes so long to knit! 

The two newest members of the family; Gaia and Ganesha. These two sweet Lop bunnies were given to us by a friend. They are settling in and going to work on our overgrown yard.

Cascarones! We had about 500 total this year! I dyed them with left over procion dyes for the most part. With a little vinegar they dyed very well. Very good color with fuchsia and a mixed purple. Turquoise was bright but easily scraped off; more research is needed to know if it was the color itself or that particular vinegar-dye ratio.