Finished Objects!!

So the Monkey socks are finished. On the evening of our snow night I attempted to graft the toe, but I got a little too inebriated so I couldn't concentrate on the stitches. Luckily, the next day I could keep it together enough to finish the grafting without screwing up the stitch pattern. For those of you who are not knitters I will explain. When knitting to the end of a sock, when you get to the toe you have to bring the live stitches together to tie them off so your piece doesn't unravel. This very much makes me think of that Weezer song about unraveling his sweater. I do not what that to happen, so I use a needle and the end of my yarn to make false knit stitches to tie the live stitches together to keep them from escaping. This is a technique that scares lots of knitters, but even beginner knitters can accomplish this and make it look really good if they follow simple directions.

I have been knitting for 20 plus years and I still look at the directions when I graft my stitches. They fit fantastically on my feet, and I love this yarn. This pattern looks really complicated but it is a fairly straightforward 16 stitch repeat. In the leg of the pattern I decreased the pattern by one repeat because my calves get really big, really fast. To make sure they would not slouch I just made the leg part shorter. This means I have a lot of yarn left over. I am thinking a little pair of baby socks, but I won't get to that for awhile.


As an attempt to stash bust I am developing my next knitting project from yarn from the bottom of the yarn bin. This yarn I mentioned in my last blog but I will fill you in again. I had some yarn samples, different fiber content mixtures and all just a couple of yards long. A few months ago I dropped the whole little collection of samples into a acid dye bath that was a dark scarlet color. Because the yarn bits are made of different fibers, they all accepted the dye in different ways. I am coupling them with a charcoal grey Lamb's Pride worsted weight yarn that is many years old. I have no idea where I got this grey skein from, but I was made before Brown Sheep (the company that makes Lamb's Pride) started adding more mohair to their yarn. I am planning a child's cardigan, so I am going to need more than one skein to complete it. I snuck into Gate City Yarns last night after closing ( I work there and have keys. You would be surprised how often employees go into the store after hours to pick up supplies for our own projects and the projects of our loved ones. I have solved many a yarn-emergency in the middle of the night this way.) and we don't have any of this color left. So I had to find something similar to work in with the grey. I was a little discouraged but I did find a grey Marks & Kattens Ecoull that is very very close to my Lamb's Pride. I am alternating the original grey with this new yarn so that you don't notice as much that I am using different colored yarns. I am planning a yoke with the little red yarn bits to highlight how different they look from the same pot. I'm thinking a simple colorwork in the yoke will do just the trick.

As the days pass from the last time I posted, I have been looking for time in my daily life to make room for blogging. The whirl of life seems to get louder the more time passes. It is hard to keep my eyes on the prize when everything keeps spinning. I read the blogs of artists and crafters that make things for a living, and I wonder how they manage to make a living and blog and enjoy their lives. I have been thinking on it a lot and I think that I figured out the key to being able to make a living of making things. The secret is not sleeping. No sleep for the busy. I think if I stopped sleeping I could probably rule the world, except that I would be crazy from sleep deprivation. And sleep deprivation makes me dangerous. Mostly to myself. But I have been sleeping, and I have been working. I dyed a lovely 8oz roving for my Etsy site.

Before the oven...

I chose a variety of greens, Ooze, Kelly Green and Lime Juice, Teal, Midnight Blue and Satsuma Purple. I rolled the roving up in a pot and poured the colors onto the white merino. Then I just stuck the whole pot in my oven to process and set the dye. Thirty minuets @ 300 degrees and my roving was taken out to cool.

After the oven!

This is a new processing technique that I have not used before, and have mutated from a collection of other processes. I like it, I think I might try it again. I have also noticed I have been working mostly in oceany colors as of late. I really need to push myself to try other colors instead of just blues and greens. I like lots of colors, and a few years ago all that spoke to me were combinations of grays, black, red, and lime green. I like the way that sounds. I know that I promised sneak peeks of the new thing i'm working on for my Etsy site, but I broke a drill bit and have not finished the prerequisite leg work to fill you in on the big new thing. In the mean time, here is a photo of the socks that I am knitting. They are Monkey by Cookie A. made with Lorna's Laces sock yarn. The color way is Amys Vintage Office and it is the colorway made my Knitty. I guess it is fitting that I knitting a pattern from Knitty for this yarn. I'm so close...

Snow Day!!!!

Sock and a half!

Today we are having a snow day!!!! Here in the Piedmont of the Northern of the Carolinas we received less snow and ice then the areas around us but who cares. In the south even a quarter of a inch of snow can drive people to prepare for the second coming. I used the forthcoming storm to leave work early yesterday, and by early I mean to say 4:45pm instead of 9pm. A nice early ending to my Friday work day. So now its our snow day, B and I are very busy. I have been dying merino for my felting packs, and colors for B's needle felting projects. My lady has been doing a lot of needle felting recently, and now she is making color demands.

Up close and personal...

So I am spending my day over the pot on the stove. As my Monkey socks are coming to a close I need to think about a new knitting project. I had a pack of yarn samples from Henry's Attic that it had been saving for something, but i was not sure what. So a couple of months ago I took the whole pack of different samples and dyed them all together in the same scarlett acid dye bath. There were several different fiber contents in the samples, so I got lots of different variations of the dye color. I am thinking of coupling them with a gray skein of Lamb's Pride and doing some color work as some sort of sample piece. I'm still thinking on it, but I need to go check my blue.

I got the sock stuck!!