Kiss My Knits!

Holly Jolly!
246 yards DK weight superwash merino wool

When I hold it up to my ear, I swear I can hear sleigh bells. Now come with me back to Sunday, when the most festive yarn in all of Christmastown was born.

Dye day at Jetsyknits’! The perfect time to try out my box o’ PVC pipe, which I have dubbed the Yarnomatic. Previous to dye day, I wound a skein of Bare DK weight from Knitpicks into a ball. I had an idea, and I needed a nice little packet of yarn for it.

On dye day, I laid the Yarnomatic out in one long line with posts sticking up, then laboriously walked around it, hunched over like Igor from Young Frankentstein, wrapping yarn from my pre-wound ball around it as I went.

Turtlegirl76 came to my rescue, taking one half of the Yarnomatic while I took the other. She also offered great suggestions for future configurations, like rotating the joints in the middle and adding shorter lengths of pipe (which I have) to create legs, so I wouldn’t have to kill my back leaning down as I go. I’m also considering making it into a big triangle and standing in the middle to wrap, although that might just make me dizzy.

The yarn was loosely tied at regular intervals. It really should have been tied more often, I think, because we got a little tangling on one end. Once dyed and dried it set itself to right pretty quickly, though. Also, I should have used a different colored tie to mark the halfway point on each side. As it was, I had to eyeball it and I was off just a hair. The red side is 3 yards long and the green is 3 yards, 18 inches long. Eh, close enough. Live and learn.

One side was handpainted with Jacquard emerald, and one side with fire red. The fire red side got a bit of concentrated suspension in a few spots, so it’s not as even as I might like. It’s my own fault for jamming the yarn into a jar of dye in a moment of gleeful abandon. However, it’s not that noticeable. I’m still happy. I’ve since done some research on how to prevent Dye Goo from suspending out in yellow and red, so it led to some learning, which is always good.

Check out the color join! Not a lot of bleeding from one side to the other there! I laid out extra plastic wrap and wrapped the two sides separately, then encased them as one yarn sausage for steaming. It did a good job of preventing contamination from one side to the other.

Unwinding the skein was laborious, since you can’t exactly put a skein that large on the swift. My idea was to put it back on the Yarnomatic and ball it, but it was cold outside and I didn’t feel like reassembling all those pipes anyway, so I strung it over a few bits of furniture in the house and balled it into a conventional ball, then used a swift to reskein it to standard dimensions.

I’m thrilled with how this turned out, and no amount of groaning from the holiday weary souls around me can change that. This would make some cute socks, maybe with an afterthought heel to preserve the striping. I’m excited to knit it up and see how it does.

I’ve got some extra Bare DK weight – I’m wondering what other stripe combos I should do. Or heck, maybe someone else needs some Holly Jolly yarn. It’s only 246 yards per skein, but 246 yards of holiday cheer goes a long way.

Happy holidays, one and all!

Here’s 420 yards of worsted yarn dyed in the crockpot. This is the diluted gunmetal, sky blue, primary blue, and black left over from yesterday – I had dipped a cup out to reserve – mixed with strong emerald. Yarn started as a natural cream, not a true white. I originally purchased this at Dianne’s store in South Carolina. She has since cast off the brick and mortar store to concentrate on her gorgeous hand dyes at http://creativelydyed.com/ . I know she had mixed feelings about letting her store go, so I may write to her so that she can see that some of her yarns from that time are still being put to good use.

By the way, I have no idea what I might do with this. I’m starting to reach a point where I really need to start gifting, trading, or selling some of my handdyed yarn. I’m trying to declutter my house, not add more stuff!

Also, everything I said about preferring subtle variations of tone got tossed out the window at Jet’s dyeing party. I’ll be posting that little gem when it’s completely dry.

I’m gearing up for a dyeing party today, so I probably won’t have time for a proper post today. Instead I offer up this. It’s an ad for Twinkies from the Nov 1977 Jonah Hex comic. I don’t commonly associate Wonder Woman with junk food, but maybe all the chemicals grant her her superhuman strength. Clicking on the picture and then on the “all sizes” button at the top brings up a larger view.

And here it is! This is the overdye of that hank of sock yarn I handdyed back in 2006, shown in a previous post. It was pretty, but not saturated enough. I enjoy dyeing monochromes with tonal variations now. This is a mixture of Jacquard sky blue, gunmetal, primary blue, and black.

This came out a bit darker than I was expecting. My plan had been to dye it in the crockpot, then take it out before it had soaked up everything, rinse out any excess until it was at the level I wanted, and set the dye with more acid. I put it in and went to run some errands. Then I got stuck in traffic. I wound up pulling the yarn out a little later than I had planned. It’s a bit darker than this picture shows. As a consequence of all the rinsing, it’s felted to itself just a hair. It’s still quite knittable, but I’ll probably have to go slowly when balling it up. Something to watch out for next time.

I’m pleased with how this turned out. I think I’d enjoy knitting with this more than the other. I could do a more complex pattern in this and not worry about it getting lost in the color changes. All in all, a success – and a learning experience.

I had dye leftover in the crockpot, so I’ve got 440 yards of worsted weight in there now. It’s a bit crowded, and of course the dye isn’t as strong as it was before the sock yarn soaked so much up, so we’ll see what happens!

About 1200 yards of earflap red yarn arrived on my doorstep today. Hopefully it will last me until the mill sees fit to send out my main order, which I’ve been told should hopefully be happening in the next week or so. At the very least, I can now accommodate all the people who e-mailed me last week for kits. I’d had to put them off until I was stocked back up. I may yet have to halt kit orders again, but at least everybody whom I told to come back later can be taken care of.

Today I was packing up hats when a visitor arrived. I’d been about to sew the pompom onto a 23″ hat bound for a guy in the Midwest, but got sidetracked with my guest. After she left, I couldn’t find the hat anywhere. How does a Jayne hat just disappear? It’s baffling! I feel like Coleridge and his visitor from Porlock, although my visitor was welcome. So instead of knitting for myself tonight, I’ll be finishing up another Jayne hat to stay on schedule. That will surely be enough to make the amazing disappearing Jayne hat reappear. This principle works a lot around here – buy a new gizmo and the old gizmo shows up. It’s the same way we’ve wound up with three digital thermometers and about 20 tapestry needles. Go figure.

I’ve got some non-Jayne projects to do, but I’m also trying to figure out what my next “just for me” project should be. Probably socks. I’m building up some hand dyes, and kind of feeling like I need to either use them or sell them. The two skeins pictured were dyed in 2006, so I reckon one of those should be the next to use. I look at them now and think “I’d make those richer in saturation now” but am trying hard to resist the temptation to overdye. Not everything has to be just perfect, nor is there a “just perfect” outcome for everything. Although a dark wash over the one on the left… Hmmm…

Any thoughts? Column A or column B? Patterns? Decisions, decisions.

Every year I make FuzzyFeet for my kid’s teacher as a Christmas gift. Em picks out the color yarn that I should use. I send them with her unfelted, along with a zippered pillowcase and a sheet on how to felt and the science of why it works. We’ve had good teachers every year, so I tend to think they’ll appreciate a fun little project that’s also educational.

Every year I leave this until the last minute because I put the Jayne hats first, and every year I’m frantically knitting the night before school lets out because I’ve forgotten that school lets out sooner than I expect and I don’t have the time I thought I did. One year I even drafted Turtlegirl76 to knit them for me because I had absolutely no time and I really needed it to be done.

Not this year! This year’s FuzzyFeet are in Lamb’s Pride worsted colorway Red Hot Passion and they’re finished! Another item I can check off the list. Hooray!

(For those wondering how big those slippers are before they shrink and felt, voila.)

I missed last week, so I must rely on secondhand reports of what happened.

According to our wizard, last week “a badger killed a zombie by crunching his undead-boy-parts.” The kobold hireling who robbed me the previous week ran off with another kobold we rescued in the mines, so it looks like I’ll never see my money again. I was told that I need to not miss weeks anymore, as “we need you to absorb the bad luck.” Thanks.

Also, the group killed a necromancer and discovered a magical puzzle, which we worked on this week. Details of that exciting adventure to come later!

Girl Scouts today was an unmitigated disaster that ended in us leaving after 20 minutes and me lecturing Emily that she would have been able to do the activity (making a kaleidoscope) if she’d paid better attention and listened. This was true, mind you, but I shouldn’t have been saying these things while I was so upset. At least I didn’t yell. In hindsight, if she didn’t want to do the activity, I should have pulled her aside again (I’d pulled her aside twice in the 20 minutes we were there) to remind her not to be abrupt when rejecting the other girls’ help and not to continually complain that she didn’t want to do the activity. Then we could have just watched the other girls, or gone to another area while they finished up that activity, then seen if she was ready to join in the next one. (I should add here that she told me as we were leaving that she didn’t want to do the activity because she didn’t know how to do it.)

I could have handled the whole situation better. I shouldn’t have been so quick to take us home. It’s just frustrating, because she consistently says she wants to be a girl scout and go to meetings, and yet sometimes she also says that she doesn’t want to go. However when I ask if she wants to stop going or really not go, she says no. She wants to do it, but it’s just too much for her sometimes.

But while I know that she’s got issues, she really COULD have looked in the general direction of the girl telling them what to do, or watched the hands of another girl, or accepted their offered help, or tried harder to listen, or remembered to say “I don’t understand.” Em gives up easily. I can’t let it slide every time just because she’s different – it’s not fair to her in the long run. It’s a lot harder to help her if she won’t help herself. And yet, she’s only nine, and I wasn’t the boldest child either. I can tell you how effective “just suck it up” would have been with me (not that I said that or anything even close). It’s just tough to know where the balance is.

If this troop did more guided activities, like singing or playing structured games, it would be better for Em, yet I don’t think there’s another troop with room for her. Anyway, now I’m upset and sad and frustrated and angry, and I know Em knows it.

I’m taking five while she plays “pretend girl scouts” with her dolls. I’m taking this time to reflect on how I could have done things differently today. I think I’ll handle things better next time, and I think Em will too.

I have to go out briefly this evening, and I’m bringing home mini-marshmallows for hot cocoa. Sipping hot cocoa with marshmallows and bashing kobolds while playing D&D tonight sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

<----Never used breadmaker manufactured in 1995, purchased from a yard sale two weeks ago, complete with instructional video, docs, and original price tag for $185 (on sale from $260).

Awesome rosemary bread baked by my husband the excellent Italian cook, with fresh rosemary from our yard and extra garlic for more kick.—->

Best eight dollars we ever spent.