June 18, 2008

The experimentation continues

First, a great photo of Dad in the sweater!

Sweater_1

Wohooo! I love it. Thanks for sending the photos, Dad!

In other fibery news, I've been spinning and dyeing much more than knitting. My arms have been bugging me a little bit so I'm trying to ease off the manic knitting schedule and do something a bit more reasonable. But the lure of the new hobby can't be stopped. Must! Spin! And! Dye!!

So you'll recall that I had my first dye day a few weeks ago. Well my first go at spinning and knitting with my dyed roving ended with this:

booties 030
They're pretty darned cute, but they're big enough to fit a three year old. And different sizes.

Sigh.

Most of the gauge issues came from my uneven spinning, so I'm hoping that my next pair of Saartje's booties end up fitting an actual infant.

So! On to the next batch of roving. On that same dye day I also made this bundle, reminiscent of my high school's Green and Gold colors.

june weekend 037

This pic doesn't capture the neon quality of the green, so you'll have to trust me. This was NOT a pretty green. I tried to temper it before dyeing with a bit of red sprinkled in, but it still turned out '80s neon sock green. Anyone know the socks I'm talking about? Came in three packs of PINK, YELLOW, and GREEN! Makes my eyeballs hurt just remembering them.

So yeah, I was not thrilled with this colorway. But I spun it up anyway for the practice.
Along the way, though, I started being pleased with my spinning results and panicked at the thought of having to waste this decent (for a beginner!) spinning because of a bad dye job. I mean, look!

aqua 003

It's waaay far from perfect, but definitely good enough to knit with!
So when I finished the skein, I plopped the whole thing in a pot with some packets of ice blue raspberry koolaid and here's what I got:

aqua 013

Still a little eyeball-burning, but I can definitely make something baby-related with this!

And you know what else? I just ordered some *real* dyes so I can stop messing around in kool aid neon-land. It's been fun and I'll probably use it again, but I'm craving some more flexibility.

I'm also realizing just how little I know about color. I'm looking at colors I like and trying to imagine how I would make them from primary colors and more often than not, I'm stumped. Luckily, I'm addicted to learning.

2 comments:

Shana said...

wow, really pretty turquoise yarn! does it smell good?

so lovely to see your dad in the sweater!!!!

Vilde said...

Thanks, Shana!
It... smells. Good? Hard to say. I'm drowning in kool aid smells right now so it's kind of nauseating. Another good reason to move on to the real stuff!