Frog pond

This ball of crinkled red yarn was once this:



Alas, the sock did not fit. And the US0 size needles with all those cables made a dense fabric that I wasn't too fond of.

I think I'll reattempt these socks with US1 needles, but for now I think I need a break from all the teenytiny cables. Sweetheart socks: we'll meet again.

The opposite of greeny blue

...if we were being sticklers I guess it would be reddish orange, but since none of us are (are we?) this'll do:



Orangey, fuschiay, red. Aka, Wollmeise's Rosenrot. My camera hates red (Nikonians feel my pain!) so this doesn't even begin to capture the fabulousness that is this yarn.

For non-knitters (or maybe even a few knitters untouched by Wollmeisemania) the specialness of this yarn may need some explaining. The Wollmeise is a one-woman dyeing operation. She is famous for her incredibly saturated, luscious, and creative dyeing. So famous, in fact, that she can't even begin to keep her yarn in stock. Shop updates cause knitterly stampedes. I had all but given up on ever seeing a Wollmeise yarn in person.

But then: luck! I put one of my Sundara yarns up for trade on Ravelry and the first offer I got was for the skein of Rosenrot. Heck yes, I'll take that trade!

The yarn arrived yesterday (as did the Sundara to my trading partner) and I'll admit it: I gasped a little when I opened the package. The color is that intense. I have it sitting on my desk right now and every now and then I pick it up to gaze into the richness.

Oh. And? There are 574 yards of it. With many sock yarns averaging 350 yards, that's an astounding amount of yarn. This yarn will have to find a very special pattern match. (but first I predict it will sit in a prized position in the stash for a good long time.)

And now for some (gasp!) knitting. Yes, knitting.
Yesterday I pushed through a slightly irritating part of the shawl-collared vest and I feel much better. After the chevron pattern you have to increase for the ribbing in a snail-paced row of k1, m1, p1, m1. UGH. I had already messed it up once and ripped back so I was now determined. An increase row will not get the better of me!! So now I'm happily cruising along again in mindless 2x2 ribbing.

And there are some socks.



At first the pooling and spiraling of the colors in this yarn made me crazy, but now I kind of like the quirkiness of it. The colors and high contrast variagation are so not my normal pallet and I find the change of pace charming. I'm embracing the pooling, and don't you try to talk me out of it.

Predictability

I just popped on here to check if I actually like the photo I took of the seafoam spinning, and it hit me when I saw the photo in the context of the blog. Yeah - no shock that I like those colors. The background? The banner? This should have been mighty, mighty obvious to me. I clearly have a greeny blue thing going on. I mean: two of my darned WPIs are greeny blue!

So.

Tomorrow: the opposite of greeny blueness. No! Really!

Oooooooo.

These colors? I love them. I'm glad my dyeing accidentally produced this.
I'm spinning it quite fine, hoping for a light fingering weight 2-ply to make something lacey with.
And with that, I'm going back to it.

Knitting? What knitting?

Back in time...

... remember this roving? Part of my first dyeing experiment?



Well I finally spun it up and it became about 150 yards of this:


I'm happy with it, especially considering the wacky combination wheel/spindle process that I used. I think it'll make a lovely snuggly hat at some point.

And no, I haven't been knitting much. A lot has been going on and all of my projects are at a point that requires a bit of concentration. Hopefully today I can push through some of these snags so I can start making progress again. The call of the spinning wheel is strong, though...

Rovingmania

Last week I got a little enthusiastic about undyed roving.


Phew. That's one pound of merino, one pound South African fine, and two pounds of BFL, all from Hello Yarn, all destined to be dyed and spun.

My first project was to dye some merino to compliment the lavender stuff from a few weeks ago. I had a bit of the green dye left so I tried an immersion dyeing for that. No good. There was too little dye and it ended up barely making a change in the color of the roving. D'oh!

So then I thought (and this is where I forget the power of beginners luck in my previous success) hey! I mixed that green once. Surely I can do it again!

Wrong.

The dye ended up being much stronger and much more blue than my previous green. It also separated a bit, which I don't understand. The process was basically the same, but this time I ended up with stronger blue bits, and stronger green bits. Hm.

So this roving definitely won't be finding its way into the same project as the lavender yarn. Sigh. But, frankly, I think it's kind of pretty. I can't put my finger on it but it reminds me of something... something oceany.

warning: no yarny content

Yes, I'm posting something non-knitting-or-spinning in my knitting blog.
I just got back from fiddle camp (the annual meeting of the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America) which was an incredibly good time.
For my fibery buddies, I thought you might be interested to see this photo. For one of the evening parties many people wear their bunads (the national costumes in norway) and I never miss an opportunity to whip mine out. It belonged to my great-aunt and has really beautiful embroidery, hence it's presence in this crafty blog.



Yes, it was 85 degrees and I was wearing a black wool dress. phew.