Dyeing, Those Cats

Belated Mother’s Day wishes

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Belated Mother’s Day wishes to Chaos’ mom, Riley (black, below), from Chaos (not pictured) and his brother Diablo (white, below).

Some semi-solid yarn I dyed over at Jeanne’s a week ago. These were two skeins of white Lamb’s Pride Superwash (a truly unpleasant yarn), soaked in vinegar water in loosely twisted hanks (as pictured below, but not so tight), then liquid purple Jacquard acid dye was dumped into the vinegar water. As the dye kept exhausting, I would add more dye and swish things around a little bit. I like the effect enough that I’ll try doing this again sometime.

I have my dye buddy’s yarn all set, but I’m not going to post pictures of it until it’s sent and safely received. Moving right along – remember the blindingly bright yarn from my dyeing class at Shepherd’s Harvest? Here’s how it looks after a few turns on the old niddy noddy – socks? Or a crazy bright baby sweater? Hmm… Anyway, I think we might have been using Cushing’s dye in the class – it was in those little cellophane envelopes and we used vinegar to set it.

“Here, Furry Orange Mouse… come to Papa.”

Tomorrow, more on the two new mice that arrived from the UK yesterday! Furry Orange Mouse (FOM), above, and Furry Red Mouse (FRM), below. FRM might indeed be hiding from someone…

Dyeing, Festing

Warped yetis and other images from Shepherd’s Harvest

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Hee hee – no, I did not bring home a llama from Shepherd’s Harvest on Saturday! I’m pretty sure that neither Chaos nor the downstairs neighbor would’ve approved. Plus, that llama looked like a spitter to me, too.

I’m bummed that I didn’t run into anyone I was hoping to run into! I got back to Building B a bit late (around 1:30 pm) and didn’t pull my knitting out because it was too flippin’ cold to knit. Or for the spinners to spin, apparently, so the Spin In area where we had all planned to meet never got set up.

I enjoyed the class I took on dyeing self-striping sock yarn Saturday morning. Here’s the warping board we used to create the long skeins – yarn was atached at the upper right corner, wrapped back and forth to the lower left corner, then back up. I think this setup makes skeins with a 20-yard loop size, but you could obviously make much longer skeins, too.

Here’s one of my dyed skeins, drying on a rack in my bathtub, Saturday evening:

“So bright! My eyes, my eyes!”

Part of the Blackberry Ridge booth – I managed to resist, because I haven’t knit up the yarn I got from this booth last year!

An angora bunny, sitting patiently on a chair waiting to be plucked – at least, I’m pretty sure this was a bunny and not an overgrown tribble:

Another angora bunny, looking more like a baby yeti than a rabbit, getting plucked:

And a very cute book I found, on sale for $3.22!

“Knitted cats?! Why do you need a knitted cat when you have me??”
Contests

Contest!

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I can’t believe I missed the obvious caption yesterday about Chaos having his foot in his mouth (which he did)… Obviously, it’s been a long week and my captioning brain is not up to snuff. And, since I won another contest yesterday (a drawing for a $15 gift card to a LYS from everyone who sent cage liners or squares to Chris of Chris Knits for her local Humane Society) (ok, ok, technically Chaos won, but he doesn’t get out much), I’m feeling the urge to spread a little contest fun myself.

The prize will be a 480-yard ball of Brooklyn Handspun superwash sock yarn, color Carnival. This colorway will cover all of your Project Spectrum knitting needs up until August (neutrals). (Tail not not included.) If a non-knitter wins, I’ll send that person something other than yarn and select a second winner.

The contest is to leave a comment with a caption for the picture below. Caption comments made before 6 pm Central Daylight Time on Monday, May 22 (my six-month blogiversary!), will be numbered and I’ll use a random number generator to pick a caption. Please note that the mouse in the picture isn’t SRM, but is the wonderful catnip mouse that Elizagrrl knit for Chaos.Have fun! Be creative!

Festing

Shepherd’s Harvest anyone?

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Thanks for all the kind words about the baby bolero!

Although it’s nowhere near the scale of MDS&W or any of the big fiber festivals, this weekend we’re having our own area fiber festival, Shepherd’s Harvest (and Llama Magic). I’m going Saturday with Charlene and possibly Jeanne. I know Kerry’s going to be out there Saturday, Renee on Sunday, and Kate’s not sure when yet. Anyone else?!

I’m taking one class on Saturday morning, Dyeing Patterned Sock Yarn (there are still openings as of 7:30 am, May 11). I was mightily tempted by Beginning Needle Felting (you make a little felted copy of your pet – how cute would a tiny felted Chaos be?!), but it’s Sunday afternoon and I have family obligations. Other fun things include a rabbit agility demonstration, herding demonstrations, sheep to shawl competition (5 hours to go from fiber on the hoof to finished product), and a bunny to bonnet demonstration.

If anyone’s interested in getting together to chat and knit or spin, there’s a Spin In in Building B. I’ll be lurking around the Spin In area by 1:15 pm, knitting on either my Black Lagoon lace socks or my funkadelic Meilenweit Cotton socks (not yet featured here). I’ll have my sturdy grey Mountainsmith zip-top tote with me.

Hope to see you there!

“Mwmph.”
Knitting, Those Cats

Bolero and SNLGM

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So Monday night at 11 pm, I admitted I wasn’t going to finish the baby bolero that night.

“You just would not believe how exhausted I am from helping with that bolero!”

The baby was born yesterday, so I raced home after work and finished my last two rounds of edging, wove in ends, did the fastest steam block ever, and took the bolero over to the hospital (where it was well received). Whew!

Baby Bolero from One Skein, using less than a single skein of Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton, color Sand. I made the following modifications: three-needle bind off for the shoulders, picking up and knitting the sleeves instead of knitting them flat, and only picking up 34 stitches on each of the front edges. I would definitely knit this again – it’s pretty speedy, economical, and damned cute. Plus the Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton is nice stuff and didn’t make my wrists ache at all.

A little Project Spectrum sparkly mouse action – Sparkly Neon Lime Green Mouse (SNLGM) has been hanging about recently, trying to cover for SRM.

“Smells like… neon lime green.”

“Must destroy evil SNLGM!!”

“Mmmmmm…”
Dyeing

Frazzled

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Whew! Things just seem to have gotten a little crazy over the past week or so. Work is busy, busy, busy. I’m waaaaaaaay behind on bloglines (if you’ve been wondering what happened to me there). And some very dear friends’ baby is due imminently. I had a picture of the baby bolero I’m knitting (note that I’m still knitting it and am not done with it), but the picture vanished into the internets somewhere. Grrr.

At least I managed to take a picture of one of the skeins of (hopefully self-striping) yarn I dyed! This was a test skein, from some random fingering weight yarn I had around, and isn’t enough for a pair of adult socks. I then dyed a skein of Knitpicks with these colors, but I didn’t get the purple as dark as I wanted. Anyway, this skein was dyed with Jacquard Silk Dye, which also works on wool and other animal fibers. These are liquid dyes and are definitely not the most economical way to dye. I just happened to disover a bottle of purple and a bottle of black in my cupboard and decided to see what would happen.

Check out Jeanne’s blog entry about some of our warping board adventures and a rubber chicken.

“Wait, did you hear that? Do you think it’s SRM, crying to be found??”
Dyeing, Project Spectrum, Randonymity

This and that

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Wow, last week must’ve been my lucky week. I won a contest at Kristi’s and received one of her very cool sock patterns and I won a contest at the Crafty Modster’s and will be receiving a copy of her Project Spectrum May mix cd. Fun!

Hmm, looks like Kelly’s cat Sockies doesn’t approve of Chaos’ antics… Check out the gorgeous green yarn Kelly dyed!

Jeanne and I dyed yarn yesterday. It’s not quite photo ready, so I’ll just show you what my hand looked like after I forgot to put my gloves back on before rinsing the dyed yarn – please note that, due to the flash, you’re not getting the full effect. My hand was dark, dark grey.

“Mom? Why is your hand blocking my photo op?”

I drove past this very Project Spectrum building on the West Bank (the area around the part of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus that’s on the west bank of the Mississippi). I can’t remember for sure, but I might’ve worked doing telephone fundraising for nonprofits out of the upper story of that building back in 1990 – trust me, it wasn’t that color 16 years ago, or I would remember!

Chaos also had a busy weekend, following the sunspot around the living room.

“…………………………………………..”
Those Cats

Another Phantom Paw…

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Trek has been making these cute little sock bags and I asked her to make me one that was black and purple. Behold – the Stumbling Over Chaos bag!

Notice the cute mini needle wrap for carrying a needle when you don’t want to carry a Chibi. And the card? Inside it says “The card because Chaos is the 1st place knitblogger cat.” Awww…. Thanks, Trek! I love the paw print fabric! You can see the purple lining over at Trek’s blog, because when I tried to get a picture of the lining, I got another Phantom Paw photo instead.

“SRM? Yoo hoo – are you in there, SRM?”
“Wow. No SRM, but the mysteries of the universe revealed!”

I forgot I had ordered a custom-dyed skein of Brooklyn Handspun Black Cherry sock yarn, but was very happy to be reminded!

“SRM? Are you up here?”
Randonymity, Those Cats

The Phantom Paw and Other Tails

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For the curious, my tattoo is on the back of my upper left arm. I had a mole biopsy there maybe seven years ago and it left a scar that bothered me, so I camouflaged it with the tattoo. (And my dermatologist even thought that was a fine way to deal with the scar!) Until last November, the tattoo was just the top half, which means “Good luck.” And yes, it was a bit difficult to photograph! It’s actually backwards (which amusingly didn’t occur to me until just now, or I could’ve corrected it!), because I ended up taking the picture in one of the plentiful mirrors around here.

Now, on to the Phantom Paw:

For all the Minnesota knitters who just took a collective gasp, trying to figure out how they missed the Yarn Harlot coming to town, don’t worry. Ana picked this up for me when the Yarn Harlot was in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago – thanks, Ana!!

Check out my new tape measure:

front
back

Yeah, that paw is definitely persistent, isn’t it?!I found some gluten-free beer while I was in Wisconsin! Of course, upon trying it, I discovered that beer tastes sort of weird if you haven’t had one for over ten years. Chaos doesn’t think too much of beer. When I tossed a bottle cap on the floor for Chaos to play with, he tried to bury it.
“I definitely don’t approve of beer. But that stuff with those nifty corks, that’s ok.”

This is what Chaos’ water looked like last night when I got home from work.

No, I agree, I don’t think that mouse is colorfast. Wouldn’t this have been a great March Project Spectrum picture?!

Art journaling, reading, knitting, and cat parenting. It's a wild life.