I've Been Led Astray

It all started with this book that I ordered from Amazon last week. It arrived in an unprecedented two days.



I have lots of Knit Picks bare merino lying around and I really needed to do something to occupy my mind. The skeins are not as long as the instructions called for so first I had to ball them up.



Then they had to be re skeined to the right length. Use acrylic yarn to make lots of figure eight ties along the way so it doesn't tangle.




I soaked the yarn for an hour in vinegar and water for an hour and mixed the dye. If you are using acid dye be sure to wear a dust mask.



Even though it looks like the same color it's actually two shades of blue and I've alternated the pots. I left the yarn in the pots about an hour and then transferred them to a plastic covered surface where with a sponge brush I added some black on the spots left bare. No picture of that since I really couldn't do it myself and I was alone.




I gently wrapped in plastic wrap and nuked it 3 minutes on high, 3 minute rest for a total of 9 minutes with the 3 minute rest in between.


I let the whole mess sit for about three hours to cool off on it's own and then gently rinsed it in the washing machine until there was no more color in the water. I did NOT spin it, I simply used the machine because it was larger than a sink.



Hung the whole mess up to dry.



The finished product.



Now I have 200 grams of pretty blue variegated yarn, about 480 yards. Now I just have to find a project for it.

Just In Case - A Spare

I'm doing a hat for my grand daughter Elliotte and I'm a little confused on sizing. She's 18 months old but is big for her age, after all she was over 10 pounds at birth. The fact that she's not around for fittings doesn't help the situation much either.

I found a bowl that seems to be the right size. I knit one hat and when I finished it it looked too small. I used Bernat Soy which I will now say I will never use again. It splits like crazy and doesn't stretch a lot. I just simply don't like it.



So back to my trusted Patons Classic Wool for the second hat.




One of these two hats will fit, I'll have to wait until Christmas to find out which one.



There will be ear flaps added when I get around to it, meanwhile I've cast on another pair of socks...

Is Anybody Still Out There?

Probably not since I've been gone from this blog for over two months now. Kind of hard to keep two blogs going when your travelling. That doesn't mean that I gave up knitting, quite the contrary. Stuff did get done en route although not nearly as much as I'd have liked.

I started what I thought would be cute little cardi on the plane to Greece. It is a pattern I bought and it looked great on paper. In real life, not so much and I ended up frogging it...



Now I don't know what to do with this yarn so I guess it will end up in the stash for a while.

The next project was a pair of vanilla socks that travelled with me from Greece to Germany and finally back to Greece were I finished them out of desperation. It was cold and they needed to be pressed into service.



I've been back for a couple of weeks now but haven't had the energy to post. I was laid up for a few days with a back issue but that didn't stop me from starting a couple of new project.

While we were in Greece there were a couple of times when my husband jealously eyeballed my Central Park Hoodie (without the hood) and I knew if it would have fit him he'd have stolen it from me, it was so cold at times so I decided to knit him his very own cardigan with leftover wool.

So far I've managed the back to the armholes and since I don't really have a pattern I hope I can make it fit him.



I have more of the beige wool than the brown so I'm doing progressive stripes. Should be interesting when it's done.

Meanwhile there was a request from my offspring for mitts and a hat for my granddaughter so I started fooling around with these last night. I really have no idea how big or little her hands are at the moment so I hope they fit.



And just because I wanted to have some fun and had this yarn left in my stash, I did a curly scarf for myself. It's kind of fun...



There, I'm caught up now. There are other WIP's around but I'm not prepared to talk about those right now. I may someday get them finished.