New yarns!

Well, new colors, old yarns.

This one was my first and I love it even though I'm not a pink person.




I named this colorway September because I love brown, my birthay is in September and the birthstone for Sept is Saphire. The base yarn is Paton's Kroy Socks and I can't wait to knit this into some socks.

The Halloween yarns came out great!! Too much fun!





Vampires, zombified and jack o' the lantern. Halloween socks!!
Dyeing is too much fun. I'm going to try self-striping next.

Yarn and weather

Okay, the yarn did not come out exactly as planned. I guess I didn't really expect it to, but I was hoping...


The green is my favorite.
In the meantime, I've ordered more supplies, and I'm just sitting on my hands waiting for them to arrive. Okay, not too much sitting. I've made some stitch markers.

And swapped one of my Aracaunia skeins for a brighter shade at The Yarn Garden. Incidentally, the sale was still going on there on Sat. when I went. Score!

All of it is ready to be dyed.

I cast on for the baby sweater I want to make for Gina's little boy. She is due at the end of this month, so I hope I can get my crap together and get it done along with a little viking hat (her dad is CRAZY about the Minnesota Vikings) before the kid is too big.

In other news....lightning almost struck my mom's house! From what Mom and Dad say, it was like something huge rammed the side of their home. My mom was so shook up from the sound and vibration, her heart was racing for half an hour afterwards. There are bits of tree all over their roof and yard - even some clear across the street!

Back to black

Well, most of my online time is now being spent on ravelry which is my knitting journal now - plus..GROUPS! Anyhoo..I've decided to embark on yarn dyeing adventures. It is pretty addictive so far. I'm only using Kool Aid and Wilton's Icing coloring, but I've got good enough results to feel hooked. One of the big motivators for me to get started with dyeing is the burning desire for Halloween theme colored yarns. I've seen a few on etsy and ravelry that are awesome, and if I can make some myself....then thats even more awesome!
I've tried hard to get some jack-o-lantern and zombie colors going. Handpainting so far has not been successful. I had all my colors run together. So I tried the stove top in 2 pans with Wiltons:



Red and black was my goal. I think it came out pretty colors, but it's definitely not the colorway I was hoping for.

So I decided to try again. (I have a bunch of Fishermans wool) So I tried handpainting in the crockpot. Everything ran together despite the fact that I wrapped individual skeins in plastic wrap. Out of four skeins, only two came out sorta okay.



and



Getting true black is more difficult than I thought. So, after some rummaging, I found some glass jars and decided to give it one more go.



I'll post the results when ALL the frickin black dye has been absorbed!