Over a year ago I unraveled most of a thrifted cashmere sweater. Hooray, right? You'd think I'd be all over that yarn. Not so. I'd pull it out occasionally, but my love was still poisoned by thoughts of the unremarkable bag of a sweater that it started life as. So this weekend I decided to change things up a bit.

hello. we are impossibly soft (and not entirely color-accurate).

Once I got the whole thing unraveled and wound into balls (I heart you, ballwinder) I assessed the situation. I had about 150g of laceweight-ish yarn. So I rewound 4 strands of the yarn together, into 25g hanks (I heart you too, niddy-noddy). So! Six, 25g hanks of approximately fingeing-weight yarn ready for the dyepot.

the end of the unraveling job

I dye fairly infrequently and, like most of you, I don't have the tools or the setup for the fancy stuff. So, once again, I pulled out my trusty bag of KoolAid packets and got to work. 12 flavors (and three empty vials of food coloring) later, I emerged on the other end of a Sunday afternoon with six little bitty bundles of colorful cashmerey goodness. I have to say, I'm rather pleased with the outcome.

this is a more accurate representation of the colors

I got my best results when I dyed each skein multiple times with different (yet closely-related) colors. It gives a bit more depth of color. Also, the original aqua played a bit of a role in the final result. You'll notice that my attempt at yellow came out as more of a chartreuse, and the orange has some greenish notes to it as well.

That's it! Reject sweater + fruity drink mixes = vibrant yarny love.

Posted by Elli at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

1) I finished sewing up Demi! There won't be any pictures until I locate some buttons and do a little seam-steaming, but she's almost there! Do you know what this means?

2) I am down to ONE unfinished project! Just one! I'm still a little shocked about this. This in turn means that...

3) I can finally start some new projects! Swatching has ensued. Plans are being made for yummy projects which involve...

4) Stashbusting! This is some Alpaca Cloud I overdyed on Sunday evening. It used to be "sunlight heather" (aka blah beige) so I took care of that with a whole pile of lemon and orange flavored koolaid. I am really happy with the results and I'm hoping that it'll be just right for the project I have in mind.

And since we haven't had enough babies around here lately...

5) The nephewling is cute. So is my dad.

Posted by Elli at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

Friday and Saturday were devoted to dying, spinning and plying.

roving, singles, 2-ply (plus pink merino I Navajo-plied to free up a bobbin)

Score - the vision in my head 0, willful wool 1.

The colorway was supposed to be more of a fiery reddish orange with a little yellow thrown in for interest. The colors I ended up with aren't terrible...I just can't for my life think of anything I'd want knitted out of them. Also, It appears I should have spun my singles more tightly since the two-ply is pretty relaxed and doesn't look very durable.

Oh well, this one lands in the learning experience camp. An overdye might be in order. Unless someone can think of something nice to do with 170g of crappy neon wool...anybody?

Posted by Elli at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Mittens: part I

I am going to knit a pair of Fair Isle mittens. Yes, indeed.

I joined Stephanie's Knitting Olympics. If you haven't heard about it yet (which would be difficult as it seems everyone in knitblogland is doing it) go over there to read the rules. Since just thinking about Fair Isle makes me go all clammy, I figure it will be a good challenge for me. And, in the spirit of destashing which is also sweeping knitblogland, I am going to use a book I already own and some sock yarn from the stash. How's that for frugality?

The book is The Swedish Mitten Book, by Ingrid and Inger Gottfridsson (how cute is it that their names match?). I think this is the modern day equivalent, but I'm not sure.

I have until February 10 to learn to knit continental with two hands. Wish me luck!

Mittens: part II

I've wanted to show off these mittens that my friend Janis knitted for a while now. Janis is the most modest person I've ever met...I had no idea she'd finished these until weeks after the fact. As friendly revenge, I'm showing off for her.

Cool, huh? The yarn is some that I dyed (trying to match her scarf there) back in July. Hooray for collaborative projects!

Posted by Elli at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Angela asked about the Kool-aid recipe for the octopus* sock yarn, so I thought I'd share. It's pretty simple.

I used one 100g skein of sock yarn and the following Kool-Aid combinations:
-darker blue: 1 packet Berry Blue
-pale blue: 2 packets Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade
-pale green: 1 packet Arctic Green Apple and 1 packet Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade

If you do more than one skein at a time you might have to increase the Kool-Aid a bit (?) I don't think I exhausted any of the dyebaths, but this was months ago and I can't really remember all that well. Experiment at your own peril.

The self-striping yarn tutorial found at ginabeana is great. If you plug in your gauge, the number of colors you want and your desired stripe width and it tells you exactly what to do. I did a 5 row stripe, in case you were wondering. Knitty also has a good article on dying that shows color swatches for some flavors. Can I just say how much I love the smell of Kool-Aid dyed wool? It's like scratch and sniff stickers.

In other news, I cut it a little close, but it looks like I'll have enough yarn to do a second Octo-sock. I have a whole gram to spare.


But where are the other 3 grams? Grrrr. Maybe the label weighed 3 grams?

*why octopus? The colors reminded me of a little tag painting of an octopus that Susie did over at boygirlparty.com. Her shop is closed for the time being (sad) but she does really fab work. I love her owls and octopi.

Julia wanted to know where campus is. I've never attended IU...I leave the school-going to Thunk these days. Maybe if they had a PhD program in knitting it would be a different story.

Posted by Elli at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)