Yarn Diva

She's Back!

Sorry, it has taken me WAAAAYY too long to get this next post up but it has been crazy busy here since we are finishing up end of school year things! I am finally done with my responsibilities to two organizations that took up way to much of my time! We haven't had any plans this week in the evening and I can't remember a week like that since school began!

I have been knitting a bit but I have been dyeing and winding yarn more than anything!

7 Skeins of yarn, all dyed by me!  The skein in front is the one going to my Dye-O-Rama Pal. I am not going to tell you anything about her so if you are her and hoping that I will drop a hint that I am your secret pal you can just forget about it! I will say that I made her complete the dye-o-rama meme and she was a trooper, that was one long questionare!  This has been so fun, I love the dyeing! I have four skeins left to dye, I think two of them in the fingering weight are going to become my Amazing Lace KAL project! I think the superwash Merino has been my favorite to dye with so far!

Kevin made my dyeing habit a little easier by helping me complete my Warping board. I used Scout's instructions to start off but quickly found some issues with her instructions, great jumping off point though! He helped me make a few adjustments and we had a great board with multiple length abilities! It is fully customizable and allows me to remove pegs when I need longer sections between pegs and I am using it to rewind the skeins too! Here is a shot of it in action...

This has made making yarn look like this.....

or this...

Much much easier to create! Thanks honey! 

I am off to go spend the afternoon at DD's school, end of year projects and parties and all! Have a great day!

A little lace is nice!...and updated!

I REALLY dropped the ball on this posting didn't I! I needed a place to drop the HTML so I wouldn't lose it until I had the time to come in here and post it correctly! I really meant to get back in here over the weekend to fix it but with the inlaws here and one of the girls sick and DH having to leave in the middle of the weekend to go to a derailment for work and two soccer games I just didn't find the time! Sorry that you had to look at that alone if you came to visit and were expecting something cool to look at or read!

My mother and father in law came to visit to see a couple of the last soccer games of the season. It would have been nicer if M hadn't been sick and it hadn't rained all weekend! My MIL is the one that taught me to knit and she is constantly surprised at how fast I picked it up and how likely I am to start something that she finds scary. We did have a good laugh at her first sock which she brought to show me. I got her started and left her with instructions that she followed really well...until she redistributed the stitches for the foot and had them off by one needle so she finished the toe sideways! I have to give her credit for going online and learning how to kitchener but when it goes sideways it looks a bit funny, that and she decreased on every row all the way down to 4 stitches so the toe was a bit pointy!  She ripped it back while she was here and we did get quite a bit of knitting done since it was raining and we couldn't go to Toad Suck!

While she was here she got me started thinking about dishcloths again, I of course had to make this:
 

For

And if that wasn't enough ____-A-longs in my life right now, I had to join this too!

We have lots of travel plans for this summer so I thought I would be able to get lots of cool pics of my summer knitting visiting various parts of the country!  That my dear friends is what the Amazing Lace ring was all about in the first place!   

The Amazing Lace Join | List | Random Previous | Next Powered by RingSurf

Now I am off to finish my warping board for the Dye-o-Rama, I bought some more yarn this weekend so now it is time to go soak some yarn and get ready to hit the ground running for the rest of the day!

I will leave you with a picture of Mudgie and her new hiding place, DH won't let her in the house when he is home so she has found a new place to hide! I swear I didn't stuff her in there and make her stay so I could get the picture!  And she isn't as pissed off as she looks!

Warping Anyone?

We have the supplies for the warping board...I decided it was a necessity if I was going to do any more self striping yarn and that was really a no brainer wasn't it!  As fun as it was to have three kids help me wind a 36yd long skein of yarn I decided to do the right thing and head to home depot! The man there was really very helpful even if he thought the project was a bit wonky! He did seem surprised that there were detailed pictures and lists of things I would need on Scouts blog! He seemed impressed that there were enough of us out there strange enough to WANT to make these that written instructions were even necessary!  I am off to wash the kitchen floor before the inlaws get here! Have you ever noticed how Kool-aid stains tile floors? Guess that is to be expected of DYE!  Makes you wonder why we feed that stuff to the kids doesn't it!  I will post pictures of the board in action later this weekend, I am going to try to get to making it this afternoon before my husband comes home or he and his dad will take over help and then I will not be able to say I did it myself!

First Attempt

What do you get when you take this

Add this...

Do this...

and this...

...You get this!


Not so sure I like the colors but I will see how they knit up!  I did learn some things but I think I will try the wilton colors and saran wrap next time!  More dyeing later today!

Notes to self

Tonight is my first foray into dyeing...I have a few things I need to remember when doing this again!

1. Having a child help keep the yarn on the chair as you are winding the 440 yd skein into the correct lengths is helpful, Having three is NOT!

2. Tie the yarn loosely into shorter segments marking which colors go where in your design, USE DIFFERENT COLORS for the different colors!

3. Tie MORE segments once you have the color sections masked off! This will keep the massive tangling to a minimum, unlike the tangled mess you had in your kitchen sink when you pre-soaked the yarn before dyeing it, thus making it much easier to determine which parts go in which color later!

4. Have more than half a bottle of wine chilled and ready to go or you will have to break into the margaritas!

5....Isn't it fun what we will do for a stranger on the other side of the country!

I Love the smell of Kool-Aid in the morning!

We got our swap pals yesterday for the Dye-O-Rama swap! No I am not going to tell you who I got! Having blogs makes it so much easier to get to know your swap pal! I am so excited to get started on this, I am going to do a varigated yarn first and then try out a self striping variety. I need to go get the supplies for a warping board, I think that will be much easier than winding my yarn around chairs spaced 18 ft apart! My living room furniture kind of gets in the way! I suppose my husband might object if I wanted to start selling off furniture so I had space to wind yarn but at least it would help pay for more yarn to dye!  Maybe that is something I need to think about!