I'm dyeing again!

I'm so happy to report that I've got my dyeing mojo back again! It's been months since I've done any yarn dyeing, mostly due to the fact that I only have one skein of undyed yarn left and I am trying to sell some more of what I've made before I buy more.

But then I actually got around to doing what I've been planning to for ages ... start dyeing some of the yarn I've recycled from sweaters. And with as many of the great sweaters I've found at Goodwill, not very many have been white or cream. So I'm trying to get creative.

My first experiment looks awesome! It's the sleeve from a 100 percent wool medium gray sweater. I am using it like a sock blank. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, thinking that maybe the gray was too dark to allow much color to be noticed. It's lovely though ... a heathery rainbow. I have another I dyed very similarly, but it's still pretty wet. I can't wait until this one dries all the way so I can measure the length of the yarn (I also got around to making a homemade niddy-noddy this weekend - it's about time) and then put it into a center-pull cake. And then find a project to make. Yay! The last time I dyed sweater sleeves into sock blanks, I got both socks out of one arm, so I'll be interested to see how this one works out.





p.s. I also found the Ziploc bag that contains my one green rainbow sock and the yarn for the other. I have been looking for it for a while, thinking it was a lost cause.

To re-skein or not to re-skein ... that is the question

One of the dilemmas I have faced since starting to dye yarn for my Etsy shop is whether to re-skein - i.e. re-wrap the yarn in a different sized skein - after dyeing. One of the issues is that the yarn sometimes looks a little messy after the dyeing process, since I end up using a mix of foam brushes, squirt bottles and my fingers to get the dye just where I want it in the quantity I want it in. This ends up with some really neat effects, but the yarn sometimes is off-kilter in the skein after it dries, which is sort of annoying.

Some knitters have a preference one way or another, either liking to see the original dyed product (to see how long the color repeats are) or prefer to see the colors all mixed together (so they can get the idea of how the fiber will look knitted up).

So far, I've just been leaving the yarn as is because I like the way it looks after being painted. And it saves me time, which is awesome, because I'm a low-tech kind of re-skeiner, wrapping it around a board in my apartment. Still, I was curious if it would make much of a difference.

One of my favorite skeins was this rainbow-colored beauty.





I had pretty much decided to keep this skein, so I decided to re-skein it, just to see how it would look.



Hmm.

Granted, this picture was taken indoors in not-so-good light, but this yarn definitely loses some of its luster post re-skeining. One of my favorite things about doing one-of-a-kind hand-painted yarns is the variety of tones, shades and color mixes I can achieve. It's kind of hard to notice that when it is re-skeined and twisted all together. I think I'll stick to the original skeins for now, as messy as they might appear.

Because they are prettier.

And quicker. :)

She lives!

So have you ever gone so long without posting to your blog that you're almost embarrassed to post again?

Me neither.

Yeah, so I'm back. Obviously quite a bit of time has passed since my previous post, but I'm not going to dwell on that. I don't feel like going into a long explanation about everything that has happened in the last month (at least not right now), so I'll just post a few random thoughts and then try to do a better post soon.

- MRI and appointment with the neurosurgeon didn't go great, but not horrible. Just more confirmation that I am pretty much broken for life and there isn't anything surgically that can be done to help. The good part of this news is that I'm not getting a lot worse, and therefore don't need another surgery to fix a new problem. Kind of a glass half empty & half full at the same time. I haven't seen my pain management doctor since those appointments, but I have one scheduled on Monday. It will be interesting to see what she suggests for the next step.

- I turned 35. I am old. And feeling old. It's weird to think I am almost twice the age of the college freshmen on campus. No wonder I got called ma'am the other day in the elevator. Egads.

- I got a really cool wall decal at Target today. It's all black and is a leafless tree with lots of birds in it. I really like it and have stuck it on the wall by my bed. I think it's crooked though, so I will have to try to rearrange it tomorrow. I also hope it doesn't give me any nightmares a la "The Birds." That was a creepy movie.

- I am trying to decide if I want look for another place to live. One of the windows in my apartment leaks pretty seriously. It's been leaking for years and I've been complaining about it for years. The apartment management refuses to do what it takes to fix it for good. I said I may not re-up my lease if they don't promise to take care of it, but so far that's not really helping. I've been living here for almost 5 years though and don't really want to move. I like the location & some of the apartment features. It's really hard to find what I need (2 bed & 1.5-2 bath) with a W&D that also is wheelchair accessible. Just because units are on the ground floor doesn't always make them OK for me.

- I am so looking forward to spring! I love springtime.

- I bought an awesome bright-colored big umbrella today at Target! I have a normal-sized one, but when it rains I am always forced to make a decision to keep one half or the other of me dry. Sitting in the rain = more body surface to protect. I got drenched Thursday afternoon when I was out waiting for the bus for about 40 minutes in a downpour. I was putting off getting a new umbrella because I wanted something cute and really didn't want to get a big umbrella that wouldn't fold down. Luckily I found a really pretty golf-size one that collapses to the same size as a regular umbrella. It also has a carrying loop so I can just loop it on the back of my wheelchair and take it with me easily. Nice!

- My mom has been visiting, but is going to leave tomorrow. :( I love my mom - she's the best. It's been nice to have company in the evenings.

- I've been completely yarn obsessed lately. I have been knitting like crazy and have been experimenting with dyeing my own yarn. It's so fun! Right now there are two skeins sitting in the kitchen - one is a big skein of lace weight yarn dyed in reds & pinks that I heated in the crockpot and another is a skein of fingering weight dyed in pink, red, green & blue that I heated up in the microwave. Last weekend I dyed two other skeins. The first was a really ugly worsted weight wool that I ordered on the Internet that REALLY didn't look like it did in the picture! It was cheap though, so that's the only upside.

Here's the before:



During:



After:





That was overdyed with berry blue & grape Kool-Aid and a little bit of sky blue Wilton's food coloring gel. I'm calling if Forest Moss. (Did I ever mention that I'm obsessed with moss?)

Here's the sock yarn (this started with a white superwash wool (with a bit o' nylon):

During:



After:





That one had a lot of different flavors of Kool-Aid, including lemon lime, strawberry watermelon, lemonade, orange and either cherry or fruit punch. I can't remember. I named this colorway Rainbow Sherbet.

- And speaking of dyed yarns, when I went to ball up that green and brown dyed yarn, it tangled to an extreme. It took me FOUR hours to get it untangled and rolled up. It's lucky I didn't throw it in the trash.

- I'm also continuing to push myself to learn more knitting techniques and I am so glad. I made my first sock last week! I decided to look for a pattern I could do in worsted weight because I thought it might be easier & quicker than trying something with uber tiny needles and skinny yarn. Reading the instructions was kind of confusing, but I just jumped in and it started to make sense. Now I just have to make the second one! (It is weird shaped in the photo, but it actually fits pretty normally.)