Oh! I forgot to post these. Late last week I got pictures of the wedding dress I dyed “live and in action”. This was definitely an off-beat bride at an off-beat wedding which is actually what made me feel comfortable enough to take the job. And I think it turned out quite nicely. What about you?
Well since I last posted there was a week-long break in the weather, but now we’re right back to over 100 degrees every single day. Just in time for Tour de Fleece! Running in tandem with Tour de France, this spinning event falls right in the middle of summer here, so its a good way to find some spinning energy when all I really want to do is sit around in a kiddie pool full of ice under a fan. Ahhh
Anyway, back in March or April I dyed up this pound of Cormo using Wilton’s Cake Dye and it did amazing and magical things.
I’d mixed Teal with Royal Blue and got this great turquoise/aqua with splots of darker teal/blue and splotches of violet purple where the royal blue broke. Oh how I lusted after this fiber! But the deal I’ve made with myself is that I am in business, and I have to at least try selling everything first. So this with went me to Yellow Rose. A full pound of this cormo that I’d named Magic.
Oh dear readers, how terrified I was! I just knew that someone would see this at the festival and fall in love with it as I had, and I would HAVE TO SELL IT TO THEM! The horror! And indeed people did see it, and people did comment on it, but somehow (magically) no one bought it. Four different braids of 4 ounces of this amazing stuff and no one bought it. I brought it home and immediately claimed it as mine. It was meant to be!
I spun on it some, but then Tour de Fleece came along, and I’ve spun on it every single day.
It’s still doing amazingly magical things. Making me love it more and more. I’m down to the last 4 ounce braid, and am almost sad to be seeing it come to an end.
Except that’s part of the joy. Even once I’m done with spinning it, then I get to knit or crochet with it. So really, I’m not even close to being done with this yarn.
And that makes me terribly happy. Sweaty and sticky and heat exhausted, but happy.
Done done done! Well kinda.
Back in February I posted about the Eire silk I was spinning.
I was a bad bad knitter and never measured the second skein, so I only have the estimate of 1,200 yards for a finished amount. Anyway, since then I’ve been working on a pattern with this silk. I’ve got the draft done, AND the first shawl. Well, kinda. I messed up on knitting part of it and as a result didn’t have enough to fully finish it symmetrically. But its still a very very happy making item.
I’m now working it up in KnitPicks Chroma and will be submitted it to their Independent Designers Program. I’ll let you know soon as its available. It’s be designed for any striped yarn, especially hand spun which can often have odd yardage amounts.
This was approximately 1,200 yards of handspun mulberry silk singles.
I’m extremely pleased.
So … sorry I’ve not been around much. Recently it has felt like all of my energy has gone into moving through the day, not leaving much for my fiber obsessions, much less telling you about them. I suspect it has something to do with this.
Have I mentioned that we don’t use Central A/C? This year we’ve put window units in the bedrooms, but that’s it. *thud*
So I had 1,500 yards of alpaca/merino/silk blend fingering weight that I didn’t know what to do with. I’d dyed it this fun sky blue and dirt brown that doesn’t appear to have appealed to anyone but myself. So it sat on the shop for a while, and then I took it down to do something with.
My friend Emily had recently finished this really cool crocheted shawl, which had reminded me that “Oh yeah! I like crochet!” so I went looking and found this extremely cool looking pattern called Cape Shawl (Ravelry link). It called for laceweight on an E crochet hook, but I had fingering weight so I went up to a K hook. I knew it would effect the size, but figured as long as I didn’t run out of yarn that would be fine.
It was a very close call.
Whew! I did have to modify the final row just a teeny bit to have that much left over, but it worked. Then I stretched it out on the floor and though “Oh My.”
Those shoes are mine. Size 10s. For scale. Yowsa.
I thought about leaving it the original colors. I rather liked it, and at this size it was mostly going to be a curl up on the couch and be warm wrap (yanno versus a go out to dinner wrap) so if the color was a little odd, no biggie. BUT I am a dyer after all, so over-dyed it was. And what shade did I go with?
Fire Red!!!! Bwahahahahah!!!
It did rather fascinating things, it turned the blue more purplish is, the brown went more chocolate covered cherries brown. And the entire thing … GREW!
Just for scale, I am about 5’8″, which means the size of this shawl is …
Epic
