lisa’s place

Why does life always get in the way JUST when you get on a roll?  I’d been doing so well posting regularly and remembering to take pictures and such… and then… well…

At any rate, I will be returning soon (if all goes well, that will be Monday).

For now, here is some roving I dyed in a range of colors.  I’m thinking to ply each color with the same solid color, but I can’t decide which solid to use.  My initial thought was black, but I am starting to wonder if that might not be too rainbow-y.  White would definitely wash out the colors, while a neutral like brown or gray might just look poorly planned.  Any thoughts?

Here are the colors (the black is in there because I was think of using it… try to pretend it isn’t there, please):

Wow, these really look overexposed.  Sadly, I am kind of excited by this (given the usual darkness of my house).

I’m thinking to use the yarn I spin from this for a vest.  I’d really like to hear thoughts about colors I should consider using as a second color for plying (Mom, that especially means you - comment already )

Back soon, I swear.

My nephew’s first birthday seemed like a great excuse to make Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Tomten Jacket (ravelry link).  I spun up some BFL in greens and browns with some hints of blue:

The blues were so much more visible in the singles.

As a two-ply:

The tomten jacket was a really quick knit - and surprisingly not boring (as I expected all that garter stitch to be).  I’m really excited about making another one, maybe even Jared’s adult version of the jacket.  Have you seen that?  Seriously, go take a look - it is unbelievable!

I followed the instructions for the jacket in Knitting Workshop and Knitting Without Tears (they are quite similar).  I started and finished knitting this project while I was sick with that horrible plague of February - the spinning was done in December and January.

Here’s the finished jacket:

I had a little bit of extra fun with the zipper.  No idea why I made such a big deal about putting it in, it was quite easy (once I just put the dang thing in).  I basted it in by hand and then machine sewed it using a slightly longer than normal straight stitch.  Easy as pie.

It’s a little big for the boy right now, but he’ll grow into it soon.

See those little remnants of birthday cake on the cheeks and eyebrows?

The dyeing bug has hit me hard.  I had to put all of my supplies away so that I’d stop playing with them.

After the first batch of fibers, I wanted to try for some lighter colors.  I think this is potentially going to be difficult for me - for spinning fibers, I am very drawn to the natural fleece colors and deeply saturated jewel tones.

I used a pretty simple immersion technique (more about this soon) for the first fibers I dyed and was able to create deep and somewhat saturated colors:

I wanted to be able to dye some fiber that would have a little more variation to it when it was spun.  The easiest way to do this (or so it seems to me) is to leave some undyed areas in the fiber.  Instead of using an immersion technique, I painted the fiber and used an oven steam method.  I used wool rovings this time (instead of superwash).

Here are some of the results:

As you can probably see, the purples and blues seem to be my favorites right now…

I added some orange-red to this one, hoping for a sandy brown and I actually had pretty good luck.  This roving is very reminiscent of summer to me, very beach-y.

I also dyed this roving using an immersion technique similar to my first try, but using slightly less dye and I applied it in a somewhat different way (more on this soon, too):

I can’t seem to get a photo of this one that really captures the colors.  It is definitely mostly purples and greens, but there are also many, many shades of gray in this roving.

That’s all for now.
Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day (have some green beer or something).

Remember this?

Here it is as a finished 2-ply yarn:

Both of these photos are overexposed, but the color is pretty close.  There is a little more contrast within the yarn than there is in these photos.  All these darned cloudy days here and I can’t get good light for anything.  It feels like spring, but it sure doesn’t look like spring!

This is about 340 yards (310 meters) of about a heavy-ish sockweight yarn.

It is pretty bright, but I am really liking how it reminds me of spring and new plant growth - really bright greens with hints of yellows and blues here and there.

I had a little trouble getting my twist right on both the singles and during plying.  As always, I spun lively singles and then added a LOT of twist when plying.  Unfortunately, I think a bit more twist was required during plying.

Ah, well.  Lesson learned.