lisa’s place

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.

Because I am… well… me, I had to start dyeing some of that superwash immediately!

It looked so, so lonely sitting there all naked and alone:

I can’t decide what I think of the finished products, but it sure is fun!

I just tried this and that and didn’t worry too much about my technique.  Instead, I just tried to get colors that I would actually use (or at least enjoy petting – did I mention this is some soft roving?)  Additionally, I really wanted to avoid getting too much dye and having color seep out of the roving/yarn forever.  So far, I think I was successful.

I have a pretty limited set of dyes (a cyan, a magenta, and a yellow), and I am pretty new to mixing these particular base colors.   Using citric acid crystals is also new – I love that it hardly has any smell at all this way.

Here they are.

First, the dark blues and deep purples:

The pinks and oranges:

The blues and greens:

and finally, the lighter blues and purples:

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m a bit of a fan of bright and cheery colors.

Because I am the most incredibly impatient person you’ll ever meet, I had to start spinning some of this.

Here is the first bobbin of the green singles:

I think this will be really pretty when it is plied.  I might actually end up with a sockweight 2-ply yarn- yay!

On a completely unrelated note, I am loving how easy it is to post using WordPress – I’m afraid that Blogger made me a little crazy sometimes.  This is just so easy and so quick – it really only takes a few minutes.

Okay, that’s all for now.