Done at last, Done at last…

I finished the shawl on Thursday night at about 1 am… so Friday really. I then had to wash it, rinse it, and condition it. I finally finished blocking it at 2:30 am. But, I did indeed get it done in time. I was wrapped Friday afternoon and unwrapped this morning. There was true amazement over how light and airy it looked.

The shawl


Close up of the main pattern


Close up of the edging


We also gave my sister and future brother-in-law a couple of Riedel champagne flutes as Christmas gifts. A little later we decided to give them their wedding gift early… a bottle of 1996 Dom Perignon. The look on my sister’s face was priceless… wish I had had a camera.

Mmmm… vegetarian chili time.

Happy Holidays!

And then there was dyeing

Here is the romney yarn that I spun up and dyed for my SIL… it’s about 118 yds of fingering weight. For the dyeing, I decided to just have fun with the food coloring and pick two colors I thought would look good together; I thought turquoise and purple would compliment each other nicely. I mixed 2 oz of vinegar and 6 oz of water with the food coloring drops according to the box. After making sure the colors were well mixed, I tested them on a paper towel. The turquoise looked great… the purple… well, the purple was completely washed out. I had used just the regular food dyes… 6 drops of red, 5 drops of blue… it looked purple in the squeeze bottle, but nothing much showed up on the paper towel. In a fit of panic I pulled out the neon food coloring and decided to go for deep purple, as the box called it. I just added the drops to the squeeze bottle filled with the lame regular purple, shook it up, and paused when I realized that the liquid now looked black… tested it… yup, black. I thought, “What the hell,” and went with it… black and turquoise go together, too. The thoroughly soaked skein was placed on my purple plastic wrap*, and I proceeded to randomly squeeze the dye liquids all over it, patting it to make sure it went all the way through. I went heavy on the turquoise and used the black for accent. Actually, I was perhaps a bit over zealous with the turquoise… okay, I used all 8 oz… I thought it was all getting soaked into the yarn… no, it was forming a puddle under it… lurking… waiting for me to try to pick up my yarn package. The wrapped, sopping yarn went into the microwave. Five minutes was all it took to get the liquid clear. I think it’s lots of fun to watch the package blow up with hot air only to vacuum seal when the microwave stops… so cool! *grin* I rinsed the yarn with hot water, then slightly less hot water, slowly bringing it down to a more manageable temp. Then, I washed it in a citrus shampoo and conditioner to do away with the vinegar smell.

And here is the result of my dyeing adventure…



I’m not sure if I should name it or something… I have no idea what I would name it. I have a tendency to be very descriptive in my naming, which would cause this to end up something like Monterey Bay Lightning Storm.

I stopped by my LYS on Saturday and picked out both a matching and contrasting yarn to up the yardage. I went with a cotton viscose blend that’s really shiny**. One is a blue, which looks really nice, and the other is a peacock blueish green. I think they are numbers 12 and 16 here.

I hope my SIL likes it… I have no idea what she might be able to knit up with this selection…


*Unfortunately, purple plastic wrap was all I had… makes it damn hard to tell if all the color is exhausted…

**I like shiny.

Do I have to go back?

Back at work after a beautiful week off… if only the week had been longer… but we can’t have the week adding on extra days just for me, other people might get jealous… or pissed if they have to work. The unfortunate thing of the week off was I have come to realize that I need at least a month off from both work and school. The nervous twitch in my left eye actually went away for a couple of days; it was back this morning. *sigh*

I didn’t really get any knitting done… I finished my bookmark, so now I need to block it. I guess it will get into the mail eventually. I did get the spinning for my sister-in-law’s Christmas gift done… approximately 118 yards of fingering weight romney. I think I need to practice the whole spinning bigger. I’ve gotten damn good at spinning lace weight, which means I can’t spin anything else. Maybe if I got a lazy kate… just spin lots of lace weight singles and start making 3…5… 8-ply yarn… I’d be spinning forever in order to get anywhere.

Anyways, the yarn came out pretty nice; now I need to dye it. I don’t know my sister-in-law very well, so I have no idea what colors she likes. I was thinking of going with a green blue combo… everyone likes green and blue, right? Now to find a time my husband won’t be mad at me for making the whole apartment smell like vinegar and wet sheep.

Did I really say I didn’t get much knitting done a couple paragraphs ago? I did, look at that. *groan* I actually did work on the Sister Shawl at Thanksgiving. I can’t believe I forgot… especially since knitting seems to be one of the few ways I can impress my family. Knitted lace seems to truly amaze them, and it rocks my socks that it’s my skill they’re impressed with. I think it’s funny that my mother has told me more than once, “We never thought you’d be one to knit.” What she did think I’d do, I have no clue.

Sadly, knitting will be laid by the wayside for most of this week unless I need a stress break. Must get to work on the 15-20 page paper that is due come Saturday. Most of the work is reading all the articles and books I’ve been collecting… should have gotten started on it over the weekend, but laying around in my pajamas for a few days made me feel better. I’m such a procrastinator. At least I’m getting better… a couple years ago as an undergrad I would have just begun looking for sources right about now.

A few days of freedom

There’s nothing quite like sleeping in… especially when you haven’t done it in awhile. I had class all weekend… Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We had our midterm and the last of our lectures on Friday, and Saturday and Sunday were filled with processing papers, boxing them up correctly, and creating a finding aid (sort of an archive index). My group worked on personal letters* written to an enlisted guy in the Army who was stationed at Camp Roberts, CA during WWII. He was from Alameda, so there’s a local connection. We only sorted through the letters from his girlfriend/then wife, and his brother-in-law… 299 letters, cards, and telegrams altogether. It was a lot of work, but it was really interesting.

Stephanie** has left me advice on throwing the idea of relaxing my tension out the window, and by thus convincing me (wasn’t hard I think I already knew it to be a not-so-wise idea), has probably saved me many hours of frustration. Of course, I do think that part of the tension problem is from me knitting it at work. Definitely a very not-so-wise idea… at least the last few weeks… bah, who am I kidding it was a stupid idea. I had thought it would help me relax, and instead I strangled my needles with the yarn.

Now that the laundry’s done, I think I will sit myself in front of my wheel and spin up some more of the light grey romney, which I will then dye some color to be determined as a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law. I know she knits, but I have no idea what kind of stuff she likes doing, or what books she might find interesting. I figure I’ll use it as another opportunity to practice doing some dyeing, and hopefully, she’ll like it.


*One of the girls in my group had found them in an antique shop and thought they were interesting.

**Who I think is one of the greatest knitters ever (she doesn’t seem afraid to just jump right in) because she seems to have a lot of fun knitting or at least she knows how to laugh at the hard parts, although I think that comes after copious amounts of wine, which I heartily agree with as a salve for knitting frustrations.