Fun with Color II

Take one bump white top (lovely soft stuff) and dye it as is; i.e. don't unroll it, just soak in water with detergent, then add to dye pot (Cushing's Navy Blue) in its now soggy state. Watch the outer layer drift apart and wonder about the inside. Once it has been through the bring-up-to-temperature and let-cool-down stages, drain it out.






Rewrap so the outside (now very dark blue) is on the inside, and the inside (now still mostly white with large flashes of pink and some blue) is on the outside. Don't bother soaking it again, it's still soggy. Make up a dyepot with Cushing's Cherry (that bluish red aforementioned in the previous post) and plop it in to repeat the heat and cool cycles.


Result:

I found the way that the various portions of each dye mix penetrated the bump to different depths interesting. I think if I were to do this again, I would pick colors that were variations of the same rather than two different colors so that the range of color would not be quite as extreme. For this experiment I did want to see the effect of the two different colors. Now to spin it up.

Fun with Color
This week, in odd moments, I've been playing with the dye pot. I don't really have space for a full dye kitchen and I don't have a good scale for weighing dyes with and, at the moment, I'm satisfied with playing with premixed colors, so Cushing dye it is. Take one pound of brown heathery Falkland Islands Rosemary wool. Add Cherry dye (a blue tinged red) and voila -

Black Cherry!













Moving on then to white roving (Bump A) I used Crimson in order to come up with this:
I'm not sure what I did differently between the two dye sessions but the second set of top is significantly less levelly dyed than the first. If I were going to use this as a standalone I would redye it and even it out but I'm not and the color variation will work well for what I have in mind.

There is a bump B of white but that is currently in the dyepot and will have to wait to take its turn on stage in due time.

A-dyeing we shall go, a-dyeing we shall go...

I've got the dye pot simmering. Light brown Rosemary wool top with Cherry Cushings. It didn't all strike on yesterday so I'm bringing it up to temp again and adding more vinegar. Waiting in the wings is white Rosemary wool top and Crimson Cushings. Should be fun.

Last week was a whirl through spring break with the kids - Easter with the PGrandPs for two days in Pennsylvania, then 3 days in MD with the MGrandPs and my nephew (age 4) and a visit with my brother and his wife (who rented a Cesna for the day and took the kids for rides), and evening visits with my sister who was too overwhelmed at work to stay and play much though she would have liked.

Taking a 4 yo to the National Zoo was fun, although I didn't remember the zoo being on a hill. You can go uphill or down - we started at the up side, so of course it was all uphill at the end. A good time was had by all and he slept all the way home.

I'm actually making decent but slow progress on the Herborgar. Part of the problem is I need to switch to wooden needles - the Addis are too slick for the yarn I'm using. Sylvia, I appreciate the offer on the walk through, but I think I'm past the setup part now where I was losing myself and into the part that's going to be much more mindless knitting. I need to take a hard look at the yarn grist I've got and the recommended grist and make an assessment of whether I need to follow your lead and lengthen the shawl a bit. My gut feel is that I do need to.

Being the compleat lemming when I finish a project, I often wind up starting the next project by picking the thing up from my to-do pile that I have most recently seen someone else doing. In this case, that is the Hyrna Hergorbar from the "Three Cornered and Long Shawls" from Schoolhouse Press. Yes, I'm using the translation also. I got the book last fall and have been drifting back and forth through it, trying to decide what first. What first has now been decided, thanks to Claudia, and I cast on two nights ago. I have quickly determined that this is not a shawl to knit while doing much of anything else. Classical music on the stereo is ok. Nothing else. I have gotten to row 21, 75 stitches, and am about to tink it back since I have made a mistake in row 20. I have enough of the pattern down visually that it doesn't take a whole lot of careful scanning of the chart for every stitch, but the middle and ends are where the action is and I've goofed it up.

This pattern is not amenable to my standard methods of keeping track of what I'm doing with lace. So far, I'm counting each side of the midline, but that will become cumbersome quickly. I'm still pondering the problem.

Sadly, pictures will have to wait until I have access to the camera again. I'm using some handspun I made with no particular aim in mind except "probable shawl". It's wheel spun, one strand alpaca and one strand tussah silk hankie. I've no idea on weight, wpi, ypp, or anything as I was a total sloth when I did this and just winged it. I'm pretty sure I have enough yardage available. Anyone want to take bets?

Well, the cold became bronchitis but the antibiotics are kicking in. I did finish and wash and block the striped one and that's much more interesting to think about. The finished measurements were 6 ft x 23 inches.






I took a picture on the Eldest Child (she has a black shirt to wear under it) and while she doesn't care for the colors, she admitted it was a. light and b. warm. Now all it needs is a shawl pin.

I hate having colds. I hate it particularly when everyone around me has a cold and expects me to do that motherly shtuff when I just want to climb in a corner and be left alone. I'm not even getting any knitting done. I did finish a book, Eyes of the Dragon, by whatsisname. Stephen King (yes I did have to get up and go look. I'm really that out of it.) It was good. I might even read another book by him if I could be sure it wasn't a horror story, not being into giving myself nightmares.

I'm almost through tucking in ends on the stripey one and will post pics as soon as it is blocked.