Rocket Yarn

There's a bunch of Rocket Yarn at Hanks and i've also just listed a bunch in my Etsy shop. Go buy some! :)




Here's the yarn I dropped off at Hanks ...

New Yarn Colorways

BLUE MOON - before and after reskeining

DEEP SPACE - haven't reskeined this one yet

DROPS OF JUPITER - before heat setting

Yarn drying from left to right: CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRY MOON, DROPS OF JUPITER and DEEP SPACE

Yarn drying from left to right: CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRY MOON, DROPS OF JUPITER, DEEP SPACE, BLUE MOON and (no name yet)

Ravelry!

As if I needed yet another internet thing to steal my time away .... this Ravelry thing is way too much fun. I finally got my much awaited invite last week and was finally able to join in the fun. Now I have yet another reason to stay up until 2:30am. I love that I can see what other people have done with some random skein of yarn they own that I also have in my stash. I already found several things I want to knit and so my queue grows and grows.

I was having some technical issues with it until I remembered reading somewhere that they designed it to be run with Firefox, not Internet Explorer. Once I downloaded and installed Firefox, all my Ravelry problems went away. And I must say, i'm really digging Firefox. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better than IE. If you don't have it ... you should. And it will automatically import all of your bookmarks and settings and stuff for you from IE so it's a seamless transfer. Now I don't have to deal with the annoying error messages I keep getting ever since I updated to the newer version of IE. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! :-)

If you're on Ravelry, look for me. I'm "Celena" ... original, I know.

More Yarn Dyeing

I decided not to reskien this one because I like the way it looks with the similar colors together. I'm going to dye another one just like it and reskien it so I can see which way makes it look more desirable. And my last crafty picture for today .... here's a work-in-progress bag I made.

Yarn for SP10

We were asked to blog about three yarns that we would like to try so here they are:

1. Malabrigo in Olive (left), Red Mahogany (center) or Marron Oscuro (right). I bought some for my secret pal but have never tried it myself. It was so soft and beautiful that I almost couldn't let it go.

2. Lorna's Laces Shephard Sock in the Gold Hill colorway. I've heard lots of great stuff about this sock yarn and i've seen some great colorways online. Would like to try it out sometime.

3. Cherry Tree Hill either Supersock (100% superwash merino) or their new Sockittome (80% merino/20% nylon) in color Java. I soooo heart this colorway! Isn't it gorgeous?

Do you see a trend here? Yep, I like dark earthy colors.

"Manly" Sock Yarn

My latest sock yarn. Kettle dyed rainbow style. Then hand painted to add a bit of a brown-variegated-blue-variegated pattern. Then kettle dyed again with brown to darken it up. Then kettle dyed once more to darken it up a bit more. It was still wet when we left for the river saturday morning so I wasn't sure what it was going to look like. I forgot about it when we got home because I was so sick. Got to check it out today and i'm happy to say that it turned out pretty much like I wanted it to. Some of the blue is a little brighter than I would like for it to be but I knew that was going to happen because of the dye I was using. I could add another wash of brown to it all to darken the blue part up a bit but I think I might like how it is now. I'll have to think about it for a while. Well it's time to get ready for Houston's swimming lessons. Lets just hope I can manage this without getting sick again. I still can't shake this overwhelming nauseau i've got going on.

More Yarn Dyeing

This time it was some sock yarn inspired by the flowering aloe plant in our yard. At the last minute I decided to use a burgundy rather than a peach and although it turned out more pink that burgundy, i'm very happy with the results.

And here it is on the niddy noddy that Brett made for me. I thought it would look better reskeined (sp?).

Yarn Dyeing Gone Right

In the dye pot ...

I can't even explain how excited I am about this whole yarn dyeing thing. It keeps turning out just how I wanted it to and that's a great feeling. So far all my dyeing has been of the kettle variety and i'm really digging how it's going so far. I made a warping board and will use it soon to dye some self-striping sock yarn. I really love the colorway above though and just might have to dye a skein of sock yarn to match. This is a bulky weight wool that I dyed with the thoughts of a felted handbag. How cool would some matching socks be? Or is it just me? Whatever ... i'm happy! I named this colorway "skeletons in the closet" because I used black dye with the hopes that the kettle dying would bring out all the different colors in the black dye. Get it? Or is that just me too? I figured if it turned out black and grey the name would still fit. I dyed another "Red Nancy" too but stuck it back in the pot this morning. I had one of my ties a little too tight which left some white spots ... and we just can't have that. :)

Here's my little helper in the kitchen ...

And here's a close-up of the yarn out of the dye pot ...

And here's my other little helper heading out to the deck to see what mama's up to now ....

And here's the finished product ... not the greatest picture but you get the idea. I'll take another one later today without the shadow.

Look What We Did Yesterday ...

It wasn't as dark as I wanted it to be for the secret project i'm working on ... so this morning, back in the dye bath it went.

To Dye Some Yarn

I found a great article on knitty about hand-dying yarn, which i've wanted to try out for a while now. Click here for the article. And the best part is that she uses food coloring instead of toxic dying materials. I've got a crock pot and cooking utensils, now all I need is some white superwash sock yarn and some food coloring. Ahem ... my birthday is in July, by the way. :-)