Glow sticks

These socks are not mine

They're ShaylaMyst's socks, which she's making from her handdyed yarn. I thought the yarn was cool, though, so I made some :)

I got a hold of a limited edition of blank sock yarn from Bendigo Woolen Mills. Hope they have more of it, because it's nice stuff, cheap, and will likely be popular. I acquired ten :)

so there might be a bit more dyeing to come. hehe. Anyway, I wanted a dark yarn that would have short little shots of color. So I balled up a skein, and then made it into a big skein, wrapped around a chair and a gate post outside. It wrapped around 20 times, so my skein was about 16m around. Then I tied it in 6 places, so that it wouldn't tangle up when I had it in a pile.

I picked the yarn up by the ties and hung the yarn into my dyepot of navy and black, making sure these 6 spots were out of the dye.

Then I got out my small dyepot and, one by one, dyed the blank spots

Then, of course, I had to string up my long skein, and rewind it into a  manageable size :)

It has about 120 shots of color, so it should make socks with about 60 streaks each. Called this dye job "Glow sticks" ...lol. (The Astronomy class is about meteor showers)

Then I dyed up some fibre, since I had the dye out. Before I knew it, it was half-spun :)

Oops :)



I recently finished a few other things, too. This spin, which is merino/camel

Not sure I like the colors. Pretty sure I hate spinning camel, though it's soft. It's like angora - soft, fluffy and likes to make lumps!

Also, this roving hat for Jasmine. She picked the fibre and we split it into thin strips. Then I just knit a hat without spinning the strips. It works well, and the hat was very soft, but the colors... well, Jasmine likes it, anyway.

 I felted 4 inches out of the circumference, which made it fit a little better. LOL. Also made these silly little covered cedar balls

Ten, all together, just being silly and using scraps of sock yarn. Also finished these Pumpkin socks

The colorway is called "Pumpkin Patch". The yarn isn't very nice; it was a cheap wool/nylon single-ply I found in Spotlight, and thought I'd navajo-ply into a thick sock yarn. They're a bit too big, but very warm and thick.

As for the NEWT, I've finished with my 600y of 2ply from the fleece, and am now working on the 3ply. Not sure I'll have enough fleece to finish 600y of 3ply, but I'll spin it all and see. Here's some yellow 3ply.

My NEWT jumper (Stilwell) is up to the armpits! I have to finish it (and the fleece) by the end of the month to get my points for 75% (good old deadlines get things done). Then I just have to knit a shawl, hat, legwarmers and weave a skirt (!)

Is that enough stuff? Hmm... I may have cast on two hats and a sock this week... hehehe.

Cooties!!

Gotta love Garden Slugs, and their crazy googley eyes :)

The kids requested these in specific colors, so I did a little bit of dyeing first. They are fun to make, and the kids have been playing with them ever since. All three of them have been "sleeping" in rolled-down socks :)

Stained glass socks

It's 4am. And in about 3 hours the kids will start to wake up, and it's not my turn to sleep in.

Night shift. It's messing with me again...

Promise, I'll go to bed right after this ;)

Only bought this because I love the BFL/mohair mix for socks. Not a color I would have chosen, if I had more choices.

But I liked the yarn it turned into.

 I didn't think there was enough to make a pair of socks for my big feet, so I striped it with some Sportmate. The squares on the toe end... they are there because I always wear out my socks under the ball of my foot first, and colorwork means double-thickness. There's always a strand of "the other color" at the back.

These went into the Harry Potter game on Ravelry as a 'project inspired by a potions jar' (thus the little jars in the photo). All the colors completely distracted me from my NEWT for a while. But I'm back on track knitting my Stilwell jumper, now, and spinning some interesting yarn for Quidditch.

Ravenclaw came second in the House Cup last term, by the way... forgot to say. Hufflepuff won it for the first time ever (it was the 15th term, I believe), but the margin between first and third (Slytherin) was only 5 points more than the number of points I earned, so it was close!

Slytherin is due for a win again. It's a house tradition to win every second term, I believe; forget sharing :)

And now, to bed...

Lately

In the last week or two I have been dyeing

and spinning

and knitting

It's all working in around work, and I'm throwing in this quick blog around cooking tea. :)

Shiny new

I was very good with my tax return money this year. Most of it went into savings, and of the bit we had to spend each, most of mine went onto a bike. The kids have all gotten little bikes this year, and Byron and Jasmine are spinning around the driveway happily, but they like us to take them to more exotic places ;)

Today we rode the 6km around Victoria Park. They all did well, especially little Zac with his training wheels.

Byron probably would have done it in a third of the time without the other two kids, but it was more fun as a family thing :)

Anyway, now I can feel free to spend the remains on yarn! I got a collection of Madelinetosh Vintage, which is one of my favorites.

Duchess (very dark purple)

Mourning Dove (just in case my other skein ran out while knitting Alchemist... ended up using about 30g of it)

Steamer Trunk (in case I need more before I'm finished Stilwell)

Firewood (really love this color)

Terra (love this mixed with Firewood)

Then I got some fibre from Shadawyn, a fellow player in the HP game (whose birthday is today, August 31). The fibre club one is "Severus Snape" (she does a different Order of the Phoenix member each month), and it was my reward ;) for finishing my Potions OWL on time. Seemed appropriate.

Severus Snape

And since I was paying postage, anyway...

Hebridean Black

And then I apparently rebelled against the greyness of the NEWT and ordered some color from Kathy's Fibres.

Jewel

Dazzle (Jasmine chose this one for a hat)

Opal

And some BFL/silk. I do still love grey after all.

Bit more

The yarn is spun up for Phi

And I've finished washing and carding the fleece. I dyed some of it, but most of it is the natural light grey color.

It's hard to tell it's grey, but here's a comparison with half a bit of A4 paper

So all I have left to do to get to my 50% NEWT mark is knit up two more skeins of Madelinetosh Vintage into my jumper. I've done two skeins, and finished the sleeves, and now I'm onto the body :) I'm taking it to work tonight. Night shift has been encroaching on my knitting time, but I also like to eat and turn on the heater, so I have to do it. hehe. And yesterday I got distracted from Stilwell and spun up this 150g skein of 2ply... just to see how it went, you know?

Next time: new yarn :)

Wit Sharpening Potion

And so my holiday up in Ravenclaw has ended, with me finishing my Potions OWL about an hour before the deadline! I decided that while I was in Ravenclaw, who are the geeks in HP, I would be one. I knit the pattern "Tortoise and Hare Sweater" by Kate Davies, but added some Nerd.

Picture by Jasmine :)

The runes around the top say "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good". Then some music, and then a chart I called "waves and particles" (just to make is sound nerdy). The question marks are a nod to one badly dressed Dr Who, and the Sine waves were really just a rest from trying to decide what to do next and how to fit it in :D

Above the 6 inches of 1x1 rib I did 3 vikkel braids (which are fiddley and time-consuming!) and then wrote out Pi to 35 or so decimals. And look! More sine waves...

The colored stripes were a nice rest from Fair Isle, but officially they're Fibonacci Numbers. On the "8" strip I wrote out my Rav name (Alrischa) in binary. Binary is Not Shorthand!

Daleks! Cute little exterminators. Also some DNA, which was a fiddley chart.

It sure did test my wits. Look... steeks!

A weirdly shaped thing (so as to go around and around, which is far easier for Fair Isle) with no armholes or neck hole, though the stitches for the back of the neck are held on a string.

Where you plan to cut, you do 5 extra stitches, and then you sew a crochet reinforcement (holding each side of the center stitch to the next stitch) and cut down the center of the center stitch.

 It works beautifully, in theory. The crochet took me a long time (because I hardly even know how to hold the yarn for that) but it held the stiches nicely. Then I picked up stitches all around, folding back the cut edges, and knit the arms and neck.

Half-way through the first sleeve, however, the yarn remembered that it is Superwash, and so not as willing to stick to itself. The crochet edge started drifting off... and then the stitches. I had to do a quick and ugly re-reinforcement that I hope does the trick. Silly thing. It was a good experiment, but I won't use superwash next time!

And now I'm back in Slytherin (hopefully) and working on my grey NEWT. 

Check out the difference between my raw fleece, and my washed and carded fleece. This will end up as leggings, a woven skirt and the Sitka Spruce hat.

Made a start on the merino/suri/silk that will be Phi

A bit of Stilwell, with stripes :)