Sunday, May 16, 2010

Baby stuff


So my daughter is having her 1st baby, a little girl and so I have switched over to knitting baby clothes. I'm going to see her this coming weekend and going to a shower for her. Did I mention I dislike baby showers? But it's my little girl.

I will admit I like knitting baby clothes as they work up quickly and are so cute. I am using sock yarn for some of it as it is washable. I will be doing more but I'll have a few things to give her. Plus I pulled out the baby things I saved of hers and am soaking the stains out. (I hope)

It should be fun to see her and her brothers. I can't wait!

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Final version


As you may have seen in my last post, my first effort to dye 3 different fibers didn't turn out like I'd hoped. So I overdyed the "blue" silk with magenta. Then it was way darker and a blue purple so I used the only other purple and overdyed the mohair and cashmere.

They ended up much closer, at least in the same color family so I am using them as is. It should look pretty, I think. But I do love purple.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Dyeing different fibers


I spun three different fibers for a sweater. Cashmere, silk and mohair. They all went into the dyepot at once but dyestrike aside, they turned very different colors. The silk took up the blue but didn't soak up any red in the purple dye.

This is one argument for dyeing first because then the uneven dye is spread throughout the yarn when you spin. Not that it would have fixed the silk problem. I might try to overdue it or just not use silk in the design.

I'll do some test swatches. Maybe I should have chosen blue after all.