The Crafty Lizzard

I have had this hank of yarn wasting away in the bottom of my stash for over a year patiently waiting for me to make it all color-y and pretty. I finally did it this past weekend -- I dyed my first hank of yarn. If you don't count the few times that I have tie-dyed, this was my very first foray into dying and I think I could VERY easily be hooked!

It took most of a Sunday, but here's how it went:

1. Re-skeining the yarn. I decided to double the length of the hank that the yarn came in and, lo and behold, my dining room table was basically perfect. Granted, I do recommend keeping any curious furry-little-creatures-who-hunt away from this process!

2. Soaking. Not very exciting, I admit. But it was kinda a cool pic so I had to include.Looks sorta like spaghetti, no?

3. Ahhh....the color. The first attempt at anything should always include your favorite things, right? Hence, big, bold, red! I used Wilton's Red-Red gel food coloring -- a lot of it. Over the course of the afternoon, I used 1 and a half containers!

4. Straight from the pot, before the rinse.

I tried a combination of dip-dying and what I guess is called the hot-pour method. When I was about halfway through the yarn in the dip dying fashion, I poured more dye over what was still heating in the crockpot to achieve a really strong kettle dye effect. Hard to tell in this pic tho.

5. The Finished Product.

I'm incredibly anxious to see how this actually knits up. But that's an entire different story! Must finish current projects first.

High photo content ahead

The past few days have been knitting/yarn overload.

Thursday was the usual crowd in the usual place but the energy was UNusual. Knowing that we had new goodies there for us to take home, a field trip the next day and just the general end of the week was enough to make grown women positively giddy.

Since the Ravlympics had just finished, everyone had lots to show...

These were the finished Ravelympic projects that present on Thurs. night.

Let's see...clockwise from top left: J's Twilight Mitts, K's Twilight Mitts, My iTARDIS, my socks for mom, M's Bella's Mitts for her daughter, and J's So-Called-Scarf (which only took her a mere 4 years to finish!)

Then the moment where I think we were all dumbfounded by the secret cast-on ninja skills of Karen. So much so that we made her demonstrate the next day...

it's extremely fast and she doesn't even watch while she's doing it.

Then we had Kate's first pair of socks. Well, at least the ones that now have her totally addicted to socks! (Yes, another one into the fold!) A year ago she wanted handmade socks so badly that she wanted to pay someone to make them for her. Now, she's come a little further to the dark side and will be making socks forever.

Friday...after getting up much earlier than I thought I had to (stupid work meeting!) we all met again but this time for a wondrous yarn field trip -- but that's another whole story.

But now we saw Cat's Endpaper Mitts that added to the Ravelympics haul.

All this colorwork REALLY makes me want to start my colorwork project. Must finish current ones first. Must finish current ones first. Must finish current ones first.

Then after all this, some of us went to see "Alice in Wonderland." We missed seeing it in 3D but all the same in was still a wonderous movie. Even if the music was just a tad disappointing to me. (not bad, just not stellar)

Now, I'm going to leave you with the latest yarn that I acquired form the Merc when I 'happened to pass by' last week...Mmmmmm....