G. Knerd

This weekend, I decided to finally bust out the crock pot and do some yarn dyeing.  I’ve dyed yarn once or twice before, and I’ve always enjoyed it, but I’ve never really been serious about it.

I think that’s about to change.

It all started with some nice white wool yarn, which I wound into super long skeins.  I’m not exactly sure why I decided to hang them from the curtain rod, but Monkey Kitty sure was curious.

After taunting the cat a bit more, I plopped the yarn into the crock pot and added some water and vinegar.  Turns out, my crock pot will hold about 450 yards of worsted weight yarn (although it would probably prefer less, the crock pod doesn’t actually get a vote in this scenario).

After letting it get sufficiently warm and steamy, I decided to start with some blue dye, in a relatively random pattern.

Then I added some green dye, because green is the best color.  Anyone who says different is lying or delusional.

Then I did something that anyone who knows anything about wool or dyeing or washing sweaters would tell you was wrong: I took a chopstick and I gave it a good stir.  I didn’t like the white spots in the original color placement, and I didn’t want such distinct color patches either.  Plus, I figured this would be a good experiment to figure out if it was really that easy to just felt yarn.  Worst case scenario, I was out a couple of skeins.

Then, I added some yellow.  Because, you know, I’m never satisfied.

I also totally stirred it again after that.  And then I let the yarn soak up the dye in its nice warm bath.

What happened next?  I’m going to save that for next time.  Here’s a hint, though: what do you think I could make from 450 yards of worsted weight awesome?

I try hard to think about finishing even when I’m starting things.  One of the worst feelings when knitting is getting partway into a project and realizing, “Oh crap.  If I’d only done X when I started, I would have been able to do Y, which would have been virtually invisible.  But like an idiot I did Z, so I can’t do Y, and now that’ll be the only thing I see when I look at this project.”

You don’t have those thoughts too?  Just me then.

One of the places where obvious seams tend to drive me absolutely bonkers is within borders.  I don’t mind the seam between the thing-being-bordered and the border itself – after all, that seam is supposed to be there.  It’s the seam between where-you-started-the-border and where-you-ended-the-border that tends to get to me, which is why I spend a lot of time thinking about how to avoid that.

I was apparently spending so much time thinking about it, in fact, that I only remembered to take one picture of the entire process with Marissa’s Wedding Blanket border.  So for lack of pictures, I’m going to describe it, then I’m going to show you the results.

The border I decided to go with is a leafy edged border from Knitting on the Edge (an excellent book, by the way, although I’m convinced there’s an error in the particular pattern I chose).  It’s got a few stitches in garter stitch on one side to keep it straight, and on the other side leaves continuously form and taper off.  It looks really elegant, especially when executed in a cream colored yarn.

When I cast on, I decided that I would use a provisional cast on so that when I got to the other end I could join them invisibly with kitchner stitch.  And then I started knitting.

And knitting.

And knitting.

When I got to a corner, I figured out how to turn a mitered corner in pattern so I wouldn’t have to break there either.  And I kept knitting.

And knitting.

And knitting.

And eventually, after months had passed, and over a hundred leaves, and nearly two dozen feet, suddenly I was done.

Of course, I reached the end of the second ball of yarn exactly one leaf away from the end.  I was sorely tempted to just quit and fudge it.  The only thing that stopped me was the understanding that doing so would bug me until the end of time.

Now, you know all those instructions for knitting in the round that say “Join, being careful not to twist”?  And you know how difficult it always is, in that first round, to determine whether or not a twist exists?

You should try it with a varying width 22-foot-long knitted border.

I triple checked to be sure that I didn’t have it twisted anywhere and even though I’ve checked it twice since joining, I’m still not entirely convinced that there isn’t a twist in there somewhere.  But after checking and rechecking, I eventually decided enough was enough and used a regular kitchner stitch to join the beginning to the end.

Anyone want to guess what went wrong?  How about if I remind you that part of the border pattern involves garter stitch?

I ended up with what looked like three rows of stockinette within the garter stitch portion.  I quickly ripped that back, did a more advanced kitchner where one side ended up looking like purls while the other side stayed plain knit, and voila…

…we have a nearly perfect join.  A non-knitter wouldn’t even be able to find it.

Now, all I have to do is block it, seam it onto the blanket, and call it beautiful.  It’s like I’m nearly done (we’re going to ignore the fact that we’re talking about 22 feet of seaming, okay?)!

I just hope it’s not twisted…

In my last post, I restated the rules that I’d put in place for starting work on Erica’s new wedding blanket.  To recap:

1. Finish Marissa’s wedding blanket first
2. Finish Tristan’s cARGHdigan first
3. Figure out the schedule for knitting, so I would know when I was slipping

I’ve now broken all three rules.

Whoops.  I’m sure no one saw that coming, right?

The thing is, I had a choir retreat I had to go to over the weekend.  And Marissa’s wedding blanket is too big to reasonably go anywhere at this point.  And the Blanket Thief’s cARGHdigan…well, I’m winging it as I go, so it’s really hard to get very far on it without him sitting next to me to measure against.  So, actually, it was with his blessing that I went off to my choir retreat weekend with the neat little knitting kit I made in my last post.

Of course, I promptly took my first beginning and frogged it, as I realized the finished product would be much too big.

And then I tried making a small square using the dishrag method (cast on 1, increase one on each edge every other row until desired width, then decrease one every other row until one stitch is left).  Turns out, that method works great for dishrags, but not for things roughly the size of a quarter – it looked less like a diamond and more like a drop, actually.

So I went back to the original construction, but then I had some trouble with picking up the triangles after the center squares – I wasn’t picking up enough, and it was kind of starting to bubble up in the middle.

Can’t you see the dome forming?  I’m making a blanket, not a series of turtles, so this was off to the frog pond as well.

It’s looking much better now, but I’m not going to show you that.  Erica requested that I do something between radio silence and complete disclosure when it pertained to her blanket (because she’s actually a reader here, and she wanted some element of surprise), so these are about the most detailed pictures you’re going to see until after the blanket is delivered.

I have no idea how I’m going to do that either.  We’ll just figure it out as we go.

When I decided that I was going to knit Erica a wedding blanket, I said there were a few rules:

1. Finish Marissa’s wedding blanket first
2. Finish Tristan’s cARGHdigan first
3. Figure out the schedule for knitting, so I would know when I was slipping

On the other hand, just because I decided to wind some of the Cascade 220 hanks doesn’t mean I’m actually starting, right?

As soon as I took that picture, I realized it looked slightly phallic, so I tried to fix it by reordering some of the blue…

And ended up with Yarn Leia instead.  Apparently my talents lie elsewhere.

You might be asking – why are there eight of them?  Well, I figured eight hanks would be a decent start.  The pattern I’m using is knit with four balls (two of each color) at a time, so with eight hanks it’s like I have two sets of knitting.  Not, you know, that I could actually use two sets of knitting at once, but…well, if I could, I could, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of sets, I then took four of them and put them in the bag from a sheet set – I love that it fits the yarn perfectly, has a pocket for the needle, and even zips closed.

It’s like having my very own blanket kit!  So exciting!  I can’t wait to use it!

Not, mind you, that I’m allowed to yet.  I still have miles to go on my other projects first…

…crap, I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to resist this.  It’s new and shiny!  Pretty please can I knit with the new shiny yarn?