Last week, I was walking through Design Partners, this small art supply store that caters mainly to FIT students, and carries mostly non-fabulous yarns (but decent knitting needles and accessories), when I ran into this:

4 Skeins of Lion Brand Textures perfect for dyeing. They practically jumped out of the sale bin and requested to come home with me. It was only $8 for all four, so how could I say no? They are 100% wool and destined to meet Kool-aid at some point in the future.

Usually I wouldn't stash yarn without even a vague idea of a project in mind, but dyeing changes this. Down the road, when they are pulled out of the stash and dyed, it won't be like working with a potentially-unexciting stash yarn, rather more like working with brand new freshly-colored yarn.

This weekend I did some knitting, and even finished *something*, but neglected to take photos! tomorrow perhaps...

Also this weekend I designed Stephanie's new site! I hope you all checked it out. It was great fun. If you need a new blog or a new design, I'm your girl!

I finally got motivated and did the last 2 inches of ribbing on Orangina. So silly to take so long to do something so easy.

Here she is!

And the verdict? well, part of the reason I procrastinated on finishing this sweater is that I wasn't sure if I'd like it. Now that its done, the jury is still out.

This might be one of those knits that grows on me, and turns into a favorite. Or it might be one that I end up giving away. Linda says it looks stellar. We shall see. I'll try it out.

The Specs:

Pattern: Orangina by Stefanie Japel
Yarn: Elann Endless Summer Lara; about 5 balls.
Needles: Size 3 US, 24 inch Addi Natura circular
Pattern Size: Small, 36"
Actual Finished Size: Chest: 33" unstretched; Length: 20" (15" lace, 5" ribbing)

I followed the pattern pretty much word-for word. One thing though: its necessary to decrease 2 stitches when the front and back are joined for the ribbing, which the pattern does not mention. I did this at the side seams, which worked out.

The neckband is supposed to be joined for 2 inches, but I seamed mine for about 3.5 inches. With only a 2" seam, the neck and back flared out too much for my taste. I ironed the sleeve tops so they wouldn't wave along with the lace pattern.

I also steam-blocked the whole top, using an iron on hot and a t-shirt between the iron and Orangina.

Overall, a successful knit! I don't think I'll ever use the splitty Lara yarn again, but its shiny and soft in a finished garment. And, if I end up giving Orangina away, I'd consider making another one in a smaller size. Maybe in white like the lovely one over at Domesticat...

Its all shrugs, all the time over here at Streets and YOs!

So despite knitting 2 OSWs recently and a minisweater in progress, I've got my eye on another cropped cardigan-type garment: The Hot Lava Cardigan.

I noticed this one awhile ago, but it didn't draw me in until recently. The newly-purchased ready-to-be-dyed Lion Brand yarn could work quite well on it too..

I need to decide on a good color: something that would work late summer into fall. It might be perfect in the natural color that the yarn already is..like Winnie's Creamy Hot Lava.

But I've got the yarn-dyeing itch! Plus, I love knitting with hand-dyed yarn. The color variation keeps me going. I don't want anything too varigated - the color should appear solid, but up close have some dark/light texture.

Color options:
1. A very light muted pink.
2. Green, you can't go wrong with green. Maybe minty sage green.
3. Dark brown is calling my name, but I must resist. Besides, I don't really know how to get dark brown from Kool-aid.
4. Neutral tan color of some sort.. like beach sand.

While musing about color, I've begun converting this pattern into a worsted gauge. Originally, it is written for Manos at 3spi, quite loose. I'll try my worsted at a 4spi gauge.

Now I just need a stockpot large enough to dye all the yarn at once...

Its always about the colors. What color should it be, how will it feel, and (most importantly), will I wear it? Color is always my first consideration when choosing a yarn for a project. I am rarely driven by a fiber type so much as by what shade it is, how it fits into my wardrobe, the intended season.

For the Hot Lava Cardigan, I envisioned a minty green, like Altoids Spearmint:

However, preliminary tests involving Kool-aid dyeing did not quite yield the right shade. The closest I got is evidenced in the sample second from the right in the top row, below. In real life, it resembles that aqua shade often found in acrylic yarns destined for baby garments. oh no.

From left to right and top to bottom, they are in order of dyeing. The colors that turned out the best are the ones I did last.. guess I got the hang of mixing by then!

There were a couple shades that stood out for the Hot Lava Cardigan.

Not-so-Muted Pink. This was 2/3 pink lemonade, and 1/3 lemonade. Could be muted down further though, in person it seems very bright. Perhaps by adding a little tiny bit of green.

Duck Egg Blue. Equal parts blue and green, plus a shake of grape. This is like my go-to color. I am always drawn to it.

Straw. 2/3 yellow, 1/3 orange, plus a shake of grape. I loved the variation in this shade, but wondered about the wearability of the resulting garment.

Following a great deal of deliberation regarding color choices, I decided on muted pink. But, after mixing up an entire dye pot of just the right shade of muted pink, at the last minute I poured it out and went with Duck Egg Blue.

The dye pot is a 21-quart canner I purchased from Kmart for $20. It worked quite well for these 3 skeins(5oz each). They fit with no problem, and I probably could have added another skein too.

The final result is not the blue I expected, but I am very very happy with it. Its like a seafoam green, a darker variant of spearmint green.

The Kool-aid recipe:
4 Flavoraid Lemon-Lime*
5 Berry Blue
5 Raspberry Reaction (also blue)
3/4 packet Grape
1/2 packet Orange

*Flavoraid Lemon-lime seems MUCH more potent than KA green. It only took 4 packets of it to 10 packets blue! It also seemed to penetrate the skeins unevenly, leading to some lovely variation.

The minisweater moves onward. It is just past the point where you separate the sleeves from the body of the sweater.

I opted not to do the puffy sleeves, a decision that seems to have resulted in many more increase rounds. The sweater is worked from the top down, and the pattern specifies increasing every other row until the sleeves meet under the arms. It suggests that this happen around 17 rounds. Mine was 22 rounds.. and I have skinny arms! But maybe this makes sense, as I have a smaller gauge and skipped those extra sleeve increases.

The wool+silk combo is coming out nicely! Initially, I was concerned that the two fibers might not blend in together in the final garment. But overall, its looking good! The silk gives it a little depth and shine.

The only thing is, the newly-started front increases are leaving holes!

They are M1 increases on the purl side. They are done every other row at the front edges until the sweater meets in the middle. Obviously a different increase is in order. Anyone know a good one?

I am thinking about using knit front+back increases on the right side, one stitch in from the garter stitch border. This is the same increase used for the raglans, so perhaps it will match. Plus I somehow feel more comfortable increasing on the right side.

There is a very real reason behind my really slow knitting and lack of posting lately. Its called marathon training.

Here's how it goes down, three nights a week:

1. I get home from work in the evening, relax for a half hour or so.

2. Change into running wear, think about what route to do today, stretch.

3. Run, at least 4 miles, according to "casual marathoner" schedule. Marathon training is not a 'casual' endeavor. But okay.

4. Get home, completely sweaty, drink sports drink, and shower.

5. Make a culinary masterpiece for dinner. Recent additions to my repertoire this week include peanut butter on bread, and eggs+toast.

6. By this point its probably 9:30 or 10pm. Knit a couple rows and go to bed.

Evenings, formerly prime knitting time, are now prime running time! I am not complaining, I love running really. This year I am making an effort to really follow the training schedule without any slacking.

With any luck, I'll be on course for a 4-hour marathon. and that would make it all worth it.

My stitch ya neck out scarf pal is about to get really lucky. I just bought this yarn for the swap.

Its an alpaca from Peru, and is really really soft. The Yarn Tree was having a sale. I often find really great yarn there, but probably wouldn't have considered this pricey alpaca if it wasnt on sale.. The label says this yarn is not dyed, that the nutmeg color is natural.

Its destined to be the Turtleneck Shrug.

I love that I can just pick out this yarn and project, send it off, and someone will knit it! How great is that? Have fun, scarf pal!

A wonder of modern knitting came into my home last week.

and there is only one question: How did I get this far without it?

I used to think that owning a swift and ball winder was an unnecessary extravagance. They seemed rather pricey and space consuming. Then I started Kool-aid dyeing, and unraveling sweaters, and washing coned yarn, basically producing hanks of yarn. Winding yarn into balls by hand is an awkward and time-comsuming activity. By the time the the yarn was finally ready to knit with, I'd already had enough of it.

So, after a couple 50% off sales at Joann's, I was set. First I ordered the swift. That was cool. It made winding yarn a bit easier.

But its nothing compared to the ball winder. Check it out. It turned this (the recently-dyed yarn for the Hot Lava Cardigan):

into this:

in less than 5 minutes! (I know, we've all seen it at the LYS, but its kinda thrilling regardless)

The ball winder: what an invention! I just love how the yarn winds up into a nice organized shape. Before long, I wound up anything that even vaguely needed it - partial skeins left over from old projects, previously hand-wound yarn.

My previously messy stash:

turned into an orderly, organized collection.

I even attached the orignal labels to little half-skeins.

Everything that I sent through the ball winder emerged renewed with life, ready to be knit. Exhausted center-pull skeins stood up again and appeared new. Yarn that I used to think of as "some red yarn leftover from my dad's gloves" turned into "Lambs Pride Worsted, half skein, Spice". Ready for a project.

Thinking about buying one? Ponder no more. Its completely essential.

So, its mid July, about time to get moving on the sockapal-2-za sock, right?

I decided that to try out some new techniques for extra knitting motivation: a picot edge and the magic loop.

Magic Loop is quite cool. From the beginning, I was unconvinced that this techinique would work seamlessly. I figured there would be a seam to block out later. But there is no seam! It really is magic!

The picot edge, inspired in the most part by Claudia (see April 12 entry) , was kinda tricky. On my first try, I knit together the cast-on row with the 5th row after the YO row, rather haphazardly, and it ended up very biased (as in diagonal). So I undid that.

This morning, I was up uncharacteristically early, at 5:30 or something ridiculous, so gave it another try. This time I looked at , which recommends using an extra knitting needle to pick up the cast-on stitches. This worked - no biasing!

Here's what the back looks like:

Although the edge does seem to flare out a bit, I am hoping that will calm down with washing. It will, right?? I'm not sure if I'm up for redoing the edge again. but it is for my sock pal, so perfection is the aim..

Sometimes it takes more than one try to get it right. I am still not convinced that picot edge perfection has been obtained, but its getting closer.

Here's the second iteration of the picot edge (the first was very short-lived and did not make it to the photography stage). This 4-row facing was knit with the same needle size as the rest of the sock. However, even after a trial blocking, the edge still wanted to flare out.

Next I tried a using a size smaller needles for the facing, and knit it for 7 rows. I secured the facing by knitting one round together with one loop of the cast-on. It works a lot better, and though it wants to flare a little, mostly behaves.

I'm going with the above picot edge for this sock, and maybe try something a *little* different for the next one.

BTW, this yarn is Koigu, shade 822.

So there were some questions on the magic loop. Adele metioned encountering problematic loose stitches at the initial join. I haven't had this issue at all, in fact, I've found that magic loop causes less problems at joins than DPNs. A photo demo seems in order.

I learned magic loop entirely from this internet demo.

Here's the sock in progress. I am using a 32" US size 2 Addi turbo needle. Apparently longer needles work even better, but this one has been fine so far.

Note the closed loops at either side. This is one thing I've found is crucial for no-loose-stitches at the join: cross the cord at either side. This reduces the pressure on the stitches there.

Here are some close ups of either side.

This is about 6-7 stitches into the round. Since the back stitches are resting on the circular needle cord, when you pull the first stitch tight, the previous one can get even tighter than the needle circumference. So the little bit of unavoidable looseness can even out later.

Hope this is helpful to any aspiring magic-loopers out there!

Last night, I arrived home from a super-successful running class to find this:

A long-awaited copy of . yay! I've had the yarn on hand to knit Raspy for over a week now and have been waiting for this to show up. I somehow thought it would be a good idea to order the book from a Amazon Marketplace seller, which saves all of $3, and took 11 days. Now I know how Stephanie feels when waiting for things in the mail :-)

I paged through it while cooking dinner, and in a post-running haze, found this sweater very very cute. Why haven't I seen this on the blogs?

The beadwork seems like it could be great fun, and that girl sure looks good. and the patterning around the neck... so nice.

But let's be honest here - am I really going to wear this?? un-likely. I can just imagine picking it up a year from now, and saying "why?".

This is the tricky thing about choosing a pattern - finding the right blend of engaging knitting + wearability. fun versus function.

Perhaps this is why some people knit soley for others.. or why there are stories of being gifted with crazy intarsia sweaters. The knitter was thinking "oooo I want to knit this.. but I'd never wear it. Maybe my niece/nephew/grandaughter/mailman will.."

We all want to feel like our knitting hobby is worthwhile, that it produces high quality, eminently wearable garments. For me, that means stockinette one-color sweaters. Maybe a little cable action. Those kind of sweaters can get pretty repetitive.

There are a couple sweaters I've been wanting to knit, held up only with questions about their wearability. Like this cabled number from Rowan Vintage Style. and Teva Durham's Ballet sweater, guaranteed to add at least 10 pounds. But I think knitting them would be great fun. and why else do I knit if not for fun?

   

Back to Denim People, Raspy is the obvious choice for a sweater that I'll actually wear. It seems fun and somewhat irreverant with those dropped stitches, and it should be interesting to see this denim shrinking action. Raspy actually has a good mix of interesting knitting.

But in the future, I want to try knitting for others more often, and choosing patterns that are challenging, just for the challenge. I want to try to remove the "will I wear it?" question. Because its way exhausting. and I've already got running for that.

I finished the first sock pal sock! It took about a week of knitting time. I wasn't knitting anything else during this week, which should give you a sense of how much knitting time I have these days - not much!

But I am worried. It looks huge. Is it going to be too big for my sock pal??

Here it is compared to my standard ribbed sock. These socks both have the same yarn(Koigu), same needle size(2), same number of CO stitches(60). The only difference is that one has ribbing and the other does not.

The sock pal sock measures 8.5" inches around, unstretched, and my sock pal's foot circumference is 9". So this should be good, right? Even though it looks huge, it is really okay, right?

please say yes.