yup, I did. I split the remaining 170g of Lion Fisherman’s Wool from the hat I made after the Harlot event. I wasn’t in the mood to make another white hat. ;)

So Saturday, I prepared the dyes. I used Rit dyes in Kelly Green, Country Blue, and Golden Yellow. I put each color in a canning jar (mixed following the directions in Dyeing to Knit), then put the jars in water in the dye pot with water to heat them up. folded the skein in thirds and stuck a bit into each jar of color. cooked awhile, let it cool, then prepared it for steaming to set the color.

I still had a good bit of dye left, so I took the remaining yarn (which was still in whatever you call the oblong balls that that yarn comes in) and shoved half of it into the jar of blue and let it sit for a good while. then went and carefully pulled it out and flipped it over into the green dye and let it sit for another good while. then I steamed it and propped it up to dry, which wasn’t going so well with it still being in the ‘ball’. so Sunday I wound it off on the swift and it dried much quicker after that. and it’s quite pretty.

this is the second one, post steaming (or presteaming)

both skeins after drying

and again

I spent most of Sunday afternoon/evening and last night dyeing up a skein of yarn for the dyed yarn swap. I’m not sure if I like it. well, parts of it I like, but other parts… I’m not sure if I can make it ‘better’, or if I’ll do more damage than good.

I did learn some good lessons though:
* winding giant skeins goes a lot easier with help
* don’t wander away from the steaming pot. I don’t know what happened last night, but it didn’t smell good. (I let it go a few minutes longer than the timer. It smelled very vinegar-y when I came back down. when I took the lid off, the yarn kind of deflated.)
* when attempting to do the fair-isle-like dashes, follow the book’s advice and don’t do them at the same time - you can a very run-together mess.
* when doing long stretches of color, there has got to be a better way than ‘hand painting’ the entire thing.

the yarn was still a bit damp when I left for work this morning. if anyone has suggestions for getting it from giant skein to normal sized skein, I’m all ears.

yes, I took pics. (while waiting for dh to return from the store with saran wrap, I had a ‘duh, I should be blogging this’ moment.)

I pulled out the easter egg dyes on Sunday and came out with this:

It’s some crewel/needlework wool I picked up at the thrift shop a while back. I love how the colors came out!

also, as of Monday night:

join me in the heel admiration society.

one sock done, one to go

the toe looks a bit wonky. will have to practice a bit more…

yesterday I finished swatching my Wool of the Andes - now, to measure and abuse the swatch. then I can start my sweater.

last night I strung the beads for sock two. so far today I’ve managed to get thru the cast on, first beady bit, and one row of lace. more to be done on the bus tonight. I’m a little worried that I’m going to run out of yarn though. anyone have some leftover Dale Baby Ull in the purple shown above? (I have a feeling I’ll run out 3 rows away from grafting the toe or something ridiculous like that. *sigh*)

I decided to finally attempt kool-aid dyeing. I had picked up an old skein of 100% Virgin Wool (Rochelle brand) in an ‘Eggshell’ color. Crappy color, but I figured for 99c couldn’t pass it up and it’d be great to practice kool-aid dyeing on. :D that was probably back in November/December. I don’t know what possessed me to do this today, but as I type, the wool is microwaving. I ended up getting a 1-oz skein and a 2-oz skein out of it. I used one packet of Jamaica flavor - it looks like a really dark red (the flavor tastes pretty good too, though I’m not a big fan of the stuff) - on the small skein. I’m planning to use Mandarin on the larger one.