1st Work In Progress Wednesday

WIP Wednesday, an idea created by Tami’s Amis and Other Crochet .  You can check out the links to everyone participating at her blog.  I discovered this great idea through The Blog Hub group on Ravelry.  I feel like I can finally share what I am working on, since it’s not all baby stuff anymore.  I still have a baby something on the needles though, that has to be finished.  I am very excited about both of my projects this week!

The first I started a few weeks ago, but hadn’t really worked on.  And only one word is needed to describe my excitement: Wollmeise!  Yummy yarn!  And my first time casting some on.  The pattern is Simple Skyp Socks.  I started with a different pattern, but I think it was too simple for my taste.  So I ripped and started these.  I believe the colorway is My Old Blue Jeans but I’m not quite sure since the yarn came from the big “not so perfect” sale, and therefore the colors were not marked.

Next, I have finally cast-on my Citron!   And boy is it addicting.  I mentioned in an earlier post about the SP 15:Refresh swap I participated in that I received some amazing Malabrigo Lace in Col. China colorway.  I love it, and was thinking about making the citron since I saw it!  Then, when reading the pattern, I saw that it actually calls for Malabrigo.  This will be the first time I make something in the actual yarn it calls for. I can’t wait till I’m done with this, and I think it may have even turned me onto lace knitting!

Overdyeing

So I had this ball of KnitPicks Shadow in Pink Posy that my Mother-in-Law gave me for Christmas.  Now, I LOVE the color pink but for some reason this color just didn’t speak to me. I tried to knit a few things with this yarn, but it is a lace yarn which I’ve never knit with.   I felt like a frog because I was “rippit” “rippit” constantly….. I was hoping to make something out of it, like a scarf or whatnot for my MIL’s birthday, since she gave it to me.   Well, after so many tries I just couldn’t deal anymore, so I put it back in my stash and basically forgot about it.

I spend some much time reading about knitting, probably more than I actually spend knitting.  And one of my favorite websites is the KnitPicks community.  This community is the best, so much help and support for knitting and other fiber related arts!  I love talking to them, and they got me very interested in the idea of dyeing my own yarn.  I didn’t even realize that you could overdye yarn till I saw a blog post about it though.  Finally I decided that I would pull out that lace yarn and try dyeing it.  Maybe that’s all it needed for me to like it again.  So I did!  Here’s my process:

Here’s the yarn before I started.

I created a few small yarn skeins out of the lace yarn, and soaked it in water for a few hours.

Then I put some Tropical Punch Koolaid in hot water with a  bit of vinegar and put the lace in to let the yarn soak up the dye.  I actually thought it soaked up as much dye as it could since it wasn’t doing anymore.  The dye wasn’t exhausted since the water was still pink, but I think I was just being impatient.  I took out the skeins and let them cool down and the yarn was striped since the skeins were tighter than I realized.  This effect was fine with me, because I didn’t want the yarn one color anyway.

So I tried a new technique.  I used the squirt bottle technique using some Dark Cherry Koolaid, and a bottle of black dye which was made with Wilton black icing dye.  I did it outside , and actually rinsed it right away. The dye didn’t all set, but I was very happy with the result.  And the funny thing is the yarn ended up matching yarn I was given and planned on making winter hat with.  Well, I found a pattern to make some lace winter gloves on Ravelry.
The dye didn’t all set, but I was very happy with the result.  And the funny thing is the yarn ended up matching yarn I was given and planned on making winter hat with.  Well, I found a pattern to make some lace winter gloves on Ravelry.  I’ll post about them once I actually start, which will be after the baby knitting kick I am on.  Every has to have babies all at once, don’t they??