The New Baby!

My plan for Monday was to go to the monthly Blue and Gray hook-in. 

On Sunday I realized that most of the more intricate part of my Forest Secrets rug was already finished.  I needed something easy to do so I could talk and not have to concentrate on hooking.

I needed to dye background.  When I plan a background, I like to get out my least favorite leftover wools and overdye them to get them used up.  I had lots of dark green that I had used in other rugs that I wanted to overdye with some dark blue to get a very deep blue-green.

I started with one teaspoon of dry royal blue, simmered the wool for a half an hour and then let it sit until the water was clear, about an hour.  The royal blue hardly showed at all over the dark green.  Darn!!!  So I dump in another teaspoon of dry dye and did the whole thing again.  Still not dark enough!!!
The next time two teaspoons of dry dye went into the pot.   Well, that took all morning and into the afternoon!    Finally some better looking results. That's what so frustrates me about dying.

The picture looks a lot lighter than the wool really is.

At least I now have a good mixture of bluish greens.  They hooked up nice.  When you look at the rug the background really looks almost black.

The Blue and Gray meeting was well attended.  Doris did a great job of reporting the highlights on her blog Moments in Time.  She also has many more pictures.  My intentions were good, I just talk too much!  Here's the only picture I took, Marions breathtaking rug with peacocks.

And now for the baby pictures.

On Tuesday evening we went to Jill's (Jill's Life in Stitches) to pick up our new kitten.  Jill had kindly found a little calico for me.  Oh is she adorable!!!  I held her in my arms all the way home. 

We have a very large bathroom so that is to be her space until we can introduce her to Deiter and Tipper.  We usually quarantine a new kitten until the vet clears her healthwise and she gets her FeLuke test.  She made it through the night without a fuss.  I think she was tired out from the ride and being in a new place.  Today when I got up she was ready to go.  I wanted to get a first picture and asked Zip to hold her.  She was very wiggly!  He looks like he's putting the strangle hold on her!!!  (she survived!)

Oh,  we named her Penelope.  AKA Penny or Little Peanut.

She loves playing with Mommy's shoes.  You can see how tiny she is!

Today we took her to the vet for her first checkup, kitten shots, flea treatment, and worm medicine to give later.  She came home feeling really lousy!  The shots always seem to slow them down, but her little shoulder where they gave the injection was hurting her.  She cried a few times.  I got a soft pillow and laid her on it and sat in my easy chair and held her.  For hours. 

This is like having an infant!  But she is sooo cute!!! 

This evening she is feeling better.  She finally got off her pillow and walked around a bit.  I'm hoping by tomorrow morning she'll be back to her energetic little self.  I will save the worm medicine trauma for a few days.

Have a good week!

Dyed Rainbows

This is not something I usually do!

My Forest Secrets challenge rug is taking me places I never meant to go.

Yesterday morning I talked to my dear friend Doris (Moments in Time).  Most of you know she is an expert hooker in the traditional methods of fine hooking and dying.  I was bemoaning the fact that I was going to have to dye some wools for my project and dying is just not my favorite thing.  She as much as told me, BUCK UP!  Well, she was more diplomatic than that, but it meant the same thing.  She really said, 'take yourself by the hand and get out that dyepot!'

I have taken dip dying classes from her but have never done it on my own.  First time for everything!  I didn't take pictures while I was doing it, probably because I had no idea if it would turn out OK or not.

I started easy with some graduated shades of gray.

Then got braver and went to purple with a little silver gray to calm it down.

Then on to the more challenging stuff.  I wanted a few different combinations of yellow, green, rust and a little bit of purple shading on the end of one.

But there you have it!  On the picture above you can see a brighter, more yellow green strip through the middle.  I had used hunter green from Cushings for my green.  When I got all the dipping done, the green looked too close to the blue end of the spectrum so I mixed up some chartreuse and just redipped the middle.  That's more the color I was looking for.

So thank you, Doris for giving me the kick in the butt that I needed to do this!

WOW!  I'm happy with the effect!

It's NOT working...!!!

In my last post I had written about finding a cool pattern to make a sweater vest.
Since I have all this wool roving lying around, I decided to spin my own yarn to make the vest.

I decided to dye the roving a dark blue since I wear jeans most of the time. Yesterday morning I got up early and started on the project. Zip and I had a lunch date with our friends Willa and Chuck so I wanted this done before we had to leave for Chambersburg. I wanted to start spinning as soon as we returned. I am very impatient!!!

Here the roving is in the dyepot.
I used cheesecloth so I could lift it out easily without disturbing the fibers.

Rinsing in the kitchen sink. The color looks OK.

The cheesecloth also made it easy to wring and squeeze a lot of the excess water out of the roving.

Hangingn by the woodstove to dry.

There were enough areas that had dried for me to pull off a small portion to begin spinning. I had this idea to include little blips of color into the yarn. I planned on using some silk fiber. First I tried pulling off small pieces from the silk caps, but silk fibers are so long that it was difficult to just get little pieces. I then cut off little pieces about 3/4 inch long and tried spinning them in with the blue roving. That didn't work well either. The ends stuck out like eyelash yarn. Didn't like that!!!

So I got out this pink wool that I had used for needle felting. I tried spinning it in a little at a time. Seemed to be working better.

Still was unable to make it look like little blips though!

I spun about 1/4of a bobbin full and then decided to see what the yarn would look like knitted up.

Here i'm plying the yarn. I use the hand wrap method when I only have a small amount of yarn to do. You may (or not!) be curious as to why I would put two strands together. When you spin yarn it gets twisted together to make it stronger and keep the fibers from coming apart. It will curl back on itself when you take it off and try to wind it into a skein or ball. When you try to knit with this single strand of yarn, the knitting is distorted on the diagonal due to the twist. When you ply the two strands of yarn together, you twist them together in the opposite direction. Voila! Your yarn comes out straight and ready to knit.

The samples. And I don't like the look of the finished knitting! Too blotchy looking or something!!!

I was trying to get a chunky yarn since that is what my pattern called for. I'm not good at chunky yarn. Every spinner has their comfort zone. Their own individual 'ME YARN' that you spin without thinking. Mine is thin! I have to work at getting a heavier yarn. So I'm going to start over today and just make my 'me year' and ply three strands together and that should give me the right thickness. And there will be no pink blips. Since this is a pattern that is all done in ribbing, I think the blips distract from the pattern.

When I was digging out the pink wool, I came across my ONLY needle felting effort. I took an hour-long mini workshop a few years ago. We made a needle felted egg. You all know that I'm usually not a person to make cute things that will sit around and get dusty...and dustier! But Easter was coming soon so I made a few more eggs and a bunny. Just for practice.

He did turn out kinda cute!

OK! Been there and done that!
It was fun for the moment, but I don't want to do it again. OH, did I mention that I bought a load of felting needles and foam to do it on, before I decided that it wasn't my favorite thing???

Maybe I should just stick to rughooking....