Dying an already knit peice

So, today I ended up with some time at home. I decided to finally dye the last peacock shawl. I decided to let the sun cook the dye using a black trash bag. Yay Georgia sun!

I'll take a final shot when it's dry and modeled. 

Sort of like a litter of kittens

You can tell they're related, but they're all different.

And now for something completely different

I'm going to do some testing for the peacock, see how the greens play together.
Wish me luck.

Thinking about what peacocks really look like

So I'm thinking about dying this shawl as I knit it, and this is making me think hard about how I'm going to accomplish what I want.  Peacock feathers in reality look very little like the picture in my head, though I think most people would get my stylized mind version (I"m borrowing others images, so to give credit where it is due, these come from http://www.tonyhill.net/, http://community.livejournal.com/chicks_with_ink/59453.html; http://www.foxriverbnb.com/tribal.htm).  I think the hardest part will be the iridescent green/gold/purple.  But I think I can get what I'm after by applying those colors to vinegar soaked yarn and letting them work together.  Or, I could end up with something the color of baby poo.  What an adventure.

Dying

More dying

These actually have more purple in them than it looks like in the sun, which is very bright today. The one with lots of green is fingering weight silk and wool, the three matching (I hope) space dyed teal-purple skeins are DK merino wool. The picture of all 4 skeins laid out on the table in the sun is probably the closest to how they really look. If you click on the picture to enlarge, that helps too.












I really like this dying method for the ease and safety, but food coloring is a little limited palette-wise. Black might be a welcome addition. Maybe it is time to branch out.

Sigh. Maybe I'll put it back on the porch for the birds to make something useful with.

You know when you work on something, plan it for a long time, put a lot of thought into it, into it's execution and then . . . . you just end up hating the darn thing like it's a living thing capable of malice?
Yeah; I'm there. So there. I. Hate. This. Sweater.

Maybe I hate it because it should be so lovable. It's so close to being nice! It's soft and cozy and really makes a wonderful fabric, the pattern I've adapted is coming out super; but still I just feel like the color is a total bloomer. I tried hard to take a plunge and work off my comfort-palette and I feel like Amy Rose has slapped me across the face.
Sigh.
I'm going to finish her, though (ripping out mohair is a fate worse than, well, lots of things are actually far worse, but I just don't want to do it, plus since I like the sweater itself, there's no point in my recycling the yarn). Heck, I've made it to the sleeves, that should take only a couple days to finish.
Then I'm going to do something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

Yup. That kind of completely different. Pfffffptttthhhh! Ravelry should start an adoption agency for ughs. (If you've never taken a spin through the ughs on Ravelry, you should - it's better than booze, chocolate, coffee, and flowers all rolled into one - though not better than spending 2 seconds with my spouse, but he's mine so put it out of your mind.)

Vis a vis Amy Rose

I have too many things going on at once.
Again.
I'm so unique, aren't I?
The blue monster is still lovely, and I'm almost done with the body, but the intensive knit and purl pattern isn't thrilling me right now, so 3 inches short of the top of the body, it sits quietly in the knitting basket. I'm almost done with the lined mittens, but they too aren't doing it for me because apparently, they aren't hot pink enough. So here's Amy - I'm working the Vis a vis pattern in reverse (Knitting the new classics Kristin Nicholas ISBN 0806931701) - meaning from the top down. I'm using a twisted lift increase at the raglan seams to eliminate the big holes that can happen when doing increases along a raglan seam. I really have to do this one again in a colorway I can wear - greens and blues for the silk and merino, blues and purples for the mohair, I'm thinking. The fabric this makes is really amazing, soft and light and not at all itchy.
I'm thinking for my next dying attempt of investing in Wilton or Ateco for dyes . . .

Sometimes hybrid vigor works out

When you look at just Mom and Dad, it's hard to imagine that the offspring wouldn't be kind of nasty and clashy. Yet, it works - well, I think it works.

Amy Rose the Hedgehog, part 2

Stank up the kitchen with hot vinegar last night dying Knitpicks Bare Silk/Merino fingering weight with store brand neon food color dye (purple and pink) to go with the first Kool Aid dyed round of Amy Rose.
The colors in person are pretty close to these pictures - I'm actually pleased with a photo I took in this case - and I think it will be really interesting to see them paired together.
Once this second installment dries, I'll knit some swatches. Maybe the Vis-A-Vis Pullover, maybe a cardigan?
Please let me know if you have a great idea for this stuff. . .

Amy Rose the Hedgehog

Instructions are pretty much the same as yesterday.

Yes, the little one is going through a hardcore Sonic phase.
So what was I thinking doing with this? Haha! Knitting the New Classics by Kristin Nicholas has a pattern for something called the Vis-A-Vis Pullover (I'm sure someone on Ravelry has it up to see somewhere - I'd use R more, but the need to post photos via flickr is just more work than I'm willing to do more than once in a great while) which used Applause (bulky weight mohair, silk, rayon and wool). I want to dye my own, in separate strands and work the sweater this way. So here's the mohair, I think I'll pair it with Knitpicks silk and wool dyed more tame shades of Amy pink . . .

UPDATE:
We're sitting in the living room and the small one looks out the window and says "Mom, there's a bird eating your yarn". Yup, a pair of titmice were plucking Amy Rose for their nest. More reasons to deal in food safe colorants!

The things you can do with food coloring!

This was a truck load of fun! I would highly suggest it as fun for the over 5 set. Safe, easy clean up, lots of creativity to be had. We didn't wear gloves, but we did change into black sweats for the occasion.
So we started off with

• plain white vinegar (1 cup)
  
• cool water (3 cups)
• these two combined in a large bowl wherein we soaked for about 20 minutes
  
• 4 skeins of Knitpicks Bare Silk/Merino fingering weight (I re-skeined the one into 4 small, loose skeins, so if the whole was 440 yd/sk. we got about 100 yd in each)
  
• a package of normal food color (liquid, store brand, red/yellow/green/blue)
  
• a package of Betty Crocker Neon gel food colors (pink/orange/lime/purple)
  
• 3 Pyrex microwave safe dishes
• many spoons to mix with
  
• small cups and dishes for mixing colors in
• our instant kettle full of hot (not boiling) water to mix with food color

What we did to the yarn:

• Once the yarn was soaked in vinegar, we gently run it out (don't rinse). After the first skein, I left the yarn wetter to allow the colors to bleed (semi-squooshy to the touch), but if you want very distinct color sections, drier will work better.
• Lay it out as flat as possible in the dishes, to avoid white patches on the bottom.
  
• Paint, pour, slop, whatever. The color liquid you have in the pan, the muddier the skeins will be, sometimes you want this. You can mash you yarn gently with a (clean) spoon or fork to get the color distributed as you want.
• Microwave on high for 2.5 minute. Take out of the microwave, let rest for 2.5-5 minutes. Microwave on high for 2.5 minutes.
• At this point, the color should be set (any remaining liquor in the pans should be clear and the fiber should have taken up all the dye). Take the skein out and inspect (with a fork, the stuff will be HOT). Bare patches? No biggie, apply more dye and re-microwave. Sort of like batiking, actually, that was a cool discovery.
• Once all dye applications have been microwaved twice and the liquor runs clear, hang them out to dry.

Thanks to Anne C for the general outline of how to dye with food coloring/Kool Aid. Tomorrow or Thursday, we're going to try the KA.
See the second picture? I think we're going to need some more [FBI guys] paper towels! Clean up also consisted of Windex and papertowels with one or two tiny patches of bleach/Comet (the purple and pink gel were a tad stain-y).

Kool-Aid

Okay, here's our target:
Knitpicks Bare Silk/Merino fingering weight (440 yds per sk, I'm going to use 2.5 or so of these) and fingering weight mohair from the Wool Peddler.

And here's the idea for the color . . .

Socks, one down

I really like this yarn, in fact, I can see it working out for some small gauge sweater patterns that need some strength to their hand so they don't get too drape-y. And for a man's sweater, where a too-soft hand would cause problems.

Still haven't gotten a decent picture of Soryu, but maybe if the sun comes out . . . .

Oh, and Kool Aid dying? I have a snap of an idea I'm going for . . .

More ideas for child safe dying

So you don't want all those pastels, eh?
How about this? Use onions and beets, or just food coloring? I like the idea of being about to do some browns, maybe make some nice low key entralac socks, and to supplement Kool-Aid's lack of strong blues . . .

Kool-Aid?

There are many places that will tell you how dye fiber with Kool Aid, but I have to admit this one appeals most. It has nice pictures! Knitty has a nice entry on this as well.

And so but, I'm thinking about spring break. The little one is very into color theory and playing with grown up stuff, so maybe dying some small batches in many colors and making socks out of it would be fun.

Maybe these?

Meatsheep, front and back

So here it is, out on my porch. I had to go back and do some fixes to it, like the arm gussets and adding the border to the bottom, but all in all, I feel like it was an overall success.
If the bottom border looks really stupid (like a hula skirt) pipe up today and I'll 86 it.

Maaaahhhhh! The meatsheep is eating my hands!

Ouch.
Not really - I'm almost done with sleeve number one. The fabric, as I've said, isn't lovely, but the colors are really nice. I think you can see the Fassett influence in how the colors play out, too. I think it's got some nice cranberry/mountain laurel/granite/bark things going on, so it fits with the hiking motif I've been working on. The V's are sort of mountain-esque, or like the views on Mount Desert - the reflections on the mountains in the water and the trails of ships in the water. I think the variation of the colors goes well with the V's.
The front is a lace-up placket, sort of like a Guatemalan cotton sweater-shirt from the 80's. I think a couple more days and I can mail it off.
:)

Meatsheep continues . . .

Maybe a little less than halfway up the back. The colors are really lovely. It has decent hand, too, though it will never be soft and cosy. The Mad Crocheter told me she's heard that people have some problems with Noro being hard and scratchy, maybe I'll write up this pattern and it can adapted to this.

Once the V splits, I have to use two balls of each color to work the pattern and that means 6-10 balls at once. So I carry the whole thing around in the 3'x3' box it was sent in. Not what you would call portable. :)

Finally, here's a snap of the Annabel Fox sweater on.