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. 

Screwing up sleeves!

So, I had a late night pattern reading moment and made my Rolfe sleeves too long. But they knit bottom up and I had already attached them when I noticed. Ripping down is easy, but ripping up is a mess. Even worse when the ribbing is twisted. I cord to the rescue:

Insert the smaller size needle into the stockinette stitches 

Cut off the unneeded portion a couple rows up

Pick out all the random bits, unthread the running yarn. With new ball (don't use the running yarn you just pulled out, it won't be long enough) cast on 2 new stitches and begin icord, knitting the held stitches one at a time each row

Work an extra couple rows after all held stitches are used up

Much better. 

Going to the Whitewater Center in NC then a baseball game tonight, so I'm going to start some socks. 

Using up old sock yarn

So, that post about the kitchen redo?  Yeah, that was a stressful day.  While I waited, I weeded through my sock yarn collection and pulled out all stuff that didn't go with anything and I'm making some crazy socks with it for Larry. 

The pattern is Mr Pitt's Socks (aka Dad Socks). They've been fun - I'll try these with a single color next. Which I will get sick of in about 3 inches because single colors are dull.  

Also, I'm making a toddler sweater for Melissa's  daughter to go with the toy armadillo. Zinnia comfy sport - it's really awesome. I'm making Rolfe without stripes but having to play with gauge. In fact I have to rip out the back and redo it tonight. I'll take pictures when I have it redone a bit. :p

I also want to start work on <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/galiano-vest">this</a>with some new Hawthorne in <a href="http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Hawthorne_Yarn__D5420251.html">Rose City</a>but I'm trying to carrot myself into finishing other things with this. 

And finally - I've been re listening to knitpicks podcasts. I'm not very sophisticated in some of my methods - what I've been doing for decades works so I'm a little lazy - but episode 92 about weaving in ends is really excellent.  

New toy

Well, not really.  We got a fertilizer spreader. And even when you're 12, the coolest part is still the box. They enjoyed putting it together - spouse had to come home for an emergency dental visit.  Who wouldn't want to assemble a spreader with a preteen after that?

Fun design toy

So, if you want to waste A LOT of time, or maybe play around with creating your own fair isle designs, go to http://www.colormandala.com/ and make yourself some mandalas.  Really really fun.  My son showed me this tonight - dad's away at a conference for a few days.

Friday night dinner

Home improvement

IWe recently replaced out furnace and AC units. Nice, but not super newsworthy. Today we redid our kitchen. Our cat was traumatized. 

I still need to wipe everything down to clean up the dust, but it looks pretty. 

The cat hid in the closet all day, and maybe I'm getting exhausted from too many house projects, but I was pretty wound up too. So I pulled out my stash and reorganized, frogged some old projects I never finished and generally got control of some chaos, just not that chaos. 

Working on Christmas early

This year I'm trying to space out my Christmas knitting throughout the year. Here's Dinah, which is a silk and wool top and a silk mohair bottom. I did some modifications to add more shaping than the orginal called for. I think it came out okay.  Thanks to Amy for modeling it for me!

Almost done with Paulie

I literally have 4 more rows and the ivied bind off.  So already done with this!  I can't wait to try it on and block it. 

I made bread (http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/6788/amish-white-bread) this week so we're having French toast ...

Paulie no stripes

So, my flow for this year is one color or cable project, one straight knitting project and an option to do socks. 

I haven't posted about my straight project - Paulie (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/paulie). 

It's made from knitpicks stroll heather twead in Autumn (http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Stroll_Tweed_Sock_Yarn__D5420150.html) which is lovely for garment knitting-soft with a nice hand. The pattern calls for stripes but with all the slubs, I thought that was too much.  

I like it. Need to see it on. 

My on deck plain sweater is Dinah (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dinah). It's a great pattern, but it seems like the execution is tricky. Or yarn choice?

Toothed stripe done and blocked

Now it just needs to dry.  First picture is wet, second is dry and straight off the needles. I think I need to see it on. 

Hi

Well, yet another storm in GA. We got really lucky - only lost power for an hour or two, we were able to cook, nothing hit our house, all that good stuff. Lots of other people had much worse issues.  

On the knitting front, I'm more than half done with the second vest. And I'm getting ready to move to a different color way. :)

Oh crap

We didn't get snow overnight, we got ice. And this is supposed to go on all day. Ice is bad with hardwood trees, let alone Georgia pine. 

So we're taking showers and making breakfast while we still have power. 

Stained glass

In the tunnel out to the Navy Peir there is a stained glass museum. I love stain glass and want to someday use some as a basis for knit designs, so here's some scrap booking.