February Lady Sweater

You might remember my previous post about the dye session that I did one afternoon a few weeks ago.

The yarn was intended for the February Lady Sweater.
I swatched and cast on, and despite stuffing up the first raglan increase, I kept going. From then on it was all pretty cruisy until I came to change to the second ball of yarn. (we won't mention the ugliness of the button holes lol)


I continued on until I realised, with plenty of swear words and angry glares at the knitting, that the second ball was a very different shade of green.



For some reason some of the balls that I dyed didn't take the dye as well as the others. They're about 2 shades lighter and not as variegated in colour. I have no idea how I didn't notice this before. I did a few more rows and hoped that it wouldn't be too noticeable, but it really was :(
So I frogged it back to where I joined the new ball, but the ugliness of the button holes was really getting to me, so I thumbed my nose at it and ripppped it all out. Yes, it did kind of feel good ;)

So now I'm back to square one, with 4 lighter balls, and 8 darker balls. That'll teach me for not balling all of them up at the beginning, I guess.

I'm thinking that I will do the yoke in the darker colours (which are smoother and feel softer, I'm thinking that the lighter balls didn't have as much superwash coating on them, which is why they didn't dye as well and fluffed/slightly felted during the dye process)... and then alternate balls from the lace down.

Oh and I am considering doing YOs as the button holes and using smaller buttons, so putting maybe 5 in instead of 3... then I don't have to worry about my dodgy button hole technique.

What do you think?

huuuge dye session

I don't think I could stand the stress of doing this again anytime soon lol. But you have to love my huge (as Lucretia put it) "Pot of Doom"....

Lucky I'm tall enough to see into it LOL.

Anyway I decided that I would follow the trend setting crazy people converging on the February Lady Sweater

But I didn't think I had any yarn that was really suitable that I actually liked for the pattern. I think it needs a more smooth, plied yarn than a single ply smooshy yarn like malabrigo or similar single plied yarns that some people are using.... to bring out the stitch pattern. So I actually gave up and just sat back to watch the action. (2280 queued as of this minute!)

Then I remembered that I had a pack of Dashing yarn buried in one of my boxes that I was saving for something. Better now than never, right? It was a poo pale, yucko green. So I wacked it in the dye pot of doom, and set myself up for an afternoon of dyeing 600g of yarn.

I didn't foresee it taking all afternoon, but it took forever and a day for this pot to boil, even though it was only a third full. Here's another progress pic:

And finally the finished green....


It's still drying, so I haven't cast on yet...

Cable Swap

I received my cable swap today!

I love the colours of these socks! they are great.... and they fit my big feet, thank you swapper!

Lachie was more interested in the bottle of wine than the car...haha.
And yes my feet look like they are weird shaped, but they are really normal shaped feet lol.

flickr

yanked from Kris :)



1. Not available, 2. extra cheesy salami and mushroom pizza:), 3. Leave me alone, 4. A Splash Of Lime, 5. Another For The Ladies!!!, 6. The best ever mocha coffee, 7. Why is a drop of water clear but the lake is blue?, 8. Japanese cheesecake, 9. Happy Flowers -International Horti Fair 2006, 10. At wallyworld with my kid, 11. Too many Rabbits......in China, 12. turn me off.

Here are the rules if you want to play too:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker).

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?2. What is your favorite food?3. What high school did you go to?4. What is your favorite color?5. Who is your celebrity crush?6. Favorite drink?7. Dream vacation?8. Favorite dessert?9. What you want to be when you grow up?10. What do you love most in life?11. One Word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name

I had a few surprises doing this! When I was searching for my high school (I went to 2, so I picked the one I went to for the longest), the first photos that came up were from my violin tutor that I had in high school! I haven't seen her in probably 10 years.
Then when I was fiddling around searching for my kids names, I found a photo of a family who have 2 kids with the same names as mine... and in the whole wide world, they lived one town over from where we used to live when we lived in 'middle of nowhere' South Australia... how strange is that!