dyeing

Summer is coming…

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | FO's, Fiber Collective, blah blah blah, crafts, dye, fiber, stash acquisition | 3 Comments

…so why am I looking for alpaca projects? I do live in Southern California after all…

Lots of things happening around here. I wish more were fiber related, but we have been super busy and my folks came out to stay with us for a couple weeks to help celebrate the twins’ fourth birthday. There have been trips all over the place, including Disneyland (which I hear will not allow needles in the park…good thing I didn’t have any down time there)!

So, it started with the Cookie A class I took after meeting her at Unwind. I designed my first pair of socks! Of course I am still test knitting them…so we’ll see how they turn out. Then my folks came bearing gifts from Frankenmuth.

Pictures from my parents trip to Frankenmuth

My folks scored me 2 3/4 pounds of fluff!

1lb. white combed top, 1 lb. white alpaca, 3/4 lb. of dyed alpaca

I am now swimming in alpaca and I have no idea what to make with it. The hot weather is here, but the office has been in deep freeze, so I might have a good reason to make some alpaca garments. I still have the bag of alpaca and bunny that my mom got me on her last trip to the mill. That will be the next thing I spin. I have some yarn on the bobbins right now that has just been chillin’ there. One of the bobbins is a surprise project I can’t write about here….the others have just been waiting for me to get some time to dump my photos onto any random computer I can find so I can make room to take proper, non-mobile phone pictures.

Once the parents left I went a little cuckoos mcgoos. The last two days I have spent dyeing fiber after the kids have gone to bed.

Messin' around with acid dye

I dyed some mills ends wool with some Jacquard acid dyes. I was messing around with dye to try and find my groove. I am new to this.

Then I decided to take that pound of alpaca my folks brought and hit it with some black food coloring. It turned out gorgeous!

Alpaca in purty greens and purples...

Of course, this whirlwind of crazy doesn’t include all the stuff I did last night which included handcarding some other stuff I dyed and making goodies for my Fiber Collective Swap Partner. But those are secret….shhhhh…..

Tags: alpaca, dyeing, fiber, mill, roving, The Fiber Collective, wool

Easter Fun!

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | Mishaps, blah blah blah, dye, fiber | 1 Comment

What to write? What to write? It isn’t like things have been boring around our household as of late, but things are starting to settle down a bit, thankfully. After a month of bouncing germs off of one another, we all seem to be on the mend again. We have fought a mighty battle with the pink eye and won (for now). Everyone still seems to be coughing all over each other, but hopefully that will start clearing up soon. Oh, and my laptop with all my bloggy/photo stuff is still toast. Boo.

Easter is never normal around our house. The kids are still small and we haven’t really established any real traditions yet, although I may have started one. In order to combat my homesickness, I decided to make Easter dinner up Midwestern Polish style. Now I am not saying it was authentic, because quite frankly, I have *zero* time to be making pierogi from scratch…but it was tasty.

Tasty!!

Easter day was different for us too. We decided to take the twins to the Aquarium of the Pacific…

The twins checking out the fish...

Where my daughter dropped her pink poodle (which she named “TX”) in a tank of toxic stuff….

The "stuff"

Which I stuck my hand in and fished out before seeing this sign. Awesome. So TX ended up in the trash and lil’ girl and I headed straight to the restroom to wash our hands, all while she cried hysterically. An emergency call to Grandma was made so we could ask where she bought the pink poodle of doom. Answer: Walmart. I hopped on the twitter, my husband talked to the folks at the aquarium, and before we knew it, wehad directions to the nearest Walmart in Long Beach. We picked up the last poodle they had.

TX, number 2

And all was again right with the world.

So what have I been doing fiber-wise? To be honest, not a whole hell of a lot. Or at least it seems that way to me. I have done some dyeing, I mean, who wouldn’t given some extra wool and some food coloring and Easter egg dyes?

Green-blue roving dyed with food coloring

I gave this green and blue roving to Wendy for her birthday… I also attacked the Easter egg dyes once the kids were done dyeing their eggs.

Wooly Easter fun for me!

Did I mention I have a ton of hard-boiled eggs in the house now. Egg salad for the whole week. Yikes!!

Tags: Aquarium of the Pacific, dyeing, Easter, roving

Marching Forward…

Friday, March 20th, 2009 | UFO's, blah blah blah, fiber, knitting, spinning, yarn | 1 Comment

Ok, I am determined. I am determined to finally get my shit together and start doing what I need to do. I keep putting things off because I need to deal with real life, but real life is overrated. So I am buckling down…working on logo ideas…trying to knit and spin as much as I possibly can. Come on! I know I can do it!

So, on the agenda:

Finish the Kusha Kusha Scarf.

The lavender Stainless steel/silk and taupe wool look good together.

Finish my True Love socks…

Mmmm. Bubble Gum pink koigu

Maybe get this sweater done?

I really suck when it comes to actually working on sweaters...

Learn to dye roving and maybe a sock blank…

I have almost all the supplies I need...

Maybe start selling some things on etsy perhaps. I have only been talking about it FOREVER! Over the past week I had people ask why I am not selling my needle protectors or stitch markers online. Why am I not selling them, who knows?

In other news, I also recieved a lovely package from Stashymama on Ravelry. She sent me some batts from the fleece she bought at Stitches. All cleaned and fluffy. I can’t wait to start spinning them. Lucky me, now I can because I actually cleared my bobbins off last night! I finished spinning and navajo plying the last of my pink and brown Merino/tussah that I purchased in November from Bee Mice Elf. Go me!