Dyeing - Knitting Notions

A Fun Fourth

Okay so maybe this part wasn’t fun but I am getting to that. We finished up most of the labeling of the yarn on Friday and did the last bit Saturday morning. There were a baker’s dozen skeins that were snarled to the point of needing re-skeined so that is what I starting working on for the rest of the afternoon on Saturday before heading out to my daughter’s in-laws for a Fourth of July cookout and fireworks.

Many fireworks were fired off and the food and company were much enjoyed by all.

My attempts to capture they fireworks themselves fell short so I didn’t bother to post those but I did get a few of the ones who were having such fun shooting them. :-)

I regret that I totally forgot to take a single picture from the family fun we had on Sunday. Jerry’s mom, brother, and many nieces and nephews came to spend Sunday afternoon with us.

There is not much knitting progress to report but here is what I have on the Chance of Showers sleeve.

Posted on July 6, 2015July 6, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Birthday Celebrating

Here’s a glimpse at the celebration today.

Candle blowing and then to the gift opening.

Yay! It’s just what he wanted! :-D

The most important piece is of course the T Rex which he figured out how to put together first thing all by himself.

The rest will require some helpers. :-)

We managed in spite of the party to still get a good deal of the yarn labeled today. Here’s what we got so far. That’s 560 skeins in all out of 1300 total so not a bad day’s work.

Posted on July 2, 2015July 2, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

I can’t believe it’s July already!

Well the labels all have color name stickers on them and we are ready to start the process of attaching them to the skeins tomorrow. Believe it or not you are looking at 1300 labels there, so it will take awhile for the next part. Part of what takes so long for this step is that it is also the quality control step too. We have to inspect each skein and make sure they are tidy. Some will need to be re-skeined if they are snarled.

I got some knitting done last night on the Chance of Showers cardigan. I am finished with the yoke and started the first sleeve. They shouldn’t take long sine they are short so my plan is to get them both knit and get to the body section. After that I may take a break from this since I “should” be knitting my cotton baby sweater sample and finishing up that up-sized Sorrel before the August shows start. That always comes sooner than you think it will when you say to yourself “Oh I have 5 weeks, that’s plenty of time”. Well yeah, but there are tons of other tasks to be done in that time as well. Sigh.

Here’s something else that will be happening tomorrow. Elijah is turning 5 and I got his cake made this afternoon and finally located the toy he wanted. It was hard to track down since it is apparently a popular one.

He is obsessed with dinosaurs so we let him see the new Jurassic World movie which he loved. There is a series of Lego sets based n the movie and he had his heart set on the T-Rex Tracker one. It is sort of pricey but I figured what the heck. The Lego store was out of it, Toys ’R Us may have had it but their website was terrible and I gave up. Amazon was even out except for other sellers who were charging a premium and it wouldn’t have arrived in time. A Google search this morning linked me to Target and low and behold the closest location to me was actually the only store in Nashville who had it in stock for store pick up. Done!

I will be sure to get some pictures of him opening it to show you. I was so tempted to give it to him today because I can’t wait to see his reaction, LOL!

Posted on July 1, 2015July 1, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Phase two begins

Saturday was for house cleaning and sorting Friday’s yarn. Sunday was a day of well earned rest. The weather was much more pleasant and after church and dinner I caught up on some reading time. Monday was grocery and library day.

The yarn is all stored in the shed at the moment while we get the labels ready. That is what I spent most of today doing actually.

We have them all printed and cut apart but we have one more step before attaching them to the yarn. That step is to add the color name stickers to each label. That will take a fair amount of time with just a few of us doing it. We will probably start that tomorrow morning and hopefully be ready to start putting them on the skeins by Thursday.

Remember the new organic cotton I told you about? I had to create the label for it today to print those out so I needed a swatch for gauge recommendation. I assumed that a 100g skein with 280 yards would knit to about 6 stitches in an inch on a US size 3 needles, so I tried that and was spot on. I am happy with the fabric at that tension and it should be perfect for the Classic Baby Cardigan too. Although I wrote the pattern at a slightly smaller gauge, I will try it as written as see if it changes the size much. It shouldn’t be too drastic but I will decide all that when I get that far. I hope to cast on for that within a week.

Posted on June 30, 2015June 30, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Red and Orange Day

Here’s the final six colors all done! Whew!

I have been getting a very early start every day to help beat the heat this week. We have had heat indexes in the 100’s with highs in the mid 90’s. It helps a lot to gat as much done in the morning as I can. I have been out setting up for the day’s work by 7:45 or 8:00 am. Here’s my mixing and measuring work space.

I have been setting up my pots in the shade under the trees just outside my work space area. Much better than where I usually set up on the concrete which is in the direct sun by midday. Here is the front are the buckets of yarn that are soaking while they await their turn in the pots. Those pots are 100 liter or quart (I forget which). I can fit a maximum of 80 liters of water and dye and still allow room for yarn of fleeces. The tables are for receiving the yarn from the pots and we rinse them there. We then take them to the work space again where we have an old washing machine for spinning out the excess water.

Here are the first two batches I put in this morning. They are both pinks, Azalea on top and Tea Rose below.

Here are some more close up shots of pinks and some oranges too. I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and finish all of it today so all we have to do tomorrow is sort all of today’s dyeing by yarn bases in preparation of the next step which is labeling.

More pinks.

Oranges here at the right and the reds down on the other end.

Here is a close up of the reds which really came out nice. Unfortunately the camera is not capturing the depth of the reds well at all. The dark one is a deep Garnet and the brighter one is a true Ruby red.

This a dark red orange I call Tiger Lily on the next door neighbor’s lines since we ran out of room on ours. They gave me carte blanche to use them any time. :-)

Notice the children up in the right corner? They were just loading all the previous day’s yarn in the shed and we are headed in for a well earned reward of popsicles and lime sherbet. I am obsessed with lime lately for some reason.

I may skip the weekend blogging but I will be back on Monday. Who knows though I may have something to say tomorrow. I have got to get the house cleaned tomorrow so we’ll see. See ya later!

Posted on June 26, 2015June 26, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Green Day Part Two

It’s pretty much just going to be some pictures tonight of the colors we dyed today. I am too worn out for jabbering and need a shower. :-)

We are in the home stretch at last though. We have six more colors to go. We will be doing four tomorrow and the last two on Saturday.

So if you are a fan of red and pink then tomorrow is your day. Saturday is for oranges. See ya later!

Posted on June 25, 2015June 25, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Green Day…

No, not the band. Green YARN day, my favorite, especially the warm greens which is what we dyed today. Oh, and we also did some yellow and orangey yellows.

The sun was pretty bright when I took these so they are a little washed out. We did get a break from the sun for the first half of the day and it felt somewhat cooler but when the sun did come out it got steamy fast.

I hope you are all having fun with the daily yarn dyeing updates. Having something fun pictures to share each day is helping reignite the blogging habit for me.

Here is a sneak peek at a new yarn we have that I will be adding to the website sometime soon. It will probably be several weeks before I can get to it though.

It is a sport weight organic cotton yarn that is grown and milled in the U.S. I was so excited to find it and the best part is that is very reasonably priced too. I will probably have it around $7.00 or $8.00 a skein. It is 100g and 280yd. It will be sold un-dyed because I DON”T dye cotton. You can dye it yourself if you are so inclined, but I hate dyeing cotton, LOL! There will be more to come on this later. I am casting on one of my designs with this yarn soon.

Okay kids, that’s all for tonight. I need to grab a bite to eat. Tomorrow’s color is cool greens and gray!

Posted on June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 by yarnmama — Leave a comment

Purple..love it or hate it?

I don’t know why it is, but in my experience people have strong feelings about purple. They either love it or hate it. I am a big purple lover but my daughters mostly are not fans.

Today we dyed purple yarn. Lots of purple yarn. :-)

On the schedule for tomorrow is warm greens and yellows. I have a long day planned to get the biggest batches done before the thunderstorms which are more likely the end of this week. I needed to keep yesterday and today’s batches smaller because I had to work in some afternoon errands.

It is beastly hot this week. That always seems to happen, as soon as I get the yarn and dyes mixed the heat wave begins. On the upside, the yarn loves it and it is easy to get it dry. All of the blue yarn was dry this morning so we already sorted it by base to await labeling when it is all done.

I plan to get some knitting done tonight if I can stay awake long enough. I also have a new project and yarn to tell you about but I will save that for later when I have a chance to get some pictures for you.

See you later!

Posted on June 23, 2015June 23, 2015 by yarnmama — 2 Comments

It was a Blue Day

I am going to attempt to resuscitate this poor blog. I last posted in mid fall last year after Meredith’s wedding. Our household under went many changes in October and November and honestly I found very little energy left for the blog. Once it was no longer in my routine it was harder to get motivated to catch it up. Well, today I suddenly felt the urge to pick it back up and get back in touch with you all. Hope some of you are still willing to tune in. :-)

So what are the changes? Well for one, half of our children have now left the nest. Our oldest daughter and my grandson moved out in late September. Then of course Meredith in October. Right after Thanksgiving the last of the adult children, Cassie, Joanie and Josiah all took an apartment nearby and are doing well there. It was a big adjustment going from a household of 12 to one of 6 but I am getting used to it.

Believe it or not I have not minded taking back over all the housekeeping. The plus is that it all gets done to my liking. It does leave less time for other things of course so one must set priorities. School work has been taking a big chunk of our time also but I feel good about that. It has bothered me many times that I didn’t feel the younger children were getting as much of my supervision and energy as the older ones did. That is mainly because of the business I guess. I have let it take a slightly lower priority lately. I have been working a a lot over the winter and spring but it has been easier to work it into my schedule with less traveling this year. I have been doing quite a bit of custom dyeing for others this year. I dyed for Cookie A’s sock club and have also been dyeing fiber for a local alpaca mill. I have enjoyed that change of pace very much.

But this week we are dyeing up our yarn for the late summer and fall festival season. As the title indicates today was Blue Day around here. Want to see what we did all day?

I have been knitting sporadically and am finally on the yoke section of the upsized Sorrel I started a year ago

I know. It is shameful how long this is taking. I am at the point where I need to do some math and decision making. Rather than do that which I was not in the mood for I cast on a fun little project with some stash yarn. It’s Chance of Showers in some Elsabeth Lavold Silky Wool. It is fun!

We will do more catching up as I go along. Tomorrow’s Purple Day!

Posted on June 22, 2015June 22, 2015 by yarnmama — 6 Comments

Warm hands and feet

Okay I am having serious commitment issues with you blog. I think my problem is that I really tend turn into a hermit in winter anyway and now that has seeped over into my online life as well. It’s not you. it’s me. I have hardly posted on my Facebook, Twitter, anything. I have lots of stuff I need to add to my website and haven’t done that either. Gah! I need to just get my butt in gear.

Spring’s coming soon though, right? It has been one heck of a winter hasn’t it? We haven’t had all the snow most of the country has, thankfully, but it sure has been unusually gray and cold this year. Next week’s temperatures are expected to be warmer, in the sixties, but wet. That’s not much better but I will take it. I need to get yarn dyed for the spring shows and the weather is just not co-operating. We have an indoor space for some of the work, like mixing dyes, but the cooking and drying happens outside.

Here’s how we soak yarn before it goes in the pots.

This is the color mixing step which comes after I measure out all the dye powder for the primaries and mix that stock up. These are the indoor parts.

This is all the outdoor parts. Boy, look at that green grass. Sigh.

This is the rinsing and color check stage before we spin the skeins to rid them of as much water as we can to cut down on drying time. Ahhh, look at those gorgeous trees. I feel warmer already just looking at these.

Now this is the perfect cure for the winter blahs isn’t it? Look at all that sunshine and color!

I sat down to write today planning to show you a few things I knit and had no plans to start talking about dyeing. But as I started writing about it and digging up pictures I realize that it was the perfect thing to see on such a dreary day as it is. Funny how that happened. :-)

Oh, and I guess I will show you that knitting too, LOL!

First I made my fourth pair of Knucks recently in Rowan Felted Tweed DK. I love these and they are so fun to make.

That takes care of the need for warm hands now how about the other appendages?

On a whim last night, since I haven’t made socks in forever but wanted a quick project, I cast on for some “house socks” in leftover Cascade Eco wool left over from the baby sweaters last fall. I am using just basic sock recipe in Ann Budd’s Handy Book of Patterns on size 6 needles.

I am using the light oatmeal for the body of the socks and the gray for the heels and toes.

Okay that’s it for now and I am going to try and stay out of my shell now. :-)

Posted on February 10, 2014February 10, 2014 by yarnmama — 2 Comments

Category: Dyeing

A Fun Fourth

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Birthday Celebrating

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I can’t believe it’s July already!

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Phase two begins

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Red and Orange Day

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Green Day Part Two

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Green Day…

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Purple..love it or hate it?

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It was a Blue Day

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Warm hands and feet

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