A better shot...

See? It's a little better. First one is with the flash - a little flashed out, but it shows the color variation.



This one is without the flash and a more accurate representation of what it looks like to me.



As I went through the 3rd iteration of this yarn dyeing adventure, I decided to check out Knitty's tutorial on hand dyeing yarn...again. She let her yarn soak in the vinegar/water all night long. Hear that, Jen??? All night! Not 15 minutes until you've decided you can't wait any longer. ALL NIGHT!

Next time I'll soak it all night first. Think first, then act. I might just end up with something I love.

In the meantime, I'm going on a hunt this evening for Malabrigo Chunky in Stonechat. Must make a hat.

The Bad Batch (1)

The Bad Batch (1)
Originally uploaded by JRoKnits

Ugh. It's better than it was. When it came out of the pot initially, it was mostly green. Rats!

I really didn't want another skein of green yarn.

So I popped it back in and tried to add more blue. Got more mud.

So I let it dry. Then I laid it flat in a 13x9 glass dish and tried adding a little more dye in what I thought was a responsible manner. I do think the final product bears some more depth and is better, but it is so far from what I originally wanted.

There is far more reddish/purpleish/burgandy-ish and that's good. There is less green and that's better. There are hints of midnight-y blue, gold, and brown here and there. That is good too. Not sure what I'll make with it. Possibly the cabled footies from One Skein. Possibly a scarf or a hat.

Although if I had to wear this yarn on my head I might never leave the house.

Then again, I could make something really embarrassing and wear it on the 6th grade field trip next week.

Would that be too cruel?

I just can't give it up!

The blog, that is! It's just plain ol' good clean fun to have a place that's all mine to talk about my stuff. And, I got a very nice comment asking me to please not stop. Even if you're the only one reading this, that's enough for me. Thank you so very very much!

Plus, I can't talk about dyeing yarn on Ravelry. At least not how I'd like to.

Today was busy. Heck, I've been busy for about 3 weeks. All 3 kids are in school now, 2 in soccer, and other little odd things too numerous to count. Work has been coming at me full speed too. Instead of my regular morning hours, I was spending most of every day at the computer working. I think every sock we own collectively as a family of 5 was in my room unfolded. Half the room was covered in clean laundry. I finally bit the bullet a couple days ago and COMPLETELY CAUGHT UP. Yes, you heard right. Go ahead and hate me. I'm caught up on laundry.

If it makes you feel any better, I'll have 5 loads to do by tomorrow evening. That's usually how it goes around here.

Work today got so irritating that I decided to dump out all my Wiltons Icing Dyes and throw some yarn in a pot. I crashed the stash and came up with one of the 6 skeins of Patons Classic Wool in Natural Marl that I've have for nearly a year and one lone skein of Winter White. So I went for it.



There wasn't much science involved here. I was hoping for brown with bits of burgundy. I ended up with something very similar to a result I've acheived before.



But I like it. The marl gives it an effect that I really like and the fact that I did not stir the yarn left areas with less dye. I like that too. Plus, one can never miss an opportunity to embarrass the middle school daughter when she comes home from school!



My second attempt with the Winter White is not achieving anything near the results I was hoping for. I wanted to make a medium-ish brown with bits of purple and teal. The brown diluted and the purple and teal both spread and diluted. I added more brown, then added more purple and teal. Then I gave up and started randomly dotting the surface with regular dropper style food coloring. Who knows what this one will look like, but I still have fun with the process. This is pretty accurate to what I'm seeing in the pot right now.



This is with the flash. Oh boy.



I think I've added so much dye that it isn't really going to exhaust anymore. I turned it off. I might turn it back on for a little bit more. Whatev'

I find the process of dyeing my own yarn mind-clearing and creative-juice-flow inducing. I like it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

I lost my ground beef!

I'm convinced I'm losing my mind. Perhaps it's just a delayed Monday reaction.

I started out by getting my last Amy's Tofu Scrambles Pocket Sandwich out of the big freezer. Love those! Got the toaster oven ready and thought I might as well give it 5 minutes to preheat. Left the frozen pocket on the counter and sat back down at my desk.

I'm working away like a busy little bee and reading a couple Ravelry posts to kill some dead network time. One gal mentioned that she'd been waiting a half hour for her coffee to brew and realized she'd never hit the button. OH MY GOSH!!!

My pocket sandwich was glistening and I was sheepish. I stuck it in the oven and set the timer lest I forget again. At the end, I gave it "5 more minutes" at a higher temp to get the crust really crispy. Who needs a timer for 5 minutes? Me. I got my brown and extremely crispy pocket out about 15 minutes later. After burning my tongue once, I had a completely delicious breakfast.

Then I lost my ground beef. No wait, first I found Stephanie O'Dea's fantastic blog: A Year of Crockpotting. This thing is a gold mine! Before I knew it, I'd exhausted a complete hour and the rest of my printer ink. I am inspired and excited.

THEN, I lost my ground beef. I was so excited about the recipes that I went searching for a pound to thaw. I looked everywhere. How many places could 10 pounds of hamburger from the giant Sam's Club sausage-roll of 90% lean really hide? Apparently the ice cream bucket hides many a forgotten frozen item. I also found a few cartons of some 10 month old Rich Whip. I hope it's still good. That's one of those things that I hadn't seen before in real life and when I did, I grabbed about a dozen cartons.

Another thing I can't find in real life anymore? Sorghum flour. At least not within 30 miles of my house and with gas prices this high, I'll pay the shipping to order it online. That's been my most heavily used flour since starting to use all of Carol Fenster's mixes and wouldn't you know it, when I start using it more, all the stores around me stop carrying it. Crud.

I'm thinking of - take that back, I'm going to take a new direction with my blog. For one thing, I don't think there were many people reading it anyway and for another, Ravelry completely satisfies my need to talk about and share pictures of my knitting and crocheting. I believe I'd like to turn my blog into more of a GFCF in Real Life kind of place where I can discuss my sucesses and failures with being a GFCF family and hopefully help others who might be just starting out. I may change this one, or I may abandon this one entirely and create a new one. That's probably what I'll do, but stay tuned.

That said, I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Where has the time gone?

Again, yet another month+ since my last post. It's funny. I know there aren't many people who look my way on the 'net, yet I really enjoy getting on here and sharing my stuff. Just need to try to do it a little more often.

So, what has the summer held for me and my family? Let's see...

Uhhhh....

Well, I'd hoped to share a couple photos of our summer fun, yet Flickr hasn't been able to pull my assorted funny family fun photos off my camera. Fancy that. Guess I'll have to stick with the knitting. I finished 3 bags:

Rutabaga,



and 2 Malika's. (this one is a tribute to McDonald's)



and this was the first one. I made it longer than the pattern suggested because I didn't trust that it would be big enough as is. I could carry my kindergartner around in this bag if I wanted to.



I'm making June is for Jag for my mom's birthday out of Dream in Color Classy in Good Luck Jade. The pattern is a perfect fit for the perfect yarn. Pretty, huh?



Because I'm not positive this is the exact color Mom is looking for, I'm also making the Cashmere Ruffles Scarf from Closely Knit using Malabrigo Silky Merino DK in green/gray. No photo yet, but it's oh so yummy.

I sewed buttons on 28thirty,


blasted through the Canopy Cardigan from Knitscene,


a pair of mitts (Laura's Ribbed Mitts by Carrie Barraco, free Ravelry pattern),


and several hats (Santa Cruz, Foliage, Nezumi, Maple Seed).






I had an itch to do some stash busting. Can you tell? I'd hit you with more FO's but they aren't as recently done so I'll leave those for another day. Have a good one!

I'mmmmmmmmmm Readyyyyyyy!

(said like SpongeBob Squarepants)

For what am I ready? The Summer KAL/CAL, of course! I first heard about the KAL/CAL earlier this year when I was listening to back-podcasts by Sharon and Marly. It sounded like so much fun I just had to get in on it this year.

I'm making Rutabaga from the Spring 2007 Knitscene. I already explained why I was afraid of this pattern initially, so I won't go into that again, but I will say that I loooove it!



I adore this stitch and can't believe it took me a year to even read the pattern and figure out it was nothing to be afraid of. It moves along quite nicely and my favorite thing about it is that it is stretch, but it has limits to its stretch. I like a stretchy bag, but I don't want it to stretch with wreckless abandon.

My sweaters are rather languishing right now. The Incan Pullover is sitting in my way at the end of my chaise end of the sofa, but I haven't worked on it for several days. 28thirty only needs one sleeve, but I haven't picked that up either. The Sera Lace Top has also lost its luster. The problem with that is I need more yarn. I don't want to buy more yarn. So I'll probably frog. What to do, what to do.

I ordered Norah Gaughan Vol.3 and Berroco 281 - Cuzco and Peruvia Quick from Jimmy Beans Wool. I sat here waiting and waiting, then realized I hadn't checked my home email for several days. Turns out #281 is backordered for a few more days and they had asked if I wanted them to send one without the other. By the time I saw the email, it had been nearly the amount of time of the backorder. So I told them I could wait for all of it to come at once. Trying so hard to be patient...and to finish other things first so I can fantasize guilt-free.

The usual kind of Monday stuff is happening here, though I can't believe it's already noon! My son has already been too and from preschool and now I have to run off to the bank and the post office. Big insurance docs to finally get off to our mortgage company so that repairs can finally take place. The dog reeks to high heaven so my daughter is bathing him - cross your fingers she keeps the water out of his highly susceptible to infection Golden Retriever ears!!

Happy Monday everyone and I hope to see you, too, at the Summer KAL/CAL!

Finish-itis!

Not such a bad thing! I go in spurts of startitis and finishitis. I love to start start start, but then there's nothing quite as satisfying as finishing a bunch of projects one after the other. Okay, I find throwing out ball bands and a pile of snipped ends to be equally satisfying but that's beside the point.

I really wanted to bust the cotton stash in June. I tried, really I did...



This was less then half my washcloth production. When all was said and done, I'd made 14 washcloths for personal use and 4 more intended as a baby gift. Oh wait, I'm forgetting a couple - make that 6 more for gifts. All that knitting, and the cotton stash remains. It is smaller, but it's still there.

Doesn't help that I bought a cone of Peaches n' Cream and started this:



It's Rutabaga from Knitscene Spring 2007! I loved this immediately, but the word "cluster" scared me away from even reading the instructions. I envisioned having to knit a popcorn or bobble every few stitches (nevermind that I couldn't actually see anything like that in the photos) and couldn't bear the thought. Upon closer inspection, however, the cluster was nothing more than a couple wraps of a couple stitches. Big deal! I'm halfway through and it's really fun...though I can't work on it too much at one time since my hands are still recovering from the June Washcloth Mania (aka cotton hell).

I'm working my way through a couple sweaters. The Incan Pullover on the cover of the Summer '08 KnitSimple really is what this yarn wants to be, it's just taking a long time to become it.





I like top-down construction, but the yoke takes so dang long! I'm knitting this on size 6 needles which is the smallest size I've ever used for a garment. I finally made it to the back and my goal is just to have it done by fall - but I better hurry because that could come any day now!

The other sweater is crochet: The Sera Lace Top by Doris Chan from the Fall 2007 Interweave Crochet.



So far so good, but I'm going to definitely need more yarn. I'm using 7 balls of Knit Picks Shine Sport in Violet that I bought from someone on Ravelry. I knew I was rolling the dice by starting this with a finite quantity of yarn, but it was a chance I was willing to take. It's cute, but I'm concerned about the length. I know Doris is great about taking stretch into account so you don't end up with a dress, but it still is a little worrisome. I think I'll end the body with 2 more balls of yarn - one for each sleeve - then I'll order more yarn and leave my fate to the dye lot gods.

I'm very blase about work right now and thinking I'll bug off and crochet some more this afternoon. My daughter is at a basketball day camp in St. Cloud today and won't get home until 4-ish, but then right away at 5:00 we're off to Minneapolis for her last regular season soccer game. Eek. I won't be driving though so you can bet my lace scarf will be coming along. That thing is moving like lightning. Have I shown that yet?



The perfect use for the leftovers from my Knit it Down sweater and it satisfies my love of lace in worsted weight yarn.

On that note, have a wonderful day!