Eleven Stitches

Owls!

At long last, my Owls cardigan!  I've had it finished for several days, but I couldn't stand the thought of wearing it during the recent heat wave. Fortunately, today was a breezy, beautiful day that is ideal for blog photographs.

Pattern: Owls by Kate Davies
Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery's Green Mountain Green, 5 skeins exactly (funny that: I thought I was going to run out, not realizing that I had a whole 'nother skein left)
Needles: US 10
Time to Knit: April 3 - April 10
Time to Put on 56 Buttons: An entire sick day's worth of chair sitting, after two weeks of procrastination
Modifications: Modified for gauge, cardiganized, short-sleeved

I think this sweater is so cute!  I decided to play up the cuteness factor by adding some mismatched buttons to the mix. I love the look of mismatched (but similar) buttons, and I plan on doing it again sometime soon! I think the purple and blue are such a nice contrast to the yellow. 

I think that, perhaps, this is the last time I knit a sweater with this yarn.  I do love it, but it is rather thick, and sweaters knit with thinner yarn tend to work better for me.  The short sleeves do alleviate some of the thick (and warm!) yarn problems on this particular piece.

Out in the non-knitting world, I needed to explain that the motifs on the sweater were owls.  But it is a rather attractive decoration even without having that bit of information! 

This sweater puts all of the waist shaping in the back of the sweater.  I knit it as specified because I was curious about how this would turn out.  I probably won't choose to do this placement of shaping again.  The sweater seems to have extra fabric in the back, especially after the increases for the bust. It could be that I needed a little less ease in general!

I think that this will be a very wearable sweater next fall.  It will add warmth (but not too much), and the yellow and the cuteness will be a guarantee to cheer up my day!

Dyeing with Fusticwood - A Tale of Yellow Happiness

Last week when I dyed with fusticwood, there wasn't a good story to tell about it.  When I dyed with beets, there was humor, conflict, and a surprise ending.  This time, I got what I expected to get, and it wasn't too hard.  Perhaps it's not as interesting of a blog post, but it was a very nice dyeing experience!

After having unexciting results dyeing with blackberries, I decided to use fusticwood chips instead.  I bought it from a natural dye site, and they predicted that orangey, golden yellow that I do so love.  I got the 1 pound bag, and I dyed about 14 ounces of yarn with it.  I think I could have dyed more things with this amount of dyestuff, but this is about all I had!  

To start out, I covered the fusticwood chips with water and soaked them overnight.  Here they are dry.

The next day, I added extra ties to the yarn I wanted dyed so they wouldn't get too tangled.  This is six skeins of Green Mountain Spinnery's Green Mountain Green, and I also thew in half a skein of Dale Baby Ull in white.

I mordanted the yarn in cream of tartar and alum, which can be found in the spice section of a grocery store.  Actually, my local grocery stores did not have it, but the big supermarket a little further away had a plentiful supply.

The directions that came with my dye recommended alum in the amount of 1/4 the weight of the yarn.  It also gave a handy conversion to teaspoons, which I started to use, and then I realized that I needed the two entire 1.9 oz containers. 

I let the yarn simmer in the alum for an hour, and at the same time I began boiling the fusticwood chips in their water.

After about 30 minutes, I poured some of the water off the fusticwood pot in to a second container and added fresh water to soak up the dye.  Once an hour had passed, I drained some of the mordant water and added all of the dye water to the yarn pot.  I also poured the chips into a colander to get as much dye water as possible.  As you can see, the mixture was pretty dark, and it stuck to the yarn immediately.

I let this simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring it occasionally.  I then poured off all of the water and let it cool for a little while.  (Warning!  If you pour out the water in your tub, the dye bath with turn every bit of soap scum/tub gunk yellow.  You will feel scared that you ruined your tub and also like a very bad housekeeper.  Fortunately, this dye washes off fairly easily, and then you also have a clean tub.)

I wish that I had used some kind of cloth inside my colander when I drained the wood chips.  It would have let less dye in the pot, but it would have caught more of the tiny wood particles that made their way onto the yarn.   Once they're dry, they come off easily, so I had a few sawdust-like flakes floating around when I wound my yarn and when I knit with it.

The color is, as predicted, a perfect, orangey golden yellow.  I love it!  I think one reason I knit Amelia so fast is because this yarn was resting in plain sight of my knitting chair, calling out to be knitted.  I've already started a cardiganized version of Owls.

All sorts of progress

I have a few bits of progress to show you.  First of all, I finished knitting all but the button band and collar of David's sweater.

All I need is a little steeking, and another ball of the brown yarn.  The yarn is on the way, and you know I'm not scared of steeks!

I finished Violette-le-duc, but I'm not sure I like it.  I do love the edging, however.  Its so texturey, and brown + red = great in my (weird math) book.

I also tried mordanting my yarn with alum before some blackberry dyeing, and these are the results.

Clockwise from far left: frozen blackberries with alum, plain, fresh berries with alum, fresh berries alone, and frozen berries alone.

The colors did not significantly darken, but they are both slightly more purple, and the frozen berries produced a brighter color.  I'm still unsure what I want to do, but I have decided against a striped combination of colors.  I knitted up a swatch, and it just didn't grab me.

Since I've finished (or almost finished) up a few projects, I had to cast on something new.  More on that soon!