Fiberrant

[insert dirge-like music here]
After nine days of being absolutely lazy, it’s back to the salt mines for me. One big thing accomplished this week, though – I got my fiber mojo back.

Sunday morning I ticked one more sock colorway off my wish list.

It’s still not quite dry, but I’m happy with these colors. Though they are a bit fruit-loopish. Sunset on acid, maybe?

Turned the heel on the Kroy explosion-in-the-Welch’s-factory socks. I’m knitting these on size 3 needles, as the yarn is a bit thicker than most. But the fabric might be a bit too thin. I’ll think on it today, then maybe rip back the foot so far and switch to a smaller needle.

Nothing doing on Mermaid yesterday – when the game started I was spinning, then it was too much a disaster to knit more than socks. Maybe tonight. The body is nearly 75% done – from the left center, around the back to the right armhole. And it’s deliciously curvy. I’m loving how these short rows look, especially with the contrasting gussets. Pictures tomorrow, maybe. Right now, I’m outta time.

I’m torn. The Finger Lakes Fiber Festival is this weekend. But it’s 40 miles away. $12 in gas, and no one to share the ride; it seems such a waste. I could go tomorrow, and combine it with picking up Staffan – which would make it only 10 miles out of my way. But I’m kind of in the mood for it today, and tomorrow is the Bills game at 1 pm … oh, crap, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go both days.

Spent all day yesterday spinning – finished up the purple blended merino. To keep this project on track, I’ve got to get out the carder and mix up the next batch. The ivy isn’t giving me the green I want, though. If I went to FLFF today, I bet I could find it. There – that decides it, eh? And the crowds won’t be bad today, not with this misty/rainy/crappy day outside.

Seems we had a bit of flooding here yesterday. Three inches of rain, two of them over the lunch hour. The paper this morning shows cars submerged up to their windows, and a local hospital had to evacuate its first floor. Who knew? I made a fire in the stove (only took three tries, maybe I’m getting the hang of this wood stove thing after five years here), sipped my tea and spun. Spinned? Whatever, it was a marvelous afternoon.

With all the rain, though, the latest skein of sock yarn just would not dry. I admit, that was the main idea of the fire – to dry the yarn. Didn’t work, though.

I draped it over the computer this morning, which took the last of the damp out of it. The intention here was a shade variation – from dark red, to light red, to light blue, to dark blue. Didn’t work: the dark blue is a kind of plummy purple, and the red is quite consistent. But it’ll make something pretty, regardless.

Sunny, warm (but not too warm), relaxed, and not a whit of work got done. I made chicken wings yesterday for the game (Go Bills!) but otherwise, we ate leftovers and just generally hung out. No pesky laundry or vacuuming for me!

But there was crafting. Saturday morning I made my dyestocks, then I just had to dye something.

Staffan and I wound a hank of Knitpicks Color-your-own sock yarn into a ~4.5 yd skein on the warping board. Then I dip-dyed it in light concentrations of coral pink and cerulean blue, and a medium concentration of purple (mixed randomly from fire red, sapphire blue, and scarlet). Each color is about 1.5 yds long, which will make boldly striped socks.

Dip-dyeing is time-intensive. Three colors in one skein, when you have only one dyepot, means three separate dye runs. I didn’t wash or dry the skein in between the runs, and got some baby-blue transferred to the coral. But it’s not all that noticeable in the skein at least.

I’m using fiber-reactive dyes, which aren’t strictly ideal for wool – but they work just fine when you add some acid to the dyepot. Today’s project is spot-dyeing: the whole plastic-wrap-dripping-steaming thing. First I’m going to do some color blending tests, though.