Blog

Finally off the needles this week is Daphne’s Bea cardigan vest-

Finally got the length just right, and found the perfect button in my stash.

Not doing any finishing on the armholes, as the slipped stitches form a nice edge on their own. Not a flashy knit, but I suspect it will get a lot of wear. Nice and light (12 oz), soft and fuzzy, in all the rich shades of the crazy girl herself

After all that garter stitch in a single yarn, I’m getting exited about switching things up a bit and doing stranded colorwork- revisiting the Alcott vest.

I went through my yarn stash and pulled all the yarns in the right weight range (~90-100 yds/oz)

and am working on a plan for the color combinations. I think I might actually only do the colorwork on the front of the vest- kind of a “Half Alcott”, if you will 😉

So we’re looking at side and neck steeks, then probably a solid color back. Should be fun!

Oh- and I forgot last week to introduce my two new chicken friends (adopted to keep Speck company since the untimely demise of our Wyandotte hen (d#$% ravens!)

They are mature Brabanter/Delaware girls. No names yet, but they seem to be settling in well, and are laying pretty regularly, which is an added bonus.

Apparently they were escape artists at their last home. They seem to be happy in the pasture and shed with Speck, though they are a little freaked out by the sheep, and try to steer clear of them.

Alrighty- that’s all I’ve got for now. Have a good week folks.

The needles, that is.

Been a while since I’ve posted a Daphne Bea project update.

In that time, I’ve alternately thought I was almost done, then ripped back the whole collar to add a couple inches to the body, then re-knit the collar, adding some additional short rows and increases so that the collar folds back and lays flat more readily.

And now (as of this afternoon), it is back off the needles-

I’ve not yet tried it on again, because it is way too hot right now (weather station is saying 89F).

So I am hiding in the house, drinking iced tea and waiting for the sun to start to go down.

I realized earlier today that I’d forgotten to post a followup on my recent lanolin collecting efforts.

Back in early May, I had maybe 2/3 cup of lanolin mixture that I’d skimmed from cooled fleece washwater, but I was hoping to get it a little more reduced. I played around with heating it, thinking maybe that some water would separate, and then when that failed, I decided to freeze it. Because, why not?

So nothing happened in the freezing itself, but once it was a solid block, I turned it out onto paper towels, and found that as it thawed, it let go of quite a bit of water into the towels, and I could easily scrape the remaining pasty substance off with a spatula. I think it lost about 1/3 of it’s volume.

Since then, I’ve used it to condition my potting bench

and also some garden tool handles. So I’m pretty chuffed about how that worked out.

Alrighty. Think that’s all I’ve got for now.

Stay cool, and have a good week folks-

A long, long time ago, I traveled to England with a school trip organized by my aunt, who taught English literature at a high school in the Chicago suburbs. We did day trips out to see various literary sights, but also got to spend quite a bit of time exploring London. I still have an item that I bought on that trip- a bright purple cable knit sweater.

It was the 80’s, so the style was drop-shoulder and oversized. I hadn’t worn it in years, but held onto it for primarily nostalgic reasons. But it was 100% wool- and I always thought that perhaps I could remodel it and give it a second act.

I don’t have a picture of the sweater right-side-out before the project began- but you can get an idea of the general shape from the reverse side

The issues I wanted to remedy- sleeves too short and wide, folded collar too tight, bottom hem ribbing too tight. I decided that I would remove the sleeves, rework the collar into a more relaxed crewneck, and reknit the bottom ribbing to give it a drapey finish.

I soon realized that the disassembly and reclaiming of the yarn for re-knitting was going to be complicated by the sweater’s construction.

All of the pieces had raw edges, sewn and serged. The only bit that was knit in the round was the collar, which I was able to remove in one piece and reclaim as a continuous length of yarn

Thankfully the new collar and sleeve finishing I had in mind wouldn’t take as much yarn as the doubled ribbing did.

I went with a 1×1 ribbing, and just secured the raw edges behind with whip stitching in a single strand of the garment yarn. Here’s a look at the inside of the armhole.

I was able to get it all pretty well secured and tidy, so I’m calling that a win. 🙂

The last bit was the bottom edge. I had to cut off the ribbing in order to unravel it. And the yarn came off in about 1.5 yard lengths. So, while I had plenty to re-knit with, it was chock full of ends. I was able to reknit most of the front using the remaining yarn from the original collar. But in the back side I had to make due with the shorter lengths. I overlapped the lengths at transition points in order to save myself some weaving in later on, and decided that a split hem would finish the new look nicely.

And with that, the 80’s London sweater, is now back in business as a slipover vest! To complete the 80’s London vibe, enjoy this classic from the Housemartins. You’re welcome 🙂

Took some time off work this week and indulged my craving for color.

Tuesday was Gaywool dye in Paw Paw

resulting in this buttery, mango-y gorgeousness

Wednesday I did another Gaywool shade- Raspberry. I dyed both white yarn and also a couple of Tuesday’s Paw Paw skeins to achieve peachy and salmon colors-

also overdyed some medium grey fleece to exhaust the dye bath, and found that grey+raspberry = violet purple! yay!

With those two fairly straightforward batches behind me, I started to get myself organized for the grand finale- the indigo vat.

I’d collected all my materials ahead of time- I had to order more thiorea dioxide (thiox) online and pick up flavorless gelatin at the grocery. But I already had the Lye on hand, and quite a bit of indigo powder, so I thought I was all set.

As it turns out, The last time I dyed with indigo was longer ago than I remembered (time flies!), and lye apparently loses some of it’s potency over time (go figure!). So getting the stock solution prepared was a bit of a trial. I had to use quite a bit more lye than the recipe I was using specified, which made me rather nervous.

I eventually resorted to using the large vat that was heating over the propane burner as a water bath to get the stock solution to clarify and reduce. It was still kind of the wrong color (more of an amber yellow than a yellow/green) when I added it to the vat, but i felt like as long as the solution was no longer opaque, I was on the right track. And once I added the solution to the bath it started adjusting toward the green shade. The Man help me out with capturing the magic indigo color change for posterity:

I found that by the end of the day, I had gotten a pretty good feel for telling if the vat was properly reduced or if it needed a bit more thiox. But pH can be hard to judge accurately with paper test strips, because of the color of the dye! Would have been nice to have a pH meter. Put that in the list for next time.

I was so pleased with the nice saturated shades I got out of the vat! (green is indigo over a sharp yellow, and purple at bottom is indigo over a light shade of raspberry) ((ignore the bright purple at left- that’s next week’s show and tell 🙂 )) And the gelatin seems to have been successful in protecting the wool cuticle in the alkaline bath.

At the end of the day I added a little bit of soda ash to the pot to bump the pH up a bit for the last items I’d planned to dye- a pair of cotton cargo shorts and a linen top that I’d sewn a few years ago, both a rather blah shade of beige

but look at them now!

Love, love, love the indigo.

And it isn’t exhausted yet. I’m letting the vat sit for now. Perhaps I’ll have another chance this summer to do some more blue-ing.

Here’s the whole assembled array of dyed goods

My kind of staycation.