Tuesday, April 04, 2006

It's Raining Taxes

Between the rain and taxes not much progress on my tapestry. It is way too dark to weave in the front studio. The back studio is OK since I have better lighting there. I was able to finish another bookmark...that's the 13th...seven more beetle patterns to go.

Also finished my little green scarf with the beaded rib pattern....finally! I finished knitting but then spent at least two hours or more on the fringe. First, I bound off the the end except for three stitches on each side. Then I unraveled the edges, one row at a time. When two loops were unwound, I then tied them in a square knot. This technique I learned from the last fringe I did...if you try to unravel them all and then knot them...it becomes an absolute mess. Well, needless to say that took awhile. Then I noticed that one side of the loop fringe seemed longer than the other side so I decided to cut the loops and make 'regular' fringe. That took a few minutes but then I thought it would look better if I unraveled the fringe into four threads to make it softer and more flowing. That I did while watching TV...it took all of 24 and a bit of the news. But then it looked pretty good...except it needed a bit of spritz and a combing. That was completed this morning...and now I have a very long wonderful scarf. Not too wide, soft to the touch and very pretty fringe all the way around. I might be a tad happier if it were a slightly different shade of green...this green goes with none of my clothes. There is a dye day coming up...hmmm....

And it was another good day with the postal service...they delivered my yarn for dye day from KnitPicks. I got a bunch of balls of cream and some of butter. Now I need to plan out what I am going to dye. If you don't remember our upcoming Dye Day...read here.

I asked for suggestions for an upcoming self patterning yarn dye day on a couple dyers lists. Here are some suggestions.

1. Soak your fiber in the soda ash solution & let dry. Then make your 40 ft skeins. Otherwise it will be way too messy.

2. Keep the cats [or in my case the chihuahuas] away when balling up the completed dyed yarn. Remember its' a 40 ft skein so it will go around lots of furniture and you'll get lots of exercise walking around with the ball winder.

3. I have been instructed to take pictures...of course. But here are pictures from Ruth who had a self patterning dye day already. http://twistedspinster.net/2006-03/DyeDay3-12-06.html

4. Tie the skeins in lots of places...otherwise they will become a tangled mess.

5. Make sure the dye goes all the way through from top to bottom when the skein is painted.



PS. I discovered a three inch loop in my scarf this morning...turns out when playing with the chi's yesterday a dog nail got caught in the scarf. After five minutes of massaging with a tapesty needle all is fine. Perhaps this is a reason I don't want to knit a sweater. I could see me spending months knitting the sweater then fixing it everytime I played with the dogs. You might suggest "don't play with the dogs". Don't be silly - anther suggestion might be - don't knit the sweater!

2 comments:

Amy O'Neill Houck said...

Hmm... were you playing with your dogs while knitting? That does sound dangerous.

Notes from Nicki said...

Oh no...my dogs know better than to get near me when knitting!

I was simply wearing my scarf and playing with the dogs. They are fairly small so they run and jump all over. One got a nail caught in a stitch and tried to pull away making a very small stitch into a two inch loop.

I'm sure this happens to others!