Good Idea, Bad Idea

When I dye up rovings, usually I have a plan in mind. Occasionally I just gather up all the half-used dye bottles and dump them on some unsuspecting fiber, but usually I have some specific color combinations that I'm aiming for.

Good Idea

In this case, the colorway plan was "Plums and Greengages". I pictured red and purple plums and the "frosted" paler colors they sometimes have, along with the contrasting acid yellow-green of greengages (ie, green plums). I think I succeeded pretty well in capturing what I was after and I'm happy with the colors. If this doesn't sell, I'll very gladly spin it up for myself.

Bad Idea

Another idea I had involved the signature lime green and bright pink colors used by hoity toity resortwear designer Lilly Pulitzer. If you're not familiar with her work, pop on over to her web site and you'll get the idea.

My first idea was "Lilly Pulitzer in a Blender", but I had the feeling that bright pink and lime green and bright red wouldn't be that great together. Then I thought, "Lilly Pulitzer Goes Goth!", but I wasn't too sure about black and bright pink and lime green. After a while I remembered the silvery gray Brown Sheep roving that I've overdyed a couple times with good results, so I said, "Hey, I'll do 'Lilly Pulitzer Gets Lost in the Fog'!"

Um. Yeah.

I think I might put this on the Etsy store just to see if anyone buys it. I don't know who would want to, but taste is such an individual thing. If there are people who like malted milk balls and Clay Aiken CDs and Thomas Kinkade paintings, there must be someone out there who will just love "Lilly Pulitzer Got Lost in the Fog".

Not a bad weekend, all things considered

Despite two trips to the datacenter to fix a cranky server (my on-call week ends on Monday morning, thankfully), my weekend could have been a lot worse. I got to socialize and spin on Saturday evening, I got to do a little dyeing (which is still currently dripping away on the drying rack), and I managed to photograph and post a couple rovings from the Thursday night dyeing session on the Etsy store.

I dyed my first superfine Merino, which turned out to be much less delicate to deal with than I'd feared. It takes the dyes well and is amazingly soft, far softer than the "standard" 64-ct Merino I've been dyeing so far, and that stuff is like a fluffy cloud. I want to get some more of this soon.

I also dyed some more BFL in a copper/rust/verdigris colorway that I'm really happy with. BFL is so shimmery that the copper color looks metallic to me.

The fact that this:

turns to this:

...is why I love to spin 2-ply. I'm thinking this might end up as some wild Trekking-ish socks if I get enough yardage. I've just started plying this up.

Fibery update

1.) Dyeing!

I dyed up 4 more rovings that I'm really happy with. These will be going up on Etsy soon to replace the 3 I sold on Friday, yippie!

"Manly McManfredjinsinjin", some brown BFL that I overdyed.

"Mud Wrestling After The Prom", Targhee.

"Black Watch", some of the silver/black roving that I overdyed. This is my absolute favorite and I think I'll cry if it sells. The pictures don't even come close to doing this stuff justice.

"In The Gloaming", Targhee.

2.) Spinning

I spun up and plied the Poppy Flower Fibers BFL, and it's my most even yarn to date. A few "blowouts" here and there, but getting much better. This is really lovely soft fiber, too.

I snagged my "Dreaming of September" roving off Etsy and decided to spin it myself, since it's one of my favorites. All mine now, mineminemine.

3,) Knitting

I have most of one of the handspun Berry Hill fingerless gloves finished, all but the thumb. I love how this yarn is knitting up. I also got to do a sewn bind-off for the first time.

The End (...or is it?)

A couple more

I've updated the Etsy Shop with all 4 rovings, but here are some pictures of the other two rovings I dyed the other day.

First off, I dyed some of this silver-black-gray roving with purple, in the hopes that the cool streakiness would still be visible after dyeing. It is!

Before:

After:

I also dyed some Merino in red/green/blue/violet. I never get tired of this color combination.

Spinning et al

1.) Spinning: I finished spinning and 2-plying some Merino in a colorway I called "Open Water". I had a hard time color-adjusting this photo, the blue/green/aqua shades are really tough to capture accurately. Merino is my favorite fiber so far in terms of finished yarn, it's so incredibly soft and squishy, People seem to hate spinning it so much, I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. If HLF is reading this and is interested in this particular batch, let me know.

I'm also working on plying some zany acid green-purple-yellow-turquoise BFL I bought from Poppy Flowers Fibers on Etsy. Miss HLF is also welcome to select this option (or wait to see what's behind Door #3).

2.) Knitting: Some very very backordered stuff has arrived and I can now continue on the Dad Secret project, which was originally intended to be a birthday gift and now will be a Christmas gift. Sigh.

I started knitting up some Berry Hill Fingerless Mittens (pattern only available on Ravelry, looks like) with the Misty Morning handspun. I really like how these are turning out. I have no idea if this striping pattern will continue, I was pretty random when I stripped the roving down for spinning and didn't try to keep any particular color order.

I dyed up 4 rovings on my day off, and here are the first two. Longwool fibers like these really suck up the pigments wonderfully and have a gorgeous sheen.

"Karma Chameleon", Wensleydale top.

And in a shout-out to my boy Keats, "Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness", Blue Faced Leicester.

Too funny to not share

It's The Sarah Palin Name Generator.

I would have been "Crunk Petrol Palin".

Rising Meadow Farm Fest

Yesterday me, Michelle, Jag and Jamie piled into Michelle's vehicle and drove out to Liberty, NC for the Rising Meadow Farm Fest. I forgot my camera like a dumbass, but Michelle took some pictures and video.

We watched a sheepdog demonstration, ate lamb burgers (the most delicious, juicy ground lamb I've ever had, it beats the crap out of the ground lamb from grocery stores), ate homemade ice cream, listened to a Celtic band doing all the usual Irish pub standards, watched a woman spinning angora straight from her very patient bunny, and did some shopping.

I bought 2 yarns. The top one is wool/cotton/silk/sparkly handspun by Nola Rich, a very nice woman who owns some unusual limited-production all-metal spinning wheels made by Columbine. They look like this. The bottom yarn is Rising Meadows Farm Corriedale singles in spring greens and blues.

I bought some rovings as well. Clockwise from the top middle, 2 balls (2oz each) of Rising Meadow Farm Corriedale roving, ISeeSpots Farm Merino/Silk/Angora blend roving, ISeeSpots Farm black alpaca roving, a new bobbin for my spinning wheel (I was so happy that ISeeSpots is a Kromski dealer and brought a walnut stained bobbin with them!), and Three Waters Farm superfine merino/tencel roving in "Black Hollyhock".

One of the Unique Sheep ladies was there, handing out little sample skeinlets of their sock yarns. I love their colorways.

It was a good time despite the really hot and humid weather.

During the drive I knitted a dishcloth in an experimental pattern. I wanted something mindless to work on, so I picked an easy pattern (eye of partridge) and gave it a 3-row garter stitch border. It did a great job of breaking up the variegated yarn, and gave a nice solid, squishy cloth, just like a sock heel. I'll be making up a bunch more of these.

Yay handspun

On Monday I bound off the Autumn Bliss Simple Yet Effective handspun shawl; on Tuesday I washed and blocked it, and on Wednesday I wore it to work, despite the weird looks from coworkers. I'm using a dragonfly hair thingy I bought from The Bronze Jewelers at the NC Ren Faire last fall as a shawl pin, since it never did a great job of holding my hair, but seems right at home holding a shawl together.

The shawl is a perfect size for me, not long enough to drag or get caught on things, but big enough to keep me warm in the aggressively chilly A/C at work. And it reaches down to my butt. It's important that shawls reach down to one's butt.

I also made my first two Etsy sales! The first one was to a perfect stranger, and the second proves that Celeste is either a wonderful friend or the most obsessed Durannie ever.

More pretties

I dyed 3 more rovings this weekend (I've nearly used up the first big batch of undyed wool top that I purchased) and I'm really happy with all of them. I had definite color themes in mind when I dyed them, and they came out pretty much exactly as I intended. The first is posted on Etsy; the other two I'll post tomorrow and Tuesday.

The conventional wisdom is that you need to post items frequently in order to stay at the top of product searches, since the most recently posted items come up first. Within 30 minutes of posting "Dogwoods in Bloom", I had fallen back to Page 2 on a search for "roving". The hand-dyed roving market, she is quite saturated. I've decided to let the listings run their 60-day course and then start poaching for my own use.

Dogwoods in Bloom, Columbia/Dorset:

Pansies, Superwash Merino

Rose Bouquet, Columbia/Dorset

Maybe if I could spin all day instead of checking email...

I think I've decided that I just don't like working from home. My employer allows people to work from home up to 2 days a week, and when I received a company laptop (which is a requirement for working off-site) I talked to my boss and scheduled myself for Thursdays. Today was my second go at it, and I just don't enjoy it. It's boring and isolating, even with IM and email. I end up chained to the computer out of feelings of guilt that I'm not "really working" if I'm at home and therefore must check email continuously and respond instantaneously in order to prove that I'm being productive. I also miss hanging out with my coworkers much more than I thought. So today may be the last time.

In spinning news, I finished up about 6oz/175g of Columbia/Dorset 2-ply in "Misty Morning". I was trying for a thicker yarn, and I got about 305 yards, so probably a worsted-ish weight. I love the tight ply, the yarn is like a string of colored beads. Overall, it seems more even than my last attempt. I think I'm slowly improving! No idea yet what this will end up as.

I'm currently spinning up around 4oz of Blue Faced Leicester I bought from an Etsy vendor I like, in some wild bright colors. The long staple length is really interesting to work with, and it's so soft and shiny. It's going to end up as another 2-ply; pictures soon.

I'm also plugging away at the handspun shawl. The colors are perfect for fall, so I want to get this finished up so I can start wearing it once it gets colder, maybe over a black turtleneck or long-sleeved scoop neck shirt. I'm finding that the Columbia/Dorset gets softer and softer as it gets farther along in the process, and the knitted fabric is actually pretty nice. I found some lovely non-fussy hammered copper pins on Etsy at MJCopper that might look great with the shawl.