Sorry for the abrupt silence. Lots of things have happened, but - let's just get caught up, shall we?
1) I overdyed the yarn for Vostok. In its natural state, it's a vivid reddish-purple. I had to overdye it twice to get the right shade, but now it's a slightly darker, bluer violet.
2) I learned how to hand-wind center-pull balls. I didn't have my ball winder on hand, but desperately wanted to start knitting, so I looked up how to make my thumb a nostepinne. It takes a really, really long time - especially with laceweight! - but having a ball of yarn for a thumb for several hours is actually surprisingly fun. As long as you don't need to do anything that requires an opposable thumb.
I love the apple-like shape of the resulting ball, too - very distinctive and unlike a mechanically-wound cake at all.
3) Yarn from Germany!
I had to talk Bandit out of buying all the purple yarn for me, but in revenge he went to the DyeForYarn Etsy store and secretly picked out yarn for me. And then categorically refused to tell me anything about it other than that it existed. I thought I would burst from curiosity and impatience, but as long as the wait seemed to me, its arrival was timed perfectly - it finally reached us on our two-year anniversary.
The light fingering teal yarn on the left is already slated to become something for Luna's birthday.
4) I did not get to work more on the Slide socks. Sorry!
5) Estes Park Wool Market! More details in the next post.
Wow, handwinding lace yarn has to be a labour of love! LOVE the yarns the Bandit picked for you - yum!
ReplyDeleteMore love than labor, when it's a yarn you love! And I also adore all the yarn he picked out for me. Just have to match them all to projects now!
DeleteNice to see you back! I would like to hear more about your hand-winding; I just got a winder because my hand-winding is so poor and tedious.
ReplyDeleteI more or less followed these instructions: http://www.instructables.com/id/Hand-Wind-a-Ball-of-Yarn/?ALLSTEPS
DeleteOnce I got to step 4, I would wind a for a while diagonally across the ball, then rotate the ball 90 degrees around my thumb and work on the new diagonal.
I think I still like winding cakes on my ball winder more, actually, but at least this way I'll never be stuck with yarn and needles and be unable to knit because I can't ball my yarn!
Wonderful gift yarn, how lucky! Your hand-winding efforts are so perfect! I've never been able to get colors as rich as those when dyeing.
ReplyDeleteI also dream of getting colors that deep and rich and thorough when I dye. Actually, when I was overdyeing, some of the original reddish dye started coming off! I guess it was just way oversaturated at that point.
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