What a dreary day it is today.

It was raining all morning, which meant that the cats were sopping wet and kept trying to gain access to my lap so they could dry themselves off on my clothes. They can learn really fast if they put their mind to it.

But on to knitting-related things. You know that skein winder that I talked about yesterday? Well, it arrived! It's a bit difficult to photograph, so this was the best of the lot:

First I thought that I was right in my assessment that this is quite a crappy piece of equipment. The circumfence wasn't wide enough so the skeins kept slipping off, and I had to be extra careful not to end up with a tangled mess. Still, I managed to wind one of the little skeins of sock yarn. When D came home, however, he informed me that the three 'arms' of the skein winer, which I had thought were just fixed bits of metal, acutally extend. My skein winder is not so crappy after all!

I proceeded to go into a ball-winding frenzy and ended up with this:

Doesn't it look delicious? That's Manos del Uruguay, which you might recognise from my blog banner, and which is one of the yarns that I bought while on honeymoon in New England (which reminds me that I never did complete the report on where we went and what yarn shops we visited...). The yarn is destined to become 'My So Called Scarf' (see link on the left). The other yarn is my natural dye studio sock yarn. Socks, here I come!!

Also, during lunch yesterday I finished dyeing the sock yarn that Michelle from the Knitty Board sent me as part of a swap. It is amazing how differently different kinds of yarn behave to dye - this yarn kept on soaking up the KoolAid with very little result. What you see below is the end product of a mix of Pink Lemonade, Cherry Flavoraid, Jamaica an Ice Blue Raspberry, overdyed iwth Cherry Flavoraid and then again partially overdyed with Grape and splashes of Green Berry Rush for the pink skein, and Tamarindo and Orange, overdyed with Orange and again partially overdyed with Tamarindo for the orange skein:

I am quite pleased with the result now. Due to the dreariness of the morning the colours didn't come out quite true, so the orange and brown skein is actually a lot more vibrant and a lot less 'spotty' than it looks here, and the pink is a lovely mix of different shades. I think they are 'Pumpkin' and 'Crushed Strawberry'...

So you see, fun was had, despite the fact that I had quite a late night last night to make a dent in all the work I have to do before the weekend - before tomorrow, that is. Oops!

What isn't so much fun is that the Cashmere sock yarn that I bought from Hip Knits at the Alexandra Palace looks like this:

One. Big. Tangled. Mess. I am assuming that the skein was dropped at some point, because despite how tidy it looks when it is all twisted up it is actually all over the place. Might take me weeks to untangle, but although D suggested I should just bin the yarn I can't do that. It's cashmere!! It can't be thrown out!

I shall untangle this! I shall win!

Watch this space...