A riot of colour...

Isn't it? I couldn't resist taking a picture of this bowl full of fibre. It sits in my living room, just by the window. :-)

~*~

Well, not feeling 100% and having submitted my work a whole 5 minutes before the deadline, I decided that I needed to treat myself a little and took a bit of time off yesterday.

I wonder if this tendency to 'treat myself' has any impact on why I always work to such tight deadlines?

*cough*

Anyway.

Still reeling from the shock of discovering that my cute Button Hat will never be worn by me (no, not even in private), I decided to knit a hat that I will be able to wear. I quickly dug out that lovely and squishy chunky yarn that my Secret Pal 6 sent to me - I think it's from Handpainted Yarn, although I'm not entirely sure - and my trusty 8mm Addi Circs and cast on. No pattern this time, I just made it up as I went along. A few hours later I had this:


It's basically a K2, P2 pattern, knitted on 1 circular needle, using the Magic Loop technique. I knitted something like 9.5'', then decreased once, using K2tog, P2tog all the way round. 6 more rows in K1, P1 and then one row where I decreased again, this time simply by doing P2tog all the way round. The remaining 12 stitches were tied together with a tapestry needle. Presto! One hat finished!

All very easy, and the best thing is? It fits! And it doesn't look odd - well, at least not more odd than hats normally look. See?


Just ignore the goofy expression, OK? I don't know what I was doing.

Anyway, I love it. It's squishy and incredibly warm and cozy. Can't wait to wear it out.

~*~

Another thing I treated myself with yesterday was some Koolaid dyeing. I hadn't done any dyeing for months and my order from Wingham Wool Work had arrived in the morning, so I had lots of fibre I wanted to test. Here are the dyeing results, all hanging up to dry:


On the left is a batch of Wensleydale Tops. I had dyed some of this ages ago and had started to spin it up, only to realise that there wasn't nearly enough. It was a bit tricky to get the same colours, but fortunately I had made notes and I think it's more or less correct.

On the right is some Merino that I had left from my merino/bfl ply, and I dyed it simply to see how the fibres would behave. I get the feeling that I managed to felt them ever so slightly when I stuck them in the microwave, but I fluffed them up a bit when they were dry and it seems OK. This is what it looks like when dry:


Finally, on the middle hook is a small amount of Soya Bean Fibre. I wasn't sure how this would take the dye and, predictably, it didn't work very well. It was odd really - all the dye seemed to be stuck on the outside and didn't penetrate into the middle of the string of roving.

I remember reading that Koolaid basically only works well on animal fibres and after this experiment I can confirm that. That said, the pale colourway that I achieved is actually quite pleasing, in particular as the fibre has such a sheen to it.


Well, and that's the end of today's post. No more to see here. Move along now. :-)