Diamond Mesh

Finally! Knitter's Magazine hasn't exactly been batting a thousand for me lately, but there's a project in the current issue that looks good to me.

What yarn? What yarn?

I decided to go stash shopping in the basement. This requires mustering both bravery and imagination on my part, because the choice seems so... final. I'm not such a good knitter that the result is generally better than the possibilities. I'm a brave person, but I'm not very imaginative. I want to have the final project come out perfectly, and I fret that my choice of yarn - especially when the fiber and gauge are way different than the designer's choice -will not come out well. Still, I know I must have stuff that would work.

Well, several years ago, my friend Vicki and I went in together on a yarn deal. We got a large number of cones of yarn for just the cost of shipping. I selected two cones from our lot One was a charcoal boucle, and the other was a pink silk/cotton (whatever did Vicki do with the rest of those cones? :-) ).

After combing through my stash, the cone of pink silk/cotton called to me. Other yarn would have been suitable and would have given me gauge without messing around. But I kept going back to the pink cone. The yarn was too thin, so I loosely plied it together with my spinning wheel. The result was still a bit skinny, so after a gauge swatch, I re-gauged the pattern. It knit up fairly quickly. I finished the seams last night.

I feel especially good because it cost me about fifty cents (broken down from the shipping cost of all the cones - yarn was free)!

Frog Pond

What a great time we had at the Frog Pond Fiber Frolic! We spent a lazy afternoon experimenting with Easter Egg dye on wool and silk. First we soaked our plain vanilla yarn and fiber in a vinegar and water solution.

Then we created colors! We swished, we dunked, we squirted. We put our creations in ziplock bags to cook in the sun while we had refreshments. Gorgeous!

The Frog Pond is lucky to have Janet, who found a great quantity of Easter Egg dye on clearance after Easter, and had the presence of mind to buy it for the group. We are also lucky to have Vicki, who gathered the supplies and directions for us. And we are lucky to have each other, because we are a mighty creative group together.

I decided to dye sock yarn - could have knit boot socks if it turned out ugly, but I rather like my result.

My result on the silk was ermmmm, okay. The teal I started with was looking too even. However, I had mixed together all the leftover dye from the Frolic, which turned out a kind of pea green. Squirted in splotches over the teal and left to cook a second day, the teal silk now has a little depth. We'll see how it looks when I've spun it into some lace weight yarn. I bet it will look pretty good, in a monochromatic way.