Picture Time

This is the body of my Lace Rib Raglan, a test knit for Chrissy Gardiner of Gardiner Yarn Works. Pretty simple stockinette for the most part, done in the round so very little finishing, with some nice lace ribbing at the bottom, collar, and on the sleeves. Very cute, can't wait to finish!

Here is the arsenal for the Secret of the Stole. Yarn that you can't really tell isn't all one color, the black beads, my in-progress binder where all the patterns I'm working on/will be working on soon reside, the size four needles from my Boye Needlemaster, and some movies to keep me slightly entertained while knitting. Yay! I will be switching from the Boye to some Addi Lace, my first pair of Addis, when they come in to my LYS. I'll probably be buying some 1s as well for the Mystic Waters Mystery Shawl, but that needs swatching first. I'm using the blue cobweb weight yarn from a few posts back, and I'm going to swatch using my DPNs to figure out what size to use. I'm thinking 0 or 1, and hoping the 1 looks good so I can get some Addi Lace needles for it. If not, I'll have to try and find some Inox quick or something.

Here's my Victorian Lace Sock, along with the yarn for the second. With this sock, I realized that the reason I love my Hederas and therefore heel flaps so much is because it is a much longer heel flap than normal. Oh. So this heel flap does not feel right to me at all. Ah well, I'll make the second and they'll be good for wearing with suits, which is their purpose.

This yarn is also the horror story yarn I alluded to a couple posts back. This yarn went with me to New Hampshire back in August, as I was working on the first sock then. My soap opened, and got nothing but this yarn. So I tried to wash it out. It's not a superwash. So here I am, badly sunburned, trying to rinse soap out of a skein of yarn without felting it. It actually worked too! So I put the damp yarn into a plastic bag, tossed it back into my in-progress tote, and forgot about it due to the sunburn.

A few days ago, just after my first Kool-Aid dyeing attempt, I completely cleaned out my project bag. And there was the plastic bag, containing the still-damp yarn almost two months later. Ew. Ewwwww. Ewewewewewewewewewewwwwwwww.

So, I cooked the yarn for a bit in my crock pot in hopes to kill whatever bacteria had decided to take up residence within the skein, to finish cleaning out the soap, and to try to get some of that dye out, because man, this stuff bleeds like CRAZY. After it was done, I almost wished I had something black that needed a re-dye so I could reuse some of that bled color. It did smell only like wet wool (love that smell) when it was done, and I let it dry completely before winding it up. Now if I could only finish the four other socks hogging that set of DPNs so I could get around to that one...