September 18, 2009
-
dying, knitting and spinning
Here are some more wool dying pics. The yellow is done with more mushrooms and the brownish is with black walnut hulls. While visiting R out in NC I saw more of the very same mushrooms I had used before but these were so fresh and loaded with pigment so I waited to pic them till just before I left and then put them in the kettle when I got home. There was a black walnut tree that R said could be used to dye wool too. They were green and hard and had to be cut off in bits with a sharp knife. I really like how the walnut hulls worked out they have a lot of dye pigment in them as well so wear gloves if you decided to give that one a try.
Here’s the latest spin for Chinny’s challenge. This skein is 146 yards, single plyed and was spun on one of my favorite Sandy
spindles. The second batch is being spun up on a Peace Fleece Turkish spindle that they sell made for them in Russia. It spins very nicely and I hope I’m winding this on the way your supposed to. Apparantly as you wind it on around the cross pieces and after your done spinning you slide off the cross and slide out the arms and then you have a center pull ball, who knew. 
In knitting there’s a lot of bias, a-scew knitting going on. Ha, this is fun to knit like this. Ever since I made the knitted bowls and learned how to knit on the bias I’ve been playing around with it. Then decided to work some different stitches and holes in the sample. Also practiced some increasing and decreasing by making a little square. Here’s a hat I decided to make out of the mellow yellow bias knitted sample
.
On this hat I picked up on the one long side stitches with a 40″ circular needle and used a 3 stitch decrease and the magic loop method. I’ve never done the 3 stitch decrease before (slip 2 sts tog, K 1, slip the 2 sts over) and like how it did since it keeps the stiches from spiraling to the left or right. I read about it in the EZ book, Knitting Workshop. With 4 decreases it formed a square and the raised stitch in the decrease goes nicely with the texture look of the pattern in the hat itself. This is the first project I designed on me own
. COOL BEANS! TTFN
