Back in the Saddle

OK so after months of neglect, I decided to give this another go. I'll go into more detail later but during the summer, I got a spinning wheel (the Ashford Joy), learned how to knit socks (thanks Kristin), made a lot of knitted hats (knitting in the round is fun!) & learned the importance of stash (I'm frackin' broke)! Oh & I had a great early surprise birthday party yesterday!

Like I said, I'll go into more later. Right now I have to finish my estuarian plant ecology take-home test before the S & B tomorrow night

Lookit What I Can Do Now!

I recently ordered the Spindolyn from Cathrine Goodwin.

It was totally worth it! I have now discovered the joy of hand-spinning. I even took up that drop spinde I bought a while back. Turns out that it works great! Thanks to the Spindolyn, my drafting has improved and that made spinning on the drop spindle that much easier. I ordered a couple more spindles from a different Ebay vendor, Ma & Pa spindles. Very cheap but work well enough. I got them in a pack that included 2 bottom whorl spindles, one large 1.9-ish oz. an a smaller just over one oz., a small niddy-noddy, which is perfect for my little practice skiens, but not so good for winding larger balls of "blanks" for dyeing. It also came with a small nosetpinne, but honestly I'm not to thrilled with it; it wasn't well sanded before it was lacquered and it too is a bit too small for larger skeins. But overall a good deal, the spindles are good for beginning to spin and very cheap.

I really enjoy spining on hand spindles, but if I want to get into production I'll need a wheel. Any reccomendations?

I Dyed

Sorry, sorry, I've been terrible blogger! After I came back from Mexico, I had a week to make up all the school work that I missed & then off to Washington state for spring break! And since then, I've been trying to bring up my crap grades. However, while I was in Washington, I looked up the yarn shops of Seattle, Bellingham and the vicinity. I'll post the reviews later.
The purpose of this post is to share my very first dying experience! After reading the Knitty Spring 2007 article on safely dyeing your yarn with food quality dyes I was instantly inspired! I ran out and bought up some McCormick's food coloring as well as some other dyes that I found in the soap and candle making section of A.C. Moore's and a skein of Paton's Merino in white and went to town... in my kitchen.
The purpley- green combo uses the hot-pour method described in the Knitty article using the turquoise, lilac, and rose dyes from the soap dying kit supplemented with the McCormick's red, blue and green dyes. I don't think that I'll use the soap dyes again because I needed to use the entire little squeeze bottle and these dyes didn't seem to penetrate the yarn as well as the food dyes did, hence the small white patches.




The orange was also achieved via the hot-pour method using both McCormick's red and yellow and some of the Wilton's icing dyes, buttercup and Burgundy. I wanted to do a combo of reds, yellows, and oranges, but since I was dying on a natural color (more Paton's merino from my stash) rather than white the yellow didn't look too good.
A note on the Wilton's: at first I didn't have faith. I read the ingredients which included sugar (HFCS) and hydrogenated oils to make it pastey and I thought "eww, won't that make my yarn all gummy?" I figured that the sugar would rinse out, but thickened oils, wouldn't it prevent some of the sugar from washing out? Well, no, it doesn't. The tiny bit of paste added in realtion to all the water in the dye pot isn't much. I believe that the sugars and oils also help the dye penetrate the yarn and helps the dye stay where you poor it, rather than spreading as soon as it hits the water like the soap dyes did. This makes sense considering the loading dyes we use in gel electrophoresis. These dyes are loaded with sucrose the weigh down the dye so that it sinks in the buffer with the DNA. Anyway, I think that I'm hooked on home dying. Etsy, here I come!

I'm back

I just got back from Uxmal on the Yucatan Wednesday night. I got there a day early & figured I'd explore the town/ village maybe even find some indigenous fiber. Guess what? No freakin' town or village! Just a couple hotels & the Mayan ruins! However, the trip had an unexpected treat for my other hobby, herpetology, in the form of free-range rock iguanas! Not much knitting got done. On the plane ride to Mexico, I slept a lot. At the conference I spent most of my time learning about what a crazy metaloid aluminum is, socializing with a small group of scientists all over the world, and trapezing about these ancient Mayan ruins. But the main thing I've been working on is another pair of the garter mitts from One Skein and an improvised matching scarf/sash in the same sock yarn using garter and elongated stitches. They are to be a belated birthday gift for my best friend. Hey, they weren't thought of at the last minute, I just haven't had as much knit time this semester. It sucks. But that's for another blog.

These lovely ladies were found just off of the patio bar, where I was desperately trying to learn some espanol. This was their body-guard.

Regrettably,I didn't bring a swimsuit.This brave one came up to me. I guess people offer them fruit from time to time. I would.
This guy was the unofficial guard of the temple.
This is an ancient Mayan ball court. One of the goals is still in tact on the left.





We didn't get the overpriced tour guide, so I'm sorry I can't provide more interesting and enlightening captions.

Flying the Friendly Skies

Plan on flying with your knitting/ crochet or needle point? No problem according to our friends at the TSA:

Knitting needles are permitted in your carry-on baggage or checked baggage. However, there is a possibility that the needles can be perceived as a possible weapon by one of our Security Officers. Our Security Officers have the authority to determine if an item could be used as a weapon and may not allow said item to pass through security. We recommend the following when bring knitting needles on an airplane:

• Circular knitting needles are recommended to be less than 31 inches in total length
• We recommend that the needles be made of bamboo or plastic (Not Metal)
• Scissors must have blunt points
• In case a Security Officer does not allow your knitting tools through security it is recommended that you carry a self addressed envelope so that you can mail your tools back to yourself as opposed to surrendering them at the security check point.
• As a precautionary measure we recommend that you carry a crochet hook with yarn to save the work you have already done in case your knitting tools are surrendered at the checkpoint

Most of the items needed to pursue a Needlepoint project are permitted in your carry-on baggage or checked baggage with the exception of circular thread cutters or any cutter with a blade contained inside. These items cannot be taken through a security checkpoint. They must go in your checked baggage.

Now, what I don't undertand is this statement "As a precautionary measure we recommend that you carry a crochet hook with yarn to save the work you have already done in case your knitting tools are surrendered at the checkpoint." What does this mean exactly? So if you've started a knitting project on 36" steel size 2 needles and they're confiscated in fear that, in a knitterly rage over a stitch dropped when the plane hit an air pocket, you'll garrotte the pilot after stabbing out the flight attendant's eyes for spilling ginger ale on your project that you can simply continue working on said project with a crochet hook?? Do they think knitting and crochet are totally interchangable? Oh that's just ignorant! While I'm bicraftual and I am a strong proponent of knowing both skill sets, I know plenty of knitters who aren't. What are they supposed to do, use the hook as a stitchholder?

Anyway, thank goodness I converted most of my needles to bamboo, except for the Boye needle master cicular set. So I'm going to Mexico for a science conference friday. I hope to find some great yarn there, oh and learn sciencie-stuff too of course.

Spinning DNA

Yes, DNA: the new all natural fiber! I was in my biology lab class today and our objective was to retrieve the chromosmal DNA from an E. coli culture. I had done something similar in my first year biology lab, but this process was more invovled and the DNA should hopefully be quite pure. So we did all the mixing and setting and out cae this lovely, bubbly, snot-like residue. hen we had to extract it from the test tube, being sure not to contaminate the "fibers" with the newly separated proteins and such. Once safely transferred, we had to spin it onto glass rods, or spindles as I like to think of them, and leave them out to dry. It's remarkable how the single chromosome of millions and millions of E. coli stick together like the individal hairs of (insert name of favorite fiber animal here). I don't know whether it's nerdy or just obsessive and disturbing, but I really wished that I could knit it up. But i do get to play with it. In 2 weeks it's gel electrophoresis. Hooray!

Moving, Homework, & Lace Work

Well, we've been moving for the last week or so now. Almost done. In the meantime there has been a lot of homework to do even in the 3rd week of class. This is because almost all the classes I'm taking are heavily math oriented: Calculus I, Physics II, and Quantitative Chemical Analysis. I'm also taking a biology class that's only a lab once a week and pottery. The wheel is a tricky beast. We'll be doing coils next week and I think I'll have better luck with that.I'm glad that I'm auditing the pottery class and not having to worry about a grade. Overall, I'm not comfortable being graded on such subjective things as "creativity." That's why I'm a science major dammit! A science major who is not at all on comfortable terms with math. How unfortunate for me.

Anyway, with all the chaos of moving and homework and labs and such, I have not worked on much. I finished my second feather & fan stitch muffler from Knit 2 Together in Malabrigo. This is the first time that I worked with Malabrigo and, if I could only knit with one yarn for the rest of my life that would be it. The easy of knitting, the texture and the colors would be worth it. Just what do they feed those merino sheep in Uraguay anyway?? What fabulous wool!!
I'm now starting the South Seas Table runner from the K2Tog book in Maggie Knits Irish Linen/Cotton blend for our new table. Between this and the muffer, I think that I may like lacework. Something about those big open stitches that are just so lovely. Oh, oh, oh! And my cashmere came in today for making the Gym Slip Dress from the K2Tog book! I is so excited!! I can't wait to swatch it!

I 'm very happy with the new place, but I must confess that I miss my knitting knook at the old apartment. But I look forward to spring and knitting one the screened-in porch listening to Lime 'n' Violet, Cast-On and other knitting podcasts. Now, if I could only fully unpack my stash box.