Aran Poncho ideas

First off - argh! at Blogger for making the sign-in so damn frustrating. I don't have the brain capacity to remember every damn username and password - especially when I'm forced to use letters AND numbers! I don't blog daily, so I don't remember this blasted information!


All I wanted to do was babble about finally finishing up what began life as a shawl - only a thick one, not a lacy one. It started life out as a tree done in a diamond shape, was supposed to have "legs" of cables and vining leafs and it was supposed to be a thick V shaped shawl/wrap type thing.

Well, I could never get the tree right. It curls, it never lays flat and it just bugs me. So I don't want to rip out the other two pieces I have done, they're just fine, but I didn't want to do just a really wide, rather long scarf, so I'm going to rearrange the pieces into a V shaped poncho. I will probably need to buy one more colour to go up the neckline. Although I want to get russet to go with the Autumn colours thing I have going on (other colours are dark green, brown, mustard) and I'm not wild about red (ish) near my head.

I have to do measuring.

I have some cable motifs in mind - currently swatching Barbara Walker's Baroque Cable. I had to completely re-graph the thing though because her graphs confuse me! Is it because I learnt doing cables by graphs from doing an Alice Starmore Aran sweater? Starmore's graph make sense to me.

Duh du jour: I spent two nights graphing out a cable design from a knot design I printed out, only to discover that I basically tweaked a Saxon braid. sigh.

It's finished!

Actually I finished it about a month ago. I've worn it a few times and gotten several compliments, but I must say that it's not really "me". I just don't have the proper body to wear a shrug. Perhaps it's the colours, too - red is not a favourite.

I'm currently working on a to-be-felted satchel-type purse for Roberta. I'm using Patons SWS, which is a wool and soy blend. I had no idea you could make yarn out of soy? It felts quite nicely, if somewhat furry, and with cute little nubs.

I've also knitted up a swath of a Moda Dea yarn which is 65% wool, 35% acrylic. I have yet to felt it, I'll chuck it in with the satchel when that goes in. It's over half wool in content, so it should felt somewhat at least. Mostly I'm just curious. I like the colourways and I think it would make an interesting bag or backpack.

I told Mark that I'd make him a Dr Who scarf if he buys the yarn. I must be mad! :)

Actually, I've always wanted to do one, but never really knew anyone who would truly wear and enjoy it. Mark's a die-hard fan though, so I know it'll go to a good home. aitapata from the neil gaiman board found a great site [url]knitpicks.com[/url] and the Wool of the Andes yarn matches fairly well with the original scarf's colours - although it's extremely frustrating to match online pictures - and depending on the lighting for the old TV show, and which scarf was used (apparently there were several)... well, it gets down to... I'm picking this and winging it!

I think that's everything so far.

update on peace of pi

after ripping out the sleeves (just to the armpit) and re-doing the descreases, I'm much happier with the new shape. It's tapered nicer and seems to curve halfway up.

I'm frustrated with flickr. can't remember my ID/password. sigh. So I'm migrating things over to photobucket, which actually seems faster and will let me display my avatar on next exit, so, yay!

my left shoulder hurts a lot.

I can't believe it's August already!

Work on the Peace of Pi shrug is progressing - I hate doing sleeves. I decided to carry over the ribbing effect and so I'm doing K1, P1 ribbing. It looks great, but man it's boring. So, since I finally have DSL I can finally check out the videos online about Continental knitting. Illustrations of this technique have for years left me going "uh?" and whenever I see anyone do it in public they just go too fast. And asking them to slow down and show me exactly how to work the stitches is kinda like asking a centipede how it manages all those legs. If a centipede could think like a human...

Anyway - my left shoulder has been hurting a lot lately and Continental knitting is supposed to be better for pain management. The knit stitch is easy-peasy - now worries - the purl stitch is a bit snarky. And wrapping the yarn around my left fingers is odd. But I just need to get used to it. It could seriously speed up work on felted purses, Which would be nice if anyone ever wanted to buy the blasted things...

Crowded House in 9 days!!

I finally got the circle to lay flat AND (mostly) achieved the spiral-y look that I wanted!





Now I shall work on the sleeves. I hate sleeves. :) I also have to dye that last skein. I wonder how the green will turn out.

Even though it's too hot to knit...

I just had to start in on the Peace of Pi :)

Adventures in dyeing

I was going to use Procion dyes, but they are rather expensive. Then I found Dylon dyes at Walmart and they were much cheaper. Especially since I wanted primary and secondary colours. Procion does have brown dyes and I might just splurge for those, for another project in the future.

Dyeing is messy, certainly, but if you have everything set out and ready to go it makes the job much easier.


I used a foam dauber thingy to paint the yarn. I did it outside and the hose was nearby. I probably mixed in far more powdered dye than I needed, but I didn't measure it out - I just guessed at half the packet. If I had used the whole packet I could have dyed about 20 skeins of this yarn.



That's the final product after washing out the excess dye. The white-ish bits are because the yarn is half acrylic and that didn't take dye. I rather like the effect though.

I like the Dylon dyes (so far, I don't know how well it will hold up to washings) and would consider using them again, especially if I find cotton t-shirts that fit me, but come in nasty colours. I do wish they had brown dye though.