It's been a while!

Well, I obviously got zero blogging done while we were at my parents' for 3 weeks. To be quite honest, very little actually got done at my parents', and that includes knitting. I knitted up one of mom's Alpine Slippers which are painfully boring to knit up. I think mostly because of the gazillion short rows. It's like you knit for hours on the toe and get no where. Oh, well. I knit up one, am waiting for mom to crochet on the side detailing and then I'll sew them up and felt them to see how they are. At the moment they are dreadfully large, but hopefully a few felting rounds and they'll be perfect!

I got the twin sheets tie-dyed for Lindsay's Bath Mat which I'm in love with. The tie-dyeing to all evening to do and then the next morning to dry the sheets on the line outside. I managed to get one of the sheets torn into strips and joined (there's a special rag joining technique from Coco knits) but the tearing of the sheets did something to my shoulder and it hurt for a few days after. Needless to say, the other sheet is sitting prettily in tact. I'm glad I got most of the hard part done, knitting it up should go quickly. Once I actually have the stuff (it's at mom and dad's).

I was able to knit like, 2 rounds, on Matty's poor socks. Well, I have the toe of the 2nd complete and am about 5 rounds into the instep, so I just need to make myself do it to get it to him, ya know?

I decided to try my hand at dyeing some wool while I was home. After some research, I decided to go with Wilton Cake Dye as my coloring, using the citric acid and extra color boost of Kool-aid as back-up. Apparently Wilton won't do it alone. I didn't ask, I just obeyed. The first techinque I used was one to make a verigated in the microwave. Didn't work. So I decided to just do a big blue batch on the stove...and I threw in the botched verigated. Why not? Right?Let me begin by saying, the resulting peacock like coloring was GORGEOUS. For the most part, the wool was teal, but in areas where the red and black from the botched verigated touched, it had some varied hues within the teal and was just AMAZING.

I knitted up Star Crossed Slouchy Beret with it and I'm in love. I hated every single cable row, but the result was VERY worth it. I have enough left over that I think I could make Hazel a matching one. I think. But I'm in love with mine either way :)

Last weekend Brett took me to Londonderry (a small town in the northern most corner of NI) and let me wander around a wool shop for my birthday! I got 5 skeins of Kign Cole Mirage and 2 skeins of pure Irish wool (can't remember the make and am too lazy to go look). I decided to knit up the KC Mirage into something for ME (it is 1715 yds of wool after all). Took me 2 days to figure out what. I decided on one thing, swatched, realized that I was way off and switched patterns. Finally settling on a Lacy Star Motif Pullover. I haven't swatched, yes I admitted it, but the gauge calls for knitting up the back panel anyway, so I thought I would just start (as the back panel is the first piece in the pattern) and measure as a I get a ways in and see where we are. I've screwed up on the panel, anyway, but as it's the back panel, I don't think it'll be too noticeable.

Well, I should be off. Time to figure out what's on the schedule for today....