Knitting with the Monsters...

My life with two toddlers and two cats, all of whom are out to drive me nuts and destroy my knitting!

Friday, February 09, 2007

This was yesterday! We had about 4 inches of snow, here just in Dulwich! It was supposed to turn to rain and stop at 8am but didn't until almost 1pm. Now of course there's not much left at all, but it was so pretty for the less than 12 hours it was here.

What else? Well I've got so many pictures but am holding back whilst I try to finish some things. I'm currently working on a pair of socks for myself in the same pattern as the last ones, but this time it's the colourway Kissed from Sweet Georgia. I just adore her colors and the bigger yarn is soooo quick for socks. What with the weather, instant gratification is my type of knitting.

Today I dyed for the first time. Not my hair, yarn! I got this cone of 100% cotton chenille natural colored back in college (god we're going back almost 10 yrs now...) from my favorite yarn store. Back then I was just teaching myself how to knit, and fell in love with a Rowan pattern called Pee Wee that was in cotton chenille. It was the magazine with the girl in a green sweater and Liberty print skirt, leaning against a wall and laughing. Anyhoo at that point in time my affections were being wasted on a guy whom I had a crush on. He recieved my first hat (Fiber Trends pattern number one, the felted hat) which is a whole other story, and I decided to knit him a sweater. Now hard could it be?

Well I bought the first cone of chenille and it wasn't enough to complete the sweater and so they ordered another cone for me. Later when I came to pick it up they swore up and down that I'd paid for it, whilst I was convinced I hadn't. They checked their records, checked and checked again. I didn't want to just take something that wasn't mine. (honest, moi?) The funny thing is that by the time I picked up the second cone, my crush had faded, but my love of knitting hadn't. All these years later and I've still got that brand new 2kg cone of undyed chenille, sitting on my shelf, wasting away. Til now.

I was watching Nick Jr. with my kids and started seeing the film trailers for Charlotte's Web. And there's a short snippet of a scene in which the lead (human) character, Fern is walking the pig around town in a buggy (pram, pushchair, whichever you want to call it). And she's wearing this yellow cardigan. And I just thought, ooh that would look amazing on Maddie. Except for that I can't find the color I like. Or yarn. So decided to try my own luck with dying. And then I remembered the Procion MX starter dye kit that I got at Alexandra Palace. And so now I have dyed chenille drying in my kitchen!

Honest, will post piccies later. Promise. Only my first try... well... it's not yellow. They had 6 colors, and the yellow was vivid yellow. and I wanted a softer yellow. So I added a smidgen (litterally, I have these spoons labeled pinch, dash, and smidgen) of scarlet. I just wanted to warm it up some! But it's sort of a peachy orangey yellow color. My plan is to dry it, and knit up some samples. Hey, and one interesting tidbit I learned from the Charlotte's website (no pun intended) was that Dakota Fanning, the lead human character, lists knitting as one of her hobbies! Not bad for a 12yr old.

So that's as much of my ramble as I'll allow for today.

Happy Knitting:)