Clearly this has hit a number of you with drool on your faces. So, next time I dye, maybe tomorrow or Friday, I'll do edition #2 of the yarn. Colors and repeats will NOT be the same as the original, but you won't care since only one person has the original and me. So you won't be matching it to another skein. Oh, you know what I mean.
Don't forget the Wicked Women Sock & Scarf Club! This time I can take more members than usual. And Yes, yes, yes, I ship internationally. As in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, various Scandinavian countries, Spain, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, and so forth and so on. And of course Canada! Click on the link over to the right, or scroll down a bit.
Quizzes!
| You Are Ocean Blue |
 You tend to see both sides to every issue, and people consider you a natural diplomat. |
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The Yarnarian Keeps Her Promise.
I promised I would show you more yarn, so here we go. Liebe and Belleza, both in Bambi, the heathery one.
Raritan in Penny, original skein and reskeined.
Tranquil and Melody, Bambi:
Graceful, Judith yarn!
Brand New Yarns: Superwash BFL/nylon: 80/20 and gorgeous and silky and with long fibers and utterly lovely. I'm going to keep one of them for me, because I've never knit on BFL, and I want to try it out. After all, how can I tell you about the yarn if I've never knit on it!
Sock weight, superwash, 115 grams, approx. 380 yards, which is the industry standard.
Gor-gee-ous!
Spice Road and Souk. If you want one, let me know and I'll keep the other one. I only have 8 more of these skeins. Before I buy a lot, I need to see how it dyes and knits up, but I can already tell you before knitting, that this will be a keeper. Same wholesaler as Bambi and Alexa, and you know how they feel and look. So, whoever picks first, she gets that yarn, and the other is mine, Wicked Yarnarian!
AND, because I love you all, I'm offering one skein of Penny dyed in those loooong 6.3 yard skeins. Not 6 feet, 6 yards! This is what I dyed yesterday. I did 2 of them simultaneously and have kept one for me to play with, and one for you. This is my usual Penny yarn (75/25 superwash wool/nylon), but wound up in this long circumference and then dyed. I'm playing with possible stripes. "Possible" because I like to dye in my loosey goosey fashion, and not with rigid lengths and such. But when you have yarn this long, the urge to play with striping is there. So this yarn has a dark brown strip of approx 2 yards, a lighter brown stripe somewhere else, and those candy colors along the way. In my gauge and 56 stitches, my dark brown stripe is approx 4 rounds. Your knitting would have different results. I'll show you a pic of a sock for me, and now I'll rip it out and try a mitered something or other just to see how it works knitting back and forth in garter stitch.
So here's the good news about this new technique, which needs a name: Winding up into a long skein and dyeing goes pretty quickly. Here's the bad news: Reskeining it into a workable skein for you takes forever! So it becomes a very labor-intensive activity. And therefore, I have to charge more. I know, it hurts. I'd rather not, but I have to reskein manually, there's no swift that will hold this baby, so it goes back onto the warping board. My usual price for Penny is $20; the price for a long skein will be in the $25 range.
BUT, here's more good news: while I'm playing around with length of skeins and dyeing striping sections, I'll charge my usual $20. After all, why should you pay extra for my experiments? And folks, I can make skeins up to 14.5 yards. Imagine what I can do with those. And more good news: Say you want to make a shawl and need 1200 yards of sock yarn. Easy peasy. OK, a lot of manual labor in the winding up end of it, but the dyeing goes very quickly, so it is very possible. Ah, I'm getting grandiose here, but you know what I mean.
Here it is: Chocolate Bonbons (chocolate candy with delicious centers)
Interested in any of the yarns? The usual: fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com
Tranquil and Melody are spoken for.
Chocolate Bon Bon has been grabbed!
Raritan is gone!
Henya - I don't know if I can repeat it, but I'm going to try. I'm knitting with it and it is one really great colorway.
Lol - I couldn't do that to an innocent customer. You'd hear the swearing and cursing all over the world for that nastiness. Nope, I have to figure this out so that it doesn't take me 45 minutes to reskein one skein of yarn. Yup, 45 minutes. Crazy, no?
Hunter - What I've been doing is just placing the dyed skein back on the warping board so that it's easy to take the threads off. The problem is how to reskein it to a much smaller size. I'm dyeing up a few 6 yarders tomorrow, and when they dry, I'm going to play around with my large wooden swift and see if that isn't easier. I know I can solve this without buying or making anything new; it just takes a little time to figure out what's easiest. So far, I've only dyed 4 of these skeins, and 3 were wound into balls, and one was in a skein, so I have a lot of other ideas.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Yarnarian Posts New Yarns!
I have a ton of chores to do today, so all I can do is post a few new yarns for you. No wordy, prolix post! You get away for free today.
OK, our Fourth of July weekend was perfect. Weather, company, barbecue, it all came together and I just wanted it to go on for a couple of more days.
Yarns!
Sophie and Harmony: Sophie is Shelley yarn, and Harmony is Bambi.
Soft Cherry: Yes, Soft Cherry is my new Judith yarn, the most wonderful 3 ply lt fingering or heavier lace yarn. 80/10/10 merino/silk/cashmere. NOT superwash, so don't toss it into the washer or dryer or you'll get a doll size garment.
Jabbersocky: Penny yarn in the prettiest of colorways. A lovely variegated that doesn't scream at you.
Click on pics to get the full effect. Want any of them before I list on Etsy? Email me at fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com.
Jen - mmm, tasty! I hope your screen was chocolate flavored.
Mary's Sharing Space - Thanks! How come we all view yarn with food in mind? I do it all the time.
Henya - It is as pretty in real life as it looks.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Yarnarian Is Warped.
Info about the Wicked Women Sock and Scarf Club are just below this post. Go there and check it out. You know you want to!
You know how to tell the difference between warp and weft? Weft goes from weft to wight. Why should the Yarnarian care? Because on Saturday she and the Hubbo went on a lovely field trip and found, much to their surprise, an incredible easel and a warping board. No, not a wefting board, a warping board, as in a way to measure yarn with which to warp a loom. And again, why should a non-weaver care? Because she can now wind up enormous skeins of yarn without walking around pieces of furniture. Large skeins are no longer a cardio-vascular activity.
Once, in her dyeing youth, she tried making a very long skein. Yarn around various chairs, much walking, much bending. Oh, her aching back. But with this handy dandy warping device (device because I'm married to the King of Devices) placed securely onto that adjustable easel, and arranged for her shrimpy height, she can now make skeins that are as long as 14.5 yards. Yup, that's right!
Can you see the possibilities: striping yarn, long runs of color, lots and lots of colors with some length to them? Oh, be still, my beating heart. My cup runneth over with ideas!
Before you start jumping up and down screaming: "She can make striping yarns!", let me warn you that this is very labor intensive and takes much planning, math in fact: measuring my knitting, figuring out how many stitches I can get in a yard, or 2 yards on what size needles. And that's just the start of it. The winding up part of the process is very fast and easy, right off the cone. But the reskeining of it is another story. So, hold your girdles here, we are not doing stripes yet. They may or may not come. I may just dye very long areas of yarn in one color and then some short color bursts, and so on.
I may actually have to get precise here and write down formulae. Ack, me the playful dyer measuring lengths of yarn. Scary. But you know that something is in the works here.
Here's a pic of the warping board with one of the yarns on it, and ready to be wound up into a ball. The 2 skeins I made are each 6.3 yards. That doesn't sound very long, but the longest commercial skein you can find is 2 yards long.
This is not the configuration of how the yarn is originally wound up; I didn't take a pic of that. This is just how the first skein looks before I wound it into a ball.
I used gunmetal gray and parts of the skein left undyed. Knit up about 2 inches of it and decided that this would make great Hubbo socks. Mr Large Man has a big foot, so I will need another skein, and I'll just do that solid gunmetal gray, and use it as part of the striping factor.
Here is the second skein in various pics so you can get the idea. I wound that up and am playing with a new mitered scarf idea.
I did some dyeing but will post the pics next week. You can look forward to 1 skein of Shelly, a few Bambi skeins, and 2 gorgeous skeins of Judith lace yarn.
Henya - that was clearly my laugh of the month! You are a very wicked woman!
Linda - that's hilarious, and accurate, too!
Jo - I found them at different garage sales. the Hubbo is the junk/Schmutz Meister of northern NJ, and I often tag along and find goodies. The warping board stunned me. And at that price too.
It's raining again. I'm growing webs between my toes!
Holly - I don't weave. yet. It is tempting though.
You know how to tell the difference between warp and weft? Weft goes from weft to wight. Why should the Yarnarian care? Because on Saturday she and the Hubbo went on a lovely field trip and found, much to their surprise, an incredible easel and a warping board. No, not a wefting board, a warping board, as in a way to measure yarn with which to warp a loom. And again, why should a non-weaver care? Because she can now wind up enormous skeins of yarn without walking around pieces of furniture. Large skeins are no longer a cardio-vascular activity.
Once, in her dyeing youth, she tried making a very long skein. Yarn around various chairs, much walking, much bending. Oh, her aching back. But with this handy dandy warping device (device because I'm married to the King of Devices) placed securely onto that adjustable easel, and arranged for her shrimpy height, she can now make skeins that are as long as 14.5 yards. Yup, that's right!
Can you see the possibilities: striping yarn, long runs of color, lots and lots of colors with some length to them? Oh, be still, my beating heart. My cup runneth over with ideas!
Before you start jumping up and down screaming: "She can make striping yarns!", let me warn you that this is very labor intensive and takes much planning, math in fact: measuring my knitting, figuring out how many stitches I can get in a yard, or 2 yards on what size needles. And that's just the start of it. The winding up part of the process is very fast and easy, right off the cone. But the reskeining of it is another story. So, hold your girdles here, we are not doing stripes yet. They may or may not come. I may just dye very long areas of yarn in one color and then some short color bursts, and so on.
I may actually have to get precise here and write down formulae. Ack, me the playful dyer measuring lengths of yarn. Scary. But you know that something is in the works here.
Here's a pic of the warping board with one of the yarns on it, and ready to be wound up into a ball. The 2 skeins I made are each 6.3 yards. That doesn't sound very long, but the longest commercial skein you can find is 2 yards long.
This is not the configuration of how the yarn is originally wound up; I didn't take a pic of that. This is just how the first skein looks before I wound it into a ball.
I used gunmetal gray and parts of the skein left undyed. Knit up about 2 inches of it and decided that this would make great Hubbo socks. Mr Large Man has a big foot, so I will need another skein, and I'll just do that solid gunmetal gray, and use it as part of the striping factor.
Here is the second skein in various pics so you can get the idea. I wound that up and am playing with a new mitered scarf idea.
I did some dyeing but will post the pics next week. You can look forward to 1 skein of Shelly, a few Bambi skeins, and 2 gorgeous skeins of Judith lace yarn.
Henya - that was clearly my laugh of the month! You are a very wicked woman!
Linda - that's hilarious, and accurate, too!
Jo - I found them at different garage sales. the Hubbo is the junk/Schmutz Meister of northern NJ, and I often tag along and find goodies. The warping board stunned me. And at that price too.
It's raining again. I'm growing webs between my toes!
Holly - I don't weave. yet. It is tempting though.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wicked Women Sock and Scarf Club
Yes! an official posting. I'm taking sign-ups now.
Here's the scoop:
Wicked Women Sock and Scarf Club
3 alternate months of yarns & patterns.
What: Evil yarns and/or patterns. two sock ones designed by 2 devious, wicked designers: Hunter and YarnYenta, and a scarf designed by me.
When: Mid-Sept, mid-Nov, mid-Jan. 2 with enough time to do a bit of holiday knitting, and one for when we can all breathe again.
Cost: $90, which includes Priority Mail shipping to the US, first-class international shipping to Canada, and first class international to Europe and beyond.
Yes, I'd be delighted to mail internationally! It just means me filling out a customs form, no big deal.
What you will receive: yarn, of course, pattern either hard copy or emailed PDF, if you prefer. No goodies, surprises, stitch markers, candy, tea, no nothing but the essential goodness of my yarn and our patterns. I don't do elegant fancy wrapping or enclose extras because I don't care about them, and I want this to be easy on your pocketbook. You pay for extras, so I don't include them. Wicked me.
Why do you want to do this? How can you resist the call of Wicked Women?
How to sign up: email me directly at:
fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com
I'll ask for your address and paypal account number and will invoice you. If you need me to wait until mid-late August to invoice, that's fine. I just need to know who is interested so that I can do my planning, yarn ordering, etc. etc.
Thanks of course.
With an evil laugh, Mwahahahaha,
ruth the Transylvania Terror. or something like that.
Mary's Sharing Space - Oh, Mary, I'm so sorry to hear that. You concentrate on getting by; there is always more yarn and more sock clubs. It goes on forever.
Here's the scoop:
Wicked Women Sock and Scarf Club
3 alternate months of yarns & patterns.
What: Evil yarns and/or patterns. two sock ones designed by 2 devious, wicked designers: Hunter and YarnYenta, and a scarf designed by me.
When: Mid-Sept, mid-Nov, mid-Jan. 2 with enough time to do a bit of holiday knitting, and one for when we can all breathe again.
Cost: $90, which includes Priority Mail shipping to the US, first-class international shipping to Canada, and first class international to Europe and beyond.
Yes, I'd be delighted to mail internationally! It just means me filling out a customs form, no big deal.
What you will receive: yarn, of course, pattern either hard copy or emailed PDF, if you prefer. No goodies, surprises, stitch markers, candy, tea, no nothing but the essential goodness of my yarn and our patterns. I don't do elegant fancy wrapping or enclose extras because I don't care about them, and I want this to be easy on your pocketbook. You pay for extras, so I don't include them. Wicked me.
Why do you want to do this? How can you resist the call of Wicked Women?
How to sign up: email me directly at:
fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com
I'll ask for your address and paypal account number and will invoice you. If you need me to wait until mid-late August to invoice, that's fine. I just need to know who is interested so that I can do my planning, yarn ordering, etc. etc.
Thanks of course.
With an evil laugh, Mwahahahaha,
ruth the Transylvania Terror. or something like that.
Mary's Sharing Space - Oh, Mary, I'm so sorry to hear that. You concentrate on getting by; there is always more yarn and more sock clubs. It goes on forever.
Friday, June 26, 2009
The Yarnarian Blathers On!
Yup, it's Friday, the day that nobody buys yarn or reads blogs. I haven't figured out why, but it's true for me. Still, I feel like a good blather, so this will be written whether it's read, or not. ;-)
Knitting News: Remember the violet blob I showed you the other day? Here's a pic of it in not so blobby form.
I love knitting on edgings, even though it takes me at least 10 tries to get it right. I knit and frog, and repeat until I'm happy. And then, I knit 2-3 repeats and decided that I'm not happy, so frog again. It's not particularly difficult to frog; you just have to catch the live stitch that you're knitting together. And now I'm hoping I have enough yarn. I dyed up 600+ yards of the lighter violet, and it should be enough, but you never know. I have visions of me running out 2 repeats from the end. Gnashing of teeth. Then I'd have to frog, always catching that live stitch, and make a narrower edging, which would defeat what I want to do with it. So, cross your fingers, toes, and eyes that I make it. You just never know. These are very short rows, but I need way over 900 rows in total.
Dyeing news: I had a grand time dyeing on Wed. I wasn't in the mood for it, but went ahead anyhow, and ended up thoroughly enjoying myself. I decided to base many of my dyeings on a particular dye, and randomly picked scarlet, and then watered down the scarlet to more of a coral/pinky scarlet. All four of these yarns is scarlet-based: Jabbersocky, Flippy, Jibber, and Liebe.
Before I went scarlet crazy, I had some leftover dye solutions from Monday, so here are the results of that dyeing: Dulce, Belleza, Raritan and Sea Sprite.
Sea Sprite is Emily lace weight and quite delicious to knit from. That's the yarn I'm using on the no-longer blobby shawl. The reskeined ones are Penny, of course, and the others are Bambi, the Bambi with the little white blobbies here and there, the heathery Bambi.
Prices? Everybody but Emily is $20; Emily is $32 for over 1200 yards of merino deliciousness.
If you want before Etsy, you know the drill:
fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com
Have a good weekend, don't work too hard, hell, don't work at all, don't eat too much, don't yell at the kids too much, don't hell at your parents too much, be kind, try to repair the world a little. Do not ever yell at your Grammie or Gramps. Oh, just enjoy it!
Love,
The Yarnarian
Yay, Henya and Ruth in Ottawa - you read my blather on Friday.
Knitting News: Remember the violet blob I showed you the other day? Here's a pic of it in not so blobby form.
I love knitting on edgings, even though it takes me at least 10 tries to get it right. I knit and frog, and repeat until I'm happy. And then, I knit 2-3 repeats and decided that I'm not happy, so frog again. It's not particularly difficult to frog; you just have to catch the live stitch that you're knitting together. And now I'm hoping I have enough yarn. I dyed up 600+ yards of the lighter violet, and it should be enough, but you never know. I have visions of me running out 2 repeats from the end. Gnashing of teeth. Then I'd have to frog, always catching that live stitch, and make a narrower edging, which would defeat what I want to do with it. So, cross your fingers, toes, and eyes that I make it. You just never know. These are very short rows, but I need way over 900 rows in total.
Dyeing news: I had a grand time dyeing on Wed. I wasn't in the mood for it, but went ahead anyhow, and ended up thoroughly enjoying myself. I decided to base many of my dyeings on a particular dye, and randomly picked scarlet, and then watered down the scarlet to more of a coral/pinky scarlet. All four of these yarns is scarlet-based: Jabbersocky, Flippy, Jibber, and Liebe.
Before I went scarlet crazy, I had some leftover dye solutions from Monday, so here are the results of that dyeing: Dulce, Belleza, Raritan and Sea Sprite.
Sea Sprite is Emily lace weight and quite delicious to knit from. That's the yarn I'm using on the no-longer blobby shawl. The reskeined ones are Penny, of course, and the others are Bambi, the Bambi with the little white blobbies here and there, the heathery Bambi.
Prices? Everybody but Emily is $20; Emily is $32 for over 1200 yards of merino deliciousness.
If you want before Etsy, you know the drill:
fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com
Have a good weekend, don't work too hard, hell, don't work at all, don't eat too much, don't yell at the kids too much, don't hell at your parents too much, be kind, try to repair the world a little. Do not ever yell at your Grammie or Gramps. Oh, just enjoy it!
Love,
The Yarnarian
Yay, Henya and Ruth in Ottawa - you read my blather on Friday.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Yarnarian Has a Couple of New Yarns and a Plug!
Oh, do I have a plug for you! Do you like stitch markers? Henya of ChickenStitches has just entered the stitch marker field on Etsy, and hers are different and adorable. I bought a set of cat markers and they are so cute. Now we have to convince her to make earrings. Hint, hint, hint.
New yarns: I had more but one of you grabbed 3 that I posted on Ravelry, so we are down to 2 left, but really spectacular yarns, both of which are Alexa.
Here's Purple Mountains. This one is deep purple with a bit of overdyeing here and there of lilac. I know, it doesn't look remotely like lilac, but that was the dye I used. isn't it grand? Way out of my comfort zone of pastels, but I do love it.
/>And then here are 2 yarns, dyed simultaneously, which is very rare for me, and using a new technique, the same one that I did on Purple Mountains. So you can buy one or both, or I can swipe one for me.
Yes, I know, lots of pics of Santa Fe Sunset, but I'm trying to show you the yarn the best I can.
I just did 10 new skeins, 2 pastel, the others ranging from dark to medium. The dark mojo was with me today. They are soaking wet, and won't be here until tomorrow, I hope.
Henya - I love your stitch markers, and now earrings? whoo hoo.
Sharon - It's sock weight in Alexa, which is very soft. There's enough yardage to make a long or wide scarf, but not enough for a shawl.
itsJUSTme-wendy - Evil laugh! It's even prettier in real life. very evil laugh.
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