The Yarnarian Plays With Dolls.

Did you play with cutout dolls when you were a kid? I loved them, and to this day, can't pass a cutout doll book without wanting to open it up. You don't see many of them any more. They're available online, and in all sorts of other formats. Those little tabs may have bitten the dust. It's too bad. There was something so satisfying about punching out the doll and then cutting out the clothing.

I'm a war baby, and there were not lots of toys to play with as I grew up. I had a Betsy Wetsy doll, but not much else. Metal for carriages and such was not readily available in the late 40's. And Barbies were not yet around. My sister came along in 1952, and she had the Barbie collections. I used to knit doll clothes for her.

So when the American Girl Doll came out, my jaw dropped both from wanting the thing and from the exorbitant prices of the doll and the goodies. This is not a doll for the millions but for a select few. However there are knockoffs, and people sell adorable dresses at street and craft fairs and such, and I'm sure that Target has lots of pretty clothing.

Well, as a gramma, I have been wanting to get an AG doll for Miss P since she was 3 hours old. After all, Grammie has someone to spoil, and she's such a good kid when it comes to toys; not grabby and her parents have her donate toys in good condition to charity. So, when Miss P called up a few days ago and asked if she could have one and told me exactly what she wanted in the way of an outfit and doggie, i said of course. She was so excited, and kept asking if it were too much money to spend. I said that ordinarily it would be a great deal of money, but she rarely asked me for anything and that yes, it would be a Chanukah present for her.

So, now, boys and girls, we get to the meat of the matter. Ahem, there are AG clothes begging to be knit. Hee hee hee. And I own Sweater Wizard and there are sweaters specially formatted for an 18" doll. And I have lots of stashed yarn, and own lots of undyed sock yarn, and you know where this is going. Gotta knit!

Pssssst: I ordered a cheapie knock off for me. I get to play with dolls again. And being grandiose, I envision lots of little sweaters and maybe matching ones for the kid and doll.

Second childhood, here I come!

Mystery Sock news: Don't forget to post your pics of the Mystery Sock on Ravelry. Yeah, I know it's only a cuff, but out of cuffs grow socks.

Some purty pics of yarn coming up for sale at some point:






KV - I made my own paper dolls and clothing too, and I wanted to be a fashion designer in the worst way.

Bad doll enablers, you know who you are! - Thanks, I think. I feel a new obsession coming on! ;-D

The Yarnarian Dyes With Much Philosophy.

I was in a brown phase on Monday, and had a wonderful time playing around with the various brown bases that I own: Mahogany, chocolate, chestnut, plain brown (this one has a greenish tinge to it). I love the richness of brown in any form or value.

Most of the time, brown is such a warm color, but when I use my plain brown very diluted, I get almost a bronze color. And chocolate diluted produces a brownish pinkish beige. Browns can contain lots of red or green. In my early dyeing, I tried to reproduce the colors, but finally got smart and just bought a few. I don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time.

I love to take brown and add orange or red or chartreuse. Wow, what a difference those additions make. And take a pale brown and add blue or violet, and you get these very complex colors without names.

Usually I just pick a color and then explore it in a couple of skeins. Now I'm thinking of choosing a color and then dyeing all the skeins of the day with it and see what I can produce. That's the excitement of dyeing for me: playing around with color to produce still more colors. I love to overlap colors; you can get the most fascinating third color here. Even when the colors together produce mud, you can still get neat variations. Try dyeing a section of yarn in violet, and then an adjacent section in pale yellow and overlap them. Yeah, the overlapped part will probably look pretty ugly by itself, but when it involves two wildly divergent colors, the ugliness goes away and your eye picks up this neat interaction.

Here are some of the skeins I did yesterday. They are all still pretty soggy, but when they dry, I'll list them for sale on Etsy.

This one is Cafe au Lait, a mixture of 4 colors:




This one is Woodwork with lots of colorwork in it.



I did a few more skeins for the Winter Mystery Sock, but I won't post them here. If you want to see them, check Etsy later on today. 2 are a soft bronze, and one of them is the most beautiful brown going. If nobody wants this one, I'm keeping it for me. Like I need more stash!

Here are a few more skeins. The red and black on is for DragonYady on Ravelry. Everything else will get on etsy.






Mystery Sock Knitters: The previous post has all the beginning work to do. Have fun!

How are you all doing with the cluster stitch? Need help? Go to the PennyRoses forum on Ravelry, and we'll give you a hand. My sotm people are old hands at this one.



pencraftco and all you wonderful responders - Have fun with the sock. This week is easy. Next week we revv it up a little.

Mystery Sock - First Clue

Mystery Sock - Clue 1

Click on the chart and instructions for a large, readable version.


Size: Small – Medium: The pattern is nice and stretchy, so a medium foot should be fine. If you’re not certain, go up a needle size. Graph for the large size is at the end of the pattern.

Style: Cuff to toe

Gauge: 7.50 sts over stockinette

Needles: size 2.50mm (size 1.5); 2 circulars, or whatever you’re comfortable with. I used a size 0 because I have a slender leg and foot and I knit very loosely.

Yarn: 350-400 yds of sock weight yarn

Pattern repeat: 30 stitches



Cast on:

Cast on 60 stitches loosely. Divide your sts up as follows: 30 on needle one, and 30 on needle two.

Ribbing: Work ribbing pattern on each needle. Repeat ribbing for as long as you wish, ending with round 4. (I made 4 repeats of the ribbing.)

There is a special stitch, the cluster stitch, in the ribbing and in the sock pattern. Here's how you make it:

On the left hand needle, slip the 3rd stitch from the point over the previous 2 stitches. Then k1, yo, k1: 3 stitches made.







The chart is accurate. I know that it looks odd with that first st a knit and then a purl instead of k2, but it's correct. It's part of a pattern. And yes, it's a cluster followed by p3. Just go with the flow.

How are you all doing? I just finished dyeing for today, and maybe I'll have time to knit with you.

Yay to all helpers here!

I have my graph solution, thanks to Linda, Lynn, Priscilla, BadCat, and anyone whom (who?) I've accidentally left out.

So here's the solution: Photograph the graph, save as a jpeg, upload to Flickr, and there you go. I tried it out and by golly it works.

When the entire sock is done, I'll do a PDF of it, nice and clean and post on Ravelry.

You guys all rock! big time!

I just did it even easier: Copy the graph to Paint Shop Pro, and save it as a jpeg. Thanks again you geniuses!

Update on KAL

Update: Blogger will NOT let me upload my graphs, so initially this will be instructions only. Bad point - No graphs until we're finished; good point - this will be a complete surprise. However, I might just be able to load up PDF files onto Ravelry as we go along, and those would have the graphs. And the final pattern will be a full PDF and available on Ravelry. I'll post all this info as I we go along.

That was a surprise for me. Sigh.

Yay, helpers and suggestions! What would I do without all of you? I'm going to try out some of the ideas tomorrow. Today, I rest!

The Yarnarian Does a Mystery Sock KAL.

What's a KAL, for those of you who don't know? It's a Knit-a-Long. And I'm in the process of designing a sock KAL. A Mystery Sock, if you will.

When? Starting Monday, Oct. 27, and then every Monday until we're finished.

Materials? Sock yarn in almost solid colors. Needles in anywhere from 0 to 2.50mm; you know your gauge already.

Experience? Intermediate.

Name of Mystery Sock? I don't know; I'll let you help me come up with one.

Sign up? You don't need to!! Just join in.

Sockpuppet on Ravelry will host all the discussion on her forum: PennyRoses. If you're on Ravelry, come join in the fun. We are a very chatty group, just so you know. If you're not on Ravelry, what are you waiting for? http://www.ravelry.com Yup, there's a little wait for getting on, but it's worth it.

Boys and Girls: You don't have to sign up!!! Got that? Just knit along. some people are not reading this accurately, and you know who you are. Evil laugh.

Update: Blogger will NOT let me upload my graphs, so initially this will be instructions only. Bad point - No graphs until we're finished; good point - this will be a complete surprise. However, I might just be able to load up PDF files onto Ravelry as we go along, and those would have the graphs.

Hey, all you responders, both here and on my email - Hi, and welcome.

I've been tagged.

Bad MamaMay! She tagged me and I'm supposed to find the 6th picture in my 6th folder. Oh, lordy, here goes:



That's me working on my Ogee Sock. You asked, MamaMay, you got.

Back to rinsing yarn. I am only a bit overwhelmed. I could go for just plain whelmed.

The Yarnarian Checks In.

Just to let you know that I'm alive and well and spending my time dyeing and dyeing and dyeing some more.

I'm dyeing the lace yarn for the Winter Mystery Shawl and my next shipment of yarn arrived only on Monday, so now I'm a crazy person with the dyeing. Fortunately I like dyeing Zephyr a lot, and it goes fairly quickly (for me). So I'm having fun, but no time for blogging.

Go sign up for the shawl, if you haven't done so already. Renee does lovely work. It's the Winter Mystery Shawl.

Bye.

The Yarnarian Says: "I told you so."

MamaMay, you didn't believe me. Hee hee. Here it is, somewhat damp. Apologies for the last blurry pic but I didn't carry the tripod upstairs. Have fun!





The Debate: Here's what I accomplished during the debate. I happily yelled, moaned, gasped and enjoyed it. I don't really learn all that much from these debates, but I love the commentaries afterwards, and you know that I watch PBS. So, the comments were sharp and delicious.

I had graphed out my new scarf and wanted to cast on and knit it but I got so involved with the candidates that I had to frog 5 times, and this is what I did post-debate while watching those commentaries.



Gotta run: all that cooking and straightening for Yom Kippur must commence immediately.

Three Cheers for MamaMay, who is going to untangle the mess from hell!

The Yarnarian Doesn't Follow Her Own Advice.

So, when people ask about yarn dyeing tips, the first thing I tell them is to make sure that your skein is tied up in 6-8 places. Are you starting to see where I'm going here? Uh huh.

I had this skein of yarn that didn't sell; I didn't really think it would, but you never know. It hung around unloved for quite a while and didn't go on the sale, so, frugal soul that I am, I decided to overdye it. This is a great solution when you don't like what you've done.

And I did overdye it. It became a beautiful forest green and I fell in love with it. Yup. And I didn't tie it up in 4 additional spots because I forgot, and now it is the biggest mess of yarn you have ever seen. Spaghetti looks easier to untangle than this mess. So I tossed it. I did this once before and it took me 5 hours, yup, 5 hours to untangle the 400 yards of it. Bye bye pretty yarn. You almost made it into my yarn stash.

I did do a very nice job of overdyeing some Zephyr today. It was originally supposed to be pastel blue for the mystery shawl coming up. Somehow, I got red blobs on it. So I overdyed it with darker blue, and the red blobby parts looked worse. Today, I dumped the entire skein into a gorgeous rich red, and it came out like elderberry. It is one beeyoutiful yarn! Not pastel, but rich and lovely, And this one did not end up as a mess. I'm going to list it because it is that pretty.

All this overdyeing is part of the fun of being a dyer; you just never know what will really take place. You think if you over dye blue with red you'll get purple. Not in this case. It's soaking wet so I can't show you a picture, but when it dries, I will and you will drool over it. And if you don't, I'll keep it for myself. So there.

MamaMay - I'll pm you on Ravelry. You are a very brave woman indeed!

The Yarnarian Radically Accepts a Change of Plans.

Huh? What is she talking about? Well she had all sorts of plans for today, but woke up at 3 AM with a very unhappy stomach. End of that discussionn. We don't feel very well this morning either. SO, the Yarnarian has to radically accept that all her plans for today are not going to work out. And she had lots of plans. KV will understand that radical acceptance thing, the rest of you may have to look it up. Go find DBT on the web. I learn these things from various family members.

Plans for today: dye yarn for the poor sotm member whom I forgot, dye some Bambi yarn, package all the yarn that sold and get it to the post office, bake bread, do laundry, straighten up the chaos of the yarn all over the house, finish the Dancing Feet socks, wind up the skein of lace yarn that I've loved from day one and it didn't sell, and now it's all mine, go to the library.

New plans for today: not much. whatever the stomach will allow. I do want to put up a loaf of bread. It's chilly here and I need to smell that bread aroma. Well, maybe not. But do it anyhow.

I have a tendency to fight these things. Feeling crappy is not going to stop me, blah, blah, blah. But today, I'm going to give in and just take it easy. Sometimes you just have to accept that you get what you get, and just deal with it.

My cuppa Darjeeling tea tastes fine. Gonna make another cup. If I could live on tea, I would. That plus top notch bread. Mmmmm!

Is this not a good kvetch. Kvetch = complain, grouse, grump. It's a great word, and you do pronounce that "k" and "v" together.

So, here are 2 project bags that I recently purchased. I can't seem to resist these things.




The knitting witch is from ZigZag Stitches. Is she not the cutest thing around? The second one is from Stuck in Illinois and was a larger size made for me, and still very inexpensive.

Dyeing News: New Alexa yarns. This yarn is the height of luxury! Feels like cashmere at a pittance of the cost. And, it's superwash. I'd still wash it by hand the first couple of times.









Bev - I'm almost done with the sock. Yay!

KV - A little radical acceptance never hurts. Sometimes you just have to accept that you feel crappy. ;-0

Carolyn and Ria - The tummy is mending, slowly, but mending. If I drink any more tea, caf and rooibos, I'm going to float away.

The Yarnarian is Proud of Herself.

Because she reskeined up lots of yarn for the sotm, and did other yarny things today. And she is feeling quite proud of herself for all her hard work. Three cheers for the Yarnarian!

OK, enough of that blather.

Wanna see what I'm working on? Well, some of what I'm working on. Let's get real here, you know I can't show you sock club stuff, and it's way too embarrassing to show you all my projects in motion. The woman buys new project bags, and then has to fill them. And yesterday, I lost one, and it took me all day to realize that it was on the dining room table. We are not going there!

First of all, a brand new sock, knit in Alexa. Just garter rib here. I tried a pattern and it looked dumb with all the yarn variations. So I went back to a tried & true pattern.




Next, a nameless sock. I have to do the second one here, also done in Alexa:



And third, a sock with a name, Dancing Feet, knit in Penny with about 1/2 of the 2nd sock done:



Not shown here are the new scarf, the shawl (which is making great progress), the vest which only needs to be sewn (blech), and various and sundry things that I can't even remember.

And now I'm going to eat supper and watch the tube and knit. Yay, me.

A quick update: the yarn sale went very well, and now I have room for new goodies. Thank you all for looking and/or buying.

kv - You have no idea what evil, um I mean what projects, lurk in the hearts of those project bags. Scary!

Sale Day is Here, Today!! 9-9 East Coast Time!!

Ta da, my first ever sale! Such excitement. Now I'm sitting here, figuratively biting my nails and waiting for 9 AM to see if people are buying. Is this idiocy or what?

Have you noticed a fall nip in the air? Yesterday the house never got about 65 degrees, and that was late in the day. Most of the day it was 63. Chilly. Did we put the heat on? Us, the great mingy ones? Are you talking about the Hubbo and me?

NOPE!

I have this idiot thing in my head about no heat until Oct. 15. I've never yet made it to Oct. 15, but still I try. So we layer and layer and pretty soon we look like Michelin men.

Yesterday we did the thrift shop thing, and I found a stunning little sweater of 80% silk/20% cashmere for $5!! In my size. In perfect condition. What a bargain. You have to understand that I get snobby about my clothing, so I've been resisting the thrift shop thing forever. Ahem, I was wrong. Shock! Amazement! I was wrong. Me, the perfect one. You can find some of the loveliest clothing in really nice thrift shops.

Off to do my thing. I may post later on today, depending on cameras and photographs and such.

SALE!

Ria and Jen - Yay, you all! I'll mail out tomorrow, I hope. Thank you for buying. The Hubbo thanks you because now he doesn't have to listen to me worry. And now I can dye more goodies. Like I need an excuse.

The Yarnarian Has a Sale on Yarn!

Are you stunned? surprised? confused? happy? sad?

All of the above? None of the above?

In honor of my first anniversary on Etsy, I'm having a yarn sale on Sunday, Oct. 5 from 9-9, east coast time. All yarns will be on sale, except for those already in the sale bin.

Here's what's good about this: You get yarn at a reduced price; I clear out yarn I'm tired of looking at; I then get to dye up more yarn. It's a win/win situation. Tee hee!

What am I dyeing for Etsy next? I haven't a clue. Look for the new Alexa yarn (if I can bring myself to sell it. I love that yarn), more Rose yarn, some Bambi, and of course Penny yarn.

Lace yarn is temporarily on hold because I have to dye up a gazillion skeins for the mystery shawl KAL.

So, S (sale) Day is coming on sunday. SDS: Sale Day Sunday. I like that. Has a nice ring.

Mommie news: I picked up the Mommie this morning and she and my sister and the Hubbo and I had a lovely lunch and afternoon coffee cake moment. She had a wonderful time, and was quite ready to go back. Yay, the Mommie!

Grace - This is the only sale I've ever had, so it will be interesting or confusing, but definitely fun.

Ria - "I wonder if I can get grace to remind me since she has a post it note going!" How do you do this?

Grace - Ah ha!