The Yarnarian loves lace yarn!

This yarn is irresistible. I know, because I dye it and touch it and admire it and knit with it. I'm talking about my Carrie yarn: 80/20 merino/silk, approx 1300 yards, and wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! I really mean wonderful! As in: you don't need to knit with it; just drape it around your neck. It's that soft and delicious. $34/skein.

Yep, these are variegated yarns, BUT the values in each one are pretty close and the yarns will knit up as almost solids with a sparkle to them.

Adobe. This looks like a sun-kissed southwest moment, and will work up as an almost solid yarn.




Calm. A gentle pale green combination that will work up as an almost solid.




Soft Clay. A wonderful neutral yarn with a truly unusual colorway.




Sweet Love. More beautiful in person than you can imagine!




Gentle. Just what the name implies: a soft, gentle touch.




Tender Love. Beyond lovely!




And 2 yarns that I haven't dyed since a year ago. I found them in my pile of odd and end yarns and remembered how much I love knitting with them. These are Judith yarns: 80/10/10 merino/cashmere/silk 125 grams and 800+ yards. The yarn is a 3-ply light fingering weight, and perfect for lace. A bit heavier than Carrie, but lighter than my sock yarns. And that yardage can't be beat. $35/skein!

The first one is Blush, and I'm just showing it to you. I think my dearest friend (for whom the yarn is named) wants it. But just in case she doesn't, then it's up for grabs.




And this one is Cool Breeze, and it looks just like what you would imagine a cool breeze would be.




You want before I list on Etsy? email me at
fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com

The Yarnarian Loves Cups and Mugs

I collect demitasse cups and saucers, and I adore my mugs. So this week when I was looking for some dyeing ideas, I decided to use a few of my favorites for some inspiration. Most of these cups and mugs have lots of white, and I dyed up BFL, which has a definite cream base. So I decided to ignore the white and concentrate on the other colors. All these sock yarns are my new Linda yarn, BFL/nylon 80/20. Unbelievably soft and hard-wearing. My British customers tell me that BFL is very strong, much better in fact for socks than merino. I know that my merino wears well. I haven't yet worn the BFL socks I'm knitting. Who wears woolly socks in this kind of heat. Yes, I know that wool wicks, but give me sandals in 90+ deg. summer days. And anyhow, I have 1.25 socks finished. So that takes care of that. At any rate, here they are.

Italian Demitasse Cup and Dainty Demitasse Cup:




Japanese Mug & Floral Cup:




Pottery Mug and Oriental Mug:




And, because I'm looking for a yarn for a pretty shawl for me, I also dyed up 2 skeins of Judith fingering wt yarn, merino/cashmere/silk, NOT superwash. Yes, if you want, I will graciously give them up for you. Hey, I know the dyer; she can always do another for me.

Tigerlily & Azure:




Off for a color job at the hairdresser. I'm sort of striped reddish brown and gray and white. I look very silly at the moment. Maybe I should do it this way intentionally. My sister is coming for a visit today. We'll do girly girl things for a few days. Fun for us!

Family crises are slowly abating. Some have been resolved, some are in process, and one is unfortunately the way it is. So it goes. We're all pretty relaxed at this stage, and chugging along as always. Thanks for your support and kind words; You know I appreciate it.

Floral Cup is taken. Smart Shark. No, not the usual Shark, a new Shark! giggle

The Yarnarian Dyes Pretty Yarns!

Yup, that's what I've been doing, in between dealing with some family crises. Do you find that knitting or crochet are soothing when you're dealing with real messes? I do too. And I also like dyeing for a bit of stress relief. So here are what I did the other day:

Judith Fingering Wt Lace Yarn: Veneer and Red! Veneer is a combo of 2 browns; Red! is really a gorgeous blue red, but my camera wants to make it an orange red. NOT.




Rose Yarns: Yup, I found some Rose yarn in my yarn room; I had forgotten all about it. Pretty Posey, Coffee-Fudge Swirl, Key Lime Pie and Choco-Mint Ice cream!






Rachel Yarn: Pond and Rainbow Brick:




Penny Long Skein (2 skeins of this one). Dyed in an 8+ yard skein, so with some real stiping possibilities: Serenade. This needs to be reskeined obviously. I do it on the sun porch, but it is already so hot today that it will have to wait.



If you want, let me know and I'll invoice you. fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com.

Red! is grabbed. I knew it would be. Tee hee.

Coffee-Fudge Swirl is taken. I admire the taste of my sharks, and you know who you are. giggle. I do wish I had an emoticon to put in a real giggle, but I don't.

Choco-Mint Ice Cream is gone.

Ruth in Ottawa - If I'm knitting in extreme tension, then I will knit much tighter than my gauge ought to be. But if I'm knitting under more normal miserable stress, as in now, then my knitting is fine. It is very soothing to do, and if I don't have time to decompress with my knitting, I'm not a happy camper.

Henya - Things are getting better in the world of Chez ruth. Thank G-d! Enough craziness for a long time. And it came in threes, so maybe there will be a nice long time after this when things just bumble along. Bumble is good.

Probably Jane - Yup, the dyeing helped a lot. So now I'm waiting for the sotm yarn to arrive so that I can get that finished. Should be here on Tues.

The Yarnarian is Sneaky!

Who ever heard of a heads-up on a Friday? OK, a mini-heads up. Just for the fun of it. Lace yarns today, sock yarns on Monday as usual. Hey, I have to keep you on your knitting toes.

2 half skeins of Emily lace yarn. 600+ yards and plenty for a scarf or small shawl. Go check out the patterns on Victorian Lace Today and you'll find plenty for a small skein. And the cost is half the usual cost, and you won't have to figure out what to do with leftovers.

Sapphire and Lichen




2 lovely skeins of Judith yarn: 800 yards of a skinny 3-ply non-superwash fingering wt lace yarn. If you love knitting lace but want a change from lace wt yarns, here you are. 80/10/10 merino/silk/cashmere!

Plum and gold!




Lichen is gone as well as Sapphire and Amethyst. The yarn sharks have been sharking!

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.