Knitting Dragonflies

In the attempt to get a different look to my dyed yarn, I tried to dip the yarn into separate dye pots. Wow, I love the look, clean colors, more definition.  I used this article from Knitty to guide me. Of course it is more work. My hats off to all of you who hand paint yarn! I started with some vibrant shades of violet and green. I couldn’t find what I wanted and ended up using this tutorial on food coloring. From Spindle and Wheel. I used the Neon food colors that I found at a baking shop. They came in a paste. The mixing was quite a bit of trial and error. To come up with the right color and salt/vinegar mixture, this resulted in lots of little bundles of dyed yarn, and several pages of notes. I wanted the colors fairly close together to get a nice repeat when knitted. Wheee…This really exercised my arm muscles, dipping into the green, I tried to make five different bands of color. Then the purple, also five bands. Then wrap it all up into saran wrap and microwave i

As you know I have been raising silkworms, or trying to. It started with the idea of raising them for their cocoons, and eggs and then dyeing them to spin. Along the way I became charmed by these little hairy babies. Lifting their heads up,every time I opened the container to feed or check on them. Little piggy fellows, peaceful and sweet. My tale is one of many mishaps. I was so excited when my 1000 little eggs hatched, right on schedule. I had my mulberry leaf supply and fed them, hungry little squiggles. I checked and fed them , removed old leaves and then……one evening a cold snap came, I didn’t have the heat light set up. In the morning I had 1000 dead silkworms. Damn.. Discouraged but determined I set out with 500 more eggs. I had a thermometer in the shoe box, and a heat lamp. The eggs hatched out in 3 days. But by this time the mulberry leaves are browning, so I bought the mulberry mush. I carefully cut and place little clumps around for the little cuties to eat. They qui

I read about Navajo plying recently and found a couple of videos on You tube. This on is good , and here is another from the Yarn Wench It was easy to start out and I got the hang of it. I had a small amount of roving left of a color way and decided to try it. Here are my results I love the look of it and will do more. It has a slightly braided/twisted look. Give it a try, it is fun. Here is some more spinning I have going Some orange that I am going to ply with a little teal blend added in. This is going to be blended into a yoke for a sweater. It was all orange with a solid teal for the rest of the body. But I decided that looked too harsh. I like the added color it looks a little softer. I also spun some reddish/pink singles that I am thinking of Navajo plying May your knitting needles (or spinning wheel) fly as fast as Dragonflies…. Technorati Tags: Spinning , navajo plying , knitting , knit , how to navajo ply