I did a little more yarn shopping last month. Probably didn't need to add to the already large fiber shelf, but I couldn't help it. It was on sale.
Oh, those words! How many times I have uttered them out loud? None. 'Why is that?' you may be asking yourself. Because I give so much hell to my mother for it. Don't get me wrong, she is amazing at finding a deal - and usually it's for things she actually needs and uses. And she by no means needs to be added to the ranks of those crazy coupon clipper people on that TV show. Although there was this one time when I came home for Thanksgiving to find 10 boxes of her favorite chai tea in the pantry. When questioned why there were so many boxes and how she could possibly use them by the time they would go stale, she responded sheepishly, "It was buy one, get 9 free. We use the stuff all the time. Would you like a box? Or three?" ending with a hearty chuckle. Needless to say, my brothers and I went home with a few boxes of chai that holiday season.
Of course, I see myself perhaps acquiring that trait and well, I'm dealing with it one step at a time.
But really, I found this incredibly soft bulky yarn for super cheap made out of wool and alpaca and I couldn't pass it up. (I just typed that sheepishly, by the way, with my shoulders up to my ears and my head cocked to the side.)
And hey! I'm using them. No sitting on the shelf for long for these little guys. I decided to take three balls and prepare them for a little dyeing....
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| A good soak with a little scour... |
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| Preparing the acid dye baths... |
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My goal hear was to get 3 different shades of one custom mixed color. But I couldn't figure out how to replicate the color, especially with such small yarn quantities. Normally I would just measure out the dye on my scale if I was replicating. Unfortunately, my mini scale doesn't measure past a tenth of a gram. So my solution? Use two cups of water to mix up the darkest color, then parse out fractions of that to each dye bath. And I would say it worked fairly well! You'll see my knitting end products soon...
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