Rambling Warps

Sock progress

Got a bit done on the sampler socks yesterday... the first part, the toe, is done in the blue-green-yellow-red colorway, have not decided on a name for it. The second section is done with what I THINK I'll call grassy bluebonnet meadow:

And here's a peek at the back:

I haven't decided if I'm going to start the fireball color before or after turning the heel. I'll probably use the toe yarn for the heel, but still not sure yet!

I did a knit and purl thing to show how knits & purls look with this sock yarn... I may also put in a small section of lacy cable as well.
One thing about this pattern, it's a pretty "flat" pattern, and probably would do better with fewer stitches, but it could also be that for some reason, my feet are not swelling up at ALL these days (knock wood!!!!) but that could be attributed to cucumbers & ice pops...

Today I may knit a bit more on the socks or may start the nanner toes since I think the toes will be slow going & I'll be using a different toe style, or/and might start on the Casablanca stole and stop when I get to the first bead row...

fever & viruses

Looks like we're just about done with fever & viruses.. on Friday the 20th, Micah got sick and was sick over the weekend, sporting 102-103 fevers...tylenol helped break it... then Monday or Tuesday, Evan got it, then Wednesday, my youngest & I got it... Thursday night my 10yr old & Gary got it... tylenol always helped... we ran out of it & I had to go into town on Friday.. I was feeling better but really was not up to being in town. Oh well!

Prozac

We think that prozac may be the bane of Gary's existence right now. He says it doesn't help with depression and he sleeps just about all the time... like a cat or dog... :(

I don't know if the sleeping so much is related to the concussion as it's already been about 2 months since he fell & hit his head at the hospital. He also said he's not having problems with depression right now, just dizzyness & sleepy/tired all the time. I've TRIED getting him to get up & do stuff...
This week we're going to try to talk to the doctor & hopefully get some things figured out & dosages adjusted or something.

I can has kitteh on printer

summer projects

Casablanca Mystery Knit Along

I joined the Casablanca stole mystery knit along...
I'll use one of the following yarns:

Handpainted wool-mohair-fingering weight

Jaggerspun Heather 5/20 Indigo

Jaggerspun Heather 5/20 Brindle

The brindle is the leading contender...it's more of a golden brown than the photo shows. It's a fingering weight yarn... 5/20 and the story is that they didn't have enough 1/8 singles to make a 2/8 yarn so they took the singles from the 1/20 yarn and made a 3/8 equivalent yarn with that... pretty cool! (I wouldn't be surprised if it's a slightly stronger yarn than the 2/8 is!)

The wool mohair (top one, handpainted (by me!)) is very nice but I have something else I would like to use it for...

I've done the swatch (and FORGOT to photo it, oops!) and am waiting for beads to come...but the swatch is in the indigo & I'm going to use the brindle most likely.
I had hoped the beads would get here before clue 2 comes out (tomorrow morning) but they're not, and probably won't be here until early next week... :(

Summer of Socks

A pair of sampler yarn socks is another summer project as I'll need more socks for winter... sampler meaning I may knit a little with one yarn I painted and then change to another that I painted... probably the multicolor ones, such as these started sock toes:

I wound the yarn from each end of the ball in this case & that'll result in reverse patterning...

Hopefully I'll make good progress on these socks and be able to start a pair of nanner socks (it's a Plurk.com thing, click the link & see my plurk page!:

I'm calling them nanner split socks because of the pink coloring... and figure we've also got some lime sherbet in the mix as well, YUM!

I'm not happy with the photo color, but it shows the basic idea of the color of the yarn. Trust me, the yellow really is a light nannery color! :)

The yarn is from my opponent in Yarn Smackdown after the first round... she included it with the yarn to make the next person a hat since she had forgotten all about yarn smackdown & I managed to send her hat fairly swiftly... (I finally got eliminated in round 3)...

Given the speed at which I knit socks, I'm hoping to finish 3 pairs of socks this summer: the abovementioned 2 and maybe a pair of sport weight socks

Handpainted Sock yarn for sale--better photos pending

I've got some handpainted sock yarn for sale on my website click on yarn then WR Handpainted but I'm not happy with the photos I posted... ALSO I want to put the socks on Zencart, but have not figured out how to use it yet. A friend installed it for me. I'd like when a skein is sold, it'll disappear from the page or show up as SOLD..

The sampler sock is one of the for-sale yarns.

I close today's entry with a snoozin' puddin' on a printer... luckily I didn't have anything to print that night!

handpainting color tests

IMPORTANT: we're having problems with this blog site so I'm moving all updates over to this blog page for now. Please update your bookmarks! THANKS!!

Well, I did some testing and came to the conclusion that the colors are deep enough so I went ahead & did some more yarn painting & after I get off the computer, I will skein up the rest of the cone of merino yarn & pop the skeins in the presoak liquid... and will skein up some other stuff that I want to use for my own personal use. Here are the skeins:

The one on the far left is mohair (my stash yarn) and the next to last one on the right is fingering weight mohair wool (also stash yarn) and the rest of the skeins are fingering weight merino.

In the next batch, which is in color set mode, I have some more merino & some sport weight wool sock yarn and some more mohair wool. The colors look fiery so I'll probably come up with related names.

Tomorrow's batch will probably have some more of the wool mohair & I may skein up some other stuff that I have in my stash, we'll see. The limit of my canner seems to be about 2 or 3 lbs of yarn... I could probably fit more but I need to come up with something else to hold the yarn above the water besides a strainer.

Gonna go see if the other skeins are dry & do some more skeining... maybe tonite I'll do a test knit & see how it comes out...though these skeins were more for color testing than pattern testing, so I might wait on testing a merino skein for when today's dye batch is ready.
I'm not happy with where the colors landed in the test batch, but I wasn't going for a particular pattern set up... I'm happy with the colors, though!