sweetgeorgia

Colour Me

Remember this nice GGH Savanna yarn? To make this lovely cabled sweater? We drove all the way out to Steveston to buy it. And it’s not my colour. It’s kind of a beigy-oatmeal colour — natural looking. But it makes me look ill, so I overdyed my swatch to see if I could get something better:

Yeah, I like. It’s just straight magenta acid dyes and it’s come out a wine-coloured red. Nice. But hopefully in the future, I won’t need to make bad colour choices anymore! A friend and I are taking a “colour” class in October where someone will tell you what colours you are suited for. I need somebody to tell me, “hey, that colour looks bad on you…” because sometimes you just get emotionally attached to a colour… or is it just me? and my strange obsession with lilac purple?

Sweet Shop!

And thanks for everybody’s comments, email and overall wonderful support and confidence in me! This is all very exciting and scary at the same time. More dye stuff is coming to me, so the shop won’t be empty for long!

Soft spot for Soft Shetland

A whopping 22 balls of Jamieson’s “new” Heather Aran in “Sholmit” (a light/med grey) is on its way to me from Anne at SheEweKnits — it’s destined for the DH’s Na Craga which I’m hoping to start soon. But then, I heard about this sale at Jamieson’s UK shop… The old Soft Shetland colours are up for sale and are more than 50% off! Yep, it’s not even 9:30 am and I’ve bought more yarn.

Now, I’ll have enough Soft Shetland to make all those sweaters I’ve been considering — Fern, Little Rivers, Irish Moss… Phew, I can see being occupied for years with these projects…

The Sweet Shop

Thank you to everybody who left such sweet comments for me about my handpainted sock yarns! It was both overwhelming and encouraging. So I took the past couple days to think about it all and last night, I had a tiny moment of clarity.

Last night, my friend Michelle came over to knit and watch The O.C. with us (this will likely be a trend over the next 30 weeks). In any case, I was organizing my stash bins (which are now 3!) and flipping through my old Spin Off magazines. We started talking about the drum carders that were featured in the Summer 2001 issue and about how I was now in between deciding on the Patrick Green Deb’s Deluxe (hand crank, $550 CDN) and the Patrick Green Fancicard (motorized, $1,300 CDN).

Then she says, “Fishy, what are you going to do with all the stuff you card? Spin it? Then what?!?” (”Fish” is my nickname and aren’t you glad that this blog isn’t called “sweetfishy”)

I have baskets full of handspun that I haven’t used to make anything more than that single sock! But like I said before, when I finish a skein of yarn, it feels — finished. It’s my finished object.

So here’s the thing. I love the spinning. I love the hand painting and dyeing. I love making this stuff. But as a knitter with not so much time to knit, there’s no way I can knit it all myself… but I don’t want to stop making stuff. I can’t imagine not dyeing just because there’s already too much in the stash.

Enter The Sweet Shop. My handpainted, handdyed and maybe handspun stuff (yarn and fibre) is now going to be for sale, starting with some of that sock yarn from the last post. Sorry, I used the blue and gold sock yarn to start a toe-up sock (to see how it knits up… I like!) but I’ve ordered more yarn to dye, so if you want the blue and gold colourway, send me a message at sweetgeorgia@planetfishdesign.com and let me know!

And in other news

Here’s one skein of that lovely Ashland Bay merino I’ve been spinning — it’s a whole 180 yards! Now, I just need to make 7 or 8 more skeins just like it and I’ll be knitting up a shawl…

And for something completely different, here’s what the DH has been knitting:

It’s a 2×2 ribbed scarf in yarn that he stole from my stash. It’ll be his first finished object… when he finishes!

Labour of Love

Dye Day

Mmm, love long weekends. And this time, I actually took the whole weekend off. What a fantastic feeling. I spent all Saturday morning mixing up dye stock and dyeing fibre with my lovely turkey roaster…

There was some sock yarn dyeing… I was trying out some of the new dye colours that I picked up including Black, Brown, Navy and Scarlet. Mmm, it’s a nice change from my all-purple/all-pink rut, eh?

I also tried to dye some Tussah silk to match the silk roving that I’m spinning for the Lotus Blossom Shawl. However, the silk I used was honey-beige coloured to start with, so my final colours are a little “warmer” than the pack of Treenway silk I bought. The idea is to ply the two together, but I’m wondering about how that might look overall — one “cool” ply and one “warm” ply.

It’s pretty amazing that the ratty looking just-dyed silk can immediately puff up into this soft, billowy roving. Just pre-draft a little and it looks buttery and smooth. Must get some more silk to dye!

River Stole

Finally, I did cast on for River on September 1st and am now at five repeats. I’ve memorized the chart now, but still make mistakes when I’m in a rush. My advice for mistakes? Tink back entire rows and re-knit. I made the mistake of missing a couple of those massive YOs and tried to frog down the rows to insert them, but it just made me crazy. Those YOs are so large and all the stitches are so big and floppy that it’s easy to distort them. It can make you go blind and, hello, I need my eyesight.

Holz & Stein Needles

After posting about my new ebony needles, I received tons of messages asking about where to buy these needles. So here you go: . If you can read German, awesome. If not, Susanne writes perfect English, so just email her.

Birch

Here are the gratuitous Birch photos.

Birch

• Pattern: Rowan 34, designed by Sharon Miller
• Yarn: Rowan Kid Silk Haze in Dewberry
• Needles: US 7 / 4.5mm Boye circulars
• Changes: none! (I made the Stockinette version)
• Finished Measurements: 75‚Äö√Ñ√π x 40‚Äö√Ñ√π

Blocking Birch was the most fun I’ve had finishing in a long time! I left it to soak in some Lavendar-scented Eucalan while I had breakfast and then pinned it out on the bed along with some of my makeshift blocking wires. What are they? They are the wire parts of some stake flags that I found at Home Depot. Seriously, they cost me $2.98 for 25. Happy happy…

I love this shawl — so quick and easy to knit. The pattern is dead easy (easier than River!) and I might just have to make more than one!