Acid for acid exhaust dyes! Who would have thought… In a previous attempt at dyeing, I forgot to add vinegar and the result was murky, slightly felted roving. Ugh. So this time, I soaked the Polworth roving in cold water plus a big glug of vinegar. The result? Juicy colours. Yummy.

I used a slightly different process this time too. Just before the trip, I bought an 18 qt. Turkey Roaster for cheap at Walmart. I didn’t like how the dyes would sink to the bottom of the Crockpot and make a big muddy mess of the roving, so I used the cold-pour/saran wrap method as shown in the Twisted Sisters book. This gives so much more control over where colours go (and stay!).

I broke off 7 lengths of roving, each 30g, and “painted” stripes using the 0.5% dye stocks I had already made up. Wrapped them in saran wrap lengthwise and then coiled them up. Placed them all in the roaster and steamed them for about an hour — I know 20 minutes is enough, but I put them in a cold roaster and heated the whole thing up so that I wouldn’t have to transport potentially leaking coils from the dining table to the kitchen counter…

In the Twisted Sisters book they have a photo where the roving packets are “all puffed up” so that you know they are done. In my case, the crappy saran wrap I used melted onto the rovings. Woo hoo. But it was no problem. Plastic and wool don’t mix so I just ripped the melted saran wrap off and the roving was still safe and intact. Just in case, I bought some thicker, heavier-duty saran wrap for next time!

Here are the lovely colours I got:

After a day of drying, I pre-drafted the whole lot. Just gently attenuating the rovings until fluffy. See pre-pre-drafted and pre-drafted shots here:

And here’s the whole 210-220g lot of dyed Polworth roving! Happily, none of it’s felted and it’s still soft. So pretty just like that, I’ll have to decide how to spin it up!

Next time, I think I should pull back a little and try some more “subtle” colourways! These colours are gorgeous…but blinding, non?

Yet Another Sock Project.

A couple of my friends are starting socks for the first time and are, like I was, apprehensive about the heel turning section. So we’re all starting with the top down sock and going to have a “heel-turning afternoon” soon. Here’s the start of my sock:

It’s in that “ONLine Supersocke 100 Sierra-Effekt” that I picked up a few months ago. I thought it would be predominantly pink but so far, it’s mostly black and white! I’m going to extend the leg of the sock more this time so that I can use up more yarn (previous socks only took 30g of the 50g available). The pattern hasn’t even started to repeat yet. Hmm…

In lieu of the dyeing photos that I forgot at home today, I have more photos from Japan. So much is visually and graphically expressed in Japan that the oft-mentioned contradictions and contrasts are made even more apparent. In Kyoto, we bumped into a Maiko getting her photos taken by an American pro photographer…and then at Harajuku station in Tokyo, we found pockets of people all dressed up for the weekend in their costumes:

And here some of the girls that were sitting outside the GAP in Ometosando. Too shy to take a photo with these girls, I took a photo of other tourists getting their photo taken.

We spent quite a bit of time at the Robot Station at the Expo too…watching little Japanese kids play with the “child care robot”. This robot, called PaPeRo, actually responds to pats on the head and verbal instructions — it blushes and “plays” with the kids!

The yellow robot is Mitsubishi’s Wakamaru robot — a hospitality robot that speaks and understands four different languages. It can recognize faces and, in the shot below, was actually looking at me — creepy but very cool. Many of the robots on display at the Expo were actually in use onsite!

And finally, we spent on night at an onsen in Osaka called “Fushioukaku”. So relaxing. It was a perfect way to spend a day between train rides and luggage hauling. I mean, you take as many baths as you like in their hot springs…next to a waterfall…under cherry blossoms! The only thing you have to think about is when you’re going to have your next bath!

See the lovely stone bathtub on the hotel balcony outside our suite? I want one. We’re renovating our bathroom this summer and it’s starting too look like a real challenge. Our house is old old old to start with and the bathroom is tiny. I’ve measured the old bathtub and it’s 57” x 27”. WHAT?!? All “standard” bathtubs are 60” x 30” (or 32”) nowadays! How will we find a new tub to fit our silly little bathroom? I was thinking of installing a tiny Japanese-style soaker tub instead!

Here’s the finished yarn spun from the roving that I dyed in the crockpot a few weeks ago. Barber pole effect? Yeah, I got it, but I’m interested to see how it will knit up now. This yarn goes from being mainly yellow to yellow/purple to plum/purple, mostly two-ply with the last bit of purple stuff navajo-plied to itself. The colours are more muted since the roving was brown-grey to start with.

I think I’ll be doing some more dyeing this weekend — there’s a pound of Polworth that I bought just before our trip and 200g of fine merino that I picked up in Japan — all plain creamy white right now. I did also buy myself a HUGE 18 qt. turkey roaster to steam the rovings in this time…all because I think I managed to felt some of the last rovings I worked with. Hopefully the steam (vs. simmering) will prevent felting… we’ll see…

While sightseeing with my grandmother at Narita-san, she exclaimed “agh, all you do is take pictures of food!” — ah, not so. I also take pictures of food menus! See what I saw at the Japan World Expo 2005 in Nagoya…in the food court:

Too bad we didn’t try any but we were pretty much eating non-stop. I can’t believe how tiny people are in Japan considering that there are food stalls and restaurants everywhere. Entire floors of department stores and malls are packed with cakes and confections… They are, however, light on take-out coffee shops.

Oh, and in Kyoto, here’s what I found:

These were just two of the food stalls set up in Kyoto in preparation of the cherry blossom viewings… The day we were in Kyoto, the cherry blossoms weren’t fully in bloom yet but there were a few people camped out in the park waiting for it. Hundreds of food stalls ensure that you won’t be hungry during your wait. There was even a stall selling PlayStation 2s.

Also, in Kyoto, we passed the Kyoto Arts & Crafts Museum/Gallery and they had these natural dye samples on display:

And finally, I couldn’t show up at my grandmother’s house empty-handed, so I finished off the Backyard Leaves scarf during the initial part of our trip (knitting on the bullet train, so comfy!) and blocked it at our friend’s house on his bath towel:

Just before I left for Japan, I finished two more skeins of Koolaid yarn — the first is some spindle-spun singles (the first few yards are noticeably more slubby than the last few!) and the second is some grape and strawberry two-ply.

When I got back this Saturday, I found my lovely new Woolee Winder (plus four bobbins) waiting for me! I love it! It’s helped me spin up ALL the plummy fall coloured roving and ply it all — efficiently using all the space on the bobbin. I’ll set the twist on these yarns tonight!

Long flights are good for concentrated, attention-required knitting…so I started the Paisley Shawl from the Spring Interweave on the flight to Tokyo — it was a bit of a clumsy start with those bamboo double-points but after I switched to the circulars, things eased up and my yarnovers started to look better.

To prevent problems with getting through security at the airport, I chose to use Addi Naturas (bamboo needles). I can’t say I really like them very much — they don’t have a very smooth join and I find I have to work at moving the stitches around. In any case, I’ve finished 9 repeats and have four more to go before finishing with the paisley edge — almost there!

I also started — and finished all the pieces of the Rebecca 29 cardi… EXCEPT for the last 25 cm of the long tie. Why? I ran out of yarn. Agh! And I even bought an extra ball!?! I’m making the small size which should only require 4 balls of Kid Soft — I subbed for Rare Comfort Mohair which has nearly the same yardage, and bought an extra ball. Who knew you’d need 50% more yarn??? And me, being the tidy person that I am, threw out all the yarn labels so I don’t know what dye lot I was using. Mmm… silly girl.

Well, you can’t leave Japan without some Noro… especially when it’s a lot less expensive than buying it here in Vancouver! I couldn’t resist picking up a pack of Cash Iroha and a few skeins of Kureyon…

And I found some nice cabled cotton yarn, made by Puppy Yarn, called “Kona Cotton”. After a bad, splitty yarn experience with Endless Summer Lara, I’m pretty picky about cotton yarn now. This yarn will probably be for a version of the Honeymoon Cami…

Apparently, pink Chibis are a big deal. Not sure why. They come with four straight needles instead of the two slightly curved needles that come in green Chibis. In any case, I couldn’t find any pink Chibis in Vancouver, so I picked up one for me and a few of my knitting friends here:

And like I mentioned before — spinning seems scarce in Japan, but there’s plenty of cute packages of roving around. I bought two bags of each of “Candy Mix” and a fine Merino — 100g each.

Nevermind the fact that I haven’t yet made anything from a Japanese pattern mag, I bought another one!

And finally, at La Droguerie, I bought some 100% alpaca to make a pair of gloves and a big hank of lovely light blue kid mohair to make a scarf. La Droguerie is beautiful, but expensive. The staff were adorable, giving me a card with the location of their main Paris store and saying, “Next time you’re in Paris…”

Hello from (the Apple Store in) Tokyo! Don’t you just love free internet access from demo G5 computers? Alison noticed that I haven’t posted for a few days and I just wanted to post a note to say that I am, in fact, still alive and knitting in Tokyo! We’re here for two weeks (back home by Saturday) visiting friends and family… I have lots of photos and will post them…soon!

Last night, we had dinner with friends (had chicken sashimi!) and walked through Ueno Park where people are still having their Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) parties… So many people… Good thing we went yesterday since it’s pouring rain today!

So far, outside of visiting Osaka, Kyoto, an onsen in Osaka, and various neighbourhoods in Tokyo, I’ve found a few of the yarn shops on Pinku’s list — La Droguerie in Ometosando, the Rowan/Jaeger shop in Ebisu (where they have actual knitted samples from the new Rowan mag!) and the Okadaya craft shop (4 floors of craft stuff). It doesn’t seem like anybody in Japan does any spinning, but they seem to like felting and crocheting. In fact, you can get little kits of wool roving to make tiny toy felted dogs — so cute. I bought a few bags of roving (that they use for felting) and am going to bring them home to spin…

Ok! Off to find some coffee now!