Dyet Yarns: Adventures in Fiber » Yarn Diet

Rose Yarn Giveaway Results: laurie!

Nuri — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:34:56 +0000

Thank you, everyone who commented! Especially for the compliments on the yarn. I hope to be able to do more lovely color combinations, and might be overdyeing some of the current store colorways in the future. I would love to hear what you look for in a sock yarn colorway if you care to share!

Given a range of 1-26, which includes bonus entries, the RNG has chosen lucky number 8!

And that is…
laurie, also known as marlib7 on Ravelry! I’ll be sending you an email, so keep an eye out!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Knitting With One Hand Is Hard.

Nuri — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:11:54 +0000

Knitting with one hand is hard. Over the course of the Tour de Fleece, a spinning personal challenge that runs parallel to the Tour de France, I seem to have injured my left rotator cuff with overzealous spindling. This whole cycle of obsession and injury is alarmingly common in my life, and it really needs to be worked on. Right, self?

I made it through the heels of two On Hold socks (I knit socks 2-at-a-time so they both are the same) before succumbing to the orders to immobilize the arm and let the injury heel. Wendy Johnson is one of my absolute favorite designers; I just love the way her lace looks. I was feeling an urgent need to turn the heels of those socks and get the complicated part out of the way. Now it’s all easy knitting and I can wait to finish it until my shoulder heals.

I was also a little bit bad. I recently acquired a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Champlain Sunset, which is a rockin’ crazy colorway! These are convention socks for sure. Or “Oh frack it’s COLD” socks.

I will be getting pictures of all three of my in-progress socks once I can figure out how to do good photos with one arm. I’m sure I’ll think of something. In the meantime, I am going crazy not being able to knit or spin or anything! Argh!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Yarn Giveaway: A Rose By Any Other Name

Nuri — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:05:37 +0000

From time to time I have little leftovers from my shop, or I find a bargain that’s just too good to pass up. Since everyone is being thrifty these days (and as a shameless way to get feedback), I’m going to offer some of these goodies to you guys!

Here’s how the Giveaways will work:
I post with the yarn (or other goodies) that are available. I tell you how to get your name into the drawing pool and when the drawing will happen. Everyone’s name goes into a numbered list. You can be on the list multiple times if you get bonus entries. I will randomly select a winner using a random number generator and announce the winner in a new post. Winner emails me their mailing address and I mail the yarn to them! (Because I’m paying for postage, I can only extend this offer to US and Canada residents.) Simple, right?

So let’s see how well it works. Here’s the first one:

60 grams of hand painted Creme de Luxe yarn in the color “A Rose By Any Other Name.” This yarn is sport weight and 50% Alpaca, 30% Fine Merino Wool, and 20% Silk.

Isn’t it pretty? To enter your name, comment on this post telling me how you found my blog/store. (ON THE BLOG, LJ cross-post readers. YOU MUST COMMENT ON THE BLOG SITE.) You get a bonus entry for anyone who found this site through you, so make sure they mention your name in their comment! (If you have a common name, please include an initial or use an alias.) Also please read the Rules!

Winner will be selected Tuesday, July 27, one week from the date of this post as long as there is at least one entry!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Second Sock Saga

Nuri — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:52:26 +0000

Yesterday was a very slow day at work, so I got quite a bit of knitting done between that and waiting for my MMA class to begin. In fact, I stayed up late turning the heel on my second sock because I wanted to get through to the straight part of the leg. Naturally, I knit the exact same number of rows on the foot of the second sock as I knit on the first sock. After completing the heel flap, I tried the new sock on.

It was an entire inch too long.

This is what happens when you trust counting and don’t try it on! Apparently I was knitting the second sock significantly looser than the first one. Also, the toe felt funny. After hemming and hawing about whether I could rip partially back and fix it, I decided to just rip out the whole thing and start over. Five hours of knitting down the drain, and because I stayed up last night my hands are too sore to knit today. Ah well, it’ll get finished eventually.

At least I have something else to do while I wait! Last night I found (I had forgotten their existence) some cones of lovely yarn that my mother had given to me and started winding it up into 50 g hanks. I have some brand new heavy lace/light fingering weight Shetland wool as well as a few different lace weight silk/wool blends. I also have a lovely recycled white wool/cashmere blend waiting to be colored. They will be fun to dye!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Lace of My Dreams

Nuri — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:54:32 +0000

Last night I had a dream. This dream involved many things, but the part I remember the most vividly is picking up a half-finished lace wrap that I was working on and showing it to my mother. Somehow the lace looked perfectly blocked already, despite the project being unfinished. She ooh’d and aah’d over it as I showed her the pattern repeats and the little subtleties. I had a huge feeling of accomplishment! The weirdest part?

I have never seen this lace pattern in my life, nor am I working on anything even remotely similar. I have no idea what it was!

Perhaps my right-brain is trying to tell me something. Perhaps my next project will involve figuring out the pattern for that lace design and writing it up. I was thinking about the new pink and teal lace weight yarn I have before I went to sleep. Of course, first I need to finish my Interlude Wrap! I’ve been letting it sit in my Zuma in favor of other projects that require less attention. Maybe it will get some attention next week after Con Carolinas this weekend. For now, I’m busy making shirts!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sock Yarn Success!

Nuri — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:07:52 +0000

I have two things to report on before I go off on a wild convention run this weekend. The first is that I successfully dyed four (FOUR!) batches of recycled yarn that I think will work great for socks. I used two different kinds of base yarns (two sweaters). The first is the one I wrote about in the last post. The light pink sweater that unraveled easily and smoothly ended up in 4 hanks, and I dyed two of them (for me! Yarn for ME!). Here’s how they came out, with a hank of the original pink color for comparison:

The first is a medium blue color with speckles of purple. After dyeing the yarn the base blue color, I dripped some extra dye over the hank and let the colors break on the yarn. It gave me quite a nice effect! I can’t wait to see how it knits up. I dyed this specifically with Wendy D. Johnson’s Rivulets Socks in mind.

The second is a coral-orange semisolid that I love. I haven’t decided what sock pattern to make with it yet. I’m sure I’ll get some inspiration somewhere.

In the mean time, check out what I’ve been doing with the other batch of sock yarn I dyed!

This was just going to be a swatch, but the yarn was so soft and pretty that it just sort of turned into a sock. And…It turned out to be self-striping! I LOVE how this yarn turned out. It is an incredibly soft wool/angora blend, and it has 10% nylon for durability. I have 2 more skeins of this color and 2 skeins in a different colorway (purple and gold). They’ll be up in the Etsy store at some point.

I have decided that 75 g is the perfect amount of sock yarn for me. The sock pictured above took less than 35 g of yarn. I am curious as to how much yarn other people have left over from a 100 g skein when they knit socks. Are we wasting 25 g of yarn when we make regular-sized socks? Obviously cables will use more yarn and lace may use a little less, depending on the pattern.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Project Progress

Nuri — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:11:07 +0000

Two projects I haven’t mentioned in awhile:

My lace virgin project is coming along nicely! I’m about 80% done with it, and am on the last ball of yarn. I’m finally good enough at it that I’ve stopped forgetting YOs and don’t need the lifelines as much. I’ve got the hang of the pattern and the chart, so it’s nice and relaxing now. Got to watch out for that knitting hypnosis though. I can end up working on it for hours without realizing how much time has passed.

I don’t know if this yarn will block or not, but it will be pretty either way.

Next we have another raglan sweater project I started a few months ago with a mystery yarn. I think it’s microfiber of some sort…whatever it is, you can see that I still have a huge cone of it left (in the basket). I’m not really sure what I’m doing with this one…it’s kind of a free-form playing around project. Ribbing on short sleeves? I dunno what I was thinking when I started that. I guess I’ll see how it turns out! The body fits pretty nicely; the ribbing on the front starts just below my bustline and gathers the sweater a bit around the waist. Red’s not really my color, but this is a rusty kind of red and the yarn was free, so I’m not complaining.

Whatever the yarn is made of (pretty sure it’s synthetic), it’s very soft and nice. It actually might be some kind of rayon…dunno. Don’t really need to know, as long as it’s machine washable, I guess. Free is good.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Oh Hai, UFO! Plz to be…something?

Nuri — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:49:08 +0000

Going through some nooks and crannies, I found this free-form scarflett-ish-thingy with outrageous fringe that I never figured out what to do with. I guess I can put some buttons on it and make it into a neck wrap! By buttons, of course, I mean large beads. Once I sew these puppies in with some good, strong thread, this item will officially be wearable. Now I just have to find someone crazy and eccentric to wear it! Heck, I would keep it, but I already have so many scarves I don’t have places for them all.

…Anyone out there into purple and gold and want something floofy to wear around your neck? (And not allergic to wool? It’s Wool-ease.)

This was kind of a stash-buster in that I had only a little of each of these colors and wanted to get rid of them. So…I guess it’s progress?

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Every Stitch is like Petting a Kitty

Nuri — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:29:50 +0000

So, I’m doing the thing that everyone says you shouldn’t do. I’m making a sweater out of Alpaca. See the thing is that I love soft, bulky yarn. Alpaca is wonderfully soft. Not terribly elastic, so not great for a sweater with elaborate designs, but this one is plain stockinette with stripes. Of course that means this is a very expensive sweater, but it was my Christmas present to myself. It could stand a little more shaping around the waist, but ultimately it’s designed to be comfortable worn over a T-shirt, so I didn’t want it too tight. I already had to frog it once to fix too-tightness.

The thing is, this is my first sweater. Ever. Well, that I’ve knitted, anyway. I’ve owned plenty of sweaters before, but they were all store-bought. I learned quite a bit along the way. Like the reason why you need to use smaller needles for ribbing. This yarn is really loosely spun (Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande), so I dropped from US 10.5 for the body to US 6 for the ribbing on the sleeve cuffs. It’s nice and tight right now, though I’m sure it will loosen up with wear.

(It looks much better on me than on the couch, but I can’t divide myself in two at will like Dr. Manhattan.)

All that’s left is to finish the second cuff and do the neck! This brings me great joy, because:

a) I will be able to start my Clapotis when I finish this sweater. YES, I know everyone’s doing/done it. I don’t care. I found a yarn that just screamed “Make me A Clap!” to me and I’ll make it if I want to. So there.

b) I have used EXACTLY the amount of yarn that I bought for this sweater. After the neck, I won’t have any extra balls laying around. There will be small remnants, but I can use those for needle-felting.

Both of these are great for my Yarn Diet! The Clap will be another simple stockinette pattern I can work on when I don’t want to have to think too much, so it’s a great follow-up project to this one.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Jayne Sock!

Nuri — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:21:34 +0000

Okay okay okay, I KNOW I still have to cast off, but the first sock is essentially done. Just a little more ribbing on the turn, then a CO. I’m debating making an I-cord with pompoms for the top to make it even more Jayne-y.

I never realized how incredibly warm handknit wool socks could be. Holy crap. These will be great for cons where the air conditioning is set at freaking 50 degrees. Once I finish the socks, I’ll need a Jayne hat to complete the outfit. Thinking about buying one on Etsy rather than making it myself, since I’m not supposed to buy any new yarn. There’re tons of good ones!

I’m seriously considering the bun covers…would be too cute!

Last night I did my first official charity fiber project: an 8″ square for the Knit-A-Square charity. They make blankets for AIDS orphans in South Africa out of squares people send in. This is a great way to use up leftover yarn remnants, and it’s quick. Yay for stash-busting and making something to help kids!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.