Tag: starry stole

Everything Is Not What It Seems

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You would think I would get better at estimating how long things take, considering I’ve been knitting for over ten years. Seriously, I should be better at this. But I have managed to mess up a straightforward triangular entrelac shawl several times, but I got a beaded one finished in a quarter of that time. You would think the beaded one would’ve been more difficult.

I’ve made so many of these, I went for something a little different on the picture. So here is Dinosaur modeling this one. It is a Starry Stole from Knitpicks, worked in Shadow yarn in the Midnight colorway with silver-lined, clear beads. As I have done on all the others, I added a third full repeat to make it more scarf-length.

I’m finally re-doing the christmas scarf, hopefully to be done with it soon. That one may turn into a bit of a tutorial. It sure has taught me quite a few things.

Am I Making This Easier?

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I’m currently using my “both sides at once” technique to make three scarves at a time. Because, in my brain, I’m only having to do the row once, rather than doing it six separate times.

Not only does this lead to very full needles, but things can get a little messy. Try as I might to keep the strings nice and untangled, like this:

it usually looks like this in a matter of minutes:

Which means I am having to stop and untangle them every few rows just to keep going. I’m probably not helping myself as much as I think I am by doing this. In fact, I know I’m not. But I have the delusion that this is making me be able to get everything done quicker. So I’m going to keep believing it wouldn’t just be faster to do this one at a time. Even though it most likely would.

Kool-Aid Does What? (Dyeing Yarn With Drink Powder)

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I’m fairly certain everyone has had some form of Kool-Aid in their lives. Which is why it is almost slightly disturbing to find out that it works so well as a fiber dye. Not that that means I will stop drinking the stuff, of course.

Not being able to find the correct shade of yarn to make my next Starry Stole, I decided to try dyeing my own. I was going to order some acid dyes, until I saw this tutorial on Kool-Aid dyeing on the Knit Picks website.

The blank yarn came last week, so I picked up some Market Pantry Sugar Free Strawberry Lemonade mix (which turned out to be a pretty color, but totally the wrong shade), because Target doesn’t actually carry powdered Kool-Aid anymore, apparently. I started by washing the yarn in the sink:

I used the Yarn Harlot washing method of tossing the yarn on top of the soapy water and letting it sink on its own. I just let it go until I remembered it was in the sink and realized the dog hadn’t peed on the carpet and that was just the wet wool in the sink.

I mixed a bit of the drink powder with some water, put the yarn on top, and filled the rest of the dish with water. The next step is microwaving it in spurts until the color is all soaked into the yarn, like this:

After letting it cool, I rinsed it, washed it again, and let it dry on the sink.

I was supposed to make this a very pale pink. It didn’t exactly work out. I mixed up Strawberry Lemonade and Pink Lemonade in my mind. So now I have ordered two hanks of the blank yarn, one to use to test out the colors and one to actually dye once I find the right shade.

As for this flamingo yarn, I’m thinking an overdye with some light blue to get me to a purple/blue variegated-esque yarn to turn into some sort of scarf or shawl. Undecided right now, but I have a few other projects to finish before I start something that doesn’t really have a specific purpose.