Dyeing – Page 23 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Yarn Everywhere!

Posted on May 29, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have yarn for sale, well, it feels like everywhere this week, even though it is really just two places.

In addition to Midday Faire, where yarn will be available Tuesday at noon, I’m the guest artist at Club Thread for the next two weeks, beginning this Wednesday. At Club Thread, I’m doing several collaborations with the very talented Tara of Urban Fibers, including peasant tops in Amy Butler Fabric with coordinating yarn, and, for next week, an incredibly wonderful knitting bag made by Tara and filled up with some of my favorite yarns, including the elusive Treasure colorway, and stitch markers.

Here are some of the colorways I dyed up for this week:

This is Treasure on Blue Faced Leicester

This is Lizard on Peace Fleece

And this is my new favorite colorway for sock yarn, on superwash Blue Faced Leicester. This is Poppy and I’m in the middle of doing a pair of baby socks out of it, which I have to photograph and show you later today because they are adorable. For now, here’s the yarn.

I hope everyone finds something to lust after.

I’m off to start thinking about Harry Potter knitting goodness. I’ve joined the Knitty Harry Potter Swap, and can’t wait to start coming up with some great ideas and items to send!

Tuesday Means New Yarn

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s Tuesday, which means I have new yarn for sale at Midday Faire. This week, I’m offering my widest variety of yarn ever, with everything from BFL sock yarn, to organic merino, to a merino-silk blend (enough for a Clapotis), to enough bulky merino for an adult size sweater. Although each of those links is to a specific item, there are a number of sock yarns and merinos, so if the item you are looking at is already sold, click here to see everything in the store.

Here are some pictures:

Please drop by and have a look! The main Elliebelly site is a little bit low on yarn right now because ~~I have a lot of girlfriends who are total yarn crack addicts~~ of my wonderful friends who have spread my name around via word of mouth. I am slowly restocking, and have lots of dyeing planned for the long weekend, so you can have a good instock selection to choose from all the time, not just on Tuesdays at noon.

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have lots of yarn to show you tonight. I’ve been dyeing yarn all week.

Some of it is cashmere for a special "private party" later on this month.

Some of it is an incredibly beautiful mixture of colors found in copper and the various patinas it takes on. This is a lovely, thick organic Merino that I just love to feel.

And some of it is sock yarn. I’m still having an affair with sock yarn. If all goes well, this yarn will be Father’s Day Socks for the Judge. If all does not go well, the socks will be a Christmas present.

And here it is swatched. I’m showing you this (even thought it’s almost midnight and i had to scan it instead of photo it so the colors look very washed out) because I’m just so tickled about the way the colors work out together in the swatch. It’s not an exact science, but even with the socks which are about double the number of stitches per row, I should still get nice little bands of color.

I’ve been in that sort of long, dark, tea-time of the soul phase of
knitting with all my works in progress. Despite knitting steadily,
there seems to be little if any progress. Certainly nothing that
warrants photos. I’m still working on the back of the Ophelia
Colinette Tank — the moss stitch pattern is beautiful and it takes
forever. After ripping lots of the Cahaba Jacket out (due to pattern
error — I should be more gracious but am not feeling particularly
gracious) I’m about back to where I was and ready to head for the home
stretch. I’m dyeing some necessary bits and pieces to put together the
handles for the market bag. And my undulating rib socks are getting
the occasional row here and there. In other words, I am the
quintessential ADHD knitter, lots going on but little to show for it.
I hope to have some pictures for you by the end of the weekend.

Yarn. New Yarn.

Posted on May 17, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s a yarn kind of night here. And it’s going to be a yarn kind of day tomorrow. I have lots of yarn to play with and am at long last expecting kilos of Blue Faced Leicester to show up, so it should be a ~~yarn porn orgy~~ fun few days around here!

I did three colorways for Midday Faire this week. I apologize for not remembering to post about it on Tuesday when I stocked it, but there are still a few skeins left if anyone is interested. The bottom picture is the last of my beloved Suffolk Yarn, which I’m hoping to be able to get more of this summer, as I love how it dyes up.

I am off to grumble now. I had a depressing interlude at my local yarn store this afternoon. Actually, it started last Friday when I went in with Ellie’s Cahaba River Jacket , which did not look right to me. I neglected to photo, but here’s the explanation. The jacket is knit all at once on round needles, and you sort of section it off to do the right front, then the back, and then the left front. I followed the instructions, I believed in the freaking pattern, and it was….wrong.

You know all those people who tell you to trust the pattern? I am here to tell you gentle readers, Don’t Do It!

I just knew that pattern was wrong. But, on Friday, the gal in the store assured me the big flap in the middle of the right armhole was for the collar. I mean, c’mon. I knew. But she seemed so self-assured and she lined it up just so and I thought maybe I was just a moron. I finished the right front, and the back. And then I got to the left side and the directions just said to "reverse the shaping" and when I reread the directions they clearly did not make sense.

So, I went back in this afternoon. Sure enough, I had the original version of the pattern. Errors included. Rip. Rip. Rip. All the way back. Days and days of back. I was too traumatized to take photos, but I assure you, it was mounds of knitting.

And, to add insult to injury? Just as I walked back into my office, I got a phone call. It was my LYS. I had left my yarn (The ball was cut off to facilitate frogging and re-knitting) there. I am off to grumble in hopes that by tomorrow, I will be feeling surprisingly Scarlett O’Hara-ish and can reclaim my yarn and finish up the jacket over the weekend.

Adventures In Dyeing

Posted on April 29, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Can you believe that these two skeins of yarn

started life in the same dye bath? I’ve been doing some experiments with overdyeing, and this was part of a controlled experiment I did yesterday. After the first dye bath, these yarns were identical. You would never think that to look at them now!

I just went outside to photograph the yarn. It is so incredibly beautiful in my yard right now! We stayed outside until the sun went down (and the children’s feet were the deep red of Alabama clay) last night enjoying it. All of my English roses are blooming and the Japanese Iris just came out yesterday.

All in all, it was too beautiful to spend much, if any, time indoors. What little time I’ve spent in the studio this weekend has been devoted to my vintage fabric book pages. I’m being plagued with sewing machine *issues* but am getting as much done as possible before my beloved, but much abused, machine comes home to me. The nice ladies at the store look at me in horror and say things like, "cardboard? you were sewing on cardboard?" "Yes," I tell them. I was attaching a transparency to it and the funniest thing happened." I think I am their most trying customer.

But despite that small glitch, my pages are well on the way to being finished.

This is just a little tease. I’m not giving away everything, since Chris is going to compile the books and have them back to us by Mother’s Day.

Pretty New Yarn

Posted on April 28, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I have to confess that I haven’t been a very attentive blogger while I’ve been getting ready for Art & Soul East (I leave Wednesday), so I’m going to make it up to y’all by showing you some pretty new yarn. I have lots of knitting to do. My niece will be one on June 1st. An old friend just adopted a baby. And looming on the horizon, my son Teddy is leaving for school in frigid (by our temperate southern standards) New England in four short months. So, I have been playing with lots of new colors in an effort to decide what I want to have on hand to play with. Here are some of my favorites.

This is Debutante, dyed on Blue Faced Leicester from England. I love this yarn.

This is Crayon, dyed on organic Merino.

This is Venice, named of course, by Miss Ellie, who seems to be all about anything European right now.

And this is some simply smashing silk yarn in Periwinkle. If this yarn was a man, I would marry it. I really, really like it.

The Judge and I had a fun afternoon with the little ones at Magic City Art Connection, a local art festival with a juried show, lots of food (my poor diet), and an entire area where kids can make lots of different art. It was like a litter corner of heaven. The funniest thing happened — a woman walked up to me and introduced herself as Kristin. She said she knew one of my friends and recognized my youngest son from pictures she had seen. She had two beautiful little children with her and told me that they had some of my playsilks and loved them. It just made my day! I’m hoping Kristin will leave a comment and link to herself, because in addition to being a blogger of seven years (seven — she must have been one of the original bloggers!), she is a photographer and I want to see her work!

The Judge is on the way home with takeout Sushi for dinner. Life is wonderful.

Step Away From The Yarn

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

Please step away from the yarn M’aam. I’m claiming it for cats everywhere.

No, it wasn’t enough that Harry got into my roving yesterday while I was packing for Art & Soul and refused to stop pulling it out and batting it around everywhere until I stopped what I was doing and made him a little toy. This morning, Miss Hermione plopped down her little round kitty-butt in the middle of my drop cloth, while I was getting everything out to take photos of some yarn. One minute, everything was all set. The next time I turned around, there she was. Needless to say, she’s keeping that one skein for kittydom. The rest, however, is mine.