Dyeing – Page 26 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

Gratitude

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

I’m grateful that it wasn’t any worse.

I was awakened this morning by the sound of my husband playing Excite Truck on the Nintendo Wii (pre-Christmas convo – him: "honey, why did you buy this truck game? the kids aren’t going to like it.") Apparently, Excite Truck is pretty d@mn engrossing, because he didn’t notice that while he was bobbing and weaving, ~~the soon to be homeless stray dog we have taken in~~ our sweet dog Trouble had taken my knitting bag off the table and gone to town.

It looked bad. In fact, it was bad. My favorite pair of Lantern Moon needles? No more. Although one of them is intact.

But even worse was the bamboo needles I’m knitting my Clapotis on. All that was left of the second needle was one tiny sliver. Do you see it?

I’m telling myself this could have been much worse. She didn’t chew up the knitting or any of the balls of yarn. And remarkably, she left the knitted pieces alone, chewing up the empty needle in one case, while gnawing the needle down to just above the knitting in the other piece. She didn’t even drop a stitch!

Good doggie? I guess she’s better than moths.

To recover I decided to dye some yarn and roving this afternoon. Both will be on sale tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Midday Faire.

I stopped by my LYS this afternoon to purchase a replacement pair of needles for the Clapotis. Addis Turbos. Chew metal bad doggie.

Art & Yarn

Posted on January 7, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

We had an incredible dinner tonight. One of my best friends, who is fortuitously married to one of dh’s best friends, made an incredible polenta with sausage dish, and white beans with sauteed spinach and yellow globe beets. I’m stuffed, but fortunately, unlike dh who is now happily snoring in bed, I skipped the lemincello with dessert and decided to share a bit of what I have been working on this week.

This piece, which I hope has a vaguely Halloween feel to it, is for a magazine submission.

I’m not quite certain that it is done. I had considered doing a transfer of a group of people onto the backround for a slightly ghosty feel. However, the 16 year old just walked past and said he….liked it! he liked it? Mansakes alive. I have arrived as an artist. The fact that he didn’t look at it and make slightly disgusted snorting noises would have been enough for me, but to actually express liking for something the maternal unit has done, well, it’s unheard of.

I also dyed some yarn this week that I am particularly happy with. It’s a silk/merino blend, and although it is meant for my store, I’m going to keep enough out to do a Clapotis with. The yarn is quite similar to the Debbie Bliss I’m using and I’m finding it to be enormously pleasurable to knit with it.

For those of you following this link for the informal ATC swap, it is still ongoing! There are links on the leftside column to participating artists, and if you would like to join in, all you need to do is post your cards and email the link to me at joyce at elliebelly dot com.

A Happy New Year

Posted on January 2, 2007 by Joyce Makes Art

It feels good to be off to a happy new year. The joy of being off of work for a couple of weeks and having time to play with kids, cook, knit, and make art is really wonderful.

The informal Artist’s Trading Cards swap got off to a great start despite short notice — I only dreamed it up a couple of days in advance. It’s going to continue on for the next little bit to give more artists the chance to play. The list of participating artists is now the first list on the left-hand column of this blog. If you are interested in joining, scroll down through the next few posts for the details and then email the link for your ATCs to Joyce at Elliebelly dot com.

I finally got in a bit of post-holiday knitting time, and used it to add onto the silk feather and fan scarf, which I’m absolutely entranced with. I seem to be doing a lot of knitting for myself right now and this scarf is surely going no where else but around my neck.

I also got the chance to return my studio to normal (as opposed to the cleanliness and order that came with my ~~unbelievable willingness to look foolish for HGTV viewers all over America~~ TV debut in early December.) For those of you who were concerned by the order, it is there no more.

Is there a name for artists afflicted with ADHD? Or is it ok to simply think of myself as a versatile multi-tasker? I’m working on two different shrines, as well as this piece which I have starting painting the background layers on….

and this piece, which is going to be a fabric portrait collage of my baby.

The "make a wish" fragment fits Ollie perfectly, but I had it in the studio because I used it to make a wand for my friend Joanne. It took me a while to figure out how to felt the handle of the wand. I ended up pre-felting some roving while still in sliver form, and then wet felting it, using a felting needle to tack it a little bit, before adding the curly mohair in via needle felting. I hope she’s going to like it!

For my swan song before I go back to work tomorrow, I’m dyeing some silk/merino yarn tonight. It looks like it would be perfect for a Clapotis, which just happens to be on my short list of new knitting projects (I’m the only knitter in the world who still hasn’t made one), although I had plans to use some pretty Debbie Bliss teal blue alpaca-silk yarn. Decisions, decisions.

Hermione’s Adventure

Posted on December 28, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

Our Maine Coon kitten, Hermione, had a horrifying day yesterday. It started at 5:30 am when I woke up to her piteous crying outside our bedroom window. Our neighbors have a tall skinny dogwood tree that soars up towards the third story of our house. That was where Hermione was. She was about 25′ up in the air.

The husband kept telling me not to worry. That she would come down. But I was worried. I’ve talked her brother out of trees a couple of times, but she was too high up. I went out about every 15 minutes to talk to her, but it was clear she wasn’t coming down. We tried a neighbor’s extension ladder and I even talked to the firefighters down the street. No help. She started to look like she was giving up to me — she retreated to the very top of the tree, sort of sprawled down where the branches came together, and seemed to be less and less alert.

After dinner, even DH was getting worried. We brainstormed and decided to try a board stretched from a little landing we have outside on our second floor up to the tree. Even standing on a ladder at 6’2" I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to reach her. He did–just barely. But she wasn’t interested. We called, we sang, nothing worked. Finally, we had the idea of making a trail of cat food, the good, wet, squishy kind, down the board. We finally got her midway across, and dh managed to whisk the board away from the tree and onto our little landing, where I made a mad grab for her. Poor baby. She was shaking all over and it took her a long time to calm down. We fed her enormous quantities of food and water, and when she finally felt better, she crawled under our down comforter, settled down between us, and purred very very loudly. All in all, it was a very traumatic day for everyone and I am so glad she is safe!

She didn’t venture very far from us today.

She loves my new socks (the ones I tried to picture yesterday as the camera battery was dying). The are made from Cascade Quattro. The subtle color patterning in tone in this yarn makes it the perfect sock yarn.

Hermione was also very helpful as I prepared a swap box of art supplies for one of my friends in the Altered Art Divas group.

I spent most of the day in my studio working on the background for a collage I have been fooling around with and playing with some ATCs as the layers were drying. Hard to get a picture of the background because of all the shine on it, but here it is anyway.

I have an abundance of yarn in the studio just now. My ongoing affliction with Colinette is forcing me to stock up before the first of the year, when my annual yarn-fast starts (it will undoubtedly last about as long as the annual diet) First off, I have this Giotto, which I think will be a sweater for Ellie.

God I love Ebay. Really. I also got some Giotto in Peaches and Cream to do a sweater for me.

Also, just to stay in the clear on the yarn fast/use up your stash thing, I pulled some of my favorite yarns that I have dyed, mostly Suffolk and Cashmeres, for my own use. There are few things as decorative as a bowl of beautiful yarn.

And then there is the beautiful Elm bowl my MIL gave me for Christmas, which is full of some of the organic wool I dyed earlier this week, and a bit more Colinette.

The organic wool is really turning out to be the love of my life. Although I’m doing lots of blues and browns because much of this yarn is earmarked for the boys, I decided to also do some deep wine reds too, just for fun. I have no idea what I’m going to use this for, but I am in love with the dark, rich colors.

And then, there’s one last little bag of yarn (Colinette) on my sewing machine chair because I’m all out of baskets and bowls. There’s a bit more of the yarn I did my shrug out of to do up a sweater for Miss Ellie and the red is for a dress for her for next spring.

The ways you have to rationalize this much yarn are endlessly embarrassing. In my own mind, I justify it all as a way to insure I won’t run out of yarn if bird flu suddenly strikes and we’re stuck at home for, say, six months. I have it all worked out. I have enough to keep the entire family happily knitting away.

Christmas Cheer

Posted on December 23, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

In case you need a little bit of Christmas cheer, read Stephaine’s post on her blog, Yarn Harlot. If you don’t read her blog already, you should. She’s smart, she’s funny, and as this post demonstrates, her heart and her priorities are in the right place. Stephanie is convincing knitters (again, she did this previously and encouraged $120,000 in donations) to donate to Doctors without Borders/Medecins sans Frontieres. I think if you read her post, whatever your faith, it will remind you of the true reason to celebrate the season and give you just the lift you need if you are feeling stressed out, overshopped, or otherwise blue.

There is no art news today. The husband, who has been elevated to demi-god status due to his decision to wrap all presents for four children, has turned the studio into a holiday gift-wrapping extravaganza site. I have big plans to felt and work in precious metal clay once he relinquishes the space.

Instead, I did some late night dying. Those bags of organic merino have been calling my name. Loudly. I’m sorting through all the colors that have been swirling through my head and plotting some some different colorways in this yarn. Here are the first few skeins out drying, yes OUT drying because it’s in the 60’s here. The picture is not too spectacular, but I’m in love with both the muted purples and grays in the yarn on top and the more vibrant jewel-toned blues and greens in the yarn on the lower rungs.

I have always wanted to knit lace but based on my research, I have suspected it isn’t the right project for a woman with ~~small demons who haunt her every move~~ multiple young children. Some of my silk yarn, which had been lingering on my dresser, pushed me over the edge. I decided to try a simple feather and fan pattern scarf. I’m double stranding it with a very fine, laceweight super alpaca, for a little bit of fuzz. This scarf feels absolutely divine — it’s sort of cushy and incredibly soft. If you look carefully, you can probably find a number of mistakes, but I’ve decided to let this be and relax and enjoy the process. I have never knit anything that felt so wonderful passing through my fingers! If you are interested in the silk yarn, you can find it here.

Bad Cables

Posted on November 29, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

Oh the horror of it. The sheer horror.

Riding high on the success of the Oh Jan dress (I had to gently tell my daughter she could not wear for the sixth day in a row yesterday) I picked up Memory’s cabled purse in earnest.

should it go without saying that cabling is something that should not be attempted with an almost-four year old on your lap? What was it that caused me to periodically do something inexplicably stupid with the twisted stitches?

I looked at it last night, and decided that I am going to have to rip back row after row, virtually to the beginning, and start over, because it looks like this:

Or, for the truly brave, like this:

I really wanted to finish this purse by the start of Chanukkah, but it is clear to me that to keep up with the pattern, I’m going to have to knit it behind locked doors, in the middle of the night, with no one around to distract me.

In case you are wondering, the yarn is Berroco’s def. Oxygen. I am a yarn snob, sort of, and normally I shy away from Berroco like I would skirt a dead possum in the middle of the road, but Memory (the aforementioned writer of this pattern and one of the most delightful, and sadly blogless, knitters I know) snuck up on me with this yarn, and it was LOVE at first sight. It’s 50% wool 50% (I am very sorry to say) acrylic, and it looks a lot like twill tape in its shape. It feels fantastic and the color is beautiful. As an added bonus, it is an absolute delight to knit. So, with all due respect to the sadly departed You Knit What Blog and its many jabs at the folks at Berroco, I have to give this yarn two thumbs up. Of course, they’ve discontinued it.

I could go on and on (and apparently will) in an effort to avoid sitting down to the task of ripping and restarting the cabled purse. But, I will leave you with some happy thoughts. I’ve been dyeing some yarn this week and am positively enamoured with this green silk, which was accomplished by dyeing and then overdyeing for lots of depth of shade.

I only dyed two skeins of this gorgeous stuff, but it is mine all mine, and I can’t wait to knit with it. Any suggestions for an appropriate pattern (including, perhaps, dyeing some mohair to go along with it — it seems to be crying out for a nice thin spider-web like mohair as company), would be greatly appreciated.

And this fabulous yarn:

is fantastically beautiful Peace Fleece and will be available for sale at Elliebelly later this morning. There are 20 skeins available right now, but y’all have been doing a fantastic job of helping me clean out the studio the last few weeks, so I don’t expect it to last long.

Yarn For A Friend (and some yarn on sale)

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Joyce Makes Art

It’s wonderful having friends, isn’t it? I agreed to dye some yarn for an old and dear friend. She wanted garden colors, like cornflower, persimmon, and a bright yellow, with some greens and robin egg blues. And then, she wanted a sort of mulchy, rusty color. Um, ok.

After much experimentation, her skeins are ready. I liked the result so much I did a few extra for myself — I seem to have caught the Clapotis bug and I’m wondering if the skeins of superfine alpaca and wool blend that I dyed would knit up into a nice one.

Also (if I know y’all, you were waiting with baited breath for the yarn for sale part), if has dawned upon me that in just two weeks there are going to be TV cameras filming in my workspace. The sad truth about my studio is that there is SO much going on down there that I can barely walk around. I have got to do some serious organization and clean up. And, I need some space. So dear blog readers, just for y’all, a free shipping coupon that will let you snap up any of the yarn (and other items like journals, roving, felted purses, collages, playsilks, etc) on my website without paying shipping. Please come and help me make some space, ok? Use code 4120666 at www.elliebelly.com for free shipping. Coupon is good until my studio is clean.