Page 29 – Elliebelly Knit & Dye Works

More Dyeing Than Knitting

Posted on January 23, 2016 by elliebelly

This week, there has been more dyeing going on around here than knitting. And with dyeing, comes this:

I truly love my electric skein winder. Without it, I couldn't make all those skeins to dye, reskein them after a dyebath to more evenly distribute the colors when they are glazed, or to pretty them up after the fact. I really do love it. But the noise lives in my head for a long time after a long winding session ends!

I managed to finish Adama first thing this morning, and I was really glad I did. My version is warmer and fuzzier than the looser, lacier versions most people have knit, so it kept me toasty and warm while pictured here, in the early hours, driving our high school kid to take the SAT. I haven't taken it off all day, although it really needs a good blocking. I'm not usually a fan of chainette style yarns, but I think Woolfolk's worsted weight Får is definitely a keeper. You should go get some right now and knit with it!

Next up — I need to pull Glacier back out of its hiding place and see if I can fix the humongous sleeves (I will never learn to read through everyone's comments on Ravelry — had I done so, I would have seen that virtually every knitter complained the sleeves were oversized). I've got to rip them completely out, not a big deal since I'm only a couple of inches in, but them I'm going to have to struggle to math them so that I can make smaller sleeves fit into the armhole size I've knit. And I've got a good bit of the back left to knit, as well.

Here's a quick peek at some of the yarn I've been dyeing. This is Elliebelly's Merlin, a worsted weight Merino wool yarn.

Although you might think it's too complex, this yarn knits up very well in cabled patterns. It's a bit counter intuitive, but the results are spectacular. More on that later this week!

A Sock and A Knitalong

Posted on January 20, 2016 by elliebelly

I've shown you the Paraphenalia Socks Janine knit for me when they arrived a few weeks ago, but I just had to share them again, as I wore them for the first time. You get a different perspective when you put them on, and realize the brilliance of the cabled design is that they fit perfectly. They don't cling uncomfortably like some socks are prone to do, but rather, they fit nicely in all the right places. And the interwoven cable is smashing. It's almost a shame to cover them up with shoes!

If you're interested in taking up sock knitting, head over to the Elliebelly group on Ravelry and get involved in our plans for this years Adventurous April Knitalong. The theme will be socks. There will be yarny prizes. And it will be FUN. We're in the planning stages now and you will want to be in the know as a little bit of Elliebelly yarn, which you can't be purchased at the moment, will be handed out as prizes as we make our KAL plans.

Yarn: Elliebelly's Juliet 3-Ply Merino in the Oryx colorway.

Sock Yarn For Shawls

Posted on January 18, 2016December 19, 2016 by elliebelly

Elliebelly Angel Sock is one of my favorite yarns. It's a lightly twisted blend of silk, alpaca, and cashmere and it makes colors sing. There is something at once indescribable and luxuriously colorful about it. Although I typically have dyed Angel Sock in multi-colored patternings for soft, cozy socks made for lazy days, with the long weekend upon us, I decided to do some up in solid colorways for scarves and shawls.

The yarn is more muted with this application. Mystic Tangerine isn't quite as flashy, and that's Glacier on the bottom, one of the colors I dyed after coming home from Iceland. They look perfect for a sweet piece of lace to wrap around your neck in cold weather or fling across your shoulders over a sun dress on a summer night. I'm very excited about seeing these knit up!

One pattern that has been haunting me for quite some time is Lori Law's Evenings in Provence shawl. It is so ethereal and beautiful — I love her version of it, but I've been struggling with finding just the right yarn to knit one for myself.

I think I've finally found the right yarn with Angel Sock. I've been working with a new colorway — a soft, almost not there brown, that I want to dye some yarn in for our new sun porch — sort of the opposite of a man cave — so I can have a Big Cabled Afghan and some pillows for the couch. The room is stained wood and it needs a neural with hints of brown. After fussing around, I thought this color looked good in testing and decided to play with it on Angel Sock. I'm going to use it for a Provence shawl, as a test to see how I like the color in a project.

I think it will be just perfect and a nice contrast with my long dark hair. I'm excited about this one. It's all I can do not to put everything I'm working on aside and cast on immediately.

This year, I'm trying not to be THAT knitter. The cast-on-all-the-things girl. I'm trying to show a little restraint and finish projects in a reasonable period of time. But the allure of casting on always calls to me, and I know at some point I'll give into it. I suppose I already have a bit with Adama, my impulse cast on last weekend, which is now making good progress after my angsty little post yesterday about the trauma of not making color changes in the right place and all of that tinking! I'm going to work on a few things that are already on my needles, while finishing up Adama, before casting on for Provence. I will not indulge myself in a knit all the things frenzy. Or maybe, I will.

Adama Cowl

Posted on January 17, 2016December 19, 2016 by elliebelly

Adama. I absolutely adore this cowl pattern. It's been on my "knit it now" list for quite a while.

I cast on last week, after running into my Local Yarn Store (It's called In The Making. It's a good enough shop that if you're coming anywhere even close to Birmingham, Alabama, you should detour for a visit) to pick up a few things. The pattern is well-written and has a clever design. But, you're going to have to listen to me whine about it in this post. Please keep in mind that the whines are all self-inflicted wounds. The pattern is lovely and I expect to end up with a charming finished object, if I can just get my act together.

Adama is written for The Plucky Knitters' Scholar, a worsted weight cashmere and merino blend that relaxes after blocking into a smooth, light-weight fabric. And I had some gorgeous Scholar set aside for this pattern. But, when I visited my LYS, one of my favorite knitters there was wearing a gorgeous version of Adama, knit in Woolfolk's Får. Får is a very different yarn from Scholar. Scholar is a woolen spun yarn, which makes it light and fluffy — it's a web of cashmere with a little merino for balance. Får is a chainette construction, it looks a bit like a 3D crochet chain, and no matter how hard you pull on it, you would be unable to break it, which is something you can do quite easily with a woolen spun yarn. Får is dense and furry. It's wonderfully soft and has a pretty halo you don't normally see on a 100% merino yarn. All of that to say, it's rather a denser knit than the lacey Adama calls for, at least in its in-progress, pre-blocking version. It took awhile before I could discern the emerging pattern.

This yarn is absolutely horrible to have to rip out. But that shouldn't be a problem, right? I am, after all, an experienced knitter and this is a simple pattern. I'm blaming this one on the cough syrup I've been taking at night, but I have ripped rows out of this project, again, and again. Probably more than everything I knit last year, combined. This is an easy pattern, and something I would have expected to complete in three or four evenings of knitting. But, the version I saw alternated sections in two different colors and I was so taken with it, I decided to imitate that approach, which is not part of the pattern. On my first try, the row that that looked like the right place to break in the pattern was too late. Rip. Second time around, I forgot to switch colors when I got to the proper row. Rip. And amazingly, I've forgotten to switch every time I've gotten to a color change, even though I stuck a big purple annotation marker in all of the right places on the pattern. Definitely the cough syrup.

It's not easy to rip out several rows of knitting in Får. That is particularly true of the lace rows I've been ripping out. Even worse, I've been knitting mostly late at night, when the light is poor for a project so dark — the darker of the two greens is very close to black. So I've been struggling to see the PSSO's and SSKs and get them back on the needle properly, in poor light. To compound my problem, my other size 7 needles are in use, so I'm using a not pointy, not for knitting lace, pair of Addis, that although a fabulous needle for normal knitting and doable for this project, are horrible for trying to pick apart and unknit stitches. Like I said, all self-inflicted wounds.

The moral of the project should be, if you're going to use a yarn that isn't quite what the project intended, get yourself the right needles and some decent lighting. But I'm going to slug this one out because I really want to finish this project. I'm on the fifth color change out and guess what? Missed it again. I'm midway through the rip back — I gave up late last night and I'm going to pull it out in the light of day to make it easier.

Why am I doing this? The cowl I saw in the shop was so beautiful. It was warm and fuzzy. The colors were elegant. The shape was perfect for a cowl — close fitting for warmth but a striking accessory. I'm usually a process knitter who enjoys the journey, but here, I'm pure project knitter. I want the finished object! So cross your fingers for me. Hopefully, I won't rip out too much hair while I rip out my stitches and I'll remember the rest of the color changes. And if you're on the edge about knitting Adama, do. I'm sorry I waited this long and suspect this won't be the only time I knit it.

Some Colorful Yarn

Posted on January 15, 2016December 19, 2016 by elliebelly

It has been a slow week for knitting around here, so I'll share one more dyeing picture from last weekend with you. This is one of the classic Elliebelly colorways, Crayon, dyed on a sock yarn base. It's a surprisingly versatile colorway, despite its boldness, and makes lovely socks and shawls. One of my favorite Crayon projects is ModernKnittress's Clapotis.

My personal favorite knit with Crayon was a sweater I did for my youngest boy, when he was at that perfect boy age for dressing how he wanted to without regard for gender stereotypes. He started a trend for colors among the neighborhood boys. Several dads were not happy with me.

This year, I want to knit myself a pair of socks in Crayon. Something to guarantee a smile on a rainy day. Since our annual April KAL is going to have a sock component this year, it looks like that's going to happen.

Dyeing, Again

Posted on January 11, 2016 by elliebelly

The day of linen dyeing that I showed you here resulted in these finished skeins.

That's Elliebelly Chemise, a silk/linen blend in the new Castle Stone colorway. I'm looking forward to experimenting with different grays this year to try and find my favorites. This one is surely a contender, at least on this base. It's interesting to note that different fibers or yarn bases take dye very differently. With this being an unusual blend of fibers for a knitting yarn, I'll be interested to see what this colorway does on other fibers.

Of course, once I had gone to the trouble of setting up dyepots, it was hard to put them away without doing a little bit more, so despite the frigid cold, I spent some time mixing colors. This skein is dyed using the paintbrush method I developed years ago, but haven't had a chance to do a lot of lately. It's one of my favorite ways to dye for variegated color.

Once I got started, it became a bit hard to stop, so I did several vats of kettle-dyed yarn. That's a bit of the Crayon colorway you see drying–I've earmarked some for giveaways ahead of the Elliebelly Adventurous April 2016 KAL, which I hope you will join us for. The indoor-at night photos never do much justice, but late night knitting and dyeing seems to be my MO, so we'll have to make do until the yarn is properly dry and photographed. I wanted to give you a sneak peek!

Big Cabled Afghan in Gray

Posted on January 9, 2016 by elliebelly

Rachael (Coco581 on Ravelry) emailed me this morning to let me know she had finished her version of Big Cabled Afghan, my first pattern. She is the first to complete an afghan project since I posted the pattern, although I know of a number of others in progress and there is also this fantastic pillow version. Rachael has knit it up in a soft, lovely gray yarn, Berroco's Vintage Chunky.

Rachael was nice enough to let me share her photos with you, and I really couldn't choose just one, so you get to see multiples that show off her beautiful stitchwork, along with the color of the yarn. The pictures make me want to knit Big Cabled Afghan all over again! If they do the same for you, it's a free pattern and you can download it here, straight into your Ravelry library.