Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find *just* the color of yarn you want right when you want it? This time, I was searching for wool in a skin tone. Now, finding this online is easy – it’s finding it in person and quickly to whip up a small project that’s the bear. After spending a few minutes in my local yarn shop, I sighed defeat and grabbed a white skein of Galway. I figured I’d soak a bit in tea and call it good.

A quick perusal of tea dyeing on Google caused me to believe that it really is that easy. Tea (and coffee, for that matter) stain so very well. I wonder what red wine would look like on white wool? Hrmmm. I *know* pizza sauce would work. Hrmmm, now I don’t know whether to be hungry or go do my laundry. Back to tea!

After reading about how the tannic acid in the tea weakens fibers, I started to lean toward coffee dyeing. But, I have some undrinkable nasty old tea bags hanging about in my pantry (why clean out the pantry when you can knit?) I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste COFFEE on dyeing wool. I decided that tea would be fine; after all, this is a lark sort of project, not a hangs-around-for-generations knitted heirloom.

I grabbed my thrift-store dyeing pot and spoon and wandered into the kitchen. Lo and behold, there sat about a third of a pot of coffee that had been on the burner too long that morning. It sat neglected all day, and was fairly begging to be poured over wool. Who am I to argue with the fates? Coffee it is.

I’m sure there are as many methods to this as there are posts on the subject, but I’ll just tell you what I did.

Combine 1 2/3 C coffee, 2 C water, and 25 g wool in the dyepot. Bring to a nice, steaming, almost-simmer. Keep it steaming for about 5 minutes. Add 1/2 tsp alum; stir gently. Turn off the heat; add lid. After a while, drain the water and let the wool cool down. Then, rinse with tepid water.

If I’d been going for a darker brown, I’d have steamed the wool for longer, and I’d have let it sit in the dyebath overnight to cool. As it was, I was aiming for a light brown, which is just what I got.

Quite a little while ago, I entered Karrie‘s Fake Rhinebeck Contest. To my great surprise and delight, I won! The yarn lazed around my kitchen and living room for a bit, waiting for me to get my act together. Let’s not mull on how long that took. Look! Pretty yarn! Thanks, Karrie.

The yarn still hasn’t told me what it wants to be. I’m tempted to do something similar to the Red Bird Knits’ Latvian Wedding Socks pattern with it. Time shall tell.

The yarn is Syncopation self-striping sock yarn in ‘Dayspa’.

I am relatively new to stitch markers that aren’t little circles of plastic, twisters, or bits of yarn, so I was thrilled with these cute markers Karrie put in. You can’t tell in this photo, but behind the ‘knit’ and the heart both look like knitted fabric. They give me a thrill quite out of proportion to their size. Must get more stitch markers.

	Hubby’s House Socks are coming along. He decided on a Greek Key pattern for the top. I was worried about this yarn, as he asked me to duplicate my colors from the first Hogwarts Sock Swap that I did. Thank goodness I took some notes.
Even with the notes, the colors aren’t quite the same; the new yarn is a bit lighter than the first go-round. I’m not sure whether that’s a function of the base yarn I used, the fact that I dyed more at a time (though I upped the dye amount to compensate), or just the dyeing fates. At any rate, John likes it, and that’s what matters.

The hollow shell-of-a-ball of the old yarn is on the right (Fingering weight KnitPicks base) and the new yarn on the left (DK weight Louet Gems base.)

Ah, how quiet the blogosphere was this weekend as many of my favorite bloggers were off having fun at Rhinebeck in NY. I hope y’all had fun, and I wish I could have been there. So does Karrie. So much so, that’s she’s holding a little Fake Rhinebeck contest. Go have a look.

So, here’s my phony booty:

A luscious sweater’s worth of Mission Falls 1824 superwash, waiting to be turned into Eris.

Uhhh. Is that the wrong kind of yarn? Does Rhinebeck only have indy stuff? I have no idea, as I’ve never been to a fiber festival before. Hmmmm. Okay… let’s try this:

Sleeping Dragon 100% superwash handpainted sock yarn in the ‘ramble’ colorway. It’s still looking for its destiny.

See you next year at Rhinebeck… or fake Rhinebeck, which is much more likely. Knit on.

Surely I’m not the first mom to notice the similarity between a wizard’s wand and a nostepinne. First the legos, and now this; if I’m not careful, the boys will start hiding their toys from me.

I dyed the yarn with Wilton’s food dye; the variegated coloring is intentional. It’s destined for a swatch for my Hogwarts socks, so I can’t tell you about it here. Don’t worry, Lesley, your socks won’t be kelly green.

There’s been more interest than I anticipated in the Lego swift; to think I almost didn’t post it! A quick refresher: my simple swift looks like this:

If you’re not sure how to go about it, show the photos to your local Lego aficionado. They’ll get right on it. The beams are approximately 21.5″ (54.5 cm) from end to end. For those of you that think in Lego dots, that’s 68 dots across, or 34 per arm. The center is two platforms, with the arms coming in between them. The spinning Lego man is optional, but highly entertaining. Here’s the view between the platforms.

The arms are a balance between sturdiness and weight. I used as many of the Technic 1 x whatever blocks that I could find, both because they have the holes in them (less weight) and because I think the locking mechanism with the little post-thingys* makes for a sturdier arm. I ran out, and used regular legos for the outside of the arms. The arms do bend a bit, especially when loaded with yarn, but it still spins.

At the end of the arms, build whatever sort of mechanism you can for holding the yarn so that it neither slips down over the arm end, nor up over the top of your “clip”. My favorite piece for this resembles an airplane strut.

Here’s my most cobbled-together clip:

Just keep the weight on the opposing arms close to the same, and you’ll be fine.

The swift can easily accommodate different skein sizes… just pop off your end clips and readjust them along the arm to fit. The only time I ‘broke’ the swift is when I was pulling a smaller diameter skein of yarn onto it, trying to get it to fit the last clip adjustment I had. The offending clip went flying, but the rest of the swift held together admirably.

Now that you have your center and arms built, it’s time to figure out how to get it to rotate. There are a lot of rotating Lego pieces, but the one I tried out first worked for me. It’s another Technic piece, and looks sort of like little helicopter rotors. I put it under my larger of the rotating platform pieces, and then balanced it on a rod from the same sort of set. If you don’t have these pieces, just look for something else that rotates.

The base is a piece that holds a rod, surrounded by some blocks to encourage it to stay in place.

That’s it!

I was at the toy store this week, and found a great tub of K’Nex for half off. I feel a K’Nex swift coming on.

* see, I’m such the enthusiast, I have all the jargon down cold

How is my new swift like Serenity?

Lego police swift dude courtesy of Tweedledee. He holds the yarn end if it starts to drop and wind around the axle. Apparently, he also enjoys twirling around with the yarn, if the running commentary around here is any indication.

Ahhh… ready for swatching.

Today’s sky was blue and, to be perfectly honest, rather boring. So, I’m pulling this sky out of my archives for you all. This is Huntsville, Alabama, last March.

This has been a fun and eventful weekend. We all trucked out yesterday afternoon to a picnic with hubby’s co-workers. It was rather fun despite the drizzle. The kids played on a trampoline and got soaked… you know it’s a good time when they’re soaked through and don’t mind a bit. We brought some of our home brew, and it was well-received, so that was fun, too.

Also, today marked the end of the mini Jaywalkers! I’m so very happy to have these off the needles. It’s a lovely pattern, but not with splitty yarn. I think yarn with a longer color repeat would have looked better, as well. The zig-zags get somewhat lost with the Panda Cotton. They are a smidge too big for Tweedle-d’oh, but that means they’ll last more than a month. How do kids grow their feet and legs so fast?! I haven’t done a proper photo shoot, but did catch them this evening in their native environment… Tweedle-d’oh was watching Daddy play video games.

Started: 13 April 2007 Finished: 6 May 2007 Pattern: Grumperina’s Jaywalkers, modified to fit my 7-year-old’s foot. Yarn: Panda Cotton, in ‘Denim’. I find this yarn too splitty to be doing double decreases with every other row. It’s not too bad in plain stockinette, though. Needles: 4″ Addi dpns, size US 1

Lynn commented:
Ok you SO need to tell me abt this kid friendly B&B in the Smokies… We have a trip planned for the area and I would love to stay in a place like this……

I know how you feel! I wasn’t sure a kid-friendly bed and breakfast really existed. Many B&B’s have an outright “no kid� policy, and many that say they’re kid-friendly seem to just tolerate kids. This was the first one I came across in my search that seemed to actively embrace families. We were extremely happy with our short stay there, and will be going back. A word of warning: you may want to plan one full day to stay at the farm. The kids didn’t really want to go anywhere.

The B&B we were at is called Persephone’s Farm Retreat. You can find them online at http://www.bedandbreakfast.cc. If your kids like gathering eggs and petting animals, this is the place for you. There is a large farmhouse with rooms, as well as two cottages (full kitchens) down toward the paddocks. We opted for a cottage – there was no extra charge for the kidlets – and lucked out with a really nice family in the cottage next door. The kids all got along; they petted the animals and played with the outdoor games together. The innkeeper also has musical instruments on hand for those who play and a fire circle for evening fires when appropriate.

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What? Knitting content? OK!

Spring has sprung chez Flyin’ Needles. This is a sock for Tweedle-dee from some panda cotton we picked up on vacation. He says the yellow is like “having sunshine whenever you want it!� This kid is destined for marketing.

The Panda Cotton is treating me all right so far. It’s less bumpy than I had anticipated, which is a pleasant surprise. Also, it doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as Cascade Fixation does with its use of elastic. I have a hard time getting even tension with Fixation. That said, it can be a rather splitty yarn, and don’t think about frogging and reknitting large sections. “Rather splitty� morphs into “these seven strings are all one yarn?� at that point. I’ll let you know how it goes.

An update from sunny Florida…

Much to my surprise, Crystal Palace yarns came by the blog to visit. Thanks for stopping by! I also received a rather prompt reply to my inquiry there. You see, I’m still quite excited about their Panda Cotton and Panda Wool – especially the wool. To date, I have found one store online that stocks the wool: Little Knits. I also found a nice little shop across the country from me that said they’d order it and ship it to me. Isn’t that nice?

To be fair, it is really new, so I’m sure it will be easier to find in a few months.

In the meantime, I shall continue to play with this…

That’s my very first ever toe-up sock in the Blossom colorway from Dave’s Place. I’ve just turned the heel and am ready to start the cuff. I might be making it a smidge too loose, but I’m really not sure how much (or if) wool shrinks*, as this is my first woolen sock. I have no idea how well it will fit, but it sure is fun to knit.

Tonight, the family and I had quite a treat. We were at an uncle’s house, and he took us on a guided tour of the property – including the cypress trees, dry lake and creek bed, and a bald eagle’s nest. There were a few trees down where the lake ought to be that are amazing. I am assuming they are live oaks. Huge, and majestic. Unfortunately, the light was failing so my photos aren’t that great.

I’m standing on the dry lake bed here, looking back up the hill.

This is the walk down towards the lake bed. No eagle sightings today; I’d stay in my nest, too. Brrrr!

* Yes, I know I CAN make it shrink. I just don’t know if it’ll shrink if I manage to treat it nicely. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Dear Yarn Shop Owners,

Crystal Palace has two new sock yarns, Panda Cotton and Panda Wool. For someone, like myself, who lives for a fingering-weight yarn with less than 50% wool, this is a Big Thing. I would be oh-so-happy if someone would actually STOCK the stuff. Yes, I’ve looked. Yes, I’ve worked the phone. I have found a sum total of one (1) store that stocks it… and they only carry the cotton; I’m really looking for the wool. I’m getting a little frustrated at this point.

If you stock it, allergic sock knitters will come.

Thank you.