Our next big adventure

So as you guys probably know by now Matt and I have been on many, many adventures together. We’ve climbed to the top of mountains:

Dead woman’s Pass, Inca Trail, Peru – Sept 2007

And lived in places where we didn’t speak the language.

Copenhagen, Denmark – June 2001

We’ve driven across the country and back:

Arches National Park June 2002

Skied ridiculous mountains

Vail, April 2006

And eaten ridiculous things

Ceviche, in Lima, Peru – Sept. 2007

We’ve even survived more mundane adventures such as college:

Studio freshman year. I'd comment on how young we look but this photo was taken 10 years ago. We were young.

Thesis

I wanted to put a pic of us at MArch graduation with our pretty hoods on here but sadly I couldn’t find one. I’m going to have to keep digging, though because this is a pretty important thing we conquered together.

Home renovations:


Building our patio – May 2006

Football Season:

Pittsburgh after the Steelers won the superbowl

And 3 plus years of marriage:

Picture taken the night we were engaged – Aug. 2, 2003


October 9, 2004


October 9, 2006

But something tells me that of all the things we've done and all the places we've been our next adventure is going to be way crazier and way more rewarding than anything we’ve ever attempted before:

We’re going to be parents!!!

Terrible picture of us taken at 6:30 in the morning about five minutes after that line turned blue. We’re half asleep and unshowered but you can tell how excited we are.

I think this will be the best adventure yet.

Olympic Update: Silver? Bronze?

So I had a grand plan to not post until I was modeling my finished shrug – preferably I would post this on Sunday… Yeah. That clearly didn’t happen. The one two punch of being sick and being uber busy pretty much ended my Olympic dreams. Here’s where I’m at:

Soooo close! I honestly probably could have finished on time but after knitting the sleeves the first time I realized that I had a lot more hanspun yarn left… so I ripped back and made them much longer.

Oh well. In the end it’s more important that I have a shrug that I love than one that was finished on time.

I’m happy with my choice of the Medieval Red, though. I think it offsets the red bits in the hanspun really, really nicely. Thanks for all of your opinions on that!

Basically I only have about 10 more rounds to go. And I probably could have done it, too, but I just do not have the dedication of an Olympian. I got distracted by things such as a party and my fantasy football draft.

So here are my final stats:

Dying – 1 lb of fiber dyed.
Spinning – 8 oz of fiber spun and plyed into approximately 300 plus yards of yarn.
Knitting – about 80% of a shrug knit.

Not too shabby for 17 days. Perhaps I should get a silver or a bronze?

In other knitting news I finally finished the Odessa I’ve been working on:

It’s a Chemo Cap for a family member of Matt’s who needs it.

I love the Odessa pattern – it’s my fav. chemo cap by far. The bling is just so perfect... But man is it a pain in the ass to knit. Something about the lace and the beads makes it take for-ev-er. That and the cotton fleece was really hurting my hands so I could only knit a round or two at a time.

So it grew in baby steps and took way longer to finish than I had planned. I think the finished hat is completely worth it, though!

Tomorrow? Something way funner than the Olympics. No, really.

Olympic Update: Decisions, Decisions

Ok. So I need to make a decision on this contrast color thing stat. I did some serious stash diving yesterday (can I just interject that it feels awesome to have a stash that is actually useful in times like this? It took years to build up the yarn reserves and I’m just thrilled I don’t have to buy anything else to complete this project. I don’t know if that makes me cheap or thrifty but either way I’m happy.). Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Some green possibilities:


Some purple/pink possibilites:


A brown possibility:


And a burgundy red possibility:


The brown is what I initially thought I would like but it’s just too…brown. The darker colors in the handspun are much more red:

So I think that’s out.

So then I tried the pinks/purples… This pink one is waaaay brighter than in the picture:

I don’t think I can pull off a bright pink and bright green shrug. One bright is plenty for someone who is in their late 20’s I think.

I like the color of this pink/purple:

But Matt thinks it clashes and he has a good eye for these types of things.

The dark purple seemed to be close:

Although the darks in the handspun are much more red than purple. Not sure that matters, though, since the deep purple looks good with the bright green.

None of the greens really did it for me except for this one:

But as Matt put it “the olive would work but it’s just not that interesting.” No. No, it’s not. But how interesting does a shrug need to be?

The one we both kept going back to was actually one I pulled out thinking “there’s no way this will work”:

But it totally does. It’s called medieval red and it’s honestly the same exact shade as the reds in the handspun. I think it picks those up quite nicely…

So basically I’m deciding between those last three:

Dark purple - I like it but it might not be quite right with the handspun
Olive – while uninteresting is still nice
Medieval Red - matches the handspun yarn perfectly but might be a bit much with the red and green

What do you guys think?

Oh and I decided defiantly not to do the ribbing in handspun. I think the smooth commercial yarn will set off my less than perfect spinning in a really nice way…

Olympic Update – taking your advice

So first of all thank you guys so much for your reassurance that my yarn looks ok! You’ve made me feel so much better about this little experiment. Also making me feel better? The way the swatch came out:

Me likey.

Before I could even pause to blog the swatch I cast on and started the third event of my Fiberman – the knitting. Most of the weekend (except for Friday night – then we went to the Feast with my brother to help him carbo load for Pedal to the Point. He rocked that btw. Both legs. So 150 miles in one weekend. Pretty awesome accomplishment if you ask me. Oh and if you want to donate his website is here – no pressure, though.) was spent happily like this:


Yes that would be Madden in the background. Matt recently hooked up the 360 to the internets and since then has been thoroughly enjoying beating the crap out of his buddies in various games. Also I’m not sure that last picture accurately shows the cuteness that was happening there:

Dexter cuddled his little head into the ball of handspun and fell asleep. Completely adorable. Anyways! Check out all I have accomplished:

That’s the entire body! It knit up super quick. Mainly because the yarn I spun came out to be much bulkier than worsted weight. So I ended up doing some math and adjusting the pattern to be knit on 10’s at a gauge of 3.25 stitches / inch. Anything would go quick at that gauge.

I think the math is working out ok so far… and honestly, I’m really liking the yarn now.

I had some issues with pooling at the beginning so I ended up winding up the other 4 oz that I spun and alternating on every other row. That seemed to solve the pooling issue:


I know I have plenty of yarn left to finish the sleeves but not enough to do the ribbing for the collar and sleeve edges. I haven’t decided if I want to do those in a commercial yarn or more handspun, though. I think a contrasting collar would be nice…

So I’m going to go stash diving and see what I come up with. Part of me is eying the remaining fiber that I have yet to spin and thinking, hmmm… I kindof want to overdye it with the same dye solutions to make fiber that’s maroon with green bits instead of green with maroon bits and use that for the collar. That would mean I might not make the deadline of next Sunday, though…. Decisions, decisions.

Hmmmm….

Olympic Update. UGH.

So my Olympic progress suffered a severe setback due to my being sick all week. Ugh. Puke. Ugh. And that’s about all I want to say about that. I have managed to spin up a full 4 oz of my Olympic Fiber despite the puking so there's that:

I like it a hell of a lot more than I did in roving form.


It’s not nearly as jarring with the colors blended together like that.

I’m still not totally convinced, though…


But I do love this merino. It spun like a dream and the yarn is smooshy and soft and just beautiful. I have a feeling it will knit up fabulously.

I gave the finished yarn a good soak in lavender wash:

And now I’m waiting for it to dry.

So the real question here is this…Can I pull off a shrug that is slightly neon green?



Possibly.

My plan at this point is to spin up 4 more oz and then decide if I’m going to overdye it or not. What do you guys think?

Day 4 Olympic Update.

OK. So my first fiberman event – Dying – is done. However I don’t know… I’m not really thrilled with the results.

So I broke the 1lb of fiber down into 4 - 4 oz sections in order to make it easier to work with.


From there I used my usual dying technique of spreading out the fiber,

and painting with a turkey baister.

This has worked with yarn many times before so it should work with fiber now, right? My goal was bright, olive greens against rich deep chocolate browns. Because I wanted a lot of depth of shade I mixed the colors using primaries and secondaries. Even the brown – I have a dye called chestnut but instead I opted to mix green and red. This has worked out very well on yarn so I figured with fiber it would be the same theory.

I also wanted some white to show through so I left bits of white and dotted the other colors on top.

Then I put the whole mess in my ghetto steamer (foil over a pot), steamed it, and hung it outside to dye overnight. So far so good.

But this morning when I checked out the nearly dry fiber the result was… unexpected:


Instead of olive and brown I have acid green and burgundy.

I think what happened is that for some reason my colors split. So instead of staying the nice mixed brown the bright green and deep red each pulled out in their own direction. So part of the fiber was dyed with one color and part the other. This doesn’t happen so much with yarn. But in fiber?

Yeah. Not the look I was going for.

I’m a bit down about the whole thing. I’m not really happy with these colors but I don’t have any more fiber to dye. And to even have a prayer of a chance of finishing this in time I need to get my spin on tonight. What do you guys think? Should I just give up? Are these colors terrible?

I dunno. Perhaps not but again not what I was going for. My plan right now is to spin up some of it and see what it looks like and then decide from there. Ugh.