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.

The Fiberman Triathlon.

So have you guys ever heard of an Ironman? It’s basically an insane endurance Triathlon with the swimming, biking, and running where each event on its own would be the death of me let alone all together. Well that’s what I’m doing for the Ravelympics. Only with fiber. A Fiberman if you will. Here’s my definition (edited from Wikipedia’s entry on Triathlon):

A triathlon is an endurance sports event consisting of Dying, Spinning, and Knitting. As a result, proficiency in dying, spinning, and knitting alone is not sufficient to guarantee a triathlon athlete a competitive time; trained triathlon athletes have learned to race each stage in a way that preserves their energy and endurance for subsequent stages. In modern triathlons, these events are placed back-to-back in immediate sequence and a competitor's official time includes the time required to "transition" between the individual legs of the race, including any time necessary for drying, winding, and swatching.

My plan? Turn this undyed merino:

Into something that looks like this:

Pic from this Ravelry project page by brineydeep4.

Full on sheep to shrug Triathlon. Oh yeah.

Here’s a breakdown of my events.:

Dying:
I have over 1lb of wonderfully soft superwash merino to dye. I have never dyed roving before ever so I’m a little nervous about it. A lot nervous about it, actually because if I ‘eff up at the beginning the other events are not going to go well either. And a full pound sounds like a lot.

Spinning:
Once I dye the fiber I will need to spin it. The goal is a worsted weight, 2 ply which I should be able to handle since that’s pretty much all I’ve spun before. The challenge will be in spinning the yardage that I will need for my next event – somewhere in the ballpark of 500 yards.

Knitting:
I plan on making the 2 toned Ribbed Shrug from Fitted Knits. I’ve made this pattern before so it shouldn’t be a huge knitting challenge – except that this will be the first time I’ve knit something out of handspun that requires a consistent, measurable gauge. So that will be interesting…. And getting a shrug done in 2 weeks will be a challenge, let alone having to dye and spin the fiber beforehand!

I’m not sure if I’m going to use a commercial yarn for the collar and cuffs yet… I think I might… I have to think about it a little before I decide. I like the look of it quite a bit- but is that cheating? I don’t know. I think I’m going to dye the fiber and decide once I can visualize it better.

Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to start this adventure until Sunday. I’m having some friends in from out of town for a little Opening Ceremonies BBQ. Yes. My friends and I are huge dorks. But we’re cool with it.

Oh and I’m doing the Triathlon for two teams – Team Ohio and Team Hopelessly Overcommitted. Go Teams!

Good luck to all 2008 Olympians and Ravelympians!

Twilight at the Zoo

So last Friday – after a happy hour at the Bier Markt wishing one of my coworkers farewell – we went to Twilight at the Zoo: (Thanks to Carolyn for all of the pictures!)

Basically this is a fundraiser at the zoo where they open it up and make it adult for the evening. The sno-cone stands are turned into full bars and there are beer and wine carts everywhere. Also excellent food and something like 14 bands. Unfortunately because it’s at night we didn’t get to see to many animals. Even the merino sheep were put away for the night which completely bummed me out.

We did get to see an elephant:

A few sea lions:

A giraffe and a very disgruntled monkey who just wanted us to leave him alone so he could sleep. The people watching, however, was excellent.


Andy and Matt trying to decide if they could jump as far as a kangaroo. They can’t.

Andy seeing what it’s like to hear like a dingo.

All in all it was a really fun event. I would definitely go again next year.

Group shot in front of the empty Polar Bear area.

Girls don’t like walking that much in heels.

Although a word of advice about this – the cab line at the end of the night was ridiculous. Over an hour wait. If you go either have a DD or plan on leaving a little early so you beat the rush.

Tomorrow? My epic plans for the Olympics.

Berlin

Berlin is the place that of anywhere I’ve ever been I would love to go back to. Simply because by now it would look totally different than it did in 2001. Check out all of this construction:

Yeah. That city is building like crazy. And the really interesting part is that a lot of the places that they are building these insane, futuristic things are on top of where the wall used to be. Mainly because the destruction of the wall left large swatches of vacant land right in the urban center. Talk about development opportunity. It makes for an interesting contrast of old and new, though:



Especially when you know that Potsdamer Platz which now looks like this:


Used to be literally a death strip. On the eastern side of the wall they tore down all of the surrounding buildings to give the guards a better shot at anyone trying to escape. Yeah. Now it’s a very cool city center designed by Helmut Jahn enclosed by this amazing canopy thing:



So for the Berlin yarn I wanted to capture this crazy contrast of ridiculously modern against a pretty bleak past:

Neon with blacks and grays seemed the way to go.


Plus that color combo makes for a really fun and funky pair of socks.


It’s available now at Destination Yarn!

And finally - I thought this picture was cool but it didn’t really fit into the post anywhere other than that it's of Berlin... but I’m gong to share it anyways:

Reichstag Dome by Norman Foster.

And one more for good measure:

Shiny!

Oh and something else I just realized when I looked at the date for this post... Matt asked me to marry him 5 years ago today. Doesn't seem nearly that long ago - I guess time flies when you're having fun!

X14

Ok I have 2 more colorways all ready to go…I even listed one on Etsy…. but I haven’t written the posts about either yet because last night instead of doing that I was watching this:


Yup. It’s X-games time. And as I texted my friend “Yes. Skateboard big air. Yes.” Those dudes are insane. But so much fun to watch.

In other news I have something big brewing for the Olympics… perhaps not as epic as my last Olympic attempt but def. an interesting take on it. More on this once I finalize my plan but I do know I’ll be part of Team Ohio.

Have a great weekend, everyone