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| July 4, 2007 @ 1:23 pm |
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posted by kris
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My new love!
So, through my search for all the indie dyers in Germany, I found Sheepaints, which is run by Sabine. I ordered two skeins from her – one normal sock yarn and one bamboo sock yarn. I haven’t knitted them up yet (yes, shame on me). She has outstanding customer service and she even included some yummy swiss chocolates with the package!!! Out of the blue, I get an email from Andrea (Das Schneeschaf) and she tells me about her yarns. Her shop is relatively new, only a few months old, but she does something very unique – she airbrushes her yarns! Some of them are completely airbrushed, some of them are dyed regularly, and then have airbrushed parts. She puts a lot of love into each and every skein! Then I find out that Sabine and Andrea know each other and are friends! They are both really nice gals.
So, they listen to our podcast and decide to send us some yarn. They sent us a whopping 4 skeins of yarn!!! Sabine sent us 3 skeins of sock yarn and Andrea sent us 1 lace-weight Marisilk. They are all beautiful, but my heart skipped a beat when I touched the Marisilk. It is made with the same stuff as the Hand Maiden sea silk (70% silk, 30% sea cell). I haven’t received my Hand Maiden yet, so I couldn’t tell you the difference. But oh, it is so luscious!!! Sabine and Andrea both carry Marisilk, so go check them out! I had to convince Elem (and soon Cashyie) that the Marisilk belongs with me. It wasn’t easy. And I feel a little guilty. I haven’t knitted with it yet, but plan on casting on soon. I think the Montego bay scarf is calling out to me!!!
If you’re interested in trying some of their yarns out, look out for my posts of the “Taste of Germany”. I will include one skein of Marisilk!
Big felted mess
Better, but still slightly felted
Woohoo! Success!
So after getting all those kool-aid packets with Linnea, I was sooooo ready to do some dyeing. What yarn did I choose you ask? Well, I had some sample yarn of BFL that was so soft and scrumptious! And what was that? Was it superwash? Of course NOT! Yes, I am a retard.
I found it very odd that I like very bright and happy colors when I buy yarn, but when it came to dyeing, I wanted really dark, rich colors. Yeah, you heard that right. That’s what I wanted to achieve with Kool-aid. I wanted a deep red/burgundyish color. Yes, I am a retard.
I start out following the instructions on knitty.com on how to do it. I chose the stovetop method. Actually, everything went very well, no mess or whatever. By the way, I decided to start easy and just do one color. They say to use one packet per ounce of yarn for saturated colors. I found that to be way too little. So I just kept adding more. I thought I was really careful with the water temps and everything, but apparently I wasn’t and it turned into a big fat f@#*#&!n felted mess. I was very sad. But I did achieve a rich red color that was sort of dark. The sport weight didn’t felt as bad as the aran weight. Don’t you find it funny that when you are TRYING to felt something, it takes the power of a washing machine to do it. But when you don’t want it to felt, just put a little too cold water and poof – you have a felted object. I did manage to rip it apart and make it back into a skein, but what to do with it. I don’t have the heart to throw it away and I don’t want to knit with it…any ideas? It isn’t that much yardage anyways. The sportweight is probably ok to knit into a baby hat or something. I told my story to Scout (of the infamous Scout’s Swag) about my felting and she said “how did you do THAT?” I hang my head in shame.
BTW, could someone tell me what cake dyes are? Are they the icing colors? Because nowhere on wilton.com does it talk about cake dyes. I cannot find the paste type food coloring (which I heard was better than the liquid), and the food coloring that we do have is only in limited colors, say 3.
So, after this disappointment, I tried again. This time, I used superwash BFL sock yarn. I even soaked it in a partial solution of vinegar so that I could get a more “heathered” look. Because the plain one color yarn is kinda boring. But oops, soaked up the color too fast, so I let it cool and then over dyed it with straight grape, and it turned out exactly how I wanted it – a deep purple that’s not uniform. I may actually knit it up into socks!!!
I am doing an exchange with the sock/spinning/dyeing goddess, cauchy09, and she is going to give me tips and tricks with dyeing. I really want to dye with Ashford dyes (I even have the dyes!), but I’m so paranoid about the “health risks” and I would have to get a mask and special dye pots that I’m too lazy to get.
At first I thought, wow, if I could dye my own yarn, then I wouldn’t need to buy any! But then you will ALWAYS want to buy stuff, so now I’m like why even try? Leave it up to the masters. Speaking of which, my Taste of Germany idea is kind of coming together. I have emailed several dyers now and just want to test out the other two. Stay tuned! I’m thinking of making the first kit “blue” (sorry Pamela!) because I figure if I can’t sell my 5 kits, *I* will have to use this yarn!
I just saw the movie “Sicko” tonight and man, I don’t think we can ever move back to the states. The state of health care in that country is just a mess. I know NO country is perfect, but it is sad to hear so many stories of people going bankrupt over medical costs. And then you hear Violet (of L&V) talk about her health horror stories and it’s really scary. The older you get, the more important stuff like health care is. Germany is not perfect either, but we don’t worry about the possibility of going broke because someone got sick, and college costs for our boys (although we are putting away SOME money). But now, after seeing that, we want to move to France. Haha! There may be a mass migration north to Canada, I think… I’m sure there are lots of criticisms for this movie, and Michael Moore is famous for being really biased, but one thing you can’t deny is that the system IS a mess and the government needs to do something about it!!!
And shhh…I broke my yarn diet alreadyagain. Yeah, I know. I hang my head even lower. I blame it on Elem, Sabi and Andrea. And hey, I gotta test out the yarn I’m sending right? right?
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| June 1, 2007 @ 1:09 am |
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posted by kris
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This Yarn Pirate is all mine!!!
Lisa Souza Hardtwist Gendarme
Hey, guess what? I won a contest (finally!). Ingrid was having a contest for the book “Knitting Under the Influence”. Hmmm….a little close to home perhaps? Anyways, I won the drawing and I just received the book! Thanks, Ingrid, can’t wait to read it!
I also got my Lisa Souza yarn as well as the Yarn Pirate from a swap I did with ShadKitty. Folks, I’m still on my yarn diet and doing well. The only one that gets me is Posh Yarn. Her shop update emails are forcing me to look. Luckily, there hasn’t been anything that is really tempting me. But oh, it’s only a matter of time. I was hoping the Lisa Souza yarn would be thinner, but it’s ok, the socks will just fly off the needles!!! I got the hardtwist one based on someone’s recommendation on the last contest I did. It is for a pair of socks for Michael. How lucky he is. He can almost go to work every day in a pair of handknitted socks. Yippee!
Oh and the Yarn Pirate, how I love thee. I don’t know what Shad was thinking giving this skein up, Temporary insanity??? :) Thanks Shad! Don’t know what I’m going to make with all of these. For right now, they will sit in my stash while I ponder what to make with them.
The podcast has sucked up a lot of time between editing, recording, planning, emailing. There is a lot to say, especially on the subject of weird things in Germany. I always forget to write stuff down and then I get so mad whenever I forget. DOH! Don’t worry folks, there is a LOT to say. It has been a whole lot of fun though and elem and cashyie are great partners. And since we have all this new music equipment in our house (for the podcasting), Michael’s music interest has come back with a vengence.
For those of you who don’t know, I met my husband in LA where he was playing in a band with the now lead singer of Weezer. He is an extremely talented guitarist and musician and I am so lucky to be married to him. He got tired of the “scene” (we were 19 at the time) and decided to go to school to study music composition. But then he quickly saw how there would be no money in his future and decided to switch to computer science. He has been a programming geek since then, but he loves to play his guitar now and then, especially to our boys. We sold off most of our recording equipment when we moved here, so now having a scaled down version of what we had is bringing the musician in him back out. We had a lot of fun writing and recording the podcast theme song! Yes, horrible singing, I know, but what can you do?
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| May 9, 2007 @ 11:48 pm |
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posted by kris
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I compiled a list of online German yarn retailers that I know of. For those of you who are sitting in your nice chair in the good ol’ USA, I’ll have you know it’s a pain to find import yarns. A HUGE PAIN. It doesn’t exist. Shops in the UK are our salvation, but it’s super expensive. And getting stuff shipped from the US also sucks due to shipping costs and customs (if caught). And places like Knitpicks? Yeah, completely unavailable unless you have a nice SP, friend or relative. So you should be happy that you have all those pretty yarns available to you for really cheap shipping (a lot of times FREE). But then again, the euro is pretty strong and getting stronger. I think it would be a great idea to have a european version of The Loopy Ewe or Wool Girl or something like that. I dream of having all of those skeins running through my fingers and finally introduce the Germans to the wonderfulness of Yarn Pirate or Vesper, stuff like that. But then I will probably keep 1/2 of it to myself.
Anyways, if you know of any more German online shops, please send me an email! Click here for the list.
