Vacation knitting

Tomorrow my family leaves for vacation, a week at a rented cottage.

So I've been preping and packing all the knitting I will need.

Thus far I've got:
* my shawl, which I'd love to finish
* the Red Carpet Convertible, which I need to finish for the july KAL at Sexy Knitters Club
* a random hand towel in elann's Camila for testing that yarn with
* the first of a pair of knee socks for Nonna (I'll leave the other one until she's tried the first one on)
* something I'm thinking I might try submitting to Knitty and therefore can't talk about...
* a pair of Fawkes to be knit with some Koigu from my stash
* a pair of Clessidra to be knit with the green below
* and I've also thrown in a ball of Austermann to maybe try the Monkey socks with

oh and my little sister wants to knit a pair of Fetching, so we'll be using some leftovers from my stash for that - which I dyed red for her earlier this week.

Yesterday and today I've done some last minute dyeing.

Yesterday was this for the thing I can't talk about, the colour is irrelevant to the project in many ways, I just wanted to see what would happen if I combined Tropical Punch with Cherry:






And today I did up this, for my Clessidra socks, it is Emerald Green with some Jet Black of the Jacquard dyes, I need to find my sister to help me wind it...

Also: I broke down and ordered a swift, which should be here when I get home and the fabulous Captain will hopefully bring me my very own ball winder when she comes up next month. So now that I've gotten pretty good at winding respectable cakes I won't have to do it myself anymore - go figure!

(*Pets VISA and promises to be good in the fall). I may also have ordered 20 balls of off white superwash to dye up for various things, including some Christmas knitting.... and decided that come the fall I'll order the necessary wool to knit my sister the Dr Who scarf she has long desired...

um.... look isnt' it pretty!!
[EDIT] After posting the above I walked to the mail box and found...



fashion accessories from Australia!!!

And now the After Dark Nightie is finis! The blue doesn't match exactly, but it isn't horrible. The red I think will match the Euro-flax exactly, the purple is beautiful, but very dark and the olive is quite bright. I'm even thinking that maybe the clear printed ones might be an nice alternative. But I am pleased with them over all. (They are from Strap Me Up, and the girl there was friendly and prompt, so if you are looking for something... NB: When I ordered shipping to Canada was $10AUD, so you might want to order a few things at once).

Here is the finished Nightie, straps attached:

Victory!

It is done! Well, the knitting and the seaming is done. I'm trying to figure out what I should do about straps as the only ones I can find are white and that would look horrible on my lovely blue handknit. Suggestions would be much appreciated. (I'm looking into http://www.strapmeup.com.au/ - they have neat stuff, but I'm not sure what shipping prices/turn around times are like). It feels silly to order one bra strap to be sent all the way from Australia.

Pictures:

Back pinned down.

front and back

seamed!!!

detail of lower edge lace

detail top edge lace

I'm going to cast on the Red Carpet Convertible tonight while I watch movies with my lil' sis - Kowalski (my camo goknit pouch) is all loaded up with the various necessities and the pattern is printed out. Tomorrow the knitting will take a backseat to all things Parzival for a little while.

I got my new printer so yeah, I can print patterns (and other stuff too, but mostly patterns). My blanket chart looks so cool all printed out.

Kool

I've finished the back of the nightie, and started the front. So (*touch wood*) I might actually get it done in time - even in lots of time.

Yesterday I taught a friend how to knit, she was very persevering and now has a couple of cms of ribbing (well, not even ribbing but ribbing) for a pair of socks - as she got bored with flat knitting.

I'm sitting in the kitchen waiting for the timer to go off so I can remove the yarn from the dye pot and set up the next one. I'm dyeing 3 skeins of fingering - two superwash and one not. I'm going to try to do one in Ravenclaw to throw in with my HSKS, but it turns out that the one dye I was going to use which comes in a blue package is in fact red (?!) and so I'll be doing that in a mixture of the acid dyes I had in my stash. The non-superwash is going to be green and orange (kool aid); the other superwash is in the pot now and is purple, pink, orange (kool aid) and natural. The purple looks like it will be quite patchy. I am very slowly learning things that I should be able to realize before I do them with each dye attempt (like you need ample space for the yarn if you want it all to have colour...).

The weather is nice though, and I've set the drying rack up out in the back so I'm hoping that it won't take as long for things to dry as they did last time when I had vinegar scented yarn in my shower for ages.

I'm hoping that the self-stripping thing will work again this time, I tried to replicate the conditions from last time, but I altered the stripes a bit so I don't know how it will work out.

Also, I need a *&%^*%*&*(-ing swift. I think my next knitpicks order is going to include one.

Question and pictures

Would anyone find these interesting? Or am I just going crazy from the yarn and bead fumes?

Since I'm doing the picture thing:

More stitch markers (with the dowel rods in the background)

The nightie in progress

softness in a skein

{update} Since posting the above, I made the following*:

US size 2 (they are 2.75mm)

US size 1 (they are about 2.25mm)

See Em's blog.

Wool gathering

Today was a good day - as most of it was spent shopping or knitting (and I finished Iter, bonus).

I went to Lettuce Knit to pick up some of the necessaries for a couple of projects and my HSKS2. I noticed a red in the Euroflax I didn't see before, I think that is what I want to use when I do one for myself. I also picked up some Mini Maiden (half silk, half wool) it is soooo soft. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, I'll probably stash it and then collect a few more in matching colours then maybe do a shawl or some such.

My next stop was Lee Valley, where I got dowel rods to make into needles (and a book on the navy). I am ever so excited to try it, I love the idea of being as involved in the total knitting process as possible so making the tools ranks way up there on the 'how cool is that' scale. [It remains to be seen if I can execute, but I look forward to trying anyway]. BTW: that store is amazing! It was a very dangerous place to go into, I'm terribly lucky I didn't leave with plans for a roll top desk or a boat...

Question: could pen blanks be used to make effective spindle shafts?

Later I went back to Michael's for a few things and hit up Fabricland for bag making supplies - I think ours might be closing. After that I found a few things I still lacked at Zellers.

The rest of the night was knitting- I've finally got started knitting the nightie from Mason-Dixon Knitting. I am very much enjoying it, I'm nearly finished the lace at the bottom for the back. (Which is a good thing since I need to have it done soon, very soon...)