3 posts tagged “grey”
These are the (finally!) finished Shadow and Ghost socks (from the Cheshire cat pattern at Purlescence). They're a late birthday present for female-friend-R (in honour of her grey-Ghost-cat and her black-Shadow-cat), who seemed pleased with them and impressed at the cleverness of me (even though I explained that it's entirely Alice Bell who's clever; I'm just following instructions ;-)
I'm plotting lots of other socks, several of which are inspired by New Pathways: Bartholomew's Tantalising Socks for partner-R, who turns out to like the handpainted red and green Opal I ill-advisedly bought on holiday last year, hoorah; Coriolis spirals for me from the red and pink sock yarn that Frax currently has custody of, and especially the Clematis vine socks, with vertical stripes, because I agree with Cat Bordhi: two-handed knitting is coooool.
Which brings me to my 'new' project. It's not new at all, really. I cast on for BMP sometime towards the end of November, and almost immediately sent the project into hibernation awaiting me getting around to learning to knit continental - dropping and picking up the yarn every other stitch was driving me potty. But now I've finished a project I'm allowed* to start another, and since I've now learnt continental (knit stitch, anyway; I still have to look up how to purl, and my muscles haven't learnt it yet), I've now properly started making gothic space invaders :-) The contrast between the purple and the black isn't perfect, but I figure over the whole sock it will become more obvious. And I really like how they look so far. The Knitwitches yarn is lovely, and knitting one yarn with one hand and the other with the other is loads of fun.
*This doesn't, of course, mean that I only ever have a certain number of projects on the needles - I might easily start yet another before I finish the next, but I'll worry a tiny bit about my attention span and lack of finishing ability. If I've just finished a project I don't need to worry ;-)
I'm actually plotting another sock project, which I might end up casting on for before these are done, but that's a matter for my next post...
Getting there with these - one down, one maybe a quarter of the way through. I want to finish them by Saturday, which is R's birthday. She won't mind if they're a bit late, but I will. Still, lots of dissertation-reading this week, and I can read and knit at the same time, especially since most of the knitting is basically stocking stitch.
I'm loving these socks. If I liked to wear the colours of my own cats (tortie and ginger) I'd make another pair for myself on the same theme. Sadly, I don't wear brown or orange, so that's not going to happen. Or maybe I'll make up some other illusion design for something. Or maybe I'll just finish these and go on and do something else ;-)
I'm loving these socks. If I liked to wear the colours of my own cats (tortie and ginger) I'd make another pair for myself on the same theme. Sadly, I don't wear brown or orange, so that's not going to happen. Or maybe I'll make up some other illusion design for something. Or maybe I'll just finish these and go on and do something else ;-)
The grey Irish wool to the left has just
gone into our big casserole pot, covered with water and about 175ml of
white distilled vinegar. In about five hours, I'll take it out and dye
it :-)
For the green dye on cream wool, I used one bottle of blue and one of green food colouring. Because this grey is naturally much darker, and because I want the colours to be deeper, I've got two bottles each of blue and red this time, but I'll use the same total amount of water for diluting the colouring (1 pint). I'm planning to mix some to make purple (well, der), and leaving some as red and some as blue, but can't quite decide on proportions. One possibility is to consider the skein in compass points, dyeing east and west with purple, north with red and south with blue, and blending at colour meeting points, in which case the proportions are easy: one bottle of red and one of blue into half a pint of water for purple, and then the remaining bottles each into a quarter of a pint for smaller quantities of the unmixed colours. Or I could just go for the slapdash pour-at-random approach I used for the green, in which case any old proportions of mix will work. Maybe I just want equal amounts of each (which would be two thirds of a bottle of red and the same amount of blue mixed to make purple in a third of a pint of water, and the same amount of water to dilute each of the remaining unmixed colours). Oh, the possibilities!
For the green dye on cream wool, I used one bottle of blue and one of green food colouring. Because this grey is naturally much darker, and because I want the colours to be deeper, I've got two bottles each of blue and red this time, but I'll use the same total amount of water for diluting the colouring (1 pint). I'm planning to mix some to make purple (well, der), and leaving some as red and some as blue, but can't quite decide on proportions. One possibility is to consider the skein in compass points, dyeing east and west with purple, north with red and south with blue, and blending at colour meeting points, in which case the proportions are easy: one bottle of red and one of blue into half a pint of water for purple, and then the remaining bottles each into a quarter of a pint for smaller quantities of the unmixed colours. Or I could just go for the slapdash pour-at-random approach I used for the green, in which case any old proportions of mix will work. Maybe I just want equal amounts of each (which would be two thirds of a bottle of red and the same amount of blue mixed to make purple in a third of a pint of water, and the same amount of water to dilute each of the remaining unmixed colours). Oh, the possibilities!
