Away from the oven and close to the sticks

Even though this is mostly a food blog, I’m taking the liberty to put a quick pause on my cooking posts to do a knitting round-up for the month. Even though most of my “crafty time” is now “cooking time”, I still manage to squeeze in some quality time with my ‘knitting sticks’ (as the Savvy Girls would say). Yes, I listen to a lot of knitting podcasts. I am a woolaholic.

If you don’t like Type A people, you’re really going to roll my eyes if you read the following. So, that being said, you’ve been warned.

Ok, so I’ve started my Christmas present knitting projects. Actually, I started Christmas knitting um… in May. Yeah. (Like I said up top, most of my free time is spent cooking, so knitting projects require significant advanced planning.) I made a list, bought the yarn, cast on and it’s been full on knitting in every spare moment ever since. Knitting on the bus, waiting for the bus, and mostly in my cubicle at lunch. I have no fear of knitting in public or KIPing as Jackie from the KIPing it Real podcast would say. (Another knitting podcast! Love her!)

My one disappointment so far is that when I put my knitting projects away for the night, they just aren’t knitting themselves while I sleep. And hooby dooby, remind me again why I chose to knit socks? Or mittens? I am horrible at completing pairs of things. And with small needle and small yarn? How do sock knitters stand the boredom row after row? I will admit, knitting socks makes for a convenient bus crafting project, but spending weeks on one sock is pushing my patience to the limit. Especially socks for man feet. (Do you think he’d be happy with one sock?)

To combat the boredom, I indulged and knit myself up a quickie cowl in some uber soft Malabrigo ‘Rasta’ yarn.

The cowl is knit up on ridonculously large needles (10mm!!) and satisfied my need to “complete something”. I still have a bit of yarn remaining which I am curious to see if I can use instead of roving in some thrummed mittens. (AACK the “knitting a pair” curse!!)

And this weekend, I crossed another item off my “must try” list: dyeing yarn. I ordered a couple of books from Amazon (Natural Dyeing and Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece) and raided the husband’s stash of natural dyes and mordants. How handy. (Thanks, husband!) Throwing caution to the wind, I used a skein of local yarn from Windblest farms that I picked up at the Main Street Farmers Market. I really should have used a cheapo skein for the first attempt, but I was feeling brazen.

Initially, I tried dyeing the yarn in a rhubarb bath, but it didn’t turn a lovely shade of pink.. instead it turned a light shade of beige. That wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. The husband was dyeing purfling for his violins at the time so he shared some of his logwood bath for my yarn. Immediately it turned a lovely shade of pinky/purple. Love! Amazing!

It sat in the dye bath for about five minutes and then I rinsed it and hung it out to dry. By the morning, it had turned a muted shade of lavender. It was perfect. I immediately started scouring Ravelry for just the right ‘one skein’ project and cast-on a secret project. It’s actually a not-so-secret slipper pattern, but I am having major knitting malaise figuring out how to knit in the round with two circular needles. And short rows. I am in over my head. Somehow I am going to cobble these together, but I may need to pitch the pattern and wing it.