beginnings

so much for hitting a slump with angelina. a little gusset secret - every so often we get the urge to stay up and get something done. so, we checked the schedule for rage on saturday night/sunday morning, and it wasn't looking so bad - lemonheads, peaches, nirvana special. we knew that skeining and dyeing the yarn for angelina would take a while, but there were a few things that perhaps we shouldn't have rushed - read and learn, friends.
before dyeing - yarn really needs to soak in water a long time. longer than an impatient hour. as a result, putting the yarn into the dyebath (a good 18 litres or so, which obviously didn't get hot enough) came out with a lacklustre, streaky, patchy result of a colour that was more along the lines of a weak bloodwood (pale plum/mauve/blue colour). there was a chunk of yarn that did come out more the colour that we wanted. so, the knitted sample was thrown into the dye bath for the duration of nirvana, and at 4am, we had our answer....need to put the yarn back in. end result - 9am, water still hot, yarn the perfect colour. take yarn out. dye bath still a very, very strong colour.
in the name of not wasting dyebath, skein a couple balls of op shop white and put that in. dyebath still strong. repeat with all op shop white. we like this colour, really we do, but we've done enough yarn. moral to story - digital scales would be very handy to weigh both the yarn, and the dye and get accurate results. we went a little over (obviously) with the amount of dye, and mixing by weight of dye, rather than by eye would have been a better way to get a good result. it's all done:

duh. we realised another of our errors (can you tell we haven't been knitting for eons?) was not reading the pattern - it's a 2x2 rib, not 1x1, so we reswatched, and maybe someone was smiling down at us, but we got gauge, and we got it continental! alright!

so now it's pretty much all systems go - there's one ball wound, which is enough for knitting this week, and the rest can be wound with a proper ball winder next week. after all this knitting and skeining, the hands are a tad sore, so here on in, we're taking it easy - and giving tina time to catch up and send in her report... ;)