Holy smokes! I'm sold out!

I stopped by the Lee's Summit SSnK this afternoon, and brought my hand-dyed sample skeins with me to show to the other knitters and get some feedback. Color me surprised (no pun intended) when my dyeing efforts caused a bit of a feeding frenzy -- they bought me almost completely out! I was gratified to get feedback on the colorways from other knitters, too. I have been dyeing combinations that I like, but I had no idea if anyone else would actually like it. (Mike is useless for feedback on yarn -- he's profoundly colorblind.) What a relief when other knitters actually understood and liked what I was trying to do with the multi-layered dye combinations. Guess I'll keep dyeing these colorways... maybe try a few more...

The only bummer about this is, my Etsy shop is nearly empty just as I placed a new ad, and my next shipment of undyed yarn is running a bit late... so it'll be a couple of days before I can add new inventory! Oh well. I'll muddle through somehow.

A new hat for Hunter

Flame Hat
Yarn: My handspun
Needles: 8

Pardon the weird shadowy picture, it was snapped before going off to school this morning. We're supposed to get several inches of snow today, so I gave the hat to Hunter (despite it having been promised to Mike). I've got enough yarn left to make a seconds hat -- a matched set! The yarn is still pretty rustic, a bit more thick-and-thin than I would really like, but I just need to practice more. A lot more.

Setting up Shop

Hey kids, guess what I did? I've opened up an Etsy shop to sell my hand-dyed yarns. Right now I am specializing in just sock yarns, but there will probably be worsteds in the future. If you have a favorite color combination that you'd like to see me try my hand at, drop me a line!

Toe Up Socks

Starting a new pair of socks... these toe-up, I usually go the other direction. It's another one of Dream in Color's lovely colorways, called Gothic Rose.

Don't you hate it when the cats get into your stuff?

Seven Quarters

A quickie hat, so named because it was keeping my hands busy for seven quarters of football yesterday while I watched the Packers romp over the Seahawks and then the Jaguars try to hang with the Patriots. It's an improvised pattern similar to the Mostly Knit Round hat , but knit with bulky yarn -- my own handspun, still a bit uneven, but my spinning skills are slowly improving.

Horseshoe Lace Socks

Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in November Muse (purchased from The Loopy Ewe)
Needles: 2
Pattern: Improvised

I think they turned out nice! I did a picot hem at the tops, and did a sort of hybrid three-needle bindoff at the toes (since I hate hate hate kitchener stitch.)

The nifty sock blockers were purchased from The Loopy Ewe as well!

Great Balls o' Fire

Two batches of flame-colored roving, each dyed a little differently:

1. Half yellow, half red, rainbow dyed in the crockpot.
2. I mixed the red & yellow & dyed in the crock... it came out a very intense orangey red, but I apparently didn't have enough water in there because all the dye pooled at the bottom. made an interesting mottled effect.

Mike wants a hat of this stuff when it gets spun up.