February, so far.

Let's see. What's happened since my last post?

...I guess I haven't been very productive.
Basically, I crocheted two and a half of my four blocks for this month of the crochetalong. I also finished that dog hair yarn (finally!) and dyed it today. Oh! And I made three batts in the same colorway, available as a set, totaling almost 5 ounces.

Pictures:

Heart block #1

Heart block 2
Heart blocks 1 and 2 cuddling on our indoor porch swing!


Dog hair yarn before.

Dog hair yarn drying after dyeing (I still liked it better before it turned blue).
A picture of one of the batts. It's hard to see the gray and the glitz in this picture, but you can see all the lovely green and teal.
And the yarn it turns into. Again, hard to see the gray and the glitz, but they are definitely there.

Also, I had a couple of incidences with my food dyes:


This is after he purposely ate some of my royal blue Wilton's, rubbed it around on his lips and teeth, and then liberally applied his toothbrush and toothpaste to the blue areas. If you look closely, you can see that his lips are still tinged blue.


Aaand...freshly consumed kelly green. His finger turned green, because he rubbed it around on his teeth, too. How silly.

Also, it was Joel's birthday a few days ago. Here's a close-up of one of the lilies that I bought him [lilies smell gross, by the way]:
I can't wait for spring.

More stuff.

Sooo...

I spun cotton (ew) and flax (hooray!). I still have to do hemp. I still have to spin the dog hair for those socks [ASAP, hey?!]. I ordered some more locks from dyeingforcolor.etsy.com so that I can make another fun art yarn. Ooh, I just had a great idea for that yarn. I'll go write it down.

My mom gave me this really pretty journal with gorgeous artsy horses on the cover for a Christmas gift in 2007. I never used it, as I never thought of something good to use it for. Today I decided that I will write down my ideas for fiber projects in there, so that I can look back and see what I was thinking. I show you guys the final product and share what I did and didn't like about things, but keeping the process a secret is kind of a good idea :P

So, the cotton:
So far, I don't like cotton. This is partially because I'm not used to it, and partially because I have always preferred long staple. This cotton had a staple of 1/4 to 1/2", and it wasn't very fun. Because it is so short, it needs a lot of twist. But, I spun it thin, as it was difficult to make thick, and thin yarns need less twist. Anyway, I ended up with too much twist. But I think it makes the yarn more interesting, because it would be a boring old cotton yarn otherwise. Maybe I'm just biased towards plain yarns. Lots of people like them. I just prefer fun ones.
Hm, that's not a very good picture, is it. Anyway, that's the flax I spun. I enjoyed it because it has a looooooong staple. It also didn't take as long to spin as the cotton did, both because the flax was spun more thickly and because cotton is such a light fiber to begin with.

And the roving:
Guess what I did wrong! Yep, I didn't use the turkey baster. Oh, besides that? I don't think I put enough color into the dye. I'm still working out the Wilton's dyes. I guess more is better...but I like the colors that came out where the dye actually took/touched the wool. This is superwash, by the way, so I can redye it all I want without worrying about felting. I'm going to spin it before I do anything else, because I might end up liking what turns out.

Anyway, that's about it. I still haven't finished my first February square, because I'm chicken and it's not working out quite right. That's all for now. More to come (obviously!).

Happenings.

I finished the shell of the crocheted hat. Now to get polarfleece for the lining...I'm also waiting on my sewing machine to arrive. I'll have to use it here on my desk where my laptop normally sits, but I'm not too worried about that.

I used up half of the cotswold locks I got from dyeingforcolor.etsy.com. I ordered four ounces. Then I split the bag in half. I took one half in a plastic grocery bag to the local fiber shop and found matching roving colors. I also picked up some angelina for glitz.


I really like it. It might even be my favorite over Starry Night, despite the fact that I enjoy cool colors much more than warm ones.

I also did a little dyeing. In my head I had bright colors, and I used grey wool. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, now the gray has undertones of color, and I can't decide if it will spin up nicely or if it will be gross. I'm probably going to navajo ply it and call it "Dyer's Regret". On the plus side, it didn't felt!!

What else...Oh, I started my February squares for the crochet-along. The craftster pattern has a heart in the middle (gag me), so I'm using the Ravelry square as a filler after I do two of the heart squares. Bleh.

Speaking of which, "bleh" is how I feel today...I want to stay home and craft all day. Yarn yarn yarn, all day long...I wish. I have class, and I'm becoming more and more late for work the longer I sit here. Irresponsible. So, off I go to start the day.