Successes and Setbacks

The past couple of days have been a mixed bag of things gone right and things gone very, very wrong.

On the plus side, I have some new, gorgeous skeins of yarn to enjoy. There's my second Kool-Aid dye attempt, shown below, which ended up nicer than I thought it would and which I have a feeling will knit up even nicer still. I'll have to pick a very special project for that one -- maybe something for Baby M.





























And there's the skein of overplied mystery wool that I dyed green (kiwi-watermelon) and yellow (lemonade) only to discover that combination came out most bland; this gave me the opportunity to try some microwave dyeing. I laid the wet skein on some plastic wrap, sprinkled Kool-Aid powder directly where I wanted it, wrapped the skein up and microwaved it for 2 minute increments until the powder was absorbed. Another fun technique, and the resulting reds, maroons and browns really livened up that dull skein!

Finally, there's the nice grey Big Bale wool skein that I spun up on my newly-restored Country Craftsman, or CeeCee as I've taken to calling her. I don't usually name inanimate objects, but this one just seemed to cry out for a name, and CeeCee was a perfect fit. I'm working on a second skein, which is coming along more slowly if only because my singles are coming out more even and with fewer huge lumps and bumps to take up space on the bobbin. DH may just get his cap out of homespun yet.

And now for the bad news....

After completing the knitting on my Fitted Bog Jacket all the way up to the underarms -- a full 66 ridges/132 rows -- I had to frog all the way back to the waist decreases, nearly 40 ridges/80 rows! What gets me is it wasn't even a problem with my knitting. I followed my pattern precisely, my count was right...it was just that the darn thing was too wide across the bust even though it fit nicely across my hips. While there's only an inch difference between my bust and hip measurements, I forgot to take into consideration that I was making this jacket to wear over jeans with bulky waistbands. What was a comfortable yet stylish fit across the hips and waist was a dowdy, frumpy, shapeless sack across the chest. There was nothing to be done but pull back...and back...and back. I've re-done my calculations and started knitting back up again, but it was certainly disheartening. At least in the frogging I realized an unrelated error I'd made when inserting the phoney seams and can avoid it in the reknitting. So, I suppose, there's lemonade to be made out of lemons after all.

Hmmm.... It seems I've been listening to too much Anne of Green Gables on the iPod. Lemonade from lemons, indeed.