Yep, it's frogged!

Anna was here tonight, and we made our first attempt at dyeing yarn. I'll tell you more of that soon. But I'll begin with telling you that I got her help with frogging the Aeolian. We looked at it together, and I decided that I had made too many mistakes to be pleased with it. So while I very carefully frogged it over a bucket, to collect all the beads, Anna wound the frogged yarn back onto the ball. This way we managed without any visible harm to the yarn! It's a bit kinked, as it has been knit, but otherwise you can't tell that it's been used. So I guess that the Aeolian will be my first project in my "10 shawl in 2010" challenge, I'm guessing I'll cast on first thing in the morning on January 1st!

Ok, now onto the dyeing! I had an undyed skein of silk yarn that I got as a RAK in Europe gift a while ago. It is made from the outer parts of the silk cocoon, so it's sort of coarse and scratchy, and I'm not sure what I'll make from it. But it was perfect to try out the colours on! We began with the KoolAid, but I think that we might have diluted the colours too much because the colour on the yarn turned out very bland, But I also got some easter egg dyes in a RAK, so we used them instead. And wow did the colours pop!

We then also tried to dye one of the Ivory KnitPicks Main Line yarn, and we weren't sure if this would work as it is part cotton (KoolAid apparently only dyes animal fibers). But the yarn took the easter egg dyes really well, so now I have two skeins hanging over my bath tub!

This is what my kitchen looked like two hours ago:

Me hard at work

My kitchen table

Me with the first yarn, right out of the microwave

Me (to the left) and Anna

It was so much fun, and now that we know how to do it, I'm guessing that we will try it out again. It will probably look even better after some practice, and I think that the next time we won't use so many colours on each skein :)

And at work I'm currently re-writing my last article, to turn it into two separate articles, and that is quite boring work. So to keep yself from falling asleep, I hang out at Ravelry between writing paragraphs :). So today I've been trying to match my lace yarns in my stash with potential shawls for next year! I have a lot of lace yarns, at least so I can make six shawls, but I'm guessing that I will have to buy some more lace weight yarn next year. Oh no, poor me ;) But I'll try to start with the ones I have and knit them up first.

I'll leave you with this beautiful photo of our newly-dyed yarn!

The yarn to the right is the KnitPicks Main Line, and we dyed it in green, blue, red and yellow. The yarn to the left is the silk, which is dyed in green, orange and blue. It will be so much fun to wind these into balls! Not to mention knit with!

/ Jenny