I've spent a huge amount of time this week goofing around with my new camera (a Canon PowerShot point and shoot). It has a fun "colors my way" setting which I can use to bring back the yarn colors our high altitude desert sun fades away.

It also has a super macro setting so I can take photos of juniper berries:



and Jack's paws:



I'm working on a pair of men's mittens in Cascade 220 for the upcoming mitten booklet (ETA: the end of February). I should have used the Colors My Way setting for this photo actually since the colors are faded:




I just had to take a super macro shot of the colorwork and braid on the cuff:

Spinning Diary

I have been spinning even though I have not had that much time to post about it. I steel a few hours here and there to spin. When I spin, I lose myself. When I spin, the Mom, the business woman, the homeschooling parent, the wife recede, and for far too short an amout of time I am me, and I am just for me.
It is so easy for women to forget who they are as they try to be everything. When I spin, the motion of the wheel, the fibers steadily slipping between my fingers, the bobbin turning, all take me away. As soon as I sit, I let a big breath out, with the first pedal push, as if I was hypnotized, I am transported. I do not think about anything when I spin, I am entirely focused on the fiber,and the yarn I am creating. What do you feel when you spin?

Back to my spinning...
I recently created a colorway called Danaides inspired by a painting by Waterhouse. I knew the moment I dyed it that I would have to spin it. I felt so drawn by the colors. As soon as I had a moment, I grabbed a roving of it in the Finn.

The experience was marvelous. The Finn was so easy to spin. The long staple probably helped a lot. The yarn that came out of my fingers was so smooth. I loved the colors even more. I could not stop spinning. Before I knew it, I had spun half the roving.



I loved the colors so much that I decided that I would ply the yarn to itself. I wanted to keep the colors pure. I had to force myself to wait long enough before plying.

Then I plied... The result made me so happy. The yarn that resulted was soft, bouncy. And the colors...



I set the yarn and let it dry and just sat there admiring it. I have not yet knit with it. I have been carrying the skein with me everywhere I go. I have a special project in mind for it, a baby sweater design that I have been thinking of for some time. I just need to spin a few more skeins in compatible colorways!The sweater I have in mind is inspired by patchworks, and should be very forgiving to my novice uneveness.



Now I just have to dye the perfect roving to go with my danaides.

Thank you Leon Bakst

This week's SockPixie inspiration came from the costume designs of Leon Bakst (1866-1926). His costumes and colors have an exotic flair. The colors are bold, and contrasted which always is a lot of fun for me to work with.
Here is a sample collage of the colorway Zobeide:




Oh, and if you are wondering why there is no roving in the Iskander colorway, well let's just say that ice dams and frozen pipes can steel some of one's time!

Enjoy Bakst's colorways!

I was hoping to post my updated balaclava pattern this week but my camera broke. So while waiting for a new camera to arrive, I thought I'd brag a bit about my driveway. Yes, you heard me right. It is definitely more interesting than the inches and inches of solid color knitting I'm doing for the Dale of Norway sweater.

DH said that he wanted to live here the minute he encountered the driveway, long before he even saw the house. Sure it requires 4-wheel drive in snow and once the satellite dish guy got stuck but it is such a fun roller-coaster of a driveway.

Here's the view from the driveway:



The view toward our house:




And the view away from our house:






I should have the balaclava pattern posted by early next week. I'm also working on two knitting pattern booklets for the Lulu store - one on mittens and one with some easy colorwork patterns (no shaping or other techniques necessary) for beginners.

A Day with Modigliani...

My weekly color inspirations take me in many directions. I am a sort of color libertine, one week in love with one, the next infatuated with another.
Last week, I fell in love with Waterhouse, this week with Modigliani. Their approach to art, and color is so different, creating the colors is like discovering dyeing all over again.

Here one of these amazing colors which I called the Lady in the Aqua Room.

First the painting:



The yarn in a luscious SW BFL:



And in a new Alpaca/merino roving blend:



Enjoy your time with Modigliani!

Thank you everyone for your great hints and ideas for my future yarn containment system! I still haven't gotten to Flickr to look through some craft room photos but I hope to this week. Once I finalize the plans I'll have DH do a drawing of my upcoming yarn armoire and post it here.

Here are some methods I've used in the past. In the first two photos I sorted my yarn in plastic bins by colors instead of weights and brands. While I like looking at all the colors together for some reason I prefer to have yarn stored by brand and weight.

Here's a very old method when my stash was over twice the size it is today. (Back then I used to buy yarn whenever I felt like it rather than only buying yarn in particular brands and colors.) I used Neat Cubes which I purchased at Target for this system and the yarn is sorted by weight and brand. The spinning fibers are on top of the cubes and you can even see my large Navajo spindle on the far left. I always worried that the Neat Cubes would crash or fall apart as they weren't stable enough for me. I also worried that our bright sunlight would fade the fibers.

Honestly every method I've tried is pretty messy. When you have so many partial yarn skeins from colorwork, you always have tangling. So I'm going to think some more on how best to store all those tiny bits of yarn in various colors with a minimum of tangling.

Waterhouse Colorways

This week, the SockPixie colorways were inspired by the works of John William Waterhouse.
Often associated with the Pre-Raphaelites he painted the femme fatale of legends, and poetry.

Here is the Danaides Colorway with its inspiration painting.




Here is the colorway shown in Alpaca.




And here as a Finn Roving.



Enjoy!