Hey, Gabrielle, I'm coming down the home stretch on the mittens!

And for all of you who don't know; Gabrielle sent me this pretty rainbow-dyed alpaca singles yarn and I spun and dyed the blue/purple background color, and now, a long time later, I'm actually thinking I might finish this little (not so little!) project. That's my home-grown chart in the background; why oh why couldn't I have just knit some Norwegian mitten pattern that someone else had already worked out?? I think it was something to do with row gauge....whatever. Its nearly in my past now!

And the next project won't be so tiny and fiddly, either! I've been surveying my stash for bulky weight yarn...and I found this grey three ply I spun many moons ago, from a friend's pet sheep's fleece.

In preparation for making the grey into something very warm, I have dyed again today.

I'm not yet quite sure where I'm going with this, but I like the colors, so I'm on my way.

Dyeing Again

Yesterday I carved some time out of my day to dye a few skeins of yarn. The ones on the left and right are to be made into the Look Ma No Purl scarf I posted an example of a little while ago. I just love that pattern, and the scarf I posted before, which of course is right here in my house, is never available because J just loves it. So...I need more! The purple/plum will be for my mother in law, and the blue/green/teal will be for me. I'm thinking of using a brownish plum as the solid color for the plum one, and maybe charcoal grey for mine.

The skein you see in the middle is an over-dye job, which I have posted here to inspire you to do the same if you have a skein-of-iffy-color lying around your stash. Just take a look at its colors and see what color you could add to shift all the existing colors to something that isn't objectionable, and also isn't mud. My only advice is to dye with the brightest or nearly brightest shade that will do the job (again, trying to avoid mud...). For instance, if as in this case it needs blue, try turquoise to keep all the colors defined. If I had used dark blue, it would have turned out much more monochromatic, and also more muddy.

My other advice is to use a pretty high concentration of dye because those original colors, especially if they're strong colors, can be a little hard to shift. Of course, if you're overdying a pastel skein this is not a big deal. But if it was strongly colored to begin with, you'll need something strong to shift it.