Sunday, January 20, 2008

Decadence

This colorway was inspired by the movie Chocolat. It was the first movie with Johnny Depp where I really understood why so many people thought he was hot. Since his other movies that I'd seen were What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Edward Scissorhands, and Ed Wood, maybe that's not so surprising. The movie as a whole was so-so, but the chocolate wonders and watching Depp and Juliette Binoche in action were fantastic.

Anyway, I've tentatively named the colorway Decadence. Dried much lighter-colored than I expected. It's dyed on my new bulky Blue-Faced Leicester wool, which I am really liking--smoothly plied, with a lovely sheen.



Thursday, January 17, 2008

back in the dyepot again

After not really feeling like dyeing for, oh, about two months, today I dyed 3 lbs of yarn. Two new colorways, one custom colorway (the soon to be world-famous Eat Your Veggies), and my Spice colorway on the last of my organic Clun Forest yarn. Plus I touched up some yarn that I originally dyed in October, but that I've been too busy/lazy/unmotivated to fix until now.

Photos this weekend! I'm especially excited about my new chocolate-themed colorway, for February's movie stocking at Venus Vanguard. It's inspired by the movie Chocolat (not to mention the pound or two of Endangered Species chocolate that showed up on my doorstep this week), but someone well-known in HC-land already has a colorway named that, so I'll need to come up with something else.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

tedium

My neck and shoulder still hurt, so not much is happening on the knitting front. I did decide what to do with the aran cabled shrug--I'm going to knit the shrug just in stockinette. The yarn is interesting enough on its own to carry a plain sweater, I think, and it will also help with the probable yarn shortage. Now I just have to heal, finish the boy's gansey, and then finally get to a sweater for myself.

And THEN I can figure out what to do with my black aran BFL. It's one of a kind yarn--my very favorite BFL that I've ever had. Soft and plush, and a true aran weight. Not the same as the old school, cottony BFL, though it bears more resemblance to that than the silky thin stuff we've been getting in the past year. I got half a kilo of naturally colored black through a co-op about 1.5 years ago, and spotted another half-kilo from the same co-op on the Wooly Wonder swap board a few weeks ago, so now I've got enough for a sweater for me. Oh, and I also managed to get my hands on two kilos of undyed from that co-op, too. Woot!

Today I am dedicating my childfree half-day to figuring out my 2007 income and expenses. After last year's tax-time, I vowed to do a better job of tracking the money stuff in 2007. Ha. Ha. Ha. I've only gotten through July in my PayPal account and my neck is killing me and I want to put my eyes out. Plus I still have paper receipts to go through. Waaaaahh.