Bargain Alpaca, Redux

The original color:

What to do?

The Result:

Now that the yarn is dry, the red is a bit too light in spots, and there's a blotch where the dye didn't take at all. The very darkest bits are still very dark blue, which makes me think the yarn is too saturated to take any other color. It needs another dip in dye, that's for sure, but on the whole I'm happy with the project so far.

Bargain Alpaca

A nice day today, dinking about and going to see Watchmen (my review: AWESOME.) Went to Tuesday Morning and found this stuff for $3 a skein--100% alpaca! 100 yards! So I bought the 4 skeins that were there.

The color in real life is more green, so the yarn is blotches of teal. I'd like to try overdying it to something I'd like better--would using red give me something purply? My first thought was to use Kool-Aid because it's cheap and as far as I know doesn't need jars of powdered lye or anything else that would be a danger to myself and others, and I hear it leaves the yarn smelling all fruity, which makes me happy. From poking around a bit in Ravelry, though, it looks like you can use Wilton colors too, and heaven knows I have a right smart of those.

The yarn feels like it's been in the bottom of a bin for a while, very matted as alpaca is wont to get. I rewound the skein that came without a label and it looks like this now:

It looks more promising this way but it's still too teal for me.

Comfort knitting

...so that's how you add pictures! More color around here for darned sure from now on!

After my Unfortunate Malaise of the weekend it was awfully nice to get back to this--it's a Simple Yet Effective Shawl (no links, bad blogger) in Bernat Alpaca Blend...so soft, so thick, so restful! It's about 200 stitches across right now, after, hmm, 3.5 skeins? and I have 6 more skeins if I need them. I want it to be large, blanketty large, even though I will look quite silly if I wear it out of the house.

Too sick to knit?

Scary. That was my weekend, though, some kind of Stomach Thing that left me giving knitting and most food a big fat pleh. Started coming out of the knitting funk yesterday, slowly, and got over it for sure around noon today, about the same time food started looking like a good idea too.

Finished the knitting and stitching of Nonie's Pocketbook Slippers today, washed them and threw them in the dryer (the magic of acrylic!), only to find they acquired a thin nasty sheen from the dryer sheets. Washed again, now air drying, so they still need buttons and giving away. I hear Nonie had some laproscopic stomach repair today but no other updates.