Belated March PS and Another Contest!

Look what I found amongst my birthday cards! It seems since Lauren went to the extra trouble of using an envelope her PS postcard was mistaken as a birthday card and tucked away with the others until the big day. It’s a great postcard of collaged magazine images in the March Project Spectrum colors. Thank you very much, Lauren!

It does seem that my postcard to her did not make it. I suppose that happens from time to time with postcards. But, I did do it digitally in March so I’ll give it another shot. I also haven’t heard anything back from my April pal. Perhaps these are signs that I shouldn’t be doing the postcard swap???

In happier Project Spectrum news, here is this week’s contest - again, for your choice of my sock patterns. Guess what the item in the photo below is. All of the correct guesses will get assigned a number and I’ll use a random number generator to choose the winner…

Project Spectrum in Fiber and in the Kitchen

Lolly has chosen some wonderfully appropriately springy colors for April’s Project Spectrum - Yellow and Orange! And really, even those in the southern hemisphere should do okay with the orange in autumn as well.

In honor of Project Spectrum yesterday I made myself a Project Spectrum lunch and also captured a few other foods in the kitchen that were Orange and Yellow…

1. April PS Lunch in the Making, 2. April PS Lunch, 3. April PS Peppers, 4. April PS in the Pantry

This weekend I also did some dyeing. Again with Wilton’s and a touch of Kool Aid as well.

This is what our fireplace/hearth looked like on Saturday morning, LOL! It looks kind of like Christmas, but with whacked out colors!

I did some Project Spectrum sock yarn dyeing using a similar method of dyeing as I used in the Bayou yarn, but this time I double dyed it - once in rose (tweaked a touch with some green to tone it down every so slightly) and then the balls rewound the other direction and dyed again in lemon yellow in a *very* strong solution.

I also did some fiber dyeing for the first time. I’ve been so paranoid that I would felt it that I hadn’t tried it. But after being afraid of felting fleece when washing it and being successful in that I decided I could dye fiber without felting it. Both sets of colorways are dyed with the same four dyes that I mixed based on the colors of my Not-So Squatty Sidekick. The differences in them are just in the percentages used of the different colors. Isn’t that amazing?

1. Snow Cone Roving Pre Drafted and Not, 2. Snow Cone Roving, 3. A Comparison of Northern Lights Roving Pre Drafted and Not, 4. Northern Lights Roving

I also took the opportunity to put together a few Project Spectrum Desktop Wallpapers for the month of April seeing as how the March one went over so well and Scout informed me I should do so for each month of Project Spectrum… So, if you click on these just hit “All Sizes” right above it and choose the size appropriate to your computer desktop and right click to set as wallpaper in most browsers. I hope you enjoy!

Seraphim Started

Well, despite my picking up Nature Spun Sport at Brown Sheep last Thursday rather than a fingering weight yarn, Miriam convinced me to continue ahead with my plans of using the 4 balls (7 oz total) of Chuck Berry Seconds I picked up on our road trip for Seraphim. Since I find Brown Sheep yarns to be on the thin side of the spectrum of yarn weight for which they are labeled it isn’t that big of a stretch. I did go up to a US6 so that I would have a bit more drape to the final product. When I completed the first ball though I was at 18% completed (thanks to the the shawl progress calculator that Jessica has on her blog in the sidebar) if I worked the pattern as written, 20% if I took out one set of 6 rows of stockinette, I would have to take out 30 rows to be 100% positive I wouldn’t run out of yarn. I had written to Brown Sheep to see if they had two more balls remaining since my visit and if I could have them shipped, but I still haven’t heard back.

I also e-mailed back and forth with Miriam to figure out what number of stitches would get me close to the same dimensions of shawl as the pattern calls for. I didn’t trust my math since I have yet to finish a triangle shawl. To accurately figure that I needed the blocked gaguge so I transfered all 187 sts to a lifeline and steam blocked the shawl on the guest bed. We decided I’d be closest if I only took out 6 rows. So, that meant I was sitting at 20% of the knitting complete.

Since the top is dense being just stockinette I very well may be okay with my four balls of yarn. I’m a little nervous about it running short, but Snow, Miriam and I decided it would also be acceptable to knit the edge chart and bind off in a contrasting color. I’ll probably hold off until I’m closer to done before getting a contrasting color, but I’m thinking perhaps a charcoal gray if one is called for.

Did you notice the uneven dyeing in that photo of the shawl blocking at row 92? I suspect that is why it was marked as seconds. But, I like it. It gives it that kettle dyed look. I don’t think it is strong enough that it will detract from the lace and it gives some added interest to the stockinette portion.

I did make a poor choice at the beginning of the shawl. Two cast-on options were offered - backward loop and cable. In reading about the cable cast-on one of the “disadvantages” was that it is not very stretchy so I thought that would make it a poor choice for this shawl. I was afraid of a pucker at the top where the cast on is if the cast-on was too inelastic. So, I opted for the backward loop and now I have what looks like “break” in the top edging. I’m thinking I’ll try use the tail and some crochet to bridge that gap a bit. What do you think?

BTW, all this wondering about whether I would have enough yarn or not led to a discussion amongst myself and Sansablog about the math in the shawl calculator and whether it was accurate. If anyone is interested in seeing how the equation used in that came about, give me a holler as I even have a graphic to back it up… What can I say? I’m a big geek and was only one course short of a double major with math!

Project Spectrum Meme for March

Margene proposed a Project Spectrum meme which was sparked by a post of Laura’s. If you’ve missed it, the goal was to poke around your home and see how much stuff you can find in the March colors of pink and red. I had a blast with this. I didn’t think I was going to find too much, but it turned out better than I had thought it would and I didn’t even pull stuff out of my studio like my red paints etc!

Let us start in the bedroom. Our walls are a warm medium brown and the duvet is slightly lighter with what looks like block printing of leaves and vines in cranberry and plum. So, there are a few decorations in the room that are in the red region of the colorwheel…

Despite my aversion to most pink and my dislike for what I feel red does to bring out my adult onset acne I did have a fair bit of it in my closet too! I much prefer the dusty pinks and it is nice to have a real red or two in your closet for those occassions that call for it. And, of course every woman must have a cute red handbag and some red and pink nail polish, yes?? A nice red necklace and a fun stole also made my list of Project Spectrum girlie things I owned.

I had a lot of luck in our kitchen! There was a tablecloth embroidered by my mother before her sight had deteriorated too far that I adore (though am afraid to ever use). There was also the red cutting board DH used to keep at work and my favorite red apple variety - pink lady, and a red covered dish that had been my great grandmother’s. I don’t know what she kept in it, but it is our salt cellar and lives next to the stove for easy access while cooking.

As I said, I didn’t raid my paper stash or my paint supplies and photograph them. But it does appear that I have done an awful lot with red as a major color in my artwork these past couple years. It is funny, I don’t think of myself as a red person, yet my red artwork is some of my favorite and my best sellers…

<- likely offensive, don't say you weren't warned if you click on that link

If you are reading this, consider yourself tagged if you care to participate. You don’t even need to be a part of Project Spectrum. How much red and pink do you have around your house or in your portfolio of handmade things?