And Now They'll Knit Them

Toaster and RockNoodle have been fascinated by my dyeing forays, and of course wanted to try a little handpainting themselves.

It's a hard thing to want to do with energetic kids in the summer (stay home as opposed to going to the beach? stay indoors?), but Saturday was raining, and worse yet--RockNoodle has strep. Again. She's a little strep-factory.

So home we were staying. And indoors as well, since it was periodically monsooning.

Dyeing is just such a production. You soak the yarn, you ready the dyes (well, we were using koolaid, so that didn't really take much effort. But, you know, it used up a lot of little bowls), you prepare the workspace (ha! Yeah. There isn't enough plastic in the world. If somebody tipped over a bowl of koolaid, there would be staining. Nothing to be done about that. Except constantly repeat "slowly now. Careful. Don't spill. Yep, that's good--now be gentle!")

On the other hand, it takes up a whole lot of time. Toaster went first, and had a bit of a challenge picking manly-colored koolaid:

It's like a sunset in the Southwest, I think. Totally badass.


RockNoodle had less of a theme--she just went with what sounded pretty:

Toaster is concerned that her skein is too much like the Enchanted skein she's getting socks made out of for her birthday, but frankly--this girl? There cannot be too much pink in her life.

The finished products look pretty good, I have to say.






Toaster's all set for socks--he wants to try magic loop, so I've got a pair of 40-inch size 2 needles on order for him (I fear that if he goes any smaller, we will never have a finished pair, even with my help).

RockNoodle wants to make a hat. I'm thinking Foliage, and double-stranding the yarn. Possibly going down a couple of needle sizes. We'll see.

In any case, they are both winding up a storm. That's another two hours of activity milked from the dyeing. And then there's the knitting. Awesome.