Project Update

Progress has been made on the gift towels: I finished the first one on Tuesday and I'm about 1/3 of the way through the second. I'm really enjoying knitting these, and I'd quite like to make some for myself some day. Especially if I can find the yarn (Euroflax Linen) on sale...

I mentioned awhile back that my friend Anne-Marie and I had dyed some yarn with blackberries, and I meant to do a post about the process, but she beat me to it on her brand new blog! You can read about our process here, but here's a shot of my finished yarn: Mine came out more purple than hers, and we're not sure why - the only difference was the amount of soaking time. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this - it's 100% wool, I think DK weight. One of the things mentioned in Wild Color is that blackberry dye isn't very colorfast - the alum mordant we used is meant to decrease the odds of fading, but I'm a bit concerned about that, so I need to make something that will look equally good in the current color or in pale pink/grey/whatever it fades into. Thoughts? Overall I had fun with the natural dyeing, but I'm unconvinced that it's worth the effort, especially if it's likely to fade. I think I prefer my Jacquard acid dyes, thank you very much.

In other news, I'm about 4.5" into my Sleeveless Tuxedo Shirt. I'm not going to post any photos because at this point it's really just a navy blue stockinette tube with some occasional decreases, and frankly I doubt any of you will find that very exciting. I would love to be working on it more but gift knitting keeps coming up! I realize that's my own doing, but I really like to knit gifts, so whenever an occasion comes up for which a handknit gift might be appropriate I drop whatever I'm knitting for myself and charge forward with the gift! This is why it seems like I rarely finish anything for myself...

Yesterday Dave and I spent the day in Olympia with our friend Rembrandt - we went canoeing and picked many blackberries, so today I made 4 pints of blackberry jam and froze some for Dave's smoothies. I spent the afternoon at a baby shower for one of my grad school friends, which meant a trip to Baby Gap for cute gifts (Yes, I meant to knit something, but there wasn't time. I might do it for the actual birth, in November. I'm only human.) Now I'm going to go watch the beginning of the VMAs, for the pure spectacle that will be Britney Spears performing the opening act. I'm not proud of this, but I have a strange desire to witness the potential train wreck. Again, I'm only human...