Friday, October 30, 2009

Blending Yarns to Get Another Color

Hugh from the Sacramento Area Machine Knitter's Guild was showing me a knitted scarf he likes to make. This particular one he used a blended yarn technique. He said he didn't particularly like the color of either of the yarns on the cone. He had bought them fairly cheap from a thrift store. So, not to let them go to waste he knitted both colors simultaneously. Blending the yarns made his scarf have a beautiful rose color. I may have taken the photo a bit too close to get the real beauty of the blend. I was fascinated. I will definitely use this technique in the future to get unique colors for something. Don't know what yet, but it's coming.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

I conquered it!


Remember the big yarn mess? My daughter took the semi neat skein and gave up. I wanted to throw it away, but I couldn't bring myself to do. When she gave it back to me it could best be described as a rat's nest. Oddly enough this made it easier to work with. Didn't have to worry about keeping it neat. Just start a ball and kept winding it back and forth, in and out of the rats nest. It sat on my lap many a night as I watched TV. I've been trying to watch less TV, but for this project I gave myself permission to watch what I needed until I got it all unraveled. This mess had many ends in it. I'd just get a ball going and it would come to an end. Finally the 2nd to last ball got quite big. So, big in fact I finally had to cut the yarn myself. It was turning into a big yarn mess trying to weave a giant ball of yarn in and out of the rat's nest. The rest rolled up into one last ball.
I took the largest ball and used my yarn winder to wind it into a ball I could use on my knitting machine. I want to make a trick or treat bag. I better hurry up!