Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

I'm not usually lucky when it comes to Internet contests, but I've won two prizes recently. 

The first was waaaaay back in July, during the Tour de Fleece, but the prize only arrived yesterday. And boy oh boy, was it worth waiting for.
 

A 4 ounce braid of Bee Mice Elf fiber in an unknown colorway and unknown fiber (no info was on the tag). I'm thinking it's 'Heatwave'. Colors look the same, although the intensity is washed out a bit in my photo. BFL is one of my favorite fibers to spin, so I'm thrilled with this.

 
I also won a Facebook contest (random number generator) from my favorite yarn shop, Anacapa Fine Yarns.
 
This luscious skein of BFL (seeing a theme here??) will be put to good use, probably as a crocheted shawl. Shocker, I know.

That's likely the end of my winning streak for the next decade or beyond. Big thanks to Lars and Lois for running some fun contests.

Mystery Fiber

One of my very favorite indie dyers found some 'mystery' yarn after she dyed a recent batch of fiber. She blogged it (here: scroll down to July 31) and I, half-jokingly, begged to buy it. It's shiny! It's purple! and - since Deb agreed to part with three skeins - It's mine!
It's 100% mohair - not part silk like we originally thought - and about fingering weight.

The minute I saw it on Deb's blog, I knew it would make a fabulous shawl - but which one?? I swatched the Eva's Shawl (here's the Rav link to 111 completed shawls) but the pattern was too contrasty with the yarn's color variations. Thought about the Zig-Zag Stole and the Green Crocheted Shawl, even bought the patterns, but they just weren't right either. Went through all the shawl, wrap, stole patterns on Ravelry. Twice. Nothing.

Until I saw this. I'd noticed the pattern in the recent Webs catalog, but the photo doesn't look nearly as gorgeous as Gigi's shawl. So this - is the first third of the Crocus Bud Shawl. I'm thrilled with the pattern - super easy but not boring. It doesn't look like much now, but it will look a whole lot different once it's blocked. Can't wait to get this finished!!

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Ok maybe not, but even Dick said this was beautiful. This is the pound of wool I dyed yesterday. I love the colors (yeah, yeah, it's purple; what else is new?) and couldn't resist 'fluffing' a little of the still-wet fibers to see what it would be like to spin.Nice and fluffy.

And this is the roving I dyed - it's about 10 oz. of a denim-y gray-blue. It isn't something I'd normally choose, but I love it.

The top-down knit sweater is progressing. I'm through with the yoke and ready to divide for the sleeves. Excitement!

Witch's Brew

Today's dye workshop was wonderful. Jeane deCoster of Elemental Affects - an excellent instructor - taught us using Mother Mackenzie's Miracle Dye for protein fiber (wools, silk, alpaca). The early morning math and dye formula session was a bit intimidating, but once we got our hands on the dyes, time just flew.

We started by picking a color and developing a 'formula' from the 9 dye colors to test dye 5 gram samples of yarn. The mason jar dye baths were mixed, cooked and cooled. It was amazing to compare the colors in the jars vs. the color of the finished yarn sample. Several of us were not satisfied with the colors in our first try, and mixed up second test batches that were more to our liking. Next came the actual fiber dyeing; same formula, just in bigger quantities. I used a mix of 50% cyan, 30% magenta and 20% black to get colors that shaded from lavender to blue to deep purple on a previously white fleece. The cooling pot looks pretty gross (the magenta doesn't 'exhaust' completely; most of the other dye colors are absorbed into the fiber, leaving the water clear.) I'm really pleased with the colors I got.

I also dyed some BFL roving, using a 50% cyan/ 50% orange solution that yielded a boring gray. Nice, but nothing special. Jeane 'doctored' the pot with blue and violet to get an almost denim blue. I'll try to get a photo of it in the sunlight tomorrow. Jeane is teaching a dye workshop for the guild later this year. Can't wait to learn more!