This Became That

Today is going to be a fabulous day. Howard is off work and we're going Christmas shopping and then out for lunch together. I'm looking forward to that. This afternoon, he'll take Kyle and the rest of the basketball team to an out of town game. They'll be back late. I'll spend the evening sewing. YES YES! Maybe I can actually start the pants. Yesterday was one of those everything takes twenty times as long as you think it will kind of days. By the time everything else was done, it was 8:00 at night. I decided to knit instead.




At the end of cranking out all the yarn, I had finally achieved even tension. This image above was quite likely the first time that there were no visible dropped stitches. What a pretty pattern. I still think this mill is an overpriced gadget but it certainly made things a lot faster for me. I finished knitting the yarn just before noon. Here's what the tube looked like.

And... a few hours later... this became that.




I started by soaking the knitted tube in hot water to soften the yarn and then mixed in a fuchsia dye. The color seemed a little too pink. I didn't want bubble gum or little girl pink; I was aiming for something a bit more sophisticated with a stronger blue base so it would look great with jeans so...




... I added some blue, let it sit for a few hours, mixed in the soda ash, let that sit for half an hour, and then poured the whole thing in the washing machine with some synthrapol and more hot water. A bonus about this process is that it has softened and preshrunk the yarn before I knit it again. Works for me.

I loved the color of the wet yarn. Unfortunately, the intensity always rinses out and the color dries lighter even though I made the dye base quite strong.

Here is the color two hot washes and a run through the dryer later. This is a close-up of the knitted tube before I unravelled it. There was only one area where the dye absorbed slightly darker. Otherwise, the color was pretty consistent all the way through.




I like the blue base of the pink and the slightly heathered look you can see in the white-ish undertones in these scrap threads. It's a bit like how you see white through the indigo color of blue jeans. Knowing the yarn was 50% cotton and 50% acrylic, I'd expected to see more of the white with a variegated look. This was a - pleasant - surprise.




Here are all the balls finished. I marked one ball as a full skein and attached it to the original label and the one with the darker spots as "use last" and put them back on the shelf. I'll knit them in the spring when it's closer to cotton weather. New to me - recycled - overdyed - yarn. Too fun! AND... it matches my favourite color card, fuchsia.




While the dye was setting, I ran over to Fabricland. I needed a purple zipper and some lining fabric for the pants. The discount section is still on sale so once again I bought six meters of high end lining fabric for six dollars. Love that. Notions were on sale too so I got the pant zipper and thread and a gorgeous black zipper with rhinestone teeth. It was regular $20.00 so I was waiting for it to go on sale. I have a project in mind. Too fun.

Have a great day - Myrna

Grateful - support and encouragement from my blog readers and especially those of you who posted a comment or emailed privately. Thank you.

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Personal Growth - Let us not become weary of doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. - Galations 6:9

Rather than reading the next chapter, I looked up this verse for it's comforting familiarity. When I wrote 100 Posts & Moving On! and started this Personal Growth category, I mentioned that I was very aware of the hypocrisy so often associated with Christians. The actions some Christians take in the name of promoting their God and religion make me want to cry. I so believe in supporting, encouraging, and building one another up that it's hard for me to imagine deliberately hurting someone. I also mentioned feeling vulnerable and nervous about this new category. What I was most concerned about was opinions such as those posted by Anonymous yesterday.

The comments saddened me. They appear to be coming from someone who shares my faith and yet instead of building up another in the faith, this person knocked me down. I went from feeling thrilled and excited to feeling discouraged. I did not find being called inflexible, rigid, insecure, egotistical and possibly misguided thought provoking in any way - at least not at first - and then I had a really good laugh. God is so funny.

Do you remember the questions I asked yesterday - am I living with good cheer, am I thankful, am I dragging other's down? Anonymous dragged me down for a bit and then God said, Here's an example of what not to do. You're okay Myrna. You go girl ! Isn't He just the best.

One thing, I've learned over the years is that the things that irritate us about another person typically have to do with faults or lessons of our own. I can only conclude that Anonymous has a lesson to learn in what it is about me that irritated her.

While cranking and dyeing yarn yesterday, I thought about all the years that my creativity was for sale, about the changes to my creativity since closing the business, about the "stuff" I've been dealing with for the past year and a half and how thankful I am for the nurturing of creativity, and about how fabulous it felt to knit those toques with no expectations and to give them with no strings. God has called me to a new way of thinking about my creativity that has nothing to do with making money.

How fabulous to know that the toques will make a definite difference. They won't be decorating walls in the spaces of the rich and nearly famous; they'll be sharing tangible love with someone who could use a GREAT BIG HUG. That's exciting and exactly what God put on my mind to do. We are all called to different tasks. Just because I didn't live out my faith the way Anonymous thought I should doesn't mean I didn't do it God's way - the way He asked me to and... He tells us to take pleasure in doing good. YES YES!