Dye, dye, dye!

This is why my fingernails are green today:


I'm working on holiday gifts and other miscellaneous projects, so I pulled out two wool/silk scarf blanks, set up my long table in the dining room, and had at it. The green/coral/gold scarf has swales of color and curved lines that remind me a lot of the mountains near Tucson in the dry season, and is a gift for a new family connection. The blue one to the right has more geometric lines, almost like a tie-dye project, and is destined for a friend.

Then I pulled out the piece I'd been working on in August or September for a liturgical stole, and stared at it some more. The problems are that (a) I sort of forgot that the intended recipient is not 7 feet tall when I placed the design elements on the scarf; (b) the cross which was meant to fall on the left shoulder is too small and muted for my taste; and (c) the transition from "water" to "shore" color was so dramatic that it would not have been visually appealing as a wearable in the form intended, no matter how pretty the individual colors were. So I laid it out and tried over-dying the "beach at dawn" golds and corals to a more "tropical shallows" blues and greens look. But there's still a very definite demarcation, and I'm just not happy. Also, I tried to throw in a few silvery grey "rocks" at the point of the old "shoreline" to obscure my botched and splotchy attempt at a cross, but it just doesn't tell the story it was meant to. So what I have is a scarf (silk-type, not warm-type) that would look pretty knotted around someones neck, or pieced together in some sort of applique piece, but really doesn't satisfy me for the task at hand. I hate to do it, after all the work I put into that piece (and especially since I was so happy with how the bottom half of it came out), but I think I'm going to put it away and start over again with a new blank and the knowledge gained from the first attempt. I'm meeting my friend for lunch a week from tomorrow, and I'd really, really like to be able to give her the finished stole then. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I am cranking out holiday socks. These will all be fulled (or shrunk on purpose to make a very dense sock), so don't be too alarmed at the current size. The large green pair is from my brother's standard pattern, so I feel pretty confident about them. But I also want to make several pairs for various smaller feet, and Dan's sock pattern only comes in two adult sizes. I've got him at work right now converting measurements into a child's version of his pattern, but I'm also cheating by purchasing a copy of Dawn Brocco's Fulled Family Booties pattern from Ravelry. The little green socks are pretty much a direct interpretation of her pattern, and are the "child's small" size. I was thinking of putting them on Eli, who is 19 months or so, but to my eyes they look a little small. I'm going to felt them, then measure them and see. But at that size they were a fast easy thing to knit, and baby booties are always a good thing to have tucked away in case of emergency gift needs so I really can't lose. The blue/grey ones are tentatively for Austin - but again, I've got to felt them and then measure them and see where we are. They are a hybrid of Dawn's pattern, with a little more of a shaft added to bring them further up the leg. I might also add some embroidery to those ones; I loved the individual colors in the yarn, but knitted up they don't quite have the same charm and the colors will blend even more when I full them. Snowflakes, maybe?

And just to top off the fiber and dye theme here, I have been in the process (more or less) of going back to my own hair color for some time now. I got something a little too light the last couple of times, which left me with yet another sharp color demarcation line. This time I chose a darker color carefully and applied it while I was waiting for some other projects to set on Saturday. I've done the color from a box several times and feel fairly confident about it, even though my hair is - finally - getting some length. But apparently I didn't get the goop saturated quite through properly, because I discovered when my hair was dry on Saturday night that I had a very distinct band of gold/brown around the crown of my head, with the much darker brown above and below. Either I had been a very good girl and earned my halo, or I had screwed it up - and I don't think I was that good. I think I've got it fixed now, after another run through the whole process. Here's hoping that's the last time, and I can just wear my grey hairs as a badge of honor from here on out.