Helygen Celli

Are you visually attracted by the first or the second skein, or do you prefer the third?

5 shades of blue and green

The same yarn reskeined ...

Close-up of the yarn

Inspired by the element Water, a week ago I have dyed a skein of yarn in the colors of the Mediterranean Sea. I mixed Colortex acid dye in the colors petrol, blue and yellow to get 5 nuances of turkoois and seagreen. I mixed a variation in hue and lightness directly on the skein.

I was wondering which way of presenting a skein works best for me. The first pictures shows the yarn the way I have dyed it. You see the several colors in the skein. But how will all these colors work in a project? I imagined that reskeining the yarn would mix the colors visually – like the way it will show in a knitted garnment. You see the result of rewinding the yarn with use of my niddy-noddy in the second picture.

Well, that sure makes a difference! I like the result of this experiment ;-)

Hand dyed merino sockyarn in a bright and funky color combination …. ,
the way I love them, this skein is as me ….,
shades of velvet, jade, violet, green, lila and pink

Not for sale :-)

Did it take me a lot of time to figure out my “R” … items for the “S” popped right up! 
Stash & socks! Is that all? What about: spinning, samhain, spiders, SAD (Seasonal affective disorder), soul, salads, spinage, sandelwood, sage, sheep, saturated colors, sensitivity … 

This time the S is for …. sampler skeins!
I have a lot of different fibers in my stash. A few weeks I decided it would be nice to spin bits of them all into sampler skeins. To feel the fiber, find out best ways of spinning them, to see how thin I could spin the fibers – a bit of a reference for myself. Most of it … it is fun to do, look and feel al those samplers.

I have spun 8 different fiber samples untill now.

From top to bottom: 

• Corriedale (4 gram, 7,5 meter), 
• Merino (2 gram, 13 meter), 
• Camel down (5 gram, 22 meter), 
• Kid mohair (2,5 gram, 11 meter), 
• Tussah Silk (abt. 1 gram, 13 meter), 
• Soy silk (less then 1 gram, 8 meter), 
• Tencel (abt. 1 gram, 10 meter) and 
• Ramie (3 gram, 24 meter). 

I didn’t think about how to spin it yet, I just let the fiber lead me. Besides the Camel down all fibers were bought as top/roving. The Camel fibers were collected by a friend in a local Zoo. It was a very dirty with lots of hay and other matter. I got about 12 gram of this stuff. After a thorough clean and removing all the coars tophair, a tiny bit of super soft down was left. I carded the down with my cat’s brushes. A lot of work for a little skein, worth every effort!

Three nice bobbins filled with fresh handspun Jacob Sheep yarn.
I still want to learn more about the technical use of my camera. Most of the time I use the P-option of my camera. This morning I thought it would be fun playing with the Depth of Field again. 

The first three images are compressed jpg from my camera, the last one is I RAW-image I have adjusted.
The lighting of all photo’s are awfull, all overexposed.  I have to look at my aperture, your shutter speed and iso to prevent this…. Of course this can be corrected with photoshop, that’s not what I want :-)))

2.5s f/22.0 iso200
Small aperture, long shutter brings out detail, the image is more clear. 

0.6s f/11.0 iso200
Medium aperture and shutter … 

1/5s f/5.6 iso 200
A large aperture and slow shutter, makes for a more artistic shot.
With the the background details blurred, the eye is bought forward to the foreground 

The same shot as above. This time I adjusted the RAW image with Photoshop to correct the overexposure. Most of the time I work with RAW-images. This gives me the control to adjust things I don’t know how to do with my camera.

Looking for a pattern for the Noro sockyarn,
I found most available patterns to complicated to work with this yarn.

Just stockinette didn’t appeal to me either,
so I knitted a simple stripe, using the strand from the inside and outside of the ball..

Now I have a second sock problem.
This first sock, above on the right has nice and bright stripes in several greens and purples.
I knitted the second sock the same way, the stripes are muddy and dull.

Frogging or continuing, don’t know yet what to do…..

Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock, colorway S188
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony Wood, dpn 2,5 mm