The Black Lake ~ New Harry Potter companion yarn!

With the start of my Harry Potter 2010 Yarn Club underway, there is a new yarn that is a companion to the club. The dyeing process for this yarn is unique so the colors for this turned out just amazing!

The Black Lake ~ Hogwarts Lake

"And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood."
~Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone

"There were rocks littering the lake bottom. He dived and snatched up a particularly jagged one and returned to the statue. He began to hack at the ropes binding Ron, and after several minutes' hard work, they broke apart. Ron floated, unconscious, a few inches above the lake bottom, drifting a little in the ebb of water."
~Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire

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Do you remember Hogwarts Lake?... The Black Lake. Harry crossed it in a tiny boat with Hagrid as a first year seeing Hogwarts Castle for the first time. The Merpeople lived there, and they held his friends under the water, captive, for the Second Task in The Goblet of Fire. The Merpeople came out to sing a lament song for Dumbledores final rest into The White Tomb...

Beautiful, luxurious colors of deep blues, paler blues, sea greens, emerald and browns play onto the sparkling blue faced leiscester yarn base. It has a high aqua cast in natural and bright lights, and outside of that you can see the deeper blues that play into it. This effect is achieved from the over-dyeing and gives it unique color.

BFL yarn is shimmery, quite strong, and soft; this blend has nylon added in to make it an even more durable softy. This one is also a superwash so you can machine wash it for ease if you choose.

It's a unique colorway with an initial kettle dye, then colors were hand painted on, then another immersion into the kettle to overdye the yarn.

Specs:
BFL Sock (80/20 superwash light sportweight BFL, nylon)
333 yds approx - 100g.
Heavy fingering to light sport weight sock
Machine wash gentle, dry flat

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows 3 month Yarn Club - Now Open

Come and join in the HP knitting fun! Signups are open for the Harry Potter Yarn Club. This is going to be so much fun to work on... I can hardly wait to get started!

There are two clubs, a kettle dyed version, which will be yarns dyed in a dyepot with one main color that isn't mixed evenly. This results in the dye having tonal variations in it. The other option is variegated colors, which will be hand painted by me, and each colorway typically will have 3-6 colors per skein.

All of the colorways represent characters (or things!) in the last book. The movie is going to be released into US theatres in November and I can hardly wait to knit up some things with Harry Potter yarn!

Clubs go for 3 months, starting in October and continuing through December. There are two payment options, to pay in full, or to pay in two installments. Club price is $70 with free shipping to the US (shipping to Canada & Europe for a fee) or pay $35 now and $38 in October.

So far, the list of characters and things that have been suggested by members of the club, from my Facebook page, and from the club Ravelry group are:
Snape
Molly Weasley
Fred & George
Ginny
Draco
Lucius
Dumbledore
Voldemort
Shacklebolt
Grawp
Fenrir Greyback
Harry/Ron/Hermione
Horcruxes 

Anything else that should be on the list? I will be choosing 3 of these for the colorways, and likely there will be different choices for each club since not all choices can be translated into a solid color for the kettle dyed club.

Feel free to join the Ravelry group even if you're not going to join the club, but love Harry Potter and want to keep an eye on things. Also, I'm updating my Facebook page with all of the news for the clubs as well.

Purchase a slot for the HP club through my Etsy shop.

Teaching my kids the art of the fiber arts

Today was "take your kids to work day". My husband brought my older boys to work with him today, and I starting thinking that I could keep Morgana home with me and I could show her how I create my hand painted yarns. Thinking of it, our 3 year old Gabriel has been desperately wanting to dye his own yarn, after watching me dye my Alice in Wonderland series of yarns.

The day started off pretty darn nice. I slept in to 7am, which is wonderful on a school day. I made myself some coffee, and let my morning just come along slowly since I had plenty of time to kill while I waited for my husband to come back with the car.

The yarn journey started at Northwest Wools in the village. They both picked out some alpaca/wool blend to dye. Morgana told me she wanted me to knit a stuffed kitty, and she wanted pink and gold ochre for her yarn. Gabriel just wanted blue yarn so I could knit him a puppy.

Gabriel getting on with his blue painting!

Morgana begins with pink, after she figured out how she wanted to paint her color sections.

Gabe has used two blues, green, and now a third tone of blue. You can see me starting off my Trail Blazer red for my playoff socks :)

She added in her gold ochre to her pink.

Gabriels yarn wrapped and ready to be heated to set the dye.

She's all done! I think her colors look like a Spring sunset.

We wrapped up M's yarn and it's getting ready to be heated.

When Gabriel was done, he did red, blues, greens, and created some purples. He took some of my black dye I mixed up and he added a little of that to it. His yarn is heat set, and cooling here.

Go Blazers! Almost done painting the yarn. Black dye is sooo messy I had to really be careful using such dark colors to not let them contaminate each other or seep while keeping an eye on the kids and their dye. 

A little self-made bed he made while waiting for his yarn to set. Peregrin looks on in the background, admiring  his brothers work. For a 14 month old, he really did good playing calmly while we got three skeins of yarn painted. Seriously.

Not a great representation of the the colors, but here are their yarns, hand-dyed by a 3 yo and a 6 yo, and heated, cooled, rinsed and now hanging up to dry. Should be ready in about 2 days, then it's onto winding it into a knittable ball of yarn, and knitting these skeins into a kitty and a puppy.

Yarnie Yarnie - Pics - Massive Yarn Score!

I'm trying to catch up with all my yarnie goodness, so here's my package from Biscotte & Cie that I received on Feb. 6th. I have made little progress with Jim's socks, but I'm centered on making longies for Peregrin right now. This yarn, however, will be socks. Socks for me, socks for Peregrin, and socks for who knows who!

The Harry Potter Yarns....

This is the Watermelon self-striping yarn. I wish I had an example of how it knits up. Well, I will when I get to some socks for Miss M with it.



And, finally this is my Sgt. Pepper's yarn from her Yarn Club for February. I just love hand-dyed self-striping yarn!





Now here's my February yarn for The Unique Sheeps Lord of the Rings sock club. The package has a pin, some dreamy tea, the Hobbiton sock pattern, and the Hobbiton colorway.




Here's my Three Irish Girls yummy BFL yarn that we picked out for Peregrin's soakers.


Aiden


Nolan



And finally, if you've made it to the end of this post, then I'm going to reward you with some chubby cutie-pie goodness!

Socks complete! And new sock yarn

Arriving on xmas eve from the UK is my new sock yarn from Angels & Elephants. About 1600 total yards of hand dyed sockish deliciousness. From left to right they are: Polperro 100% British sock wool in colors of blue to green to deep purple (maybe for the Saartje booties or the Bellatrix socks), Zennor 100% blue faced leicester in colors of lavender to grey to blue to purple, Autumn Leaves 100% blue faced leicester in colors of pink to olive to browns and greens with a little mustard (I'm thinking of using this for either some Morgana socks or for the Ginny Weasley socks), and finally it's Damson Delight 100% British sock wool
in deep purple to medium purple to pale violet (maybe this for the Bellatrix socks?).

And here is a final shot of (and it's impossible to get the true color of the yarn which is a deep and bright garnet color) of my Baudelaire socks that I finished up. I can't get a good close-up of the lace pattern with my camera, but I got some fairly decent ones a few posts back. They are very comfy and snuggly! I love them!

So...I'm going to try to pick out my yarn and get started on the Saartje booties. They should be a very quick knit, and I'm thinking I can do both of them at the same time on the circulars. I have to wind my yarn into balls, so that will consume the first hour of my time right now at least...but at least the yarn came in 50 gram hanks so I can just wind them separately to use for two-at-a-time socks. That's my new goal. I'm even thinking that I can do four-at-a-time baby socks right? Yep, that sounds totally plausible. Someone has to have tried it. Just use lots of baggies to keep that yarn separate....


Jim had gone to Michaels and picked up a bunch of rolled casting to use for my belly mask. With how crampy and odd I've been feeling everyone is getting ready for this baby to come any day. I'm still at 36 weeks though and knowing that I've given birth with my other children anywhere from 39 to 42 weeks there's just no telling. But a nice glass of wine definitely calmed things down the other night. Sometimes I can't even figure out how to get into a comfortable position where it doesn't feel like the baby is trying to completely turn itself around or over, or where my stomach doesn't feel like it's pushing itself out into everything I get near. Other times it feels completely like it's a part of me that doesn't interfere with anything at all. This has been the most unique of my pregnancies, but Jim tells me that they all have had their own issues like this. I seem to be able to forget anything unpleasant then I guess.

I would love for Winter Break to go on, and I'm a little sad for there to be only one more week. I'm enjoying this break from routine and obligations so much. I always do. Summertime is too long of a break, but these small breaks really make it nice. Especially now when I'm physically uncomfortable for one reason or another lately and love not having to get up early, or run to ballet, or drive kids back and forth to schools and all the other stuff we have to do. I love being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Again, what I miss the most from homeschooling.

Well, time to wind the yarn and think about what I want to use to start those booties. Sometimes after it's wound into a ball it starts to look like something completely different than when you see it in a hank. It begins to take on a life of what it wants to be. When I have more time, I think I might even start dying my own yarns. I have so many ideas of what I want to do but I'm trying to just take things one day at a time, at least until after the baby comes and we are settled back into some sort of a routine.