Granite is grey, trellis is pink

My sister knitted Granite by Helga Isager a while ago, and it came out really nice. She washed it and put it outside to dry. And a disaster happended! It was made out of silk/alpaca, and there is a reason they always tell you not to dry silk in direct sunlight. Instead of a lovely white sweater, a strange, yellowish garment came back in. She had it sitting in the closet for while, until we dyed it the other day. It is now considered saved!
We had lots of little helpers, one of them helped simply by sleeping through the whole thing:

others were more vocal in their assistance:

3-year old Iris wanted to "color something too", and after some negotiation settled for a lone sock

It turns black!

The Granite sweater didn't actually turn out black, more of a dark grey, similar to what it looks like here


In other news, I've also finished the Trellis cardigan for Dagmar, here she is sporting it

It's the 12 month size, a little big still on 8-month Dagmar, so it will fit through the winter. It's less than 3 skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted on 5 mm needles. Modifications: I knitted the body in one piece and picked up the sleeve stitches and knitted them both at the same time (with 2-at-a-time sock technique). Voila! Almost seamless.

Hello again, blog

I haven't blogged for ages. Dagmar is now almost 8 months old. Here she is, all covered in my mother's knitted pieces:



I guess I've been busy. In other news, we're just back from a trip to Boston, and more importantly, a trip to WEBS in Northampton. This is what my sister, my mother and I got for ourselves:



and my sister wasn't even there. Don't tell our husbands!!

I've been knitting Trellis for Dagmar. After almost completing (save one sleeve), I decided to start over....



almost finished sweater on the left, beginning of new sweater on the right. I am using Lamb's pride, but it just wasn't knitting up as soft as it should on 4.5 mm needles. I decided to knit it on 5 mm's instead, and the drape is wonderful, and the fabric is soft. I still used 4.5 mm for the lower seed stitch border, which now fits better in size relative to the cabled section.

Also, I have just started my experiments with avocado pits and shells, for dyeing red colors. I ate a lot of avocados when I was pregnant. They also make good baby food. So in the end, I had almost 3 kg of pits and shells in the freezer. I give them a simmer almost every day to extract the color. Let's see how long I can keep it up. Here they are just out of the freezer