Hello to you my friends.  I hope you had a wonderful mid July weekend.  (It’s hard to believe it is indeed mid July already!–WOW!)  We are enjoying lots of heat and sunshine here in northern Illinois.  It truly feels like summertime here.  I am enjoying it even though it is super hot.

First I’d like to talk about Magnolia; it occurred to me last week that I never introduced the new addition to my Warm Heart Bears collection.  She arrived about a month ago, and is a panda bear named Magnolia.  I had a panda bear when I was a baby and I loved her so much.  Below is a screenshot from a photo book I made that shows me with my panda (and grandpa).

When I saw that Warm Heart Bears had a panda bear (which was still available 🙂 ) I knew she had to come and join my duo.  And now that I have three of Carolyn’s creations I have a collection.  (I once read that 3 makes a ‘collection’. 😮 )  If you’d like can read about Claudette the giraffe and Ivy’s arrival.  I love my little animal collection!  These three bring a smile to my face every day.  Aren’t they adorable together?… and they all get along swimmingly.

Carolyn’s packaging and goodies are so much fun to open.

Now for the socks part of this post…

A while back I got it into my head to try dyeing a skein of self striping yarn.  It sounded so nice and simple–not having to weave in ends every time I changed colors.  I wanted 6 stripes–each stripe being 8 rows.  It involved figuring out the yardage for one row (28″) then multiplying that number times the total rows in the repeat (48 rows).  Forty-eight rows times 28″ came to 112 feet or just over 37 yards.

Now I had to turn the original skein into a 37 yard loop!  To make a loop this large I had to head outside.  I had 4 stools arranged on the driveway at points to make a 37 yard loop and walked around and around with the yarn… ’til it was all wound into a GIANT loop.  As I was doing this the yarn blew and stretched between the chairs.  It was crazy.  I wasn’t sure it would work, but I already had time invested in this project, so I kept on.  After winding the yarn, I put figure eight ties on the gigantic skein every yard or so–lots and lots of figure eights to tie.

The dyeing involved dividing the loop into six equal sections and dyeing each one singly.  When that was done I thought I was home free.  Nope!  This mess, and it looked like a mess, needed to be wound into a ball.  I think I spent 3 hours untangling and winding, maybe it even took longer…  I should have brought the stools outside again instead of draping the loop up and down over a bunch of hangers.

The end result is beautiful though, and it was fun knitting with yarn that kept changing color, but… NEVER AGAIN, ugh.  I wish I took photos of the process just to show you the craziness, but I was not in a photo taking state-of-mind, sorry.

Now on to the fun… and calm part of my story.  Below is one sock in progress.  I used an old quilt I made my daughter as inspiration for the colors.  As always (and the only way I know how to knit socks) I used Susan B. Anderson’s Blueprint (Craftsy) class, “My First Toe-Up Socks”.  I love how they turned out.

For the next pair of socks I plan to knit, I purchased someone else’s hand dyed yarn.  I think I deserve to let someone else do the ‘work’ this time, don’t you?  We found this skein of Spun Right Round at our local yarn store, Fiddlehead Yarns.  Doesn’t it look fun?  It’s called “Rumble in Brighton”.

By the way, am I the only one who winds their yarn by hand into balls?  I have yet to purchase a yarn swift and ball winder.

I hope you have a beautiful week!  Thank you so much for visiting with me today. ❤