Finished - Silk Lace Scarf

 This one will not be travelling with me again! Just needs to be washed & blocked.  It will be for sale.

Plan for Finishing UFOs

From the June 2025 Fiber To Finish Newsletter:

I love starting projects. The creativity of choosing a design, yarn type, and colors is challenging and fun. Unfortunately, once I start knitting and work on the project for a while, I lose interest. It may be because I’ve figured out the pattern rhythm, or another color catches my eye, or I simply forget to work on it. This leaves a lot of UFOs (un-finished objects) in my craft room.

My goal for 2025 was to finish a UFO before starting a new one. Fail!

On a blank page in one of my journals I made a list of all the projects I had started along with their intended recipients. I need to revisit that list, cross off the completed ones, add the new ones, and get busy working down the list. It’s a good plan. Can I do it? Accountability is the key, which means I need someone else to be privy to the list and support me in this effort. A lot of people use social media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blog, etc.) to help keep track of progress and provide accountability to an audience.

Come along with me and see how this works out! Here's my plan so far:

Preparation:

A few UFOs

1. Collect the UFOs. This isn’t difficult, they’re mostly organized already. Make the list. 
   
   
2. Line them up in order of one of these: oldest, newest, most fun, most important (i.e., a recipient is identified), completely random (eyes closed), or some other logical order. Assign a number by putting a sticker on the Ziplock bag.
3. Put them all in one bin so when a project is finished, I can grab the next one in line.

Kickoff:

1. On My Birthday (in about 2 months) I will pick up a UFO, probably one already in my take-along knitting bag, and work on it exclusively. That means, it is the only project I allow myself to take on trips or to have near my TV chair.
2. Commit to knitting most every evening in front of the TV. I have a huge collection of “Blue Bloods” recorded. If I can get in 1 or 2 episodes per night, that will be a productive amount of time.

Accountability:

1. You can follow along as I track my progress here on my blog.
2. Send me comments for encouragement or if anything I'm up to inspires you.

Progress since I initially wrote the plan:

Where I picked up on 6/2/2025

Where I am on 6/17/2025

  

Remember this? It turned into a 3 ply yarn, and then into this:

This is a slightly modified verson of the Morning Surf scarf from the Summer '08 issue of Spin-off magazine. My modification was to do 3 knit rows between "loopy" rows rather 5 rows specified in the pattern, because I didn't have much yarn, only about 165 yds.

I knitted all the yarn I had, and the scarf is only about half as long as it needs to be to go around a neck. So I dyed some more wool. I started with purple to match where the previous yarn ended, then I used more green in this batch.

Dyeing for Socks

I spun up a bunch of the Targhee roving I bought with the idea of making sock yarn. I 2-plied onto the Lendrum giant plying bobbin and then gave it another spin (plying direction) to tighten it up a bit. Too bad I don't have a second giant bobbin for that purpose. It fit on the Jensen Woolee Winder bobbin ... just barely ... the poor WW couldn't move any more. It's almost 250 yds before washing and it's not really fingering weight, probably closer to worsted weight, but sooooo sofffffttttt.


And then.... the color-crazed woman was at it again!!!!

Oh, yeah, and before I forget, there has been an interesting discussion of Kool-Aid dyeing over on Yahoo! Groups Spin List. Join up and you can read all about it.

I had an idea of the colors I wanted. Something bright and southwestern, with turquoise and yellow and some others. I started with my crayons & markers:

These just weren't quite what I wanted. Close, but not there yet.

Then I got out my ColorWorks book so see what it would offer. It has cardstock pages you take out and play with different combinations on the color wheel. I decided that the triad was the right choice. I ended up with fewer colors than I started with: but simplicity is good.

Then out came the Kool-Aid and I started playing.


How did I do? The red is more red than fuschia, but I can't wait for this to dry so I can divide it in half and start knitting socks. Oh, did I mention how soft it is? Verrrrrry soffffffttttt.


It's taking forever to dry in this humidity!!!!

Another Dye Day

Our Fiber To Finish Indigo Dye Day was fantastic! I put the photos here. My home-grown hand-spun indigo dyed mohair lace yarn is now ready to become something for the F2F Shades of Blue gallery show.

Sunday was another dye day for me. After talking "dye" with everyone on Saturday, I stopped by WallyWorld and bought a pack each of Rit black and Dylon black (can anyone tell me why the Rit is in the grocery section and the Dylon is in the craft section? Geez!).

I finished spinning a 3-ply worsted weight (350 yds) last week that I'd started last year. It was miles and miles of singles so it had become a chore. But in order to free up some bobbins, it was necessary to Geet-Ur-Done! It was a big blob of white with no project in mind. Well, look and see what happened.

First I soaked the blob-o-white:


Then I added the black Dylon dye (following their directions, I used salt water in this step):


I let it sit in the sun for a couple of hours (or maybe only one; I was impatient!) Sun cooking wasn't in the directions, and it didn't work like I expected, but wait for it...


It turned out grey. The cotton ties did take the black quite well. I don't know what it would take to make the wool completely black. However, grey is really what I wanted anyway.


Then I added koolaid. I just love the simplicity of koolaid dyeing and I've been trying to figure out how to make different colors (like brown: yellow+purple, soon). I made a nice green with orange and berry blue. And I used come colors I had already mixed: berry blue, black cherry, grape, and grape+berryblue+blkcherry. My solar oven disappeared as a thunder storm passed over, so I put my pan of koolaid-wool in the oven on the very lowest temp I could get (less than 140 I think) and let it sit for an hour. Here are my results:


Finished:


Drying:

Experiment successful:

Now I think this yarn wants to be one of my special triangle scarves (my own "Lost Shawl" pattern. There is enough yardage and the color mix should look pretty good.

I Ply-ed

You knew I would, right? Here are the results. The colors came out very muted, but very nice.


I ended up with about 245 yds of fingering weight. This yarn is going to be socks. After all, it's superwash. The yardage is a little less than I usually use for socks, so I'll split it into 2 balls and knit them toe-up, which is my preferred method anyway.

Here is a closeup. It's not really grey, just very muted green/blue.


Remember the merino/silk from last month? Here they are together.


Spinning the superwash merino was not as easy as the merino/silk, but the yarn is so soooooofffffftttttt. Another winner!

Wait 'til you see what's next. The merino/silk was so easy to spin and made such beautiful yarn, I bought another one. Addicted! And it arrived today. How to keep my hands off until I finish the current bobbin of BSWool for Indigo Dye Day.... Rats!

To Ply or Not To Ply

Or 2-ply. These are the singles from spinning the 2 separate rovings that started as this.

One is mostly green with lots of white. The other has more color with blues and greens. I guess I'll give it a ply and let you know what happens.