New Year's good luck.. with some delay...

 It is now a tradition, and I am happy to say, that by now not only for me... My friend, Angela started this, and now I have a whole group of people on FB to knit a good luck sweater with me. 

However I have been under some - mostly self inflicted- obligations in december, and for once I have not prepared everything beforehand... For one, I was working until the last minute in december 31st, besides, I was like, oh I have   aton of red yarn, I will think of something...

But then I had a concrete idea of what I should make, and when I started poking around in my stash I realized that the thing I had in mind needs more yarn than my average 4-500 grams that I have around... 

Then as I was digging around in my stash I thought I have several option...

I can make a fair isle sweater, with gray base and a lotsa differnt shade of red... out of sock yarn, because if anything I do have sockyarns, by the ton. But I already have a very colorful fair isle on the needles...

Then I found a bunch of tweedy yarns, some of it in shades of red:

So I thought hurray, I am going to knit a stripy cardigan, "design" one, if you will, just out of my head. And started knitting furiously, but the original idea, the one, that needed more yarn... just stuck in my mind. And as I was knitting the stripy thing, I messed up the calculations. I messed up bad, so before i could do more damage, I frogged the whole thing, put the yarns in a bag, as the idea was actually good, I just need better calculations, fine. Next time.

And then I was thinking, if my original idea bugs me so much, why I do not do it? I do not have that much red yarn, and I kind do not want to buy more yarn as I already have more than most would know what to do with right? (Okay I admit, I am kind of in love with DROPS's Soft Tweed, and if they would have it in red, I would bought it, but they do not at the moment...). However, back in my red-haired days, I collected a lot of orange yarn. Some of it in cones, some of it in skeins, and those on cones were usually more than the basic 500 gramms units... I dye yarn for others - if not for a living, but as a hobby, as an adventure into the world of colors, don't I? I have a ton of dye at home don't I? I have citric acid, vinegar, don't I? And it is not likely that I am going back to being a redhead, so I will never really use those orange yarns, now will I? (Unfortunately,, wearing orange makes my hair look much more yellow, than it actually is, therefore I minimailzed wearing orange)...So more digging in my stash, and from the corner, where I hidden some yarns on cone out came about 800 gramms of heathery orange (covered in thick dust, but a vaccuum cleaner helped with that.) 

Skeined it up, and left it in a warm water and vinegar solution to soak overnight. Now I never dyed this much yarn at once with the intention to have them all the same color... So I needed up my game, thus dug out my biggest steel pot (which is actually a leftover from PJ's days, he liked to cook in gigantic pots, while I prefer to use -much- smaller ones), prepared the dyebath, mixing several different shades of red. I wanted a deep red, with possibly a hint of warmish brick in it. The dye had simple red, dark red, rapsberry and some more red in it, and came out... how shall I describe, more cold shade, more blueish red than I would preferred, and usually I tone this down by adding a bit of orange to the mix. However I knew the base is orange to beginn with. I stuck the skeins, and left them boiling for a while... Then I rinsed it, rinsed, and rinsed, and more rinse (I wasn't going skimpy with the dye, I can tell you that), and more rinse, soak in more vinegar solution and after I hung them up drying. 

(Yep, that is the shelf N. put up for me above the stove. Perfect place to dry freshily dyed fiber/yarn)

And then, two day late I could finally start knitting...

Now I can see, I am going to be bored out of my head with all that ribbing... but we will see.

Oh, what it is, you ask? Its a surprise. You will see. 

And BTW... yess, I know, I never showed last year's finished sweater either... I did finish it, though we never photographed it... By the time I finished it, the weather turned so warm, that I didn't need to wear it, and life got into the rushing phase... Hopefully we can get out one of these days and make a photosession.