Sparkle and Silk

It's been an awfully busy month! The new season of Monday Night Pinball-- which is a team-based pinball league-- started up. Each week, 10 player teams play head to head at various pinbars in the Seattle area(bars with pinball games in them, for the uninitiated) and we fight for the glory of our "Home" location. Half of your games in a season are at your home location, and half of them are "away" games.

I'm part of the Soda Jerks team-- based out of Full Tilt Ice Cream in Ballard, which is where my boyfriend, Bobby owns and operates pinball and arcade machines. It's a really good excuse to hang out with a whole bunch of people I really like and enjoy a shared hobby. Also, there's a lot of time in between matches, or if I'm sitting out a round, so it's a really good excuse to sit down and knock out some mindless knitting. :3

I've been pretty busy at the dyepots lately-- I had a big order of sparkle yarn in DK weight come in, and I'm steadily working  my way through it. I'll be sending a hank or two out to designers, and I'm really excited about working with some rad people! <3 

The sparkle yarn makes basically every colorway more exciting and awesome. I'm resisting the urge to just dye like a million neon hanks, because I don't think anyone else likes neon nearly as much as I do!

I've just finished reskeining a hank into five separate groups to gradient dye it. I've got this cool grey-minty thing in my head that I think will look really cool and be very spring appropriate. My previous continuous gradient dyeing experiment turned out fairly well. I've got roughly 700yds of this gorgeous 80/20 merino/tussah silk lace weight blend and it's probably going to become a shawl of some sort. Now taking suggestions-- I like crescent shaped shawls especially, and don't much care for triangles.

More stuff that came out of the dyepot last month was that silk I talked about contract dyeing for a friend. She requested a color that would be appropriate for the upcoming Boo Knits Danse Macabre Mystery Knit-A-Long in April. I'm absolutely beyond thrilled with how it came out, and my only regret is that I'm about 90% certain that I can't recreate it, which is a damn shame because I kind of want to keep it all to myself. The thick and thin characteristics of this yarn lend itself really well to the sort of creepy, eerie vibe this color has, don't you think? I always really enjoy doing custom colors for clients, it's a lot of fun to take their words or photos or examples and figure out the best way to render it in yarn form.

The other big contract project I've been working on lately is a 9 hank gradated sweater set in the aforementioned DK sparkle. It's still under wraps as I'm finalizing it, but it's coming out ridiculously awesome. It's this great gradation from teal green to this amethyst-y sort of purple and she's been very excited with how it's coming along. I can't wait to show you guys the finished set.

And finally-- you should join me and the Reddit Knitters group on Ravelry in an informal Knit-A-Long for A Cropped Sweater for Winter. It's an uber cute, uber quick cropped sweater with some cute scalloped colorblocked details. I've already cast on (and had to rip back because I can't read a line of instructions to save my life, apparently) but it's not too late to join the fun. I'm super in love with the yarn I've picked, Malabrigo Rios in Pearl Ten and Teal Feather. I kind of get the feeling that I'll be making multiples of this, but I guess we'll see, huh?

Join meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~

<3,

Arianne