Harry Potter UK Cover Yarn Club

September: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

October: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

November: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban

These are the first three colorways of the first Sock Yarn club I've joined. I've been hesitating to join any clubs because you never know what you'll end up with. This club seemed like a safe bet because I know which colors would be used and I've seen other colorways by this dyer. There are a total of seven skeins I'll be receiving in this club. Each one is based on the cover of one of the Harry Potter books released in the UK. The cover art for those editions is vastly different than the US Scholastic versions. If you look closely at the ball band you can see a picture of the actual UK cover that colorway was based on. I am so pleased with my skeins so far. I think Dharmafey (Ravelry name) from Cosmic Fibers does an excellent job matching the dye colors to the cover art. She also includes a little extra something with each shipment. With my first skein I received an HP trading card, with the second I received temporary tatoos of all the covers, and with the third I received a matching stitch marker. I can't wait to see what I get next!

Time to Dye

This post goes out to Knitvicious! Cause she's tired of the lake...

Way back in September, I got together with a couple of fellow Chicks to try our hand at dyeing our own yarn. Okay, it was not my first or even fourth time dyeing yarn, however, it was my first time using the dip method and my first time dyeing a sock blank.

The top photo is the result of dipping the ends of a pre-wound skein into two canning jars, one with pink dye and the other with chestnut dye, then microwaving the whole shebang. Hot Stuff! (By the way, Felted I still have your jars) The resulting skein has a deep chocolate color fading to tan and then a vanilla middle and light pink darkening to a perfect strawberry ice cream color. Neopolitan!

The bottom photo is the sock blank. This was a little harder to dye than I supposed, but only because my dye bottles were leaking. You can see little spots of blue on the pink and purple sections. I had a pattern picked out for this yarn before I dyed it so you would think that now, being two months later, I would have finished this project and could post an "after" picture. You would be wrong.

I spent the rest of September finishing old projects and working on WIP's. I didn't want to start any new projects until I'd done something about my total WIP count. I can't seem to bring it under 13. (I haven't decided if that's good or bad luck) So, while I have finished some projects (Mystery Stole 3, Carmen sweater, Marie Antoinette sock #1, Baby Ripple Blanket) I did not start my socks in September.

For October, my focus was all Halloween... (check back for my next post)