Art Yarn: Flowers on the Breeze

Using the instructions from Sarah Bradberry's site, I incorporated silk flowers into some very fluffy, lightly spun wool that I had attempted to dye before. The raw wool came out a pale, kinda dirty blue but I thought it seemed like a nice enough color after it was spun. It looks kind of like clouds to me, hence the name in the title.


2 plies of blue wool fluff and one "ply" of flowers on quilting thread.




I can't actually claim the idea for the flowers, but I can't remember where I saw it before. Just so you know, this kind of yarn takes a lot of work for even this piddly 18 yards. If you see similar yarns for sale and they're expensive there is a good reason!

P.S. - You can do this without spinning. Just make a decorated thread and carry it along with your yarn while knitting.


(Edited to Add)
Okay, I couldn't resist knitting up a swatch. Wouldn't this be cute on the ends of a scarf?





Too much fun!

My First (Grown-Up) Knitted Shirt!

I spun the yarn, I developed a yarn-sparse pattern to work with it, and I knitted it. And I sewed in a bit of elastic to act as a bra. (I needed it). And I even have a few in-progress shots for you!


These pictures are from when I figured out how to do the back straps. We have a racerback!


(I'm not whispering sweet nothings to my camera. Seriously. He prefers candy).



Then I finally finished it. I took these pics, and then I took out the bind-off because it was too tight. Also my left boob kept trying to sneak down into the brown part and escape the shaping that I put so much work into making.





So I redid the bind-off very loosely, sewed in some elastic at the bottom of the green section, and I washed and dried it. Mostly. It took forever in the dryer and the right boob section just wouldn't finish drying and I got tired of waiting on it.



I think it fits nicer in the back when I'm not twisted.






So, here's crossing my fingers that the straps won't stretch to the ends of the earth.

Later!

For The First Time,

I'm knitting a shirt-type thing for me. Actually this is going to be the first shirt-type thing I've made for any adult ever.

So far I've tried it on a few times, and I'm happy to report that the short-row shaping I used for Barbie is working quite nicely. But I didn't take a pic of me trying it on because, as you can see from the pic,




that would be showing a bit more skin than I'm comfortable having on the big ol' internet.

This is some handspun, naturally colored FoxFibre* cotton that I spun 3-ply. I am really excited about this tanktop because I just know it's going to be a favorite if I don't manage to goof up the knitting details.

* The article I linked on FoxFibre doesn't mention it, but around the time that cotton production became mechanized slaves were still growing the naturally colored cottons for their own personal use but were not given as free access to white cotton varieties (I'm not sure if they were allowed to grow it for themselves at all, but I didn't want to rule it out b/c I honestly don't know). This unfortunately had the effect of stigmatizing naturally colored cotton in the eyes of non-slaves. Luckily there were some families who kept the culture of these cottons going even after their liberation, and you can find seed for green and tan varieties if you do some searching.
In Peruvian culture the natural colors were explored more intensively and over a much longer period of time, and so they have developed several more color variations. And they guard the seed jealously. <:^(

Why Is She A Freak?

Well, the lacing was a little risque... but as my friend Nikki discovered when she lifted Barbie's skirt....





This Barbie just hates panty lines.



What do you mean, I'm weird? Didn't you know that already?

Don't You Wish Your Barbie Was A Freak Like Mine?

Hehehe, I've been trying to come up with patterns and ideas for clothes. Unfortunately my short row experience is somewhat limited so I have taken advantage of my Barbie doll to test out some ideas.

It worked out almost exactly like I wanted.

I don't really like the options available for securing Barbie clothes while still allowing them to pass over her head, so I came up with another option.









Do ya like it?

Please ignore the skirt. I plan on recreating that (with short rows, hah!) relatively soon.

Later!

Not Exactly Knitting

I keep getting these ideas, so I bought a sketchbook to write them down in. Now I write down the idea and never make it.... I'm not entirely sure it's an improvement over having an idea obsess me. But, I did get an idea from some website that had a pattern for baby shoes. I figured I could do it better (yeah, ok so what I really figured was that it would take me longer to find the site and print the pattern than it would to just trace Sebastian's shoes) and I made up some shoes of my own. From a sweater that I originally bought to recycle the yarn because it was merino and angora(!), but it was so felted it wouldn't come apart at all. No, it wasn't painfully obvious at the thrift store. Look, you try evaluating sweaters for useful yarn while wearing a whiny boy on your back. I was doing good to target sweaters that had nice fiber content. And I did score a 100% cashmere sweater that works, although I will have to ply the yarn to make it usable.

So anyway, I've been wanting to make bullion stitch roses for ages. Maybe since my childhood, I don't know. And this seemed the perfect excuse - I could embroider/make some shoes and sell them! Not. There were a few issues. Minor things, overlookable in a gift but I couldn't sell them. Okay, enough of the blah-blah, here's the pics.







Eh, I thought they would show up a little better than that. Oh well, you get the general idea. The backs are too high and look like weird misshapen boots when they're actually on a baby. This also adds a rather excessive amount of bulk for a girl's shoe, and when I sewed everything together I had to redraw my stitch lines. I didn't redraw them very well and one shoe has a larger front piece than the other, and the embroidery isn't centered properly (another effect of the redraw).

But the next ones will be better! If I can ever convince myself to do anything that involves stitching leather ever again...

The Towel

Yeah, I'm getting kind of bored of the whole letter format. So here we go.

I finished the towel for my boy. I pretty much just knitted a 20" x 32" rectangle to get a towel that fits on him the way my towels fit on me. I used garter stitch on all the edges but it still wanted to curl. It has been blocked but I was too lazy to take any more pictures. Sorry.

(He's holding the towel)



I used a synthetic terry style yarn from red heart called "Baby Teri." I wish I could have found a terry yarn in a natural fiber, but it would probably have cost more than I wanted to spend anyway.

He was excited about the towel. He would frequently pet it while I was knitting it, and he got to help me knit one of the rows. Mwa-ha-ha, I'm already turning him to the dark side!