Spinning & Dyeing

I'm getting ready to design some lingerie, and dyed up some 70/30 silk/cotton blend (recycled, of course, hehe) to that purpose. Also, I didn't realize it had cotton in it when I was dyeing it and now I know why I couldn't get it quite as dark as I wanted. I wouldn't have used acid dyes if I had known, but it came out nice so oh well.

This was the smallest skein, and had surprisingly even dye coverage. I was happier with the more variable effects I got on the other skeins but I didn't photograph them.




And on the spinning front, I had previously dyed some shetland/angora blend to spin up some custom yarn for my friend. She was enamored of the yarn I had spun to enter in the state fair last year, and of the scarf I knitted from it.

The yarn is actually a little bit greener and a little bit darker. The thread, beads and black parts of the yarn are pretty close to real color.

Picnic Blanket

Picnic blanket, or beach blanket. I've been saving old jeans for years to make this. We've recently gone to the beach, and started going out to a nearby field to fly kites. It was time to get busy and make this a finished project.

I cut up my jeans into 7x7, 7x14, and 7x3.5 inch rectangles (plus selvages) to try to get the most from my old jeans. It took forever to cut them all up. And to arrange them. And to sew, and sew, and sew them. But I am so happy with the final result and I know we'll get a lot of use out of it.

My little model helped me out by providing scale for my pictures. :^)

V-Neck Completion

I finished the v-neck tanktop I've been working on for the last month and a half. I took a ton of photos too, but I'm not going to bog down this post with too many of them.

This is a tanktop that I've been working on for a while. It's not quite as sexy as I was wanting, but it's pretty close. I used a cashmere-silk blend that I recycled from a thrift store tank top (and it is sooooooo nice).

My gauge was 6.5 stitches and 9 rows to the inch on #5 needles (coincidentally the same gauge I got with Sanguine Gryphon's Dance yarn on #4 needles, although I wasn't trying to match gauges).

This recycled yarn is a lot clingier than Dance and shows off my features and my flaws pretty exactly. I really like how it fits in the back, but there are a few small details I would tweak with the front shaping. They're sufficiently minor for me to consider this design a full success as it stands!

Front View


Back View


Action Shot


Dress Model - Front


Dress Model - Back

Tidbits And Leftovers

Remember that recycled yarn that I overdyed?



So pretty. It makes me think of red wine. Or as my knitting buddies suggested, garnets.

Well, I decided to indulge my desire to knit with it, and I made a little swatch from a reprinted historic knitting book (circa 1897 - patterns are poorly written, but at least they usually have drawings or pictures).


This swatch is the "knitted fluted edge or border - No. 63" from page 47 of The Art of Knitting.




I did eventually finish the youngest nephew's hat. I completely forgot to put it up here, so here it goes.



Grrr, apparently I forgot to take a final picture before sending it home. Anyway, there was a little more webbing stitched on at the top. The pattern was PumpkinMama's "We Call Him Spidey" hat.

I did the colorwork with duplicate stitch, and I made a dumb math error when I was knitting it and made it a little too long for the stitch pattern to work out right. But it was pretty good anyway. The yarn is Rowan Pure Wool DK. I liked that yarn at first, but after three hats and miles of duplicate stitch I was beginning to hate it a bit.

Toddler Bathrobe

My poor husband has been busy for the better part of the last month or so, working on a project for his class. (His last class, hopefully. Maybe he'll agree to another kid if he gets a good job, hehe).

But he took some time to make us chocolate chip pancakes this morning. They're so good we don't even bother with syrup. It would distract from the awesomeness. Hmmmm? Oh, I didn't have a point. I just wanted to brag that I had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and you didn't. Bwa-ha-ha!


Anyhow, I do have a finished project to show you. I wasn't sure I would be able to force myself to finish it. But my little guy was very excited about it... he nearly threw a fit once when he saw me knitting on something else.

Him: "What are you doing?" He knew I was knitting.
Me: "Knitting."
Him: "Knitting my bathrobe?" He knew it wasn't. Sneaky little boy.
Me: "No..."
Him: "I want my bathrobe! I wanna wear my bathrobe!" Holy cow, kid! ;^)

I recycled yarn from a thrift store sweater. (Yeah, you were beginning to wonder if I ever knitted the yarn I dismantled, huh?) I bought it as a candidate for yarn harvesting, but I liked it. So I washed it. It shrank. (Wha? Did the previous owner never wash it? It's cotton, seriously!) So I ended up dismantling it anyway. I barely had enough yarn to make this bathrobe for my boy. It's not a pattern, I just winged it and tried to base it loosely on the style of my own bathrobe.




It's the Fonz!





Do you remember the orange silk noil raglan sweater I knitted for him? If I let him choose his own shirt he almost always picks that one. I LOVE this boy! He definitely knows how to get more handknits - just be super appreciative. :^)