Finished!

I have finished the "kid-pants of glorious fun!" They are slightly felted, and have an i-chord drawstring. Liam loves them, and is wearing them today. I was pleased with the ease of this pattern. They were quick to knit, besides the waiting period to dye more yarn :P I didn't anticipate how much I would need. Silly me.

on the needles....

I have been working on a cute pair of pants for Liam and this new baby to both wear. She'll have to wait until she's a little older, I think. They are made from the hand-dyed yarns I've made, and I am pretty excited about them.

I've also just finished (knitting - but assembly is still required) a fortune cookie. My homespun made it a little uneven. I'm going to felt it once more I think, just to try to make it a bit smaller. But I'm excited, it will be cute.

That's it for now.... :)

Dyeing recucled-sweater yarn with Kool-Aid!

Greetings. I'm not sure who even looks at my blog anymore, considering how little I post, but hey. This is what I was up to tonight. :)

Thanks to a wonderful tutorial I found here, I have successfully dyed some yarn that I took from a natural coloured sweater I bought at Value Village. I was having a really hard tie deciding how to recycle the sweater (as that was my sole purpose in buying it), when I came across this idea. This gave me the opportunity to make something completely new,and have a fun time experimenting with different colours. :) wee! So here are some pictures, and for more tips and tricks, I recommend this girls site, seriously. She's got some links posted to other resources for dyeing with Kool-Aid, that really helped me. Here we go!

Here, I accidentally dropped a whole hank that I had nicely divided into three sections....Oh well. This colour turned out beautiful though! This was Kool-Aid's Tropical Punch.

Here it is, finished, and ready to be squeezed and hung.

So, after that little oopsie, I decided to try again, and then I just couldn't stop. I had only planned a trial run tonight, but I just wanted to keep going :) I think these yarns turned out beautifully! I used the following Kool-Aid flavours: Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade (blue), Tropical Punch (red), Grape (purple), Orange (orange) and Lemon-Lime (green). I think I might use lemonade next time, and add some yellows, and I might try mixing some colours for added effect. (ex, browns, and greens, and purples, and some variegated painted yarns.)

All done. Yay!!! Now I just have to sleep (I'm just finishing this at 1 am)and think of all the nice things I can knit with this. I'll try to post pictures of the balls of yarn once I get them all rolled up. :) Byes!

My first pattern! Lottie!

Meet Lottie.

She's a satchel. (or she will be by the end of this week. Probably sooner than that.) I am gifting her to my childhood best friend who happens to be coming for a visit this weekend.
I used a bigger button for Lottie. If yours is smaller, feel free to do 5, 4 or 3 stitch buttonhole. I did mine according to the tutorial on knittinghelp.com and reinforced the ends.

Lottie is my own modification of this pattern.

Gauge/Needles:
I used fingering weight yarn on 3mm needles.
I got approximately 7 sts. x 11 rows for a square inch.

Abbreviations:
k - knit
p - purl
MC - main colour
CC - contrasting colour
Co - cast on
Bo - bind off
sts - stitches

Making Lottie is simple:

• Co 40 in CC
  
• 3 rows in stockingette stitch. (knit a row, purl a row)
  
• k 17, 6 stitch buttonhole (a one row hole), k 17
• k 40 (second row of garter stitch.)
• *k2, p2* (repeat from *) ending with a knit pair
  
• *p2, k2* (repeat*) ending with a purled pair
• repeat these two rows until ready to switch colours. It's really up to you when you'd like to switch, I did 8 rows
• Switch to MC
• k every row (garter stitch) until work measures 9-10 inches long, or however long you'd like
  
• Bo 40 sts.
  
• Seam both sides, leaving the top flap to fall down over the pocket.
• Sew button on where buttonhole meets front of pocket.
• Embellish as desired. If you used 100% wool, you can felt it with a load of towels in a hot wash, and air dry, OR just hand wash in hot water with a bit of soap and lots of agitation (spoons? maybe a scrubbie?) until it shrinks to desired size/felts to desired texture.

All done!

Isn't she cute?

just learning.

Since my husband and I are expecting our first child, I decided to start learning how to knit.
I had dreams of lovely blankets and booties and hats and sweaters, and so far, I'm pretty excited.
I've started a blanket, a pattern I am improvising, kind of as I go. It's patchwork made from many squares of cute baby boy colours.



I'm going to embellish with leaves, and perhaps some small flowers. (white ones of course.) here are some leaves, and flowers are forthcoming.



I'm also working on this super-cute bootie pattern, by Saartje, a dutch girl who modified a Marie Claire pattern.



So, I'm pretty excited. I've got a set of 3mm DPTs and a set of 3mm 10" straights, as well as 5mm 10"s and some chopsticks I'm converting to 5mm DPTs.

YAY!