Wednesday, February 6, 2008

First soaker

This is the first of many soakers (cloth diaper covers) to come, if I get my way. I took a couple different patterns and melded them to make my own. This was made using my hand-dyed yarn. I do have another soaker OTN and almost ready to BO, I'll be posting that one in the next couple days, I'm sure. Knitting my own soakers was the entire reason I taught myself how to knit, since buying them I could easily spend $30 on one, but I can make one for materials costing under $5 and a couple hours of my time.

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Granny Squares

Without giving too much detail, I received an email from a classmate regarding an afghan being done as a gift. She asked for 8x8 squares from everyone, and I whipped these 3 out in a couple hours, stuck them in the mail yesterday. I got all three patterns from the book 99 Granny Squares to Crochet.

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More Dyeing

I delivered the order of superwash to the LYS yesterday. While these pictures don't do the vibrancy of the colors justice, they're the best I could manage.

These 9 skeins are DK weight, in the color groups (from left to right) pink/blue/purple, pink/yellow/orange and blue/yellow/green:
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These Worsted weight skeins (from left to right) are red/blue/yellow, the large one in the center is a triple skein of teal, yellow/tan and purple, the one across the bottom is the 6-color rainbow I've posted previously, and the ones on the right are orange/green/purple:
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Monday, January 28, 2008

Baby Sweater

This was the first complex article of clothing I've ever crocheted, and I've been crocheting for more than 20 years. This is from the Baby it's Cold Outside pattern, crocheted in Lion Brand Homespun, color Tudor with Gothic trim (it's purple, not black). I've had a pile of Homespun sitting here for years, and this was a great use for a full skein. This really only takes a couple hours to make, and it's so easy I want to size it up to make one for myself.

I really love how the subtle color changes produced a sunrise effect.

BICO front

BICO back

Dyeing

These are the skeins I dyed for myself. They will all eventually get made up into baby clothes, most likely.

My very first skein. This one taught me that I really needed longer skeins. It has already been stitched up into a soaker.
Apple Green and Berry Cherry

This is grapes. It is currently OTN.
Grapes

Wool dyeing

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First knitting projects

I've wanted to learn how to knit for years, so I taught myself around Thanksgiving.

This is my very first project, a hat I made for a friend's birthday. It's a beautiful wool that I've picked up in several diferent colorways since I enjoyed it so much:

K's Hat

And my second, a garter-stitch shawl I made my grandmother for Christmas. It's a lovely laceweight alpaca that I can't wait to work with again.

Grandma's Shawl

Warping Board

Since my warping board has disappeared, I've been warping my yarn for dyeing on my ironing board. Needless to say this takes up a lot of room and isn't exactly ideal. Since I didn't feel like paying $100 for another one, I figured a quick trip to the hardware store was in order. This took me about an hour to assemble, and cost about $20. It's completely adjustable... the only downside is that I can't warp wet yarn or I'll ruin it.

Warping board with 16 foot skein:
Warping board with 16 ft color repeat

Superwash

I started dyeing yarn for my own purposes, and on a whim I took it into my LYS and asked if they were interested in carrying it. She asked specifically for superwash, since she has trouble getting superwash in non-solid colors.

This is what I have so far, in DK weight. Three different tri-colors

Superwash wool

and a 6-color rainbow.

6 Color Superwash

Beginning

I've been contemplating starting a blog for a while. I've been spending a lot of time doing crafts lately and really wanted somewhere to show off my handiwork. So here we are.