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by Kelley on May 25, 2010
Alison brought in her Crown Mountain Farms Corriedale Roving. I talked her into letting me keep it to start playing with my blending of bright roving colors and the chocolate brown. I ordered more roving from Crown Mountain Farms so I will have enough to make a sweater and give one “hank” of roving back to Alison. You can see that my English Paper Piecing experiment is coming along nicely. I do love working along, one hexagon at a time. It actually goes much faster than I had expected. I’m using the Fat Quarter Quilt pattern from Paper Pieces. I would like to head home to start playing but it’s only 2:30! < |
Category Archives: Inspiration
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 25, 2010
When my dad was here last month, we worked on my taxes together. While he was going through my paperwork and filling out some forms, I started knitting this hat using Wool of the Andes Bulky hand dyed in Galaxy and Kim’s Hat pattern from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. I’ve never thought of myself as a purple person, but I love this colorway. I used it around Christmas time to knit this hat for my sister. The spiraling stripe looked really cute on her, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted for my hat, so I doubled up the yarn to break up the pooling and knit it on size 11 needles. It knit up so fast that I was done with the hat before my dad was finished with my taxes! I’ve put on the finishing touches now. It’s still been ... |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 25, 2010
I’m at the point in the pattern where I can add a few extra repeats to increase the width (height?) of this shawl. In fact, I’ve already added two extra repeats, but I’m wondering if I should add more? There will be the last section of the lace body which is probably another 2 inches plus a border later that is about 3 to 4 inches. So, the total width would be about 25″ if I continued on now without adding any more repeats. I love my shawls to be really wide so I can scrunch them up (lace scrunches so nicely) around my neck and shoulders to stay warm. Do you think I should add more repeats or go with the width as it is? Pattern: Lady’s Circular Cape from Victorian Lace Today (except I am only doing 9 repeats instead of 12 hoping that ... |
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by Kelley on May 25, 2010
I’ve finished the Pumpkin Gloss socks! I will be dropping them off to my friend this afternoon. They don’t look too good on the sock blockers because I didn’t actually wash them. Cindy is really going through a hard time and I don’t want her to have to wait even one more day for her socks. I just remembered that I promised myself the microwave popcorn popper from Sur La Table as an incentive to finish the socks. It turns out that Cindy’s troubles worked much more effectively. < |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 25, 2010
I don’t normally announce new books in a blog post, but this one is special. We’ve been anticipating Cookie A.’s new sock book for several months now, and once we knew it had shipped to us from Interweave’s warehouse, we were watching the truck’s progress every day. And, there were wings on that truck! The books just arrived! Cookie is well-known for her fascinatingly constructed socks – they’re works of art, architecture and a marvel of knitting engineering. Please let me know if you’d like a knitalong for this book; we could definitely get that set up if there is interest. < |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 22, 2010
I’ve never dyed yarn before. I love to experiment, but I don’t really like following instructions. This makes for an interesting combo when it comes to hand dyeing. I cook a lot and like to mix different recipes for the same dish into a funny hybrid that by nature I can never remember how I made. Must be a good method for dyeing yarn, right? Definitely! Well, perhaps . . . |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 20, 2010
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I’ve always been curious about dyeing yarn, but I was intimidated by the safety precautions you need to take with dyes that aren’t food safe (although now that Kelley and Kerin have given us some pointers, I am feeling more confident). Then Nina pointed me towards the What a Kool Way to Dye group on Ravelry, and I couldn’t wait to give Kool Aid dyeing a try. My local grocery store didn’t have a huge variety of flavors, so I picked up two of everything they had. |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 20, 2010
I was actually going for more of a gradated-sunset-kind-of-look with my second sock blank, but since my cherry blank completely exhausted all the dye in the red Kool-Aid (to my surprise!), I only had lemonade and orange left. I decided to wing it and try mixing 1 pack of orange with some red food dye and a splash of vinegar and see what I'd get. First I dumped the whole blank in the pot of boiling lemonade until it exhausted the dye. |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 18, 2010
I've recently been exploring natural dyeing methods, and I was really excited when we started carrying a Indigo Dye kit. What makes indigo dyeing a little tricky is that indigo is not naturally water soluble, and you need water to help the fabric absorb the dye. So the indigo in this kit is reduced into powder, and when you add it to a bucket of water, it is a yellow green color because the oxygen was removed. You add wet yarn or fabric to the indigo and hold it in the dye bath for only a couple of minutes. When you remove the dyed yarn, it is a bright green color and you can watch it turn blue as it comes into contact with oxygen. I have a more in depth tutorial for dyeing with this Indigo Dye kit here. |
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by Knit Picks Staff on May 17, 2010
I have never dyed yarn before, and honestly I was intimidated. What I have dyed a lot though is frosting and white chocolate. I love the "gel" food coloring that you can buy at Michael's or any store that has a "cake decorating" section. This isn't the liquid food coloring drops, this is food coloring in a gel form so the color is super concentrated--you don't need much to get a really vibrant color. Try it in melted white chocolate, then spoon your white chocolate into a zip loc bag, cut off the corner and drizzle over thick pretzels that you've dunked in melted caramel--so yummy and they make a great personalized gift for sports team lovers, or...oh wait, what was I talking about? |
