Playing with colour

Although I have not had a huge amount of time to spend dying, and I also can't invest in skeins and skeins of bare yarn, I have done a little more and have played with a comparison between different yarns and different techniques.

I now have ten different colours of acid dye. I expanded my collection recently after deciding I wanted to get the primary colours to begin experimenting with mixing colours. I am familiar with the basic colour wheel and know what colours are pleasing to me both by themselves and side by side but my crafting up until now has not involved any mixing of colour or creating my own palette. I have purely put pre-made colours together into my handcraft. So mixing colours and seeing the outcomes of that on yarn has been interesting and exciting.

I have prepared each colour as a dye stock. Up until now my experimenting with dye has been sprinkling the powder directly into hot vinegary water and watching it mix and react with the yarn.

This time I had a thought process of wanting to try a different method and these are the results.

Skein 1

• 100% wool
• pre-soaked in plain water, then bought up to temperature in plain water
• small amounts of mixed and diluted dye stock added to the water
• started with a yellow, then added a light blue and gun metal
• At this point I thought I had what I wanted, so added vinegar to the water and set the dye.

After it dried, it was way too pale, and there was too much white and very light yellow for my liking. So it got another bath!

Second round:

• bought the skein up to temperature in water that just covered it
• applied diluted colour to patches that seemed the lightest, turning the wool and adding little bits all over of all of colours (and combinations of them)
• Finishing with a final vinegar treatment at the end to set everything.

Skein 2

• 85% super wash merino, 15% nylon
• pre-soaked in plain water, heavily twisted into a skein
• mixed a custom green and added the dye to hot vinegary water before adding the skein
• let the dye exhaust, turning the skein as it soaked for even coverage
• took the yarn out, unravelled it, then returned it to a fresh pot of hot vinegary water (low level)
• focussed on the white sections, squirting pure dye solution directly on the yarn.

I love both skeins. Love them for their differences and what I learned from the mixing and diluting process and from the different ways that yarn takes up the dye.

knitrospective - most worn/reliable knit acccessory

Recently I bought a wooden chest for the end of the bed, and now all of my knitted items are stored there. As I moved each piece from their previous homes I took time to look over what I have done and the progression that I have made as a knitter. This gave me a renewed look at my knitting as a "body of work" and accompanied with my Ravelry Project Page brings back a lot of memories.

I thought it would be interesting to focus on pieces that I have knit previously, tell their story, how I feel about them now and hopefully get some inspiration from other knitters.

For this knitrospective I am focusing on the accessory (excluding socks) that I wear most regularly and think of as a "go to" piece.

Cowls are definitely my favourite accessory pieces and my most worn/reliable of my cowls is the Fresco Basket Whip Cowl. Interestingly, it was the first cowl I ever knit. And the only reason I knit it was because it was part of a knitalong I joined.

Project Breakdown:
Pattern: Fresco Basket Whip Cowl
Designer: Laura Patterson
Started: 1 November, 2011
Finished: 16 November, 2011
Yarn: Heirloom Easy Care 5ply
Colourway: Blue (No.740)

To be honest, if it had not been for the knitalong I may not have even considered knitting this pattern. But now I grab that cowl to put on more often than any other. It is warm, but not too hot; can be casual or more formal/corporate; and goes with a lot of different outfits and colours.

For the knitters out there - what is your go to knit accessory? Share in the comments or join in on instagram with #knitrospective

Toy Knitting - a.k.a I can't say no to my nephew

Until last week I had only heard of minecraft, but had no idea at all what is was.

Now I know what the "face" of a creeper looks like and I have charted out how to knit it (those with any minecraft knowledge will know it's not a tricky face).

My nephew is currently obsessed with this game. He also understands that I knit and he was not at all timid in asking if I could knit him a creeper toy. And of course, when he asks me so nicely and appreciates the knitted toy there is not a chance in the world that I would say no to him.

The challenge here was that I found a picture of a knitted version, but no complete pattern to follow. Luckily it is not a complicated shape and I was able to play around to get something that looked similar to images of the creeper.

To make it stand up I inserted a thin cylinder of cardboard (made from a toilet roll) inside the body when I stuffed it, then messed around with different legs until I figured out a version that was able to support the rest of the toy.

Miranda Sweater

The Easter long weekend will be a good opportunity to spend some time knitting.

My current project is the Miranda Sweater by Josee Paquin.

I am making good progress on it. The knit so far is quicker than I thought, given the crossed stitch panel. I am doing the crosses without a cable needle. I followed the directions in the pattern and watched the video, but as an "English knitter" or "thrower" I had to adapt the 1/1 LPC. Once I figure this out it was smooth going.

I have numerous other projects on the needles right now, including quite a few gifts, but I have put these aside to focus solely on my sweater. I am unashamedly enjoying the selfishness and monogamy. The weather is starting to get cooler, so looking forward to having it completely finished and blocked before the cold weather truly hits.