Thursday, March 27, 2014

WIP retro colored Marius!

Ofcourse at the time when I need to work on a sweater that my friend ordered, I have to get this Minecraft urge... Crazyness...

Oh yes! A friend of mine ordered a sweater! I've forgotten to tell you guys about that! A week ago I ordered yarn for it, loads of wonderfull Merino yarn from Drops and late on tuesday I fired up the needles! ...but I've been a lazy butt, so sorry for REALLY slow update!

This is going to be a Marius with round yoke in stylish retro colors. The main color will be mustard yellow while the fair-isle pattern will be cream and the neckline dark brown.

But as I've said, I've been procastinating... Right now I'm trying to kick in a second gear into my needles, but it's not really working for some reason... I'm at 12cm (almost 5") right now and will start the waist curving pretty soon.

Fun times! So much fun to make Marius sweaters again! Think I gotta try and finish up the sweater I promised Bård forever ago after this...

Monday, March 24, 2014

Simple crochet dishclohts

During the past couple of days, I've been working on dishcloths, crochet this time actually. I usually prefer the thinner, more quality type cotton, but I had a total of four skeins of this thick, icky cotton I've got from my friends in North America. Three of these skeins was a brand called Bernat that I've gotten from Star. I've allready talked a bit about these since I had bleached one of the skeins and got a fancy camo effect with it. But as I started working with this yarn, I realised that I just don't like it. It's thick so I had to use 4,5mm hook on it, knitting with it was kinda out of the question.
The last skein was Sugar and Cream that I've recieved ages ago from Tiffany, and it is exactly the same as Bernat. The same thickness and the same icky feeling so I decided to use them all up at the same time.


The one with red is Sugar and Cream and the other three is Bernat. The one that appears blue in the picture was actually different shades of green. The lighting screwed me over whenI took the pictures...

In retrospect, I should maybe have used these skeins for pot holders rather than dishcloths, since they're so thick it would be good to handle warm things, but they work good for dishcloths too... Maybe a little too thick, but they wash well, I started using the lime green one earlier today!

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Results?

So, after last night's experimenting with bamboo/acryllic yarn in bleach, I've now got some results...I think...

As I said, I put the strands of yarn in bleach over night. They were left there for about 12 hours or so because I forgot they were excisting when I woke up. But took them out and let them dry and just now  I remembered them again and went to get some pictures.

As you can see in this picture, there is some change, but not enough for what I got planned...

Then again, the bleach solution was maybe 1 to 10 parts water, which is alot less than what I usually bleach yarn with. I will have to try a second time with a stronger solution... So I'll keep you updated whenever I get around to buy more bleach.

Experimenting!

When the cat is away, the mouse will play...or however that saying goes in english... In norwegian, the mice dances on the table when the cat leaves! Fun fact of the day!

What I ment to say is, Bård has left me this weekend...don't worry, he's just visiting his parents! But I truly enjoy the alone time...for some reason, I turn back to college life when he's gone, which is both refreshing and dangerous, cause the appartment suffers from a hurricane! So I've just started an experiment...which I would have done if Bård was home...so all of that crazy talk was now pointless...

A week ago, I got the idea of making myself a summer sweater or pullover of some kind out of cotton...or whatever light and soft fibers I could find. Then, a few days ago, I got the wonderful idea of dipping the sweater (after I've made it) in bleach and make it awesome and retro! Like this sweater:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/116467403/ombre-dip-dye-bleached-womens-m-l

I just got a feeling that it would be super awesome and unique...that is...if this doesn't become a trend by then and I'll look mainstream...I hate to look mainstream...that's why I don't give a crap about fashion!

Anywho! Late spring/summer/early autumn sweater/pullover YES! It'd be awesome! But what kind of yarn should I use? Cotton is just as expencive as wool, and I'm trying not to buy too much new yarn for myself these days... Well, what about the crap load of bamboo/acryllic I got lying around in my yarn storage that I bought last summer on clearance for just about nothing that I was going to use for hand towels and washcloths but never got around to it cause I'm a lazy but that don't know how to use punctuations?

Welp, still got those lying around, still haven't made those towels not cloths, why not make a sweater? GENIOUS! So that's where the wannabe dancing mouse comes in... I managed to squeeze a few drops out of the bottle of bleach and I put two strands of this yarn into it and I'm going to let it sit over night to see the result...if there even is any... You see, bleach doesn't do a hell lot on acryllic, and this yarn is sadly 50/50 bamboo acryllig... Now, I haven't tried to bleach bamboo before either, but I can't imagine it being too much different from cotton. The question is, how much damage does the bamboo take from the bleach? Cotton takes little to none while wool takes heavily damage.

So the cat is gone... The mouse is out... Let's see if it can dance over night! LET THE EXPERIMENT BEGIN!!!

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Legend of Zelda fair-isle socks!

They are dooooooooooone! Finally! Legend of Zelda socks! I'm such a nerd... I do love me some Zelda and I do collect the Zelda games.

I redrew all the charts myself, it took me three days, but I did base them off this pattern, just because I'm too lazy to do test knits and all the calculations myself.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Dyed and bleached yarn!

I am finally awake and I've gotten around to wind up and photograph all the yarn I've been dyeing over the last week or so! So much fun new yarn and so many fun few colors!

First off, we have the Gloss DK yarn from  Knit Picks that Brooke sent me. It's so pretty and soft, I was scared to dye it, in case I messed it up, but I love the outcome! With two packs of Kool-Aid Lemonade and half a pack Lemon Lime, I got these fantastic colors, variating from minty green to neon green! Fits my life so perfectly!

Right after I finished up dyeing this skein, I dipped two skeins of Bomull Sport cotton in bleach and got these amazing colors! A much better result than my first bleaching cause these don't go to white.

So I then decided to try and bleach a different cotton brand that has a totally different feel to it. This was a skein of Bernat Handicrafter Cotton that I recieved from Star during Secret Santa. It turned into these amazing camo colors which I really love.

And at last, we got the tea dyed yarn. I've wanted to try this ever since I started dyeing, the result was better than expected, tough, I wish that the herb one would turn out better. Bottom left is green tea on Safirgarn, 100% new pure wool yarn. Bottom right is black tea, also on Sarfirgarn. The one on top is herbal tea on Karisma from Drops, 100% wool, superwash treated.

So, maybe I should start using some of the stuff I've dyed and bleached now before I do more? Yeah... My shelf behind me is getting stuffed...

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Zelda socks WIP

So I just finished off the second heel of the Zelda socks I'm working on, so I figured I'd do an update. I said I were to post the dyed yarn last night or something, but again, I fell asleep too early and I feel like I'm going to crash and snooze anytime now...so blog while I'm still awake!

I'm working super slow on these! And I've been procastinating for a few days, but I have made some progress today. As I've said, I just finished the second heel. I am crazy and I need to work on both socks at the same time, or else I'll go mad.

Looking pretty good so far. The purple looks more grey IRL, but it shows up almost perfect on pictures. I was trying to aim for the Twilight Princess look on Zelda, and this was the color to be ckosest to that.

If you're wondering what the symbols on them means, it's the Sheik symbol for Zelda and Navi for Link. I've also put the Master Sword and Zelda's bow.

Hope you like them! I'll finish them up soon enoguh, just gotta sleeo off some Z's'

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Tea dyeing!

Sorry for not getting this one out for you guys on time... I managed to fall alseep with my computer in bed as I was about to start writing up my adventures with tea dyeing (so LAC members, please excuse me for just sitting there, silently all night).

So yes, tea dyeing adventures! I've been procastinating these last couple of days, doing yarn dyeing instead of making dishcloths that I really need to finish up by tomorrow... I've been wanted to do tea dyeing for a long time now, so I just jumped into it yesterday. I dug out three skeins of white (or "nature"), two of which were Safirgarn, a 100% new, pure wool and one Drops Karisma, 100% superwash wool.

With good help of my drying rack, I got them all winded up in loose skeins and tied up using some scrap acryllic.

I decided to try the three "main" tea types, black, green and herb. I got a bunch of tea, and I've stuffed a whole cabinet with boxes and bags of tea...to Bård's annoyanse. With this tea dyeing, I got to clean out the cabinet, sort through all my tea and clear out alot of them. Since I wanted to get a vibrant result as possible, I picked out a good bunch of tea bags for each type.

I didn't have too much green tea, so I ended up using some loose leafs for that.

I started with boiling up about 1 liter water (0,26 gallons), adding some vinegar to get the acid in there that binds the colors (I just poured some in, didn't mind to measure it up), and started to heat it up while adding the tea.

I let it sit for a while and when it started to boil, and the tea had soaked for a good time, I took the bags out and dunked the yarn in there.

When I had gotten it all cowered and soaked in tea, I took the teabags and put them on top of the yarn, letting it sit like this for about 15 minutes while it was barely boiling.
Turned the heat down, and let it again sit for 5-10 minutes before I removed the tea bags. The yarn I put in a plastic container after I drained most of the water out of it, to then cool down before I poured luke warm water over it, being careful to match the temperature of the yarn.

Looks like noodles, right?

Then I rinsed and repeated for the two others, it took some time, but I did get as vibrent colors as I could have gotten. Most of the tea I used was Lipton and pretty old so that may have killed the colors some. The green tea gave me a lighter beige color, which I was expecting from the black tea (which turned out warm, middle brown), but I can't complain too much on those two. The herb was more dissapointing though. I was expecting a more pink-ish brown color, but it ended up being more brown/grey. I also used the Karisma on that one, my favorite brand out of the two I used, so I wish I'd dunked that one in the black one instead.

The fun thing though, they all go really good together! I know for certain that I'll have to use these three together in a project some time!
They are more or less dry, so I'll probably get them winded up tonight

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Yarn dyeing in the making!

I am currently, right now, dyeing and bleaching some yarn! Since I was late with St. Patties, I decided to make up for it by doing some green dyeing!

So I recently got around to try the Lemon Lime Kool-Aid, and at first it tasted like a knock-off 7up, but as I kept drinking, it got worse and worse and I couldn't even drink half of the bottle I made (for your information, I make half the package at the time, I just don't have a big enough container). So I put the rest of it aside for some yarn dyeing!

And tonight I started it! The yarn I decided to torture today was the Knit Picks Closs DK skein I recieved from Brooke. It's a merino/silk blend and super soft and I kinda want to make myself some fingerless mittens or something like that with it.
I used only half a package + two packages of Lemonade. I wanted a more difuse and spotty greenish tone, so I mixed a little Lemon Lime into the Lemonade and poured it over, then I went over again with the rest of the Lemon Lime and finished it up with the second Lemonade package. Lemonade is super light yellow color and hardly did much to the yarn by itself, so that's why I used double.

Fun times! I'm currently just waiting for it to cool down...and in the mean time, I started bleaching some cotton! I dug through my bag of cotton yarn and pulled out two more Bomull Sport, this time in orange and deep magenta color.

I let them sit for about 20 minutes this time, and the result is much better. It took a while before it started to change the magenta one, but the orange showed some result pretty quickly. In the end, the magenta got a very subtle gradient over to a lighter hot pink while the orange got all firey!

And I decided to do a little experiment at the end. I got three skeins of some cotton yarn I've never used before from Star during LAC's Secret Santa exchange. They're called Bernat Handicrafter Cotton and is alot thicker and more corse than the type of cotton I'm used too. Kinda want to try and make crochet dishcloths with them...

Two shades of green and one variegated. The darkest green seemed a little boring on its own, so why not try and bleach that too? I squeesed out as much of the leftover bleaching liquids from the two Bomull Sport skeins and dipped it in, not expecting the best of results since it was second use bleach. But any result at all would be noteworthy for me, and it would brighten up the color anyway.

It didn't show much promise at first, but when I got to wet the whole skein and rinsing it off, it gave me a kinda camo result. I love it!

I'll probably blog about these to show of the final result when they're all dry and purrty, so stick around! In the mean time, you can read more in detail about Kool-Aid dyeing and cotton bleaching earlier in my blog from the last time I did it!

Monday, March 17, 2014

All the socks!

Wish I could live off socks...  They my favorite thing to make and they keep my feet warm and toasty!

Now, as I've told you guys, I'm in the middle of a "socks for cookies" trade for Brooke, and I'm having too much fun making socks for her. Now, I'm not sure if she's seen these yet, or if she likes them, but I surely do. I finished them up yesterday and I just love the colors. I've used Karisma from Drops Design, a 100% wool superwash yarn (the purple) and then a variegated mixed blend called Ragg Soft. It's 60% wool, 20% nylon and 20% acryllic. Good for socks, but has a little too much acryllic feel to them for my taste. I got a bunch of scraps like these so I might whip up a ugly scrap sock pair for her too.

Now, our trade involved a pair of socks for her daughter too... And if you guys remember way back, I said I was working on a secret project. Well, I was actually making a secret sock pair for little Brenna, BEFORE Brooke asked me to make her some. Now that I've gotten her shoe size, these are sadly a bit too big for her, but that only gives her something to grow into. They're in a yarn fairly similar to the green/blue variegated I used for Brooke's socks, and they got the same quality too. So... SURPRISE! I might end up making an extra pair for her though, just because I can, I got more of this yarn to use anyway.

Then there's this Zelda contest at Knitting-and-Crochet group on dA... I suddenly hit me a couple of weeks ago what I were to make for the contest; socks ofcourse! I sat down and used three days to get the charts right, and today I started them! Had to turn the livingroom upside down to find my darling fair-isle needles though. I refuse to knit fair-isle socks without them.


And then there's these last socks... I found these while roaming through my workshop yesterday. I made these for some old friend of mine...before she stabbed me quite painfully in the back...and I have no idea what to do with these... My calfs are too fat for them, so maybe someone else out there wants them instead? I haven't weaved in the ends on them yet, so that has to happend... but other than that, they're pretty fancy if I could say so myself. Definitly scrap socks though.


More socks ahead! And no, I don't have a foot fetish...just in case you were wondering...

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Multicolored socks!

Again, sorry for the lack of update!
The past couple of days, my knitting motivation has been down, but I'm trying to pick it up again.

As you know, I've been working with felted things lately, two pairs of slippes and a wine holder... They are all now more or less finished and I'll get around to talk about them later when they're all done!

But the last couple of days, I've been trying to make socks! My yarn trade with Brooke evolved into a socks vs cookies trade, and I'm not trying to work on the first pair for her. My plan was to make these, but sadly, the yarn I had in mind for them didn't work well together in fair-isle... I had to frog half a leg and just give up on that pattern. But I really wanted to use the yarn for her socks, so I decided on a simple pair with stripes instead.

Since I'm low on the purple yarn (cause the other skein is reserved for a Zelda contest), I made the stripes on the leg, while the foot with be just in the variegated yarn. The variegated are actually sock yarn as well with a bit of nylon and acryllic, while the purple's 100% superwash wool, so it'll make the heels and toes more dureable. Simple, yet pretty and very practical!

...and I think I need to get working on a spring-ish theme for my blog...

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Knits on the catwalk!

Fashion is a weird thing I don't really care much for... But you got to wonder...am I in fashion? I wear my knitted sweaters all the time and I love making them. Does that make me a fashion icon? It's really popular these days, and the catwalks have a good bunch of knits on them too! Most of them are a bit crazy...but it's still knits!