Flickr!

I fixed it, I finally fixed it!

Well I figured out what went wrong with everything and I got back into my flickr account and fixed it up so it shouldn't happen again.

I finished the cloud bolero, and am knitting something now for another craftster swap. Pictures coming soon of all the Harry Potter stuff. I am so glad its over and I can craft other stuff now. Off to play with flickr...

Casting On

Just casting on the cloud bolero. Bernat Satin in a nice lavender colour. On sale!

Pattern here.

Craftster Swap

Well my first Craftster swap is officially finished now. I am really happy with how everything turned out, and the stuff I got was amazing. I took a ton of pictures, and now that my partner Susanne (TAOJ) and I have both sent and received our packages, I can post pictures.

Way too many pictures...

First, here is the wonderful package I got from Susanne. All together:


First was a magic yarn ball in the most beautiful shade of pink, that Susanne dyed herself:


I immediately unwound it to find the treasures inside:


There's a mask, kool-aid for dying yarn (with instructions), and eyes to use in dolls. The eyes made a great rattling sound wound up inside the yarn, which made me even more curious to get to the middle. here's a close-up of the eyes:


And then wound the yarn back into a ball. I am not sure what I am going to make with it yet... any suggestions?





Then there were two little books. The first has two recipes for chocolatey stuff:





And the second is a mini scrapbook of my guinea pigs! TAOJ stalked me good! It is so awesome, you get to see every page!











And finally, a beautiful knitting needle roll, with flower applique:


The inside:


There are also stitch markers tied onto the end of the tie for the needle roll. At first I thought they were charms on the end of the tie, but Susanne pointed out what they really were.

And here is the package that I sent to her. First, a picture of everything together, taken by Susanne:



And the pictures of everything before I sent it:



The close-up was of a Hello Kitty dishcloth I knit for TAOJ, since she said she likes Hello Kitty. Hopefully the character shows up okay in the picture, its hard to photograph:




A wallet with cherry print. It's lined with lime green, and has two small pockets, and one larger zippered pocket. I thought I'd made peace with bias tape after the last apron I made, but apparently I was wrong. The bias tape is a little wonky, but for the sake of my sanity, and as a monument to my ongoing battle with bias tape, it stays a little wonky:




And this is a close-up of the button I made to close the wallet, using a phrase TAOJ suggested. I did it in illustrator and tried to make it match the fabric:




And the last small item is a set of buttons (badges, pins, whatever you call them!) There's two done in illustator, two done by hand with markers and gel pens, and one is fabric. The words on them are both things I thought up, and things my partner requested:




And finally the medium (large?) item - a skirt! TAOJ listed brown as her favourite colour, and said she liked retro fabrics too, and I thought the teddy bear print sort of had that feel. It's made from a free pattern from fitzpatterns.com, but I fudged the pattern to get the panel of contrasting fabric. It's a wrap skirt with a kangaroo pocket. I really hope it fits her, it's adjustable, but still, I am nervous!

The front:


The back:


Thanks Susanne, and thanks Kishcrafts for organizing!

An Apron! Simplicity 4282

I made this apron a little while ago, but I never took pictures of it until now. I decided I needed a pretty apron one day, so I came home with a few yards of fabric, and a few different patterns. Simplicity 4282 was one of them, and I made view A.

I wish I could remember more about making it! I do remember all the bias tape was a little tedious. And I used velcro on the back straps, but they don't seem to sit properly all the time. I think the problem is that I made it size Large, and I am not very tall.

Anyway, I do love wearing it! Especially when I rmember that I have pockets, and can stick a towel or something in there.

I also signed up for my first craftster swap. It is a newbie swap, which I think takes the pressure off a little bit. I have already started making some things for my partner, since I have the day off work today. The swap is only for 1 medium and 3 small items, so I think I might end up sending out a little early! That way I'll be able to post pictures sooner, as everything has to be a *surprise* for the swap, ideally!

Dyed Yarn Part 2 - the finished product

I decided to make a baby hat out of the yarn I dyed. Mr. Bronze Head is modeling it so nicely for me, since I haven't given it to its new baby owner yet.

I used the Baby Beret pattern from Debbie Bliss' Simply Baby. It was a pretty fast project, and knit on two needles. And that's awesome. I have tried to knit socks before, but I just don't seem to do dpns very well. And I actually took my time and did all the finishing properly, so you can barely even see the seam at the back. Only the colour pattern gives it away a little bit.

I followed the pattern pretty closely, all I changed was the colour (!) and fibre content of the yarn, and decided to do the whole brim in the contrast colour, instead of just a few rows at the edge. I like the look better than in the original pattern, and if I make it again I will probably do it the same way.

The contrast colour, by the way, is just the natural undyed yarn.

I am really happy with how the dyed yarn turned out when knit up. The colour pattern worked well to make a blendy colour effect. Now I am excited to dye some more yarn!

Sari likes to...

I found this as a note on a friend's facebook page. I was impressed at the knitting sites that came up totally randomly.

The instructions: Go to Google and type in quotation marks your name and then "likes to" (ex. "Tom likes to"). Type in the first ten things that come up and repost in your own note (or blog or whatever).

1. Sari likes to bleed dye, and the vinegar helps to ‘set’ it.
2. Sari likes to take part, too.
3. Sari likes to sleep in my arms, and inside my wool sweater was also comfortable for a while.
4. Sari likes to order books according to their size.
   
5. Sari likes to eat this weird flax-y, seedy bread (that we call protein bread) for breakfast. She especially loves it with a thick coating of almond butter.
6. Sari likes to consult with many people, and I really believed in the idea from the start.
7. Sari likes to try out some rasgulas but never comes right.
8. Sari likes to call her psycho.
9. Sari likes to suck on her fingers and her arm too, but she hasn't given herself any hickeys yet.
10. Sari likes to rub in the fact that I thought she looked so cute, if she was a guy, and I felt like hitting her because honestly, I told her how cool I thought she was, and all she does was rub it in.

Dyed yarn, etc.

So all that stuff I bought at Len's mill two weeks ago hasn't really gotten much use, yet. Maybe I should mention that I am the queen of UFO's. But I have been doing stuff.

I bought wo bags of neat-o trim at Value Village in KW. One is the dangly pom-pom type, but it is off-white, so I decided I wanted to dye it. Well it didn't turn out so well, BUT I did LOVE dying it. And thanks to Craftster, I figured out why (it was probably cotton), and what I could do instead.

I can dye yarn!

It has to be animal fibre (or nylon, apparently, but I have yet to try that one), to work with the Wilton cake dyes I used. Same technique as kool-aid dying, but I like the idea of more control with the Wilton dyes. I went all out and bought the biggest multipack of dyes they had and I loved all the colours.

I have already started turning this ball of yarn into the Pompom Beret from Simply Baby by Debbie Bliss. I am planning on giving it to Ada Elizabeth, Willy and Leanne's new bundle of joy.