Destroyed Cowl: Part III

The wind is noticeably out of my sails on this project... first mentioned here. I'm sorry. After I dyed and blocked it, I didn't like it so much.


It's a little scratchy.


And the uneven color, that I normally love, looks kind of sucky to me. I may try overdyeing, and re-blocking. Or chalk it up to an dyeing disaster.


On the upside, I love the pattern, so may make it again with a softer yarn and more dropped stitches for an even more dramatic look.


They can't all be winners...

Destroyed Cowl: Part II

For those interested, the Destroyed Cowl, aka my first fall knit, is just a big rectangle of stockinette stitch. Boring to knit, but good for TV watching. Fairly mindless. But, oh yay for dropping stitches on purpose!!

As always, the Kitchener stitch was way more annoying than expected. It's supposed to make the cowl a continuous loop of knitting. Blocking will even this out some.

But as you can see, I made some mistakes.

Okay, a LOT of mistakes here at the end... Fortunately, I think these won't be noticeable unless someone is studying it.

Next up: dyeing.

Crabby update

Blocked crab panel.

Pretty close to my original idea.

Will make fast friends with lobster pillow?

Squee!

I was away for the weekend while my mystery knitting blocked/dried. Imagine my surprise when what started like this:

ended up looking like this:

Here it is serving its intended purpose of holding my straight needles:Knitted ombre-style plastic tub cover thingy? Success.

Birthday Crustacean

This gift was a direct response to my dozen+ homemade AMAZING blueberry cookies that I recently received for my birthday. I felt compelled to undertake a total DIY birthday gift for my true love, B.

First I wound little mini skeins of Fisherman’s wool that was hanging around in the basement. I was inspired to DIY all the way (and circumnavigate the closed yarn stores) by dyeing my own yarn. I used my tried and true Kool-Aid/microwave dye-job, purposely going for an uneven slightly kettle-dye-like look.

The pale blue-green took 3 tries to achieve. The first two were waaay to dark, and the final color was actually created by using the leftover dye water after I removed an unsuccessful turquoisey-green attempt (3 ice blue lemonade, 1 lemon-lime). Since the first batch into the water struck most of the green, round two ended up a seafoam-y color that I really liked.

The red-orange was the result of 1 Strawberry Kool-Aid, 1 Mandarina-Tangerine Kool-Aid, 1 Splashers Orange, and in a moment of panic 1 Flavor-Aid Lemonade. I was surprised by how red it was despite all the yellows added in, but the end color was pretty perfect.
Next, I knit a modified free lobster bib pattern (basically just using the chart), by CO 36 (pattern repeat plus 3 sts on each side) and k the first and last stitch on each row (RS and WS). I also omitted the garter st border. I knit 8 rows before starting the pattern and after finishing it.

If I were to knit this again (because seriously, I will probably need another knit lobster pillow…) I would add more sts on each side of the repeat. As you see it’s a stout pillow, and a little wider would cause the image to wrap around a little less in the claws.

Once knit and blocked, I really took a leap of faith and decided to machine sew the knit panel to the fabric backing for the other side of the pillow (since I didn’t really want a knitted back to the pillow). I had no idea if it would stretch or get screwed up- luckily it didn’t. (I had an idea it would work since I’d lined a purse this way a long time ago).I also had to customize the standard pillow-form to suit the odd size, and it totally worked out. I just unstuffed the form (which had a zipper closure), traced my lobster panel onto the pillowcase, sewed the new shape, cut it out and re-stuffed it. It sounds like a lot, but this was actually the easiest part.

Then I just fit the pillow into my custom case and voila. Happy Birthday, B!

Dishrag rampage.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out how to knit a nice squarish-square. It seemed unlikely that knitting and measuring in garter stitch would yield a perfect square, even with my best intentions. It then occured to me that the basic "granny" dishcloth, since knit on the diagonal, would necessarily yield a perfect square. So on I cast!!
The idea: knit a dishcloth-sized square of 100% wool and then felt to get a coaster. To try and get even fancier, I'm going to attempt to weave acrylic or cotton yarn through the yarn overs. I'm hoping that the wool will felt around the non-feltable fibers and give me a coaster with teeny tiny holes around it. I have NO IDEA whether or not this will work or whether I will get a mottled yarny tangle mess.

Anyway, if my test coaster (in primary yellow and red) works, I think it would be cool to knit and felt a whole set with undyed yarn and then dye the set together with some unifying treatment or color. I've never been a huge fan of hand-dyed yarn colors pooling (this is when multicolored yarn produces 'pools' of color in the finished knit fabric) so why not dye them at the end and go for a dip-dyed effect?

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for the patience to do the felting (I feel like my real laundry should take precedence, right?) I've gone on a dishrag rampage. They're addictive!

Bowlicious

Ok, so this project was a series of experiments (I'm a scientist, remember). First, the yarn was dyed with blue and green Kool-Aid. After that, I knit it up as a roll brim hat. Nothing fancy, just a simple chemo cap. Then I wanted to try over-dyeing the already knit piece. So I did that with more blue Kool-Aid. Finally, I wanted to give an honest go at felting (and I have to admit, it was kind of fun.) After less than twenty minutes in the washer, it was on to the pyrex for drying and shaping. I think with subtler colors, this could have been even cooler. But it seems to work quite well as an odds and ends bowl.