Nobody told me it was RED SHOES day...

Well, maybe it is a coincidence but a good chunk of my colleagues are sporting Dorothy-worthy shoes in the office.

With my 'ready-to-trek-through-the-muddy-path-home' Salomon lace ups I feel a little out of place ;-)

Oh...and apparently, it is THURSDAY..not the actual FRIDAY I had managed to convince myself about (well, actually, not much convincing was necessary) :(

So to cheer myself up and distract from the shoe issue, let's look at some cute crochet...





You got that one? Right, let's look at some MORE...

Yep, those little cuties are all crochet, and they all come from the same talented lady: Brigitte Read, you are officially my favourite person of the day, because you have posted the patterns for those (and quite a few more) for FREE in the true spirit of sharing craft on the Net.

Dont believe me? Have a look for yourself HERE! Ah the finds that one can get on Ravelry...

So guess who has half of a meerkat's body in her school bag?

A bear for charity...

Today, after much time spent knitting his little yellow and white body and his little eye-patch, after sewing many sequins and buttons, Pudsey found a new home.

Today is Children in Need day and we had a cake sale. I knew all along Pudsey was the prize for the raffle but I was still sad to see him go and even paid for one entry to attempt at keeping him... But he raised over £40 all by himself, so I am very proud of him! And Julia who won him will I hope give him an exciting life, playing hockey and travelling the world.

And because I can not find my phone dongle there is not a pic yet to show his cute little face.

Now for the technical details:
Needles:3.5mm straight metal
Yarn: acrylic in Pudsey yellow (75g) and white (20g) with a scrap of black for the nose.
Pattern: Thomas from "the knitted teddy bear"
Stuffed with ...stuffing
Notions: 2 black buttons and 2 black eyes...

A fairly fast and easy knit... and now back to Foliage ;-)

Hats 101

Forgot to say...

101 hats!

yeay to all the girls for helping me send a very decent package to Innocent and planning on doing it next year!

Montego Bay style hat pattern

Or what should really be called a fishnet hat...but that just sounds weird!

After getting the Montego Bay scarf pattern from Wendy AND from Sas (yes, that very one of Knitty fame... thank you thank you) and deciding that I totally loved it especially when knitted with fat yarn on fat needles (21st on 7mm ... knitting at the speed of light) I started to suspect that it would work as a hat.

Gurjit had given me some yarn because her wrist hurts and after loosing count twice on "foliage" I decided I needed more mindless knitting...

Presenting: the Montego Bay (style) hat! Lacy spirals going from the ribbing to the crown...

Vital stats: knitted on 6mm needles with yarn that requires that size needles.
Size: medium

Instructions:
Cast on 61st
Slip 1st, knit to last, knit together last stitch and slipped stitch to join in the round (60st)
Work in 1x1 ribbing for 1 inch/2.5cm (*k1, p1* to end)

Row 1: slip 1 st, *k2tog, yo* to last st, knit together last stitch and slipped stitch, yo
Row 2: knit to end

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until it is time to begin the decreases

Decrease by working a row 1 and omitting 6 yo's evenly spaced. knit next row. Work a yo row knitting together 3 stitches so as to keep the right leaning slope 6 times. knit next row. repeat the process a few times until 30st remain.

next row: k2tog to end (15st)
next row: knit
next row: k2tog to last st, k1 (8st)
next row: knit

Cut yarn leaving a tail, and thread the tail trough the stitches. Pull tight and fasten.

Weave in ends.

Voila!

- I am contemplating adding a flower for girliness...watch this space!-

Highlighter fumes

So finally the mystery KALs have started... and it appears I can not read charts!

At least not fluently!

Turns out, just like a small child learning to spell I have top methodically work tiny groups of 10 violently coloured stitches and review each full row before venturing into the next one.

I *could* put a picture of my progress, but somehow 10 rows of 139 stitches on 3mm needles do not sound THAT impressive.

On the day of clue release I was shocked to see that hours after the release someone is already half way up that very clue...

Note to self: must learn to knit IN MY SLEEP!!

The weekend awaits with boxes to open, books and DVDs to list, cleaning and tidying...when oh WHEN am I supposed to fit the knitting in??????

So I wait...

Another 11 days before the first clue of the SOS (much better than SotS) is released, another 4 days before Chrysopolys... What's a girl to do?

Why, dye new yarn of course!

And change my mind entirely about which colourway to use for which...

So now I wait, patiently for the clues to appear so I can decide how to knit what depending on the style of each...

In the meantime I am trying to finish WIPs to make room and time, and yes, following the reading of Knit Kimono the gignormous Textured Tunic from Fitted Knits is being frogged despite being at "just missing the arms now" stage to hopefully become a still-heavy-but-more-wearable fan-pattern jacket.

All of that without any Sprout news..yet...*sigh*

Yes there will be pictures of yarns and swatch and fan pattern, and maybe even some of tiny bottle hats and Print-O-the-Wave lace... all in good time!

Dye-saster and the rescue mission

After joining my first lace KAL (Secret of the Stole, see button...you can STILL join!) I thought it would be an excellent idea to custom dye the yarn to go with the beads I was choosing.

How difficult could that be? I have seen it done many times through people's blog. You can do it with food dyes and vinegar. It is safe and fool-proof.

..Pause..

Turns out, it is not.

Well it IS safe...

So, armed with my dream of the perfect green I set out to find a supplier online (found a cheap e-bay seller that delivered oh-so-quickly the 30 pretty colours of its range), I begged and begged to go shopping so I could stock up on vinegar and purchase more knitting needles from the charity shop on the way (and some acryl for Innocent...more on that on the right).

T'was Sunday afternoon before I was ready to get going.

Surely the winding of the skein and securing of it will take 30 minutes or so....wrong again! (it may take that long for 100g of bulky...the 100g=1500m+ of cobweb...2 hours JUST for the skeining, by hand with help from P...).

Finally the skein was ready, would lovingly on the back of the sofa and tied in no less than 9 places to be safe.

Now for the dye...

I had read the blog entry from Pieknits (http://www.pieknits.com/blog/2006/02/dyeing_with_wiltons_icing_dye.html) on using food dyes, so I soaked the yarn whilst preparing the colour (spruce and christmas green).

At that point the kitchen paper test and its slight graduation of bluey-yellowy-greeny brightness should have alarmed me...bah it's just the paper effect I thought.

Diligent pupil, I prepared the dye bath, added the yarn, heated and had steaming for 10 min before the vinegar went in.

It took about 50 minutes for all the dye to be absorbed, so I left it to cool down before rinsing and hanging.

At that point I REALLY thought the colour looked lovely.

An hour or so later the yarn was cooled and so I rinsed (with tell-tale red running out of the rinse), careful to avoid felting, and set out to hang it to dry...

"It's very green" I thought..."It's uneven" I thought... but still I decided to allow it to dry.

The next morning, after having peaked at it all through the evening hoping for a magical change I decided to cut a piece of the tail to look at later in the day...maybe the light in the bathroom was wrong.

But it was not. I knitted the foot-long piece of yarn into a tiny square, and there it was looking at me, Leprechaun-green lacy stockinette.

That evening I decided the yarn would be re-dyed. I had asked the mighty web , and an expert dyer for help-advice-support-well wishing.

Before I sealed the fate of the yarn I immortalised the green yarn monster...(turns out my phone does not do the colour justice it was much brighter than that for real! ...more like THIS)

I was keen to try and resolve the dye-saster last night so was pleased to find a clean kitchen and pot when I got in from work.







Having re-read the blog I based my original experiment on (add some red to tone the green..check) and taken into account my pro-dyer's advice (see her fab stuff at http://www.stormintheattic.com/ ) of 'uneven colour tells me the yarn wants salt'...and full of the determination that only the chemist and cook know when the recipe did not come out 'right', I started again.







The yarn was still in skein so I put it in a glass bowl and measured the amount of lukewarm water that would be needed to cover it (2L) and took back about 250 mL for dye dissolution.







The amount of vinegar according to the web is 60 mL for 1L of water,so 120 mL went into the bowl with the yarn.. at that point i remembered #salt# (how much...not sure. ok, let's go with 2tbsp...in the bowl it goes).







Dye (last time was Christmas green + spruce green, this time spruce green, dark brown and a hint of cherry for a total of about 2/3 teaspoon food paste) dissolved goes into the pan.






After 15 minutes the yarn was lifted from the bowl, the liquid was added to the pan, stirred and the yarn carefully added.







Slow heat, some very gentle lifting into the bowl then back in and after 50 minutes the dye bath had lost its reddish tinge to be left with some lighter green.










Left to cool to a temperature i can handle (because I was so impatient yesterday...normally i WOULD allow for full cooling) I rinsed with same temperature clear water and diminished the rinse temperature gradually.



The colour was there...and stayed there: a deep (although still wet)browny green that looked EVEN...could have I got it right on my second attempt?



The result will be confirmed tonight as the rescued yarn hangs,drying, in the bathroom (see how cotton takes the red but not the green..strange hey)...




Now to learn the secret to the lace cast on...