Dyeing Yarn with Wine

Have you ever stained anything with red wine?  I decided that it would be fun to intentionally dye some fibers with wine, wool yarn.  I started with 100g of bare palette yarn and 1 bottle of Charles Shaw Merlot.  I added 4 cups of water to increase the amount of liquid, and the pH was just as acidic as the vinegar based dyebaths I typically use.  I allowed the yarn to simmer for over an hour in the wine solution and then cool overnight to give as much opportunity for color to bind to the yarn as possible  Did this experiment work?  Watch to find out!

Welcome Baby Lucky!

I am pleased and honored to introduce you to the newest member of the ChemKnits family, Baby "Lucky"!

Lucky in his hand dyed, hand spun and hand knit baby pod.  

For the first time ever, I am going to give you a sneak peek of a ChemKnits design, Lucky's Christmas Stocking.  (The free pattern will be available here at ChemKnits in the next week.)

There will be many posts in the next few months of items that I made for Lucky but lack photos.  This is because the items, and posts, were completed before he was born.  But don't worry, there will be other photos coming!  

Tiger Woobie

This year has certainly been the year of babies.  As I prepared to welcome my own baby into the world, there were multiple other important babies that needed special projects of their very own.  I selected the Woobie Kitty pattern for some family/friends.  It is a great gender neutral project for people who don't have a strong color preference.

I was given the entire Woobie Patterns Collection - Series 1 as a Random Act of Kindness (RAK) gift for being an expectant mother.  I have earmarked other woobies for certain parents when the time comes.  I cannot wait to create them all!

My harmony options needle set doesn't get small enough for this project.  Thankfully I needed to hit the $50 free shipping mark and SunStruck needles were on sale.  I loved the opportunity to add a size 3 - 32" fixed circular set to my collection!  I knit this woobie on size 3 (3.25 mm) knitting needles and KnitPicks Shine Sport yarn in White (57 g, 126 yards) and Clementine (119 g, 262 yards).  

I decided to try this picot edging without doing a provincial cast on.  Provincial castons and I have not gotten along very well, and I know that I could pick up the long tail CO stitches where directed.   I ended up with not such a long tail, but it should work out.

Not quite the long tail!

The day I started this project, I really needed to be working on my fish project, but I knew that this would be an easier one to bring with me to crochet club.  Why do I always start these projects the morning of?  

Notes from Construction

• Clementine Ball 1 finished in the middle of row 16.    
• Picking up stitches from the cast on edge to close the picot edge worked beautifully (see above pictures.)  
• After the 7th white stripe, I noted something off with my stitch counts.  In between markers, I counted 49, 48, 47, 48 sts.  Now I clearly messed up with replacing the markers after the picot round, and I'm not going to rip back to fix that.  However, I am a bit confused about the numbers.  I would have expected the division to be odd rather than even.  I am going to continue to the decreases as written until I have an average of 36 stitches in between each marker.  (And then add the second decrease.)  I'm willing to fudge things a bit until I get to the kitty center.  
• Clementine ball 2 finished in the middle of Orange stripe 9 (decrease round - not counting edging as a stripe.)  
• Before white stripe 10 decrease we have 39, 38, 37, 38 sts.  
• Before orange stripe 10 decrease we have 37, 36, 35, 36 sts (144 sts total).    Continue the cdd as written so there are 35, 34, 33, 34 sts.  136 sts where it should be 140 at this point.  We somehow have 4 too few stitches, which is a secondary issue to the miss-aligned stitches.  
• Next decrease round (CC): K15, CDD, PM, K15, CDD, K14, K2tog, PM, K15, CDD, K15, PM, K15, CDD, K14, K2tog, PM, K15, CDD (with the first stitch of the previous round.)   There now should be 124 sts and evenly spread between the original markers (31 sts - alternating 15 or 16 sts between the 8 markers.)  Please note that the new decreases in the rounds are NOT perfectly centered in accordance with the original instructions. The way for them to be centered would be to have even # of sts in each round.  I then continued instructions as written.  
• I reached 28 sts at the end of the 14th white stripe.  I switched to MC to knit around before the "next rnd" decreases
  
  
• After the stitches were cris crossed to secure the center - I made sure to keep the yarn tails behind the first stitch to mark the beginning of the round.
  
  
• White ball 1 completed in head round 8.  
• None of the other projects on Ravelry show the back of the head, so here is a quick little view.
  
  
• The ear pieces took very little time to knit.
  
  
• I used scraps of palette in black and hand-dyed green for the embroidery.  I was worried that these would be easily pulled out by a little toddler fingers, so I secured them with a bit of non-toxic glue.  

I am so happy with the way this little woobie came out!  Now I just need to cast on the woobie for my own child.  What animal do you think I'm going to create?  

Magic Crochet Rings

I am a novice crocheter.  One of the first amazing techniques I learned was the magic circle/magic ring technique.  This was the first crochet technique that I was able to teach to other people.

Imagine my excitement at crochet club when people asked if anyone knew how to do a magic ring.  After teaching it to more experienced crocheters, I knew that I wanted to demonstrate it on a video.  Unfortunately my crochet terminology is not yet up to par, but hopefully you can understand this simple technique for starting off crochet circles in the two videos below.

 

Finish Your Knitting with a Sturdy Bindoff

A lot of the crescent shawls I've knit require a really sturdy bindoff edge so you can block it out completely without losing the curved shape of the entire shawl.  I created the following video to help with this technique:


Finish Your Knitting with a Sturdy Bindoff - the P2tog Bindoff Method

What if you are making a top down shawl?  Then you would want a stretchy bindoff!  

Knits for My Baby - A Summary

My baby is due any day now (or may have already been born!)  Here is a photo summary of the items I have knit for our little Chirphead.

Projects completed by July 12, 2013.  

Projects completed by September 25, 2013.  Note that stocking initials are hidden to preserve name surprise!

The last item I made for my baby, completed October 2.  

Knit and Crochet items for my son

• Hermes Winged Baby Socks
• Baby Marley Hat
• Highlights Handspun baby hat
• Turtle Love Bib
• Striped Baby Socks
• Alpaca Baby Shawl (blue lacy blanket)
• Owl Earflap Hat (Newborn Size)
• Owl Earflap Hat Take 2 (3 month size)
• Baby Caterpillar Toy
• Baby Pod Photography Prop
• Pumpkin Head Hat

The details of many of these items have not yet been posted, but they are scheduled to come out in the next few months.  Stay tuned!

More Baby Owl Amigurumi

This is the baby month!  Whether or not my little one has arrived in the world yet, I thought it would be fun to share another baby themed project... Baby Owl Amigurumi!

I am much more confident starting the project this time.  At this point I had completed over a dozen crochet amigurumi projects.  Wahoo!

I love my first crochet amigurumi so much that I had to create some more!  Once again, I used a size F crochet hook and remnants of Wool of the Andes for these little ornaments.  (Colors: Dove Heather, Mink Heather and Bittersweet Heather.)  Each owl used about 6 g (12-13 yards) of yarn.

This time, when fastening off I did one slip stitch to finish off round 12.  This is my only "modification"!

These are so addictive that they are hard to stop making!  I had planned on making only 3, and well, you can see what happened.

Last time I had some trouble with getting the felt for the eyes to glue down properly.  It took me a couple of times to get it to feel secure.  This time, I used pins to keep the eye felt down while the glue was drying.  It is a little creepy looking, but hopefully this will work better!  The pins created some holes, but it was easy enough to fix by agitating the fabric with the end of a dpn.

Many holes

Holes gone!

What a fun and sweet little project.  I now have 7 little owlettes.  How many would you end up creating?