Space Dyeing a Crochet Chain with Easter Egg Dye Pellets

Time for some more space dyeing!  I really loved how kettle dyeing crocheted roving turned out so I was excited to play with these braids and other dyeing variations.

Easter egg dye pellets contain food coloring and citric acid, however there isn't that much acid so I also like to add vinegar to my dyebaths.  In this experiment I used 8 cups of water, 3T of white vinegar, 100g of wool and 6 Easter egg dye pellets.

In this space dyeing experiment, I selected 3 yellow pellets and 3 red pellets.  Normally I like to do a mixture of red, yellow and orange but I wanted to see how the colors would mix together today.  If I added a secondary color like orange into the mix to start with then this would be harder to visualize.

I really enjoy using Easter Egg Dye Pellets in my videos.  It is so much fun to see the color dissolve and then go into the fiber.  It is much more cost effective to purchase liquid food coloring but if you wait until just after Easter you can pick up a lot of kits on sale.

Check out the dyeing video to see how this dyeing went down!

Video: Space Dyeing Braided Roving with Easter Egg Dye Pellets

Video Contents

• [0:00] Introduction
• [0:49] Crocheting the roving into a "braid"
• [1:50] Dyebath setup
• [3:21] Adding the Easter Egg Dye pellets
• [4:32] 5 minutes later
• [5:13] 5 minutes later
• [5:46] 10 minutes later (20 minutes total post dye)
• [6:24] Removing the roving from the dyebath
• [7:09] Washing the fiber
• [7:53] reveal of dry fiber and conclusions

The finished braid looked like a rising sun. I LOVE how vibrant the colors turned out.

Look how fun the color spacing is!  The mixture of orange, yellow, red and white looks very much like a tie dyed shirt.  This will be so much fun to spin!  

I cannot wait to explore this technique further.  What colors would you like to mix when you space dye?

Behind the Design of the Love Bug Hat

Let's take a look behind the scenes of the Valentine's Day Love Bug Crochet Baby Hat!  

Really this post is an excuse to share a bunch of pictures of Rowdy I took along the way.  I didn't want to bog down the pattern post with a bunch of adorable baby pictures.

Back at a few weeks old Rowdy was so sleepy!  He let me try the hat on him while he was asleep and he would STAY asleep!  Now that he is almost 6 months old he is napping in his crib by himself and I need him awake to be a little model.  

After 13 rounds the hat on Rowdy is a tad bit short.  Since he is only 2 weeks old I want to make the hat a little longer.  I want this hat to fit well at 1 month old and I know from Lucky how much heads grow right now!  The hat is fitting with positive ease right now so it doesn't stay on the head super well, but this means that it will fit a larger head very well.

The hat is too long to fit my 2 week old but this Rowdy boy is still in newborn clothes.  I want this hat to fit a bit longer.

I'm not saying that I did this, but it is possible that I took a picture of Rowdy with his crochet Love Bug hat after almost every round.  Why take boring pictures of the hat on its own when I could have it snuggle with a newborn?  

I knew that I wanted to make a little lady bug hat for my February due baby.  I wanted there to be little hearts on it so once I had the heart size figured out I just needed to create the basic hat pattern to fit on my Rowdy boy.  I hope to get some more of my design ideas completed for him but right now I'm still in survival mode staying home with two boys.  

Look at those cheeks!  Rowdy still has cheeks for days but he is also rolling all over the place now.  I hope that you enjoyed these snuggly baby pics!  

Valentine's Day Handprints and Footprints

Last Halloween Lucky and I made a "Trick or treat, smell my feet" handprint and footprint wall hanging.  Having this hang in the entry way of my my house made me unreasonably happy but it would be a little strange to keep a Halloween themed hanging up all year round.  I considered making a winter hanging but since I was pregnant with Rowdy I thought it would be worth waiting to make a winter one when they could both contribute.  I therefore started panning a Spring and Valentine's Day themed print that my whole family could be a part of.  (Minus Indy.  One of these days the puppy can join in on the paw print fun!)

I painted three 9x12" canvases blue, purple and red with the cheap acrylic paints you can find at your local paint store.  Some of these required multiple coats of paint to get good coverage but with patience I finally achieved the backdrop colors I wanted.  

For the family prints canvas, we started with Keith's pink hand print and then my blue hand print.  No gender color stereotypes in this house hold!  We each practiced on some scrap paper before committing our prints to the canvas.  (Note - it is easier to paint your hand with a sponge brush to make the print than to make enough paint to dip your entire hand into it.)  If we had spread our hands out wider we wouldn't have had those triangles in the center, but I still love the way it starts.

Rowdy is still under a month old, which means that it will be hard to keep his hand open wide enough for a hand print.  We'll test it out on some scrap paper before attempting to do it on the family prints canvas.  Ultimately, if we need to do a newborn footprint I'm okay with that.

The tests went great but when it was time to print his handprint on top of mine we got some smudges and lost some fingers.  I did the print a second time right on top of it and you ALMOST can't tell that it isn't perfect.  I don't want to minimize that I was disappointed but now that it has been hanging on my wall for months I have to say that I really don't notice that it isn't perfect, I just see my human family.  

Meanwhile the prints for the LOVE panel went perfectly.  Lucky loved stamping his hand (as usual) and footprints are the easiest thing to do with a young baby.  

"More footprints!  I do some more footprints pleeeeaaaseee" - Lucky

After waiting for all of the handprints to dry I was ready to embellish the canvases.  I added some silver antenna to the butterflies and some script letters to the love panel.  I wish I could redo the lowercase "e" but otherwise I love it.

I picked two different 5/8" ribbon to glue the canvases together.  I chose the burlap red and white hearts because it worked better with the set.  3 yards of ribbon is plenty for the hanging.

I turned the canvases over and glued the ribbon to the back with white craft glue.  When it is dry sometimes I add a layer of packing tape over the ribbon to secure it but this hanging didn't really need that.  (Rowdy's Dinosaur chalkboard didn't stick well so the tape helped.)  

After drying overnight I was ready to hang it up!  It makes me smile to see it every day as I walk by it.  

I have one more handprint project planned for this summer, but otherwise I'm not quite sure what I want to create next.  I know that I want to make one for the winter holidays and maybe a fall one (Thanksgiving maybe?) Do you have any suggestions for me?

Cardboard Airplane!

When I crocheted the baby aviator hat, I loved the way the Repeat Crafter Me designer photographed the hat on a 6 month old baby in an airplane box - and she shared the pattern to the box plane, too!  This was so cute that I knew that I wanted to make the box as soon as possible for my boys to play with.

Rowdy at 2 months old, Lucky at 2.5 years

I LOVE the Repeat Crafter Me blog.  The designer has fantastic crochet hats and I was thrilled to not only make the aviator hat but the cardboard airplane that was used as a photography prop.

At the end of February, while both boys were napping, Keith and I thought that this would be a fun project to do together.  Keith was on board (cardboard, haha) to be a part of this project.  We wanted to make a plain big enough to photograph Ryder in the hat while sleeping and for Lucas to play in.

The box we selected is huge, big enough for both boys at around 16" x 26" (measured by Keith's hand and feet) and around a foot deep.  The main reason for selecting this box is that it had good proportions and was plain on the outside.

It is hard to cut a curve in cardboard without bending it.  Scoring it along the curve with a scissor edge made it MUCH easier to cut around.

We traced the second curve the wrong way to have symmetrical swoops, but it turns out that the piece I cut out was symmetrical.  YAY!

I trusted Keith to draw the curves, he has a good graphic eye and is much better at free hand stuff than I am.  

Pieces cut according to directions by Repeat Crafter Me

The first wing was MUCH too long, so we needed to cut it down.

I used a sharpie to create markings similar to the ones in the original post.  Eventually I plan to let Lucas and Keith go to town decorating the plane, but I wanted it to be simple for some initial photography.

Can you believe that this box plane is made out of only packing tape and a single cardboard box?

The wings are still removable but the tail and propeller are pretty secure.  Lucky hasn't broken this box and it has been accessible to him for months now.

Rowdy at 6 weeks old

Rowdy's picture of the day on Leap Day was him dressed up in the box plane.  How cute is he?  

Rowdy at 6 weeks old, Lucky at 2.5 years

Rowdy at 6 weeks old, Lucky at 2.5 years

Shortly there after I put both boys in the box plane for the first time.  Lucky loves getting a chance to snuggle his brother and back when Rowdy was so tiny he needed some extra support.  Snuggle time inside a box was perfect to keep them both safe.  

Rowdy at 2 months old

Indy is such a trooper!  He is happy to snuggle with his boys, too.  This box is turning into quite the photography prop in addition to being great for imaginary play.

Rowdy at 2 months old, Lucky at 2.5 years

Do you have any suggestions for other box related crafts we should try?