Cross Stitch Neckwarmer September 29, 2009

9/29/09

I finished this a while ago but just now got around to putting up the pictures.

7/6/2009

I got through 12″ of this pattern, which is about half of a neck warmer so I am going to have to go buy more yarn…oh shucks another trip to the yarn store

7/5/2009

So I made these great mittens and I wanted to make a neck warmer to go along with them. The yarn that I had left over was perfect and should be the right amount.

I found this great stitch a long time ago call the cross stitch. A lady had made some beautiful wash cloths out of it. I had forgotten all about it until I got my “101 Designer One-skein Wonders” book. They have a lovely pattern for a cross stitch scarf. I decided to combine what I had learned from all these patterns and decided to make my own for a lovely neck warmer.

The cross stitch pattern turned out to be quite confusing so I decided to make a video sharing what I learned with you all.

I am Dyeing! September 27, 2009

So I have been branching out in my fiber working lately. I will do a series of posts on how this is true so look forward to that.

One of the ways that I have been branching out is I have been experimenting with dyeing my own yarn.  I have purchased a few undyed skeins from the yarn store here in Rolla and have been experimenting mostly with dyeing yarn using coffee. The yarn I have been working with is 100% merino wool and is quite nice feeling and I am looking forward to working more with it. I dyed the first skein a couple of weeks ago and was very successful in getting  a uniform beautiful caramel color from the coffee. I gave this skein away in a yarn swap and started missing it so I decided to do another today with my friend Sara.

We got really adventurous and decided to try our hand at  Kool Aid dyeing some cotton yarn that we acquired in a unique way. ( See this post) We went to the grocery store and bought all the pretty colors of Kool Aid that we could get our hands on.

We decided to experiment with some small practice skeins that we put together before using our big skeins that we extracted. Some things that we learned were that cotton is not terribly good at absorbing color from the dye. Next time we will use something besides Kool Aid for the cotton.  We did get some really great pastels out of this little experience and my second try at coffee dyeing the merino was super successful.

I left the merino in the wrapped up skein form so it left a variegated look to the yarn with some spots a litgher caramel than others. I am really really happy with how it turned out