Great Hat Race hat #1 done

Here is the hat #1 from Great Hat race!

Yarn: Ella Rae Amity in #37 Orange

Needles: #8 Circular and dpn

Off to the post office tomorrow!

The Great Hat Race

I'm going to be a part of the Great Hat Race.  It's knitting hats for charity, and also fun with prizes and meeting other great knitters.  

The first round starts tomorrow!  Yay, can't wait!

My hand dyed camera sock!

Here are the circumstances:

A: Work has been slow this week

B: I discovered a small scratch on my ridiculously awesome camera

C: I had hand-dyed sock yarn that wanted me to knit it up for a taste

A+B+C= camera sock!

After knitting Perpensockular!  by nonaknits, I have been the master of grafting.  So, I made a small opening for the strap to come out of the bottom of my camera sock.  

Here is the pattern if you're interested in your very own camera sock of your own!

***Pattern starts here***

Yarn: any sock yarn that will give you 7-8 sts/inch or 7-8 sts/2.5cm (about 30 yards?)

Suggested yarn: KnitPicks Bare-Superwash Merino/Nylon Fingering weight (462 yds/100g)

Needles: #2US or 2.75mm dpn OR one circular for magic loop

Gauge: 7-8sts/inch or 7-8sts/2.5cm

Notions: ruler and grafting needle

1. measure the dimensions of your camera : width(sideways), height(vertical), depth.  

     Example: (mine was w=10.0cm;  h=5.5cm;  d=2.0cm)

      note: Since cameras are made in metric countries, it may be easier to do the calculations in the metrics.  Your call.

2. Calculate 2h+2d 

     Example:   2(5.5)+2(2.0)=15.0 -> this is your overall width (how many sts to cast on)

3.  Calculate w+d 

     Example: 10.0+2.0=12.0 -> this is your overall length (how many rows to knit)

4. Multiply your total from #2 by 3.  

     Example: 15.0 x 3=45

5.  If your total was an odd number, subtract 1 and CO that amount.  

CO 44 (that took forever!)

Join, take care not to twist; 1x1 rib for 10rows in round

switch to stockinette and knit in round until your piece measures to your number from #3 (12.0cm)

Here is the fun grafting:

Divide your stitches evenly on 2 dpns (22 sts on each needle)

Graft until 2 sts from middle (graft 9).  DON'T CUT YARN

BO next 4 sts on front needle DON'T CUT YARN

Slip next 4 sts on back needle to holder

Graft the remaining sts together(graft 9).  Weave in ends.

Take a short piece of yarn and BO 4 sts on needle holder.  Weave in ends.

Admire your work!

Leave your mark at Loveyarns!

The best local yarn store in the world, Lovelyarns, is having a multi-knitter afghan project for the store.  Sue asked for a 6" x 6" square that represented each of the knitters who come and hang out at her lovely shop.  

I figured since I make toys all the time, I would make something to that effect:

However, I am quite lazy to calculate my own patterns, so I looked for a design that kind of suited me.  Here is the happy sun pattern from knitting-and.com.  I used my Cascade 220 (my favorite yarn) and happy face.  

There it is on the wall!  Yay, I feel special!!!

2/42

Now I'm hooked.  Here is another leftover yarn square from my lovely gloves I made 2 years ago.  

1/42

I had to leave the apartment today for about an hour.  My landlord is showing the apartment to a prospective tenant.  

I had just received a copy of Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting together by Larissa Brown and Martin Brown.  

What a brilliant little book!  I want to make everything from it.  I even wanted to knit an afghan.  I swore never to knit such a dull thing. 

But this one was different.  It was a quilt made by using leftover sock yarn.  I have those!

So:  Here's my square 1:

Not Bad for First Time

On Sunday we thought it would be nice to try a little yarn dying using food coloring and vinegar:

We had two skeins of natural colored superwash wool: one skein worsted weight and one skein fingering weight. The worsted weight wool is going to be a beanie and the fingering is going to be...socks.

We had some trouble finding boxes of food coloring. Finally we found a box of four bottles at Kroger. Our aim was to mix 1tsp of food coloring for every 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

Since we are total beginners, we started out with 1/2 tsp of red, 10 drops of blue and 4 drops of green. That totaled to about 1 tsp. We added 1 tbs of vinegar and about 1 cup of water.

To see how dark the food coloring was, we dipped little bits of paper towel into the dye mixture and checked how the dye was looking.

We were aiming for wine-red, so we added a little green to mute the color. Yay color theory.

***

While we were busy mixing colors, the yarn waited patiently in the pot. We did not add any vinegar to the water mixture. The water in the pot is slowly getting warm to prepare the yarn for the dye. When the water is steaming but not bubbling, we got the dye ready to go.

Happy mixing dye! mmm food coloring tastes like easter eggs!

And here is the moment we have been waiting for! Ready to pour in the dye!

We were AMAZED to see how quickly the dye was sucked into the yarn! Now the yarn had areas with really dark colors and areas with no color at all! Yikes!

We quickly mixed 1 full tsp of red, 20 drops of blue and 8 drops of green. The we mixed that with 2 tbs of vinegar. This time, we slowly poured in the dye a little at a time...

Aaaah that's better. The red is like a blackberry red. We let the yarn simmer in the pot, covered for about 30 minutes. We then let it cool to room temperature and gave it a good rinse.

The yarn color looked darker when it was wet!

And here it is, all dry and ready to be knit!

Not bad for first time!

*****

For the fingering weight yarn, we used a different method: massaging dye into yarn with fingers and cooking it in the oven for 2 hours. Unfortunately we don't have too many pictures from that session (it was not as messy as you would think). Here are some pictures:

Yellow: 1/2tsp yellow; 3 drops blue

Blue: 1/2tsp blue; 10 drops green

Green: 1/2 tsp green; 5 drops green

I added about 4 1/2 tbs vinegar for the entire skein (100g)

It was a really fun experience! I would definitely like to try again soon! But first, I must find out how they knit up!