Which-Crafts?

One of the interesting side bits to running Seasons of Lace is that I am getting to see a new array of knitting tools used by lace knitters. I had been peripherally aware that people were making fancy stitch markers, but a bunch of our sponsors and prize donors make them, and I have been perusing their sites.

Now some of you may know that I used to bead, a few of you may remember that I used to work at a bead store, and I suspect that many of you may know that I am hoarder of craft supplies. How does this all work together?

I have a huge supply of beads that I haven’t used in a long long while. So last week, I opened my bead box and rummaged around a bit. Dug out some small bits that were left-overs from other projects, and started playing.  I suspect that I’ll show of a few more not too far in the future. This is a pretty, fun and useful way to use up beads that were sadly without purpose.

I know I have mentioned this to a few people in person, but I haven’t gotten around to mentioning this here.  Helen, Maria and I had a little run in with insanity last month. There is a really long and fairly amusing story  - but the long and short of it is that we are running a KAL (Knit-along.) It is a Lace knit along, not based around a specific pattern, just based around knitting lace for the summer.

We got started organizing it a little over a month ago, and already we have a pile of sponsors and prizes (Helen has done an awesome job procuring these for us.)  We have a Ravelry group and a Blog and I am pretty excited about how it is all coming together. Its called Seasons of Lace - and if you are interested you are welcome to join us!

Even though I am Mod there, I am really quite the lace newbie. I have 2 lace projects on the needles right now. One of them I am doing in my own made up pattern - but I am not very far along on that one. This one is someone else’s pattern and is the one that i am working on primarily.

This is the Strangling Vine Lace Scarf. I got off to a rocky start, there is a bit of a discrepancy between the written pattern, and the chart. But once I worked it all out and put some stitch markers in everything smoothed right out.

I am knitting it in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool - which I love love love! I bought this yarn to be Aibhlinn, but after I started knitting, it really was just about the most boring thing ever - and you needed to pay just enough attention to it that it wasn’t even “mindless” knitting. So Riiiiip! Its been a few thing in between, but now its found its happy match.

I ran across Folia the other day. I haven’t played with it for very long yet, but it looks a bit like Ravelry for gardening. If you want to find me there my username is Whichy.

Its that time again!

Craft day is this Saturday - May 24, 2008.
Time: 1pm till ya’all go home
Place: My living room - if you need instructions please email me at web at alyse daht org
What to bring: Yourself, your brain and mouth (we like to talk), your craft project, your sense of humor . . . All people and craft projects are welcome (invite a friend!) - scrapbooking, knitting, crocheting, beading, origami, programming, cross-stitching, spinning, furniture re-finishing etc. We’ve seen it all! If your project requires a table, let me know, and I’ll have one setup for you.
What to bring take 2: A food item to share, craft day is also a bit of a potluck
What I provide: A Pet free, but not dust free environment, many chairs and couches to sit upon and generally good compay. I’ll have fresh bread (home-made) and probably cheese and a few other things. I provide water and a random assortment of soda for drinking. There is also generally someone who can help with knitting and crocheting projects.

If you hang around for dinner, we’ll probably order in.

Please come, and bring your friends, just RSVP to let me know how many to expect!

More information on my house and events at my house, and directions available at my home page.

[singlepic=50,320,240,,left] But it should be.

I am sure I am knitting the pattern, but it really doesn’t look like the Lovelyness which i have seen in Grumperina’s scarf gallery. It also has a few structural problems, like needing a needle 2 sizes or so larger. So I have decided its a REALLY large swatch (at this point its about 2x the size it is in the picture.) So I am starting again on larger needles and with 20 fewer stitches than is in the original pattern (10 less than the “swatch”.)

The yarn is my own hand-dyed yarn, the base yarn is *Kn!@ !@#ks* and I actually can’t say enough bleah things about it. Suffice it to say, I won’t be purchasing more, and certainly not as a base yarn for me to dye with. Which is a bit of a shame, because I LOVE the colors though. I cannot get a picture that does justice to the colors in the yarn, the blues go from a midnight blue that is almost black through to beautiful turquoisey sky blue with some lovely stark white highlights.

I have been looking for some patterns that really do a nice job of showing off my style of hand-dyeing. Just enough shape/texture/pattern to really make the color ways stand out, without burying the colors or the patten.

I am working on a pair of mittens that are plain stockinette, and the yarn is blending to a beautiful mottled heathery color texture.

Coming soon: actual decent pictures - I am getting a camera on loan. YAY!!!

Two of my unpublished (because they are always unpublished - all the easier to cheat) resolutions for this year are to eat better, and to be a bit more fiscally responsible. One little step of this is to change the way we are eating breakfast. Evan and I both tend to purchase a muffin in the morning at the train station. I am not good at doing money breakouts, but I suspect that making them at home is cheaper per piece, and I can guarantee healthier.

Like usual I browse the Internet looking for recipes that appeal to me and then doctor them to suit my own purposes.

Today’s doctored winner is:

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffin with Cranberries and Pecans

Prep Time: 10 Minutes
Cook Time: 20 Minutes Ready In: 30 Minutes
Yields: 12 large servings

INGREDIENTS:
1-1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1-3/4 cups buttermilk
1 t Vanilla
1/2 C Dried Cranberries
1/2 Chopped Pecans
1/4 t Nutmeg
1 t Cinnamon
2 egg, beaten
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup and 2 melted butter or oil
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:
1. In a bowl, soak oats and cranberries in buttermilk for 15 minutes.
2. Mix the egg, sugar and oil together in a separate bowl. Add it to the oat and buttermilk mixture.
3. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; together before you stir them into oat mixture. Mix until just moistened.
4. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full.
5. Bake at 400 degrees F for 16-18 minutes or until muffins test done.
6. Cool in pan 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Its that time again!

Craft day is this Saturday.
Time: 1pm till ya’all go home
Place: My living room - if you need instructions please email me at web at alyse daht org
What to bring: Yourself, your brain and mouth (we like to talk), your craft project - all people and craft projects are welcome - scrapbooking, knitting, crocheting, beading, origami, programming, cross-stitching, spinning, furniture re-finishing etc. We’ve seen it all! If you need a table setup, please let me know so I can have one setup for you.
What to bring take 2: A food item to share, just a snacky type thing,
What I provide: A Pet free, but not dust free environment, many chairs and couches to sit upon. I’ll have fresh bread (home-made) and probably cheese and a few other things. I provide water and a random assortment of soda for drinking. There is generally available some basic help for knitting and crocheting projects.

If you hang around for dinner, we’ll probably order in.

Please come, and bring your friends, just RSVP to let me know how many to expect!

More information on my house and events at my house, and directions available at my home page.

So I snagged the bosses camera (an EOS!!! - now I am totally spoiled) and took some pics of my recent playing with hand-dyeing. I was a bit in a rush so haven’t edited the pictures much, but the colors are pretty accurate as is. For all of these there are more pics on the tab labeled Hand Dyeing at the top of the page.

[singlepic=41,320,240,left] The first pic here is of one of the 2 skeins of Knit Picks Bare sock weight merino/tencel yarn I dyed this way. It is incredibly squishy and feels great. At the risk of sounding conceited, I am very pleased and a bit surprised at how the colors turned out. Right now I am not hand-painting the yarns, but using my own version of kettle-dyeing. The results are turning out very cool, and not at all regular and stripey which is exactly what I want. I have 1 skein from the earliest dye batches (my test skein) that I am currently knitting into mittens. It ends up knitting up with a sort of watery heathery affect. I hope to get these in front of the camera soon.

The next two pictures are of over-dyed skeins. This one was the last one I dyed from the holiday batch and really - I think [singlepic=44,320,240,right] my inspiration had sort of temporarily burned out. There were two skeins of a merino-silk blend that ended up sort of this sad sickly pink with dullish purple splotches. So I decided that seeing as they were already sort of miserable, I would use them as my test skeins for trying out the warping board. I reskeined them in these big long skeins and then over dyed them. I do have to admit that once I reskeined them and then soaked them to prep them for dyeing, they looked very pretty - all sorts of multilayerd grapey colors that just didn’t show up when dry. So they got over dyed, and I tried very very hard for a nice multilayered color spread - but mostly ended up with 2 colors. I am not sure I am able to create the same color subtlety over-dyeing that I can when I start bare.

[singlepic=40,320,240,left] This yarn was a fabulous freebie give-away yarn and has a whole long story behind it. But mostly for our purposes here, the important part was that it was ugly. Inho REALLY ugly. Sort of a dull, pastel, but still olive and not sage green. It is 100% Alpaca and wonderfully soft. And I didn’t want to let it go to waste, so I took it and knew that someday I would over-dye it. I was a little paranoid dyeing it, because a lot of what i dye is Superwash and I don’t have to be too careful about it felting. I KNOW this yarn felts and so I had to be v.v. careful to prevent ending up with a beautifully dyed lump of useless fiber. Once again I didn’t quite get the color depth that I wanted. But it is still about 500% better than it was when it started, and now I am trying to dream up what I can do with 1lb of DK weight 100% Dark green alpaca.

Tags: Dyeing, Yarn

First Craft day of the new year is right around the corner. I realized late last night that even though Craft day is next saturday, I hadn’t actually told anyone.

Sorry for the late reminder!

Saturday Febrary 23 - 1 pm

Alyse & Evan’s House (email me or comment if you need directions or more info)

Feel free to bring any hand-craft project that doesn’t need a whole room to do. Most seating is “couch-like”, but if you need a table, or a more straight backed chair just let me know ahead of time and we’ll set one up. Please also bring a small “potluck” item for everyone to snack on. I will of course be providing “something” and drinks.

For those who still remain at dinner time, we generally order in dinner later in the evening.

PLEASE RSVP!!!

Future Craft Days:
You can find the public calendar of events here.

The dates for this years events will be:

March 16th Hypertufa
March 29 - Craft Day
April 26 - Graham Leather’s Concert
May 24 - Craft Day
June 28 - Craft Day
July 26 - Concert (I think)
August 30 - Craft Day
September 6 - Yarn dyeing day
Sept 20 - Craft Day
October 25 - Music

You can find out more about events at our house at my website. You can also find out more about Craft-Days.

If you want to get these announcements in your email you can go to here to sign up.

Tags: craft day, Invites

this is one of those times i REALLY wish I had a camera - so i could show you some of the awesomeness that I created this weekend.

Over the holidays I dyed some yarn for gifts, and got a really good response. This has been the first weekend since then that I really had time to play again.

A few weeks ago, I was talking about some of my future dyeing plans to a friend of mine. I was waxing rhapsodic about all the ways I could experiment once I made myself a warping board type thing to wind yarn on.

“You know i have a warping board in the basement? Right?”

“Huh?” (I am very cogent when surprised )

“Ya know, from when I used to weave. Do you want it?”

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I spent some time this week reading up on warping boards (there isn’t a lot of info out there) and then went to town. Up until now skeining yarn has been a bit of a pain. Winding on to my umbrella swift hasn’t been thrilling me - it is ungainly and my inner mechanical engineer (who is a 2nd grader) can tell that it is wildly inefficient. The warping board, while having its own amount of inefficiencies, is WAY better and much easier to use. As far as I am concerned it is a total win.

I had 2 skeins of KnitPicks Bare merino/silk fingering yarn that I had dyed at the end of my holiday dyeing and had ended up a drab pink and dull purple. They got reskeined and over dyed. They are now still pink and purple, but now its more of a deeper purple with some pink glowing out of it. It still isn’t my favorite, but my roommate, is trying to steal it while my back is turned.

I had 2 skeins of KnitPicks merino/tencel sock yarn - they are now a fiery blend of light golden yellows, deep oranges, and burnt chestnut.

7 skeins of puke light olive Plymouth Baby Alpaca DK got completely re-skeined and over dyed. They are now drip drying in the bathroom, I am hoping that they are a a dark green/teal with light green overtones when dry. This was my first attempt to make 2 separate pots of yarn turn out the same, when they are dry I’ll be able to judge better - but I think I did a pretty good job.