Startitis and UFOs

So last week I went through a bout of startitis.  I had a whole bunch of projects that I wanted to do but wasn't starting cause I wanted to finish ufos and wips first.  and it kinda stalled me out.  I was doing stuff but it wasn't accopmplishing finishing the ufos and larger wips.  I was doing stuff I could finish in a day or two. but overall felt stalled out.  so last week I was like lets do this  I want to make x, y, z, p, q, l, and m.  so I started 5 different projects,two knitting projects, two quilty projects and a set of matching tote bags.  and made progress on all of them and on the ufos and wips sitting out there.   The energy for starting the new projects has bled over to the older projects

Tired quilting

Last night I was working Storybook Farms by McKenna Ryan.  I am working on the horse block.  I get everything traced on to the fusible web.  I get my fusible web all cut out and laid out on my fabric.  I am fusing the pieces to the fabric and not once not twice but three times I fuse to the right side of the fabric.  the dangers of being tired and quilting.

New Years Goals

my new years goals ( I like goals better than resolutions) part of this is to write it down and tell other people to help keep me honest.  and I know it is like January 13th and I have been thinking pondering and actually working on some of these already.

1) finish my UFOs that I care about from last year.  this includes the binding on the fairy quilts and fish quilt. and getting the two matching fish quilts and Bebekins brown bear quilt off to the long arm quilter and bound.  then finish piecing the fish quilt for my aunt and uncle, and my fairy quilt ...  there are a lot more UFOs to finish but that is a good start.  I also want to finish the two sweaters I am working on.  I have three other sweaters/cardigans/shells inline for when I am done. but one of the big things I have done is gone through my UFOs and decided which I wanted to finish vs which ones I feel guilty that I should finish cause I started them but then don't really care for them or something.

2) I want to depleate my fabric stash and yarn stash.  I am allowed to buy specific items for a project but not just random buying cause I like something. and new acquisitions will only be purchased if I have a project in mind for it.

3) get better at selling stuff on etsy.  I need to photograph and post stuff and get it up.

Free Pattern Friday - Felted Bell Cloche

This is a first attempt to write up a knitting pattern.

200 yards worsted weight feltable wool

this hat is done in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes

size 8 16 in circular needle and a longer one for magic loop or a set of DPNs.

ribbon of coordinating color

optional st markers.  I use them a lot cause it is easier than making a mistake and having to rip back and redo part of it 

CO 160 stitches

join and work in the round.  place marker at join

round 1 k entire round

round 2 p entire round

round 3 k entire round place stitch marker every 16 st

round 4 *k2tog k14*repeat rest of round

round 5-7 k entire round

round 8 *k7 k2tog k6* repeat rest of round

round 9-11 k entire round

round 12 *k2tog k12* repeat rest of round

round 13-15 k entire round

round 16 *k6 k2tog k5* repeat rest of round (120 st)

round 17 k entire round remove st markers

round 18 k entire round

round 19 k entire round  place markers every 20 st

round 20 *k2tog, double yarn over, ssk, k2tog double yarn over ssk k12 * repeat from beginning

round 21 *k2 p1 k3 p1 k13* repeat rest of round

round 22-47 k entire round, round 22 drop st markers,

round 48 k entire round, place st marker every 15 st.  alternate red and blue markers (or what ever color you have)

round 49 (red round decrease one after each red marker) *k15 k2tog k13* repeat rest of round

round 50 (blue round decrease one after each blue marker) *k2tog k13 k14* repeat rest of round

round 51 k entire round

repeat rounds 49-51 until there are 11 st between st markers.

repeat rounds 49 and 50 until there are 7 st between st markers

next round *k2tog k5 * repeat rest of round

continue to decrease until 8 st remain.  break yarn and bind of.

The hat will look funky but after felting it will be awesome.

I machine felted mine in the wash machine.  I felted it for a full cycle to get a nicely dense felt.  check it every 5 minutes during the cycle to see if it fits and if it is felted to your desire.  mine came out of the wash machine pretty much shaped exactly as I wanted it too.  I blocked it by wearing it for the day.  The hat felt dry at that point and was shaped to my head.  The holes knit in, in round 20 will mostly disappear but you can still feel them.  and then you can run a pencil through them to open them up to run the ribbon through.  If you don't wish to add a ribbon the replace rows 20 and 21 k entire round.

I have gotten so many complements on this hat.  It came out fantastic.

Top done

Well sorta done.  I am done piecing the large fish quilt.  I need to do the sashing and the border still but wanted to make sure the top was going to come out the same size that I calculated before I cut it out.  sorry about the poor quality of the pictures the top is large enough that the flash in my camera won't cover the entire top.  those of you who actually get real winter weather would laugh but it is was 37 outside and dark out side so I didn't brave it to take the quilt top out to the grass to photograph.

All the Pretty Colors

Before we get to the good stuff, here are some lovely pictures of my daughter in the dress I knit for her.

She learned very early to look away or close your eyes when some one points a camera at her.  But look at that smile

I love going to the quilt shop and the yarn shop for all the pretty colors and all of the pretty textures. I have mentioned in the past that I like to play with dyeing fabric.  I have been playing with dyeing yarn over the past couple weeks.  I have been playing with a couple techniques.  I have been using Jacquard Acid dyes on the wool.  I have been doing immersion dyeing and hand painting.

Immersion Dyeing 

Dye Bath: 

1tps dye powder per 100g fiber

3Tbs white vinegar per 100g fiber

enough water for the yarn to move freely

I cook it on the stove for 30 minutes or until the solution is clear. the dyes I use are really nice cause they exhaust and you know when it is done cause the dye bath turns clear.  This works well for how whole skeins and when you only want to dye half of the skein.  you just have to support the part you don't want dyed out of the water

These skeins were dyed using  a full immersion on the red and then a half immersion on the black

These skeins were dyed in a green dye bath that was made of 3/4 yellow dye and 1/4 blue dye.  they took of the die differently through out the skein due to differences in the the wool.  some of it wanted to take more of the blue dye others took more of the yellow.  Mixing colors of dye gives a more variegation color than if I had used a true green dye.

The red black yarn all balled up an ready to knit

Hand Painting Technique 1:
Dye solution in an 8oz condiment bottle

1/4-1tsp dye powder

1/2-3tbs white vinegar

topped off with water.

I take a garbage bag lay my item on it paint my colors on it, well more like squeeze my colors and work the colors in with my fingers. Then I use the garbage bag to wrap the item up in. wrap that in saran wrap. I have a 16 quart stock pot that has a pasta strainer thingy that litfs out. I put water in the pot up to to the bottom of the strainer and put my pieces in the strainer, put the lid on and steam it for a while. it usually takes about 30 minutes at temperature for the dyes to set. I usually let them steam for about 45 minutes which gives about 15 minutes at the beginning to let every thing come to temperature.  The amount of dye in the bottle will change the intensity of the color you get on the yarn.  The amount of vinegar will change how the color runs.  if you want the color to run and mix and play, then only a tiny amount of vinegar is need.  if you want the color to stay in one place and not move then you want more of vinegar

Hand Painting Technique 2:

8 oz squeeze bottle filled with 3tbs vinegar and 8oz water.

dye powder

so you have the item to be dyed laying on the garbage bag as before.  with a plastic knife you sprinkle  tiny amounts of dye over the wet yarn.  when you are done  sprinkling the colors. you squeeze the water on the yarn and work the dye in with your fingers.  can give stunning results and gets a highly variegated yarn.  when you are done with that you wrap it up and steam it like before.

These are some examples of the hand painted yarns





 

and some times they come out looking hideous so that is when an over dye is nice

 and then it looks like this.  Much better.  alot of the color play in the yarn didn't come out on the camera

Indigo My friend, My foe, the Bane of my existence. 

Indigo is a is a fickle friend.  I have tried it in the past and never got it to work right.  I tried it the old fashioned way of trying to ferment a vat of indigo and could never get it to ferment correctly.  Could be I was trying to do it in the middle of winter and even with it in the work shop at my moms it just wasn't warm enough for the yeasts to ferment. 

this time I went with the pre-reduced indigo and the reducing solution and got my indigo to reduce and turn its yellow green that is supposed to.  and I get these:

The ball is a wool yarn and the very tangled skein is a cotton modal fiber blend.

this lovely pale deminy color is on a cotton/acrylic blend.  so part of the paleness is the acrylic not taking the dye and partly cause it was the last yarn to go in the dye bath and I had used up a lot of the indigo on the previous couple skeins and the 5 yards of silk I threw in there.  I left the silk all crinkled up and it has the most amazing crinkly white and blue texture to it. 

Stuff and Stuff

I havn't blogged in a while and lots of stuff has happened.

two weeks ago was the Northern New Mexico Quilt show.  I saw the machine of my dreams the Horizon 7700.  now need to come up with the money to acquire it.  it is a very lovely machine.  The quilt show would have been better if my daughter was in a better mood for the show.  we got there right as she wanted to eat and then nap so there was lots of screaming and the dramatic throwing her self on the floor, and the trying to touch the quilts with her ever sticky fingers and having to play with everything in the vendor booths.  yeah.  I wish I could have had more time to look at the quilts.  I did find two that were good inspiration.  though I think I only got a picture of one.   the baby was being a pain so I kinda threw the camera at my mom and said photograph that please.  so I am not even sure I got a good picture of it.

we left the quilt show and fed the baby.  she promptly fell asleep in the car.  and slept the 2 hours more we were in the car as we drove to taos.  it was a lovely lovely day in northern new mexico.  the trees were starting to turn up in the mountains so there was valleys of red and gold streaking the mountains we drove past.  The leaves hadn't turned near where we were.  Bebekins woke up as we got into Taos.  the lovely gps took us the stupid baby route to get to the wool festival but we made it there in the end.  

The first thing we looked at when we go to the festival was the animals.  the baby enjoyed being able to pet all of the animals.  they didn't have any of the rabbits in the animal area.  They were all at vendors booths for sale, so we found those later.  So much yarn so many pretty colors.  and some of it came home with me. bebekins was totally fascinated by watching people spin yarn.  Just totally fascinated.  we might have a spinner in her.   we found a booth that had angora bunnies and the baby fell in love with them.  just totally in love.  we let her pet them for 10 minutes or so.  and we tried to move on.  we get a couple booths further down and she slips our grasp and makes a break for it back to the bunnies.  she ran right past the bunnies and keeps running through the festival groups yelling bunny bunny bunny.  so we go back to the bunnies and while she is there petting the bunnies I ended up giving in and purchasing a skein of 100% cashmere lace yarn.  it is all green and gold and brown and soft and luminescent.    I think I am going to knit either the frozen leaves shawl or the brandywine shawl with it off of ravelry.  I only got one skein of it cause it was pricey but between the colors and the softness it came home with me.  I think the bebe would have rather me bring home one of the bunnies.  The other big purchase we made was of a skein of wool silk blend to jumper dress for the bebe.  it is a lovely blue purple green variegated yarn by Brooks Farm Yarn.  It is knitting up beautifully.  I am using the Swinging Summer Shell by the Knitting Fairy.  I decided to knit it in the round and also modify the pattern to make it jumper dress length for the baby.  The baby got a hold of the skein and shook it enough to totally tangle it.  it took me 2 days to untangle the 400 yards.   I cast it on last Friday and am out 10 inches into the sweater.  this yarn knits up beautifully.  it has lovely drape and is all shiny.

The Same weekend I started out cutting out the large fish quilt.  it takes soooooooooooooooooooo long to cut out that much fabric even when you are using fairly large pieces.  it took three solid evenings of cutting to cut the main body of the quilt out.  I haven't even touched cutting out the the borders yet.  I took a slight hiatus from that to make a new purse.  found a pattern I liked had the fabric.  followed the instructions and it called for lining all of the outside panels with peltex.  finished the purse and and totally totally hate it.  I mean totally hate it.  don't get me wrong the purse is super cute but so insanely stiff that I don't like it.  so I started it again and instead of using peltex used a really drapey batting and free motion quilted the outer panels so it will have the same weight as using the peltex but not the stiffness.  I am much happier with the results but haven't finished the purse yet. 

In midst of making the purse I had to go get more green top-stitching thread.  and when I was at the store I found the remaining bold of the fish fabric in black that I thought they were out of a couple weeks ago.  I bought the rest of the bolt.  It was a happy day.    happy happy day.  I think I now have enough of the black to do both fish quilt borders.  and that is what I needed to get me to work on the large fish quilt.  I started sewing last night and I broke the quilt into 16 sections.  I started sewing the first round of seams and only got through 10 of 16 sections.  still have to press all of those seams.  going to take forever...  and I have to take another hiatus from the fish quilt as I need to make my husband a ninja costume for a costume contest he wants to be in.  and I have till oh about next wednesday to finish it.  tonight we are going shopping for the fabric we need.