50% of xmas knitting done!

Well, I got half of my xmas knitting done! I got a bunch of Lion Brand Amazing yarn a few months ago for 99 cents a ball (Isn't that great?! It's normally $9.99 each!) so I used part of it to make these scarves for the inlaws. The thinking is, all I have to do now is make scarves for my brother, SiL, parents and grandmother.

The colours I used (in order, left to right) are Olympia, Aurura, Olympia again, Rainforest and Vineland. They're each just ribbed scarves - either in a K1, P1 rib, or K2, P2 rib, or in the case of the two mobius scarves, a k3, p3 rib. Very easy, and I knit until the entire skein was used up.

everything from afghans to vinyl

I've decided to knit a leaf afghan using some Lion Brand Homespun in green and brown; hopefully I'll get it done by this christmas, as I want to gift it. I just started my first panel, this is what I have so far:

I actually started it last week, but when we (DH, DB and I) dropped my mom off at the airport last Tuesday night, I caught a wicked cold there, so I've been sick and inactively knitting. Bleh.



Oh, and my new fun find:

It's some vinyl yarn from jellyyarns - I ordered 3 skeins of different coloured glow in the dark, and 1 skein of black, all fingering weight. I've a nifty project in mind, that I'll keep under wraps until a later date. I've been looking for glow in the dark yarn for ages and final found some! :) They were nice enough to include a couple packs of vinyl wipes in the package, which was neat, and I'm sure it'll come in handy!

if you want to destroy my sweater...

Remember DB's cabled knit sweater that I originally posted here? As I posted yesterday, he needed it resized so it's not just 2 inches longer as he originally wanted, but the new length adjustment ended up being 5 inches longer.

Obviously I'm not a big fan of frogging projects, and the seams I originally sewn together were a pain in the behind to undo and then restitch, but it still turned out ok. I've photographed 'before' and 'after' shots of the new front and back that had been adjusted; the sleeves stayed the same length.

Since DB wasn't available to model the new length, DH volunteered to do it so I could blog the new sweater; thankfully it turned out alright! Phew!

finally finished DB's sweater

These pics are the front and side views of my brother's sweater that I've made for his birthday (September 8th)... it's about damn time that I finish it too! (I started it back in January!)

The pattern's from Lionbrand - I only adjusted the collar from a turtleneck to a crew. The odd thing, though, is that the pattern calls for 10 balls of the Thick & Quick yarn for his size, and I only used 6. Well, not even 6, I've about a quarter skein left over, but still... anyway. It's in the 'charcoal' colour because it's the closest I could find to black.

Also, as a side note, my MIL called me today. My parents in law just came home from their vacation on Tuesday, and didn't see the ducks with hats until yesterday (the ones I posted on sunday) and they both thought it was a riot. :) Glad to see there are others with my sense of humor!

Ah, yes, and this is my ravelry.com update: (this is taking forever!)

You are #16435 on the list.
5502 people are ahead of you in line.
13486 people are behind you in line.
36% of the list has been invited so far

Dying Yarn - a post about this was bound to appear on a knitters blog!

It seems that whenever I sign up for a knitter's swap, I find my random internet surfing to coincidentally coincide with the swap's theme, and it's no different with this hand dyed yarn swap that I'm currently involved in.

I took a personal day to dye my swapee's yarn, using my own version of Kool Aid dying - a variation of how knitpicks and knitty go about doing it. And later this summer I plan to dye a wicked batch of sock yarn using Wilton's food dyes (instructions found here). As I was doing my skein today, being the environmentally concious person that I am, I was thinking what the process would be for more natural dying. (Anyone who has Polish grandparents like I do likely remembers colouring Easter eggs with onion peels!)

But then - (and here's where the random coincidence falls in!) - I get my newsletter email from Lionbrand about natural dying, using turmeric, yellow onion skins, grapes, and beets. And just for kicks, and also to not completely and simply endorse Lionbrand's website, dying yarn with black tea. I'm sure there's a link somewhere out there on how to dye with coffee, berries, and other naturals, I just can't find the links at the moment. But these shall hopefully keep you busy.

I've bookmarked all of these as things to do this summer while on vacation!

Oh, and just for kicks, knitty.com has a good article on hand painting yarn in a few methods - worth a gander if you haven't done so already!