mom's hat

I made my mom a hat and told her she'd be famous when I posted the picture. Here she is:

my now famous mother! I'm into hats lately. Hmm. It's good weather for them, dontcha think? Oh yeah, that's yarn I dyed. Nifty, eh?

amelia's hat

A little more dyeing, and a little more knitting. This time for my cousin's daughter. I thought I'd try a little embellishment, ala cosymakes. I think it turned out pretty well. She'll look so beautiful. Oh yeah, and Chloe likes it too.

mary's hat

I used the rosy yarn to make Mary a hat. One with a pom-pom on it. I'm now working on matching hand-warmers to go with it. Won't she just be the cutest once we actually have cold weather? Can't wait for winter!

to dye for

I did some dyeing yesterday, and here are the results:


This one is kind of a rosey color with built in stripey goodness. I've very pleased with how it turned out.

This one is alright. It turned out a little darker than I predicted, but I can work with it.

These were my first venture into dyeing with something other than kool-aid. This time I used Wilton's icing dye. (yes, like icing on cakes) The rose yarn is a mixture of "aster mauve" and "delphinium blue" while the blue-green is "delphinium blue" and "juniper green". I used the directions found here.

Let's see. What else is going on in Leah-land, you ask? Not much lately. I've got project ADD and can't seem to finish actual projects, but am having fun building my stash with the recycled wool and dyeing projects. So technically I guess I am finishing things.

In other news, I'm waiting for my invitation to ravelry.com, although there are 12,275 knitting or crocheting enthusiasts in line ahead of me. Yes, I have a history of being slow at catching on to computery things like blogging and myspace, but I'm very ready for this one. Go check it out, you'll see why.

mmmm... dye

I like dyeing. It's fun.

thrift stores rock

I found a cashmere sweater at AmVets for $2.95, took it home and pulled the yarn from it. Now I have a whole load of wonderfully soft, good quality yarn to work with that would have cost an arm and a leg to buy new. I love the thrift stores and the way they don't check labels for relative worth of things. Life is good.

How to Recycle a Sweater (A Story Told in Pictures)

sweater purse

How cute is this? It's the sweater I couldn't pull the yarn from, but had found a picture of a similar purse and decided to try to copy it. I still need to make the handle and sew in the lining, but the bulk of it is done.

off-label uses for kool-aid

So I decided to try my hand at recycling yarns again. I tried it a few months ago and just got frustrated and threw everything away. I went to the thrift store this morning and picked up two sweaters that looked like I'd be able to take apart. The first one had some issues with the yarn breaking, but I have a back-up plan for that sweater which you will have to wait to see what happens with that.

The other sweater surrendered its hood quite easily, so I got that yarn pulled apart and moved on with what I was planning. I gave it a little bath in kool-aid. Here it is, bathing away in the strawberry goodness.

And here it is drying on my front porch.


I'm planning on making a set of handwarmers with this yarn, but who knows what direction it will actually take? I don't.

"linked stripes"

Another slip-stitch pattern. So purdy!