Monday, September 20, 2010

My First Hand Dyed Yarn!!! Plus another new design!!!

It's a blend of purple and green, but mostly brown. I think next time I'm between designs, I'll look up a pattern and make it into mixey colored winter gloves. The class was awesome and I had loads of fun. I will probably never again grab a skein of pretty multicolored yarn without appreciating the work that goes into it.

I brought my yarn home Saturday. While waiting for it to dry, I remembered my last purchase at Wild Purls.


It's Cascade 220 Heathers in Iris. I started swatching ideas for something scarfy, because that's what I could use right now. Winter's on its way and since I'm pretty much a lizard, I need to fill in the gaps in my wardrobe before the constant cold hits.
So I got out larger-than-recommended needles and charted up an expanding feather and fan pattern. I was really scared that I'd end up frogging it, because it looked so weird and lumpy on the needles.

But I was wrong...check it out drying! The ripples are nice, and the CO edge even makes a little collar. It's a one skein project too so that's even more awesome.

I think I'll swing by WP, Michaels or Hobby Lobby today and get enough to make a second version that's a near complete circle. Maybe grey or a nice normal color.

The purple's gonna look so nice under my leather jacket this fall.

-Manda

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Gloves, Maybe?


Right now...the day before I go back to school...I'm playing with twisted stitches. You can see at the bottom that I tried a regular traveling vine pattern, but when I got up to the tulip pattern I just went right and left twists. I've decided that I wanna make the tulip a bit taller...I think the middle petal needs more height. I also wanna go back and make the bottom outer edges of the tulip more prominent. I'm also gonna go back do a twisted stitches version of the traveling vines leading up to the flower.

Oh, and I've realized that dark blue is entirely the wrong color for this. The next swatch and final product will be green!