Throwback Threes Cardigan

In my last post I mentioned that I had discovered a post that I had never actually published. Well, here it is! This was the first of the in threes: a baby cardigan sweater that I ever made and it was made for my niece, Madelynne. Since she just turned 1, this is far from being able to fit her anymore. 

This sweater was made from Madelinetosh dk yarn in the "la vie en rose" colorway. It is the 0-6 month size and again I was able to make it out of just one ball of yarn which is one of my favorite things about this pattern. 

Here it is just after finishing but before the yarn ends were woven in or buttons were added. 

And here it is on the adorable recipient: 

It's hard to believe how much she has grown since these pictures were taken! 

Hand-Dyed Sock Yarn

Lately I have been having fun playing with my Jacquard acid dyes. I have been using a sock yarn base that is 80% merino and 20% nylon. Since I end up dyeing much more yarn than I can possibly knit up I decided to start up a new Etsy shop called Lilliput Yarn! My yarn is also now available at the yarn shop Black Sheep at Orenco in Hillsboro, OR. I have kept "recipies" of all of my colors so that I can repeat them in the future. Since the yarn is named after Lily, she appears on all of my yarn labels.

I started off with 10 colors but plan on increasing this number in the future. The colors that I have so far are:

Chocolate Lab

Clifford

Doggy Paddle

Evening Stroll

Goldendoodle

Jumping in the Leaves

Man's Best Friend

Nymeria

Raining Cats and Dogs

Rolling in the Grass

Clogs

I have been planning to make felted clogs for a while but due to my past history with felting (not good...) I have been hesitant to try. I can't remember which of us brought it up, but Jason mentioned that he would like some felted clogs for this winter. So, I ordered some Knit Picks Wool of the Andes worsted weight yarn and bought the pattern. The way they work is that you knit really huge slippers then put them in the washing machine with hot water to shrink them. I made a pair for myself first as the tester pair before making a pair for Jason.

Here is my pair before felting:

And after felting:

You may have noticed that the colors are different on the inside of each clog. This is because I messed up the amounts when I ordered the yarn. You need about 2/3 the total amount of yarn for the soles and top rim and 1/3 for the foot. I got this backward and ran out of brown yarn by the inner sole of the second slipper. Fortunately they look exactly the same except if you were to actually look inside them.

We were both quite shocked by the size of Jason's clogs prior to felting! They were so huge that I could fit both my feet into one of them with plenty of room to spare.

Here are the before pics with an iphone and Jason's feet for size reference:

After felting they fit him perfectly:

Now we will both have cozy feet this winter!

Roving to Yarn

More Spinning. I love watching how the color changes from roving to yarn. This one started off with chunks of blue, maroon and shiny silk.

It ended up looking purple. (Especially if you see it from a distance.)

The next one had all kinds of colors mixed in. Greens, blues, grays...

It also had an intermediate step that I usually try to avoid while spinning. This step was called "Lily goes nuts." I thought she was being a good puppy chewing on one of her toys. Turns out she got a hold of a chunk of roving and tried to pull it apart. Much like she does with stuffing in stuffed animals.

Turned out alright in the end. This one might even become a "Lilliput Yarn." Seems fitting since she even "helped" make it!

Sock Collage

I realize that this blog has been highly neglected since the arrival of little Lily, but given the choice between typing on the computer or playing with this...

the puppy tends to win. She is now 14 weeks and growing like a weed.

In the knitting world I have been on a bit of a sock kick lately. They are just so easy to carry around with me. It is also easy to work on a row or two here and there in between stopping the puppy from chewing on table legs or chairs or blinds or shoes.

Most recently finished were these:

 

They are not the softest socks in the world, but I just love them. They are nice and thick and toasty warm. The yarn is called ONline Supersocke 6-ply which I believe is a German company. It is actually the same kind of yarn that my mom's birthday socks were made from last year:

The yarn has held up well through many washes which is good because I am not a fan of hand-washing my socks.

I love the color of this next pair (Cascade Heritage in the "fall foliage" colorway) but they were a pain in the butt to get just right! With a multi-color yarn you just never know what you will end up with. Many factors play into this such as the length of each color section, what size needles you use,  how many stitches you have on your needles and how tight you knit.

It took a while to get just the right combination of stitches and needle size to make the colors turn out. At first the colors kept pooling which means that one half of the sock was entirely red and the other half was gold. I ended up having to use size 0 needles and 64 stitches to make the pooling stop.

 

They are a little small but I'm ok with that. :)

Lily!

Usually I only post about crafts here, but this post is about my brand new puppy "Lily". Lily is a 9.5 week-old Cardigan Welsh Corgi.

She was born on September 15th and looked like this (Lily is the 4th from the left):

My husband and I have been visiting her and her brothers and sisters since they were 3 weeks old.

7 weeks (Lily is top center):

On Thursday she was finally able to come home with us!

Sometimes she is a crazy dog

and sometimes she is a sleepy dog.

Her favorite napping place is under the chair.

Often she is a hungry dog

or a thirsty dog.

She LOVES to play (on her hand-knit blanket - see, there is still knitting involved in the post!)

and REALLY loves shoes (both eating them and sleeping with them).

She is a great puppy and we are so happy to have her home with us and be able to watch her grow up! Woof!

The Start of an Obsession

I learned how to knit when I was 9 years old - in 4th grade. My teacher required the whole class to learn how to knit. Everyone had to knit one hat and after that it was up to you if you wanted to keep knitting or not. Every day after lunch there was a corner of the class room where everyone would sit while she read to us and this was also a time to knit. I was hooked from the beginning. I started with something that was supposed to be square but I remember that it kept getting wider and wider as I was bringing the yarn to the back and making the first stitch of every row into two stitches. Once I knew how to make the stitches I moved on to my hat. I don't remember what color it was or if I even still have it somewhere but I loved knitting. I do remember that I hadn't yet learned how to purl so the hat was worked in the round entirely in stockinette stitch. This made the brim curl up along the bottom of the hat. I learned the hard way to make sure all your stitches face the same direction otherwise you get a big twist in the fabric. Instead of having me rip it back out she helped make the twist an element of the hat instead.  I believe that it was in 4th grade that I also made my first socks from a pattern that she helped me with - it's one that I still have.  I remember that they were huge floppy socks, probably made out of worsted weight acrylic but they were socks and I was so excited when they were done! I think that they are still in my parents house somewhere, but not sure where.

In 5th grade I had a different teacher but I still remember stopping by my old 4th grade classroom after school to ask for knitting help, or just to show what I was working on.

In 6th grade I was lucky enough to have the same teacher I had in 4th grade. This was the year that I moved on to the ultimate knitting project a sweater. She helped me measure myself, measure how many stitches per inch I was knitting and do all the calculations to make a custom sweater. (There is a picture of this sweater on the top of this post: http://blog.crystal-crafts.net/2012/02/12/sweater/) I'm so glad to have had such an awesome teacher who taught more than just the required curriculum.

Recently I was able to find and contact my teacher through e-mail. I was pretty excited, and I couldn't believe that after 15 years she still had pictures from some of my first projects that she sent to me. (I hope she doesn't mind that I am about to post them here).

My first socks:

Working on my first sweater: