In threes... again

Welcome to my new blog and website! My husband and I have been working hard on getting this site up and running and I'm excited to be making the first blog post in the new location. 

This pattern has been one of my favorites lately. I have posted about this pattern before, but is is called in threes: a baby cardigan by Kelly Hendrich. I made one for a co-worker and another for my niece (I just went to link to the blog of my niece and discovered that I never actually published it. oops! It will be appearing at some point in the future.) 

For this sweater I used my Lilliput Yarn in the "Sasha" colorway. I held the yarn double since the pattern calls for a worsted weight yarn and my yarn is fingering weight. It worked out pretty well and I was able to make the 0-6 month size out of just one ball of yarn. 

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This one happens to have been knit for another co-worker and was given to her at her baby shower. She seemed to like it and it ended up getting passed around the circle of guests so that everyone could check it out. 

I like how it turned out so much that I am actually knitting an identical one to use as a sample of how the yarn knits up. 

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. Logo

 

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

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Chocolate Lab

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Clifford

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Doggy Paddle

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Evening Stroll

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Goldendoodle

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Jumping in the Leaves

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Man's Best Friend

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Nymeria

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Raining Cats and Dogs

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Rolling in the Grass

Merry Christmas Part 2

So, you already saw what the Moms got for Christmas. Well, the guys got some hand-knits too. My dad got a hat and socks made from hand-spun alpaca/silk. When I got the fiber it looked like this:

The white parts are the silk and the black is the alpaca. Once it was spun it looked like this:

I used a general top-down boot sock pattern for the socks.

 

It worked out well that my husband and dad have almost the same size feet, so my husband was constantly trying on the socks to make sure they were the right size. (Thanks!)

For the hat I used the same yarn, started out with a knit 2, purl 2 rib and then switched to stockinette stitch for the rest of the hat. Again, my husband got to keep trying on the hat.

Since alpaca is even warmer than wool, these are super warm.

For my father-in-law there was a pair of socks in Green Bay Packers colors. I am not so great at dying yarns that actually turn out the colors I want them to so for this yarn I turned to Etsy.com. I found a shop called GalianaCreations that had some Green Bay colored sock yarn. She didn't have as much as I needed, but was willing to dye some more for me. The colors turned out amazing, and the yarn was so soft!

I used a general sock pattern with a short row toe:

 

Since my husband is also a Green Bay Fan, he got a pair too. Basically the identical pattern with minor changes such as a wider foot.

It turned out that there was just enough yarn left over to make one more small pair of socks, so I got my own pair. These were a toe-up, short row heel sock.

Now, we will all have toasty feet for Packer Games. :)