A few months ago I knitted these longies with matching hat for Greer from wool that I’d dyed myself. Being that her things were newborn-sized I had a little ball of wool left over, sitting sadly in my knitting bag where it was likely to languish unused. So! A little tutorial for you to find a use for all those little scraps of yarn whilst saving some crap from landfill

When I was at school some of the kids in my year would use pringles tubes as pencil cases and now I use the mini tubes for keeping marbles and rubber bands in. I reckon with a little bit of embellishing these could be quite cute for tweenagers to keep art supplies in or indeed for anyone who just needs a little bit of extra storage. Best of all, the materials are dead easy to come across.

This is the end product:

Before you start, give your tube a good rinse with the strongest smelling liquid soap you own. The pringles tube I used didn’t have a completely even top so I glued some cotton twill tape around the top. Sticky tape would do the same job if you don’t have twill tape.

Now there are two ways you could do this – either cover your tube in double sided sticky tape and wind the wool directly onto it, or do as I did and coat your tube with pva glue. Leave the end of the wool hanging so that you’ll cover it with your winding, then wind your wool onto the tube. Take care not to pull the wool too tightly because it’ll thin your strands out – you want them to stay thick so no writing shows through.

Continue to the bottom of the tube. If you’re using the PVA glue method, dip the end of your yarn into the PVA glue before smoothing it against the tube. The glue will dry clear but this way your end should be hidden securely. As you can see I ran out of my striped wool and had to finish it off with another ball but I think it still works.

Let me know if you try this out yourself – I’d love to see your versions!

Posted under general crafty updates

I promised pictures of the wool that I’d dyed last week and here it is. I was thinking about this actually – would a step-by-step guide to dyeing with koolaid be helpful to any of you?

Bob bought me a few books on natural dyeing for Christmas last year and I still haven’t got round to trying any of the ideas out. Truth is that natural dyeing will take a bit more preparation than dyeing with kool-aid and so I put it off. In a similar fashion, I also bought some acid dyes over a year ago with great intentions and have still not used them. No excuses there, I just haven’t got comfortable with using them yet!

Truth be told I don’t know if I’m in a great hurry to dye again. I really enjoy the end product but it’s so messy, and one little slip of the hand can wreck an entire skein but then it can be so worth it when you get it right! I’m going to reskein these to show the colours better and maybe take more photographs.

Hope you’re all having a nice weekend! Our children are all away this weekend so we’re attempting to organise our house a little. What are you up to?

Posted under dyeing wool, general crafty updates

Annie is my swap partner in Apryl‘s Owl Swap and I received her parcel yesterday. I am so spoiled!

I had told Annie during our first discussions about my love for The Owl and The Pussycat and she clearly picked up on that as she’s made and sent me these beautiful toys which are going to have pride of place on my bed under my new print. Annie also sent me some gorgeous yarn which I suspect is cotton, a flake (which was eaten immediately!) and a butterball bath bomb from Lush. I am so grateful – your gift was so thoughtful Annie and I hope you are as pleased with what I send you.

I had planned to bake today but I accidentally put 1.2kg of wool into a soaking bin earlier and filled it with water so I suspect I’ll be dyeing it later! What are your plans (crafty or otherwise) today?

Posted under dyeing wool, general crafty updates, swaps

I work with a brilliant graphic designer called Janice, who just makes my day at work go by so much quicker and easier. Last week we went for a walk around the city centre at lunchtime and ended up buying new scarves as Janice had lost hers the week before (actually, she’d left it on a wall in Skye where she was volunteering for the National Trust). As she explained what had happened, she exclaimed, “I need COLOUR in my life! Colour!” and I suddenly decided what I was going to do for her birthday.

Pattern: Fetching from the Summer 2006 edition of Knitty
Needles: 4mm bamboo DPNs
Yarn: This was my very first skein of my very first attempt at dyeing with kool aid. I posted about dyeing on this entry. The yarn I used is the left skein in the bottom picture.
Ravelry project page: Click here
Techniques learned: I discovered whilst checking how to do the cable cast on that I’ve been casting on incorrectly for, well as long as I’ve been able to knit! That was fairly disconcerting but at least now I know how to do it properly.
I also feel that I’ve mastered how to pick up and knit stitches without leaving a gaping hole.

These were really quick to knit up – I cast on late thing on Thursday night and finished them on Saturday night, and I am by no stretch of the imagination a speedy knitter. I had to frog the thumb on the left because I somehow managed to pick up 21 stitches instead of 17 and I completed eight rounds on the thumb instead of the suggested four because the thumb barely covered my knuckle with four repeats. I did use the suggested picot cast off, but I’m not hugely happy with the effect. I think it looks pretty untidy – is it just me? Have any of you who’ve made Fetching before felt the same?

Click any of the pictures to get the bigger size.

The skein I used is the one hanging on the left hand side.


This is the best close-up I could get of the cables. To be honest, they don’t show up quite as sharply in the finished object because the colours are so dense but I like the texture.


Here is one finished wristwarmer


So I gave Janice her birthday present yesterday, something full of colour but which she could also use on her regular trips away and she says she loves them. In fact before I left the office she had her gloves on because she was cold so that’s made me very happy

Posted under dyeing wool, knitting

Loyal readers may remember this post where I hand-dyed wool using kool-aid. This wool has lay unused for so long that I decided enough was enough.

We use cloth nappies with the children and wool makes an excellent cover for the nappies. I like the longies that are quite popular just now and so using some of my wool whilst following the Aubrey Doodlepants pattern I created these longies for the baby.

I do apologise for the terrible photo but unfortunately space is at a premium in this house right now. The longies seem to be doing the job, they’re beautifully soft and the baby just looks good enough to eat in them. I subsequently made another pair using the same pattern for #2 but unfortunately I haven’t managed to accost him for a photograph yet. I will, though.

I made a few modifications to this pattern. Firstly, I measured her waist and subracted an inch to make the waistband fit better. I also measured her hips and increased in the five rows after the waistband to prevent the waistband from sagging too much. Then, after the short rows were done I found the stitches that would be grafted and increased between those every other row to create a gusset and provide a better surface area for kitchenering. Have I mentioned that I love the kitchener stitch? Oh! Beautiful and not difficult to learn either.

Overall I’m happy with how these came out and I expect I’ll use the pattern again. I’m all about the freebies.

As I live in the UK, it can be quite difficult to acquire kool aid without paying a huge amount in postage so I have recently bought some acid dyes to play with. I’m quite excited but nervous in case I ruin the wool I’ve bought. We’ll see how it goes.

I have more to update but I must wait to hear when my craftster.org swap pal receives her package as I don’t want to ruin her surprise.

Posted under dyeing wool, knitting

I spent a couple of hours last night dyeing up some wool using kool aid that I acquired from eBay months ago. GREAT fun! Seriously, although I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all this yarn. I very well may sell it on etsy if it comes out a good enough quality. I have very cleverly managed to dye my hands bright red, with a bonus raspberry-blue fingernail. Any tips on how to get rid of the dye would be greatly appreciated! I shall use gloves next time.

I did two types of dyeing – steaming and microwaving – and I’d say the microwaving was easier but steaming was more fun. My steamer has two racks but I didn’t want dye dripping from one rack to another, so the self coloured wool went in the microwave and the patterned stuff went in the steamer. I used roughly 6-8 packs of kool aid for the patterned wool and four for the self coloured, and that’s for 100g (4oz) of wool. Knitty has a great article on kool-aid dyeing here which was written by their advertising manager Kristi Porter. There’s also an article on the different dyeing techniques written by Julie Theaker and these were the articles I used to guide my dalliance. Thanks go to Emma Crew for pointing me to this colour chart too.

I’ll post again when I have them re-skeined, buut for now here are a few action shots, with more available here.

Posted under dyeing wool