These gloves will always remind me of some of the things that happened in my life while I was knitting them: working on a big project (the frogged version), Spain winning the world cup…

The pattern is originally from the PurlBee (one of the first blogs I ever read, the other being Inchmark).  I used a mix of Spud&Chloe fingering and my over-dyed Pickles yarn.  I’m so happy I decided to re-knit because they are now exactly what I wanted!

I admit the photos are a little dramatic!

Well, I think it may be time to frog this project, mostly because I’m almost done with the replacement.  (I just love where “frogging” comes from, so check out the link if you don’t know…)  Knitting is so wonderful because you can frog and re-do, even though I have more than enough yarn not to need this.

This one lonely glove was supposed to be half of the Long Striped Hand-Warmers from the Purl Bee, but I didn’t get the exact yarns used, and so the colorway ended up being garish and harsh, rather than surprising and delicate like their example.  Furthermore, I was feeling pretty stressed with some other stuff that weekend, and just wanted to knit and knit without thinking, so I ignored the problems, not just with the color, but the gauge, yarn textures and shaping…

Now that I have one and a half new gloves worked with new decreases and increases, a new yarn pairing of my dyed green plus the original Spud+Chloe fingering, and different needles, it might be time to rrrrrrrrrrip these out.

Or am I too sentimental to dare?

¡ESPAÑA! (good luck charm from Any Three Words)

One fingerless glove finished just minutes befor Iniesta scores!

Elephant watching with a good friend!

Sometimes (no matter who you are or how lucky you may be – and I admit to being very fortunate) it can be hard to get up in the morning.  So I’ve decided to start a new series on RobbyRaccoon dedicated to appreciating all the big and little things that make my days a little brighter.  Obviously it’s inspired by the amazing song “Reasons to be Cheerful (Part 3)”

The juice of the carrot, the smile of a parrot
A little drop of claret – anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, the days when I ain’t spotty,
Sitting on the potty, curing smallpox

-Ian Dury and the Blockheads

My new Camper sandals – on sale!

Staedtler Fineliners in a rainbow of colors

Getting perfect gauge on the swatch for my first knit sweater

Feeling cheerier already!

Someone knew exactly what to make me for lunch…

Followed by watermelon for dessert, and lots of help with monkey photos!

What a great Friday!

This is the second half of my grandma’s birthday present, with inspiration from her Chinese zodiac sign.

Once again, I am using Ysolda‘s adorable elephant pattern.  Elephant, you say?  Well, Whitney came up with some ingenius modifications that turn it into a monkey.

The only big change I made was to add a wire inside a bigger i-cord for his tail.  Now this little guy can hang around his favorite food all day long.   Yum yum yum!

Emily Ross explains in her pattern that Haruni means “grandmother” in the elven language of Tolkien, so this one is for my grandmother for her special birthday coming up.  The original pattern is so beautiful, especially the leaf edging.  I was most taken with many of the versions on Ravelry with just a plain stockinette center, but wanted to make a scarf that really highlighted the edging.

What I came up with is a scarf, provisionally cast on and worked in the round using just the edging chart.  Then the center stitches are picked up again and grafted together.  The trickiest part is working the u-turn ends of the pattern.  Here I used the technique for the point of the shawl but used two stitches extra, treating each as one would knit the “center” stitch of the shawl.  It works quite nicely, leaving a rosette of leaves at each end.  Although it’s a lot of stitches to handle, there are very few rounds as the scarf is basically worked lengthwise.

Any edging pattern that can make the 90º turn of a shawl can make the 180º turn of the end of the scarf with some added math.  This is definitely a technique that I plan on using in the future…

Today I decided to make like the witches in Macbeth and brew up a little yarn.

You may remember my Ishbel which I love, but was never going to wear (because it’s a shawl and it’s bright yellow – two qualities that are wonderful, but not on me.)  Well, a friend happened to mention that she loves the shawl but not the color.  Time to finally try dying with food coloring!  The goal was to get a deep green color and I think it was a success.

There are all sorts of resources for dying with probably much more consistent and reproducable results, but below is approximately what I did.  I had read a lot of posts online before starting, but then just mixed them together in the end.

-soaked the shawlette in a mixture of vinegar and water, just enough to cover it after saturated
-let sit 10 minutes
-mixed blue dye with vinegar and water (unknown quantities)
-began to heat dye mixture and trow in the shawl, and some of the soak
-let simmer
-remembered one extra ball of the same yarn and throw it in without soaking in vinegar first (it draws in the dye much more slowly, which is as expected) – yeah, not really the typical plan for this sort of thing…
-added green dye, aiming for lighter patches
-simmered
-added more green dye, aiming for the ball of yarn which is still quite a bit lighter

Recipe:  yarn + dye + acid + heat

As you can see, this is completely unscientific…  but it seemed to work.  The ball of yarn is in the lower right corner of the picture below, and you can see the slight color difference.

Not all of the dye was soaked up, as many of the tutorials said it would be, but the mixture got considerably lighter and then maintained its hue, which I took to mean that the fibers were as saturated as they could get.  It simmered for about another 20 minutes, then added cool water to the mixture to gradually take down the temperature.  After one rinse and one wash the water ran clear and the shawl was a pretty uniform shade of deep green. It’s drying now, and I want to make sure one more time that the colors don’t bleed before blocking.  (The photos show the colors when still wet.)

The ball of yarn was a pretty lighter green, and the inside was a bit paler.  This is giving me ideas for perhaps trying to dye up a transitioning colored ball of yarn…

Teaser for a future post: I’m working on a project that is going to take some of the shawly-triangular-ness out of a shawl…

To my sweetie-pie:

Apple Pie

Yummy yummy yummy
I’ve got love in my tummy,
And I feel like loving you!

-Ohio Express

Let’s eat!

Happy longest-day-of-the-year!