Knits For New Baby

I had a feeling that this new grandchild, even before he was born, was going to be a more earthy, grounded child than his older sister, who is into hot pink and purple. So I knitted his baby blanket in the most un-baby like colors you could imagine!  A patchwork of muted earth tones, heathers, with a bit of bright color here and there.  The surprising thing is, it fits him perfectly!  And Mom can use the baby blanket as a throw later on, owing to the fact that it does not look like a baby blanket.

I made the blanket from 100% wool from Knitbits, since this

was a January baby, born in Vermont.  I figured he would enjoy the warmth of wool as opposed to cotton.  I had some leftover yarn, so I decided to make a cocoon for him as well. I had never made one before, (it's super simple,) and it turns out to be a fabulous and functional item for newborns. Everyone complimented me on how nice it looked and how useful it was.  I will have to incorporate some of these into my Etsy site.

When he's grown out of it, you can unravel the bottom a bit, bind off and you have a beautiful cowl!  

Enjoy, baby Aviv!

Catch Up

You wouldn't know it from my blog, but I have been busy!  I have been working on my new Etsy store, My Handmade Collection, www.etsy.com/your/shops/MyHandmadeCollection.  Notice the slight change in names, from "The" to "My".  I had to drop a letter to fit in the space for an Etsy shop name, so I opted for My Handmade Collection.  Anyway, I have 20 items for sale, and working on some more.

Mostly scarves like the one here, some fiber jewelry too.










Plus, my daughter requested a blanket for the new baby coming in January.  So I've started on that too.

This is decidedly the most un-baby like blanket ever.  It is made with squares of different colored leaf pattern blocks, that will be joined with a band of purple heather all around.  100% wool, so it will be nice and warm for a January baby!

Right now, the squares don't look square, but they will once they are blocked.  I really like it, since I've decided that this baby will be very earthy, compared to his/her sister, who is super glam, at the age of 2!


Besides these projects, I have been working on my knitting machine, getting more proficient on it, and doing lots of landscaping projects around our house, from planting blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, to putting in a stone walkway.  so now I just have to find time to write in my blog!

BIG SCORE!

One of our favorite pastimes is going to garage and yard sales. We have found all sorts of things we need (and some things we don't need) for very cheap prices. Naturally, my ears really pricked up when my husband found a sale that featured a knitting machine and yarn. So off we went at the appointed time and sure enough, there was a Brother Knitting machine, with ribber attachment plus a Knitleader for $100. Plus , we found 3 big boxes of yarn of various colors, 25 pounds altogether, almost all a fingering 100% wool Japanese yarn. In fact, everything is in Japanese; the knitting machine instructions, and the yarn labels! We got it all for $120. Good deal, if you ask me. Now, I just have to figure out how to use this new machine, which looks way more complicated than the Bond that I have. Can't wait to make something!

Sunset Sky

Continuing my color exploration.......
This time it's blues and purples. This combo above reminds me of a purple sunset in a blue sky.









The colors in the skein in the smaller photo also reminds me of some beautiful sunset colors I have seen. This is the only skein that I made of this color combination because I originally dyed it with the skeins you see below, but the lighter pink section did not dye evenly. So I decided to hand-paint in some orange and this is what it came out like.

I Really Like These Colors

Some more of my dyed yarn. these samples are some of my favorite color combinations: pink, orange, and teal, olive green, light brown and lavender.



I am working on softening up this yarn, since it is quite rough. I believe it came from a rug factory. After dyeing the yarn, I wash it, then soak it in fabric softener for about 30 minutes, then rinse. It definitely softens the yarn a bit, but it is still on the rough side. I am experimenting now on felting the fabric. Future posts on that.

Another Toy

In my search for ways to make knitted items faster, I decided to check out a knitting machine. There are quite a few on the market, but my thought was to get an inexpensive one to play around with, in case it became a failed experiment. I checked out Ebay, and found tons of machines, from $20 to over $10,000! The one I chose is a Bond Incredible Sweater Machine, which has a plastic bed and carriage.

It took a little time to get the bugs out of it, but now have it working pretty well. It is very fast to make a simple stockinette stitch, but when you start doing some kind of pattern, you have to hand manipulate the stitches, which takes some time. Still, I think it has some potential for certain things, and the idea of upgrading at some point is not out of the question.


You can see some samples I made here, just playing around.

MORE YARN!

For this batch, I used Teal as the main color, tie-dyeing each skein (2 skeins of 220 yards each).
Once the teal was in the yarn, I untied the scrap yarn that was used to resist areas of the skeins and then hand painted the yarn with Periwinkle and Sapphire Blue. At the very end, I sprinkled a bit of dry Chartreuse over the wet yarn, then heat set the colors.
It's interesting to sprinkle a dry color onto the wet yarn, in this case at least, the chartreuse came out very bright, but since there is not much of it, it doesn't overwhelm. It definitely adds a pop of color, though. I can see using this method when you want to add just a little bit of contrasting color.

It's also interesting that greens are the primary colors, though I also used some pretty dark blues.

Definitely enjoying the process!