just in case i didn’t have enough blankets for my girls, i decided to make another one for the may cal. i’m using three colors of malbrigo laceweight from eat sleep knit – azul bolito (dark blue),jewel blue (light blue), and sauterne (yellow) i just loved these three colors together so couldn’t resist. it took a lot of crocheting and frogging, but finally i decided on the design. here are all the centers done and a few of them put together.
i love the way the colors go together. what do you think?
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a new cal for may
we interrupt your crafting….
there has been a horrible wildfire raging in the fort mcmurray area. almost 90,000 people havve been evacuated and are waiting to find out if they have homes to go back to. included in that number are my brother and sister in law who don’t have to wait to find out… they already know that their home is one of the over 2000 structures that has gone up in flames so far. we would have helped out anyway, but with that personal connection i wanted to do something just a bit more special. so along with other things i made up a few crocheted bunnies to send to children affected by the fire.
here’s the first
and all three together
if you want to help you can give to the red cross or samaritans purse and designate it for the wildfire relief
the alberta and canadian govts are matching all donations made to the red cross by canadians through the month of may, so your gift will multiply!
thanks
all part of the process
i decided to knit my realfees some striped sweaters, and crochet coordinating funky hats. i wanted something that would be more suitable for the boys, or at least unisex. i tried, as much as possible, to carry the ends along so i’d have less to sew in, but i still ended up with this!
after sewing in all the ends i ended up with a pile of yarn bits almost as big as the pile of sweaters/hats
i still have to add snaps and make some pants to go with them so my dolls aren’t indecently exposed 😉 but then i’ll take more pictures and eventually one of each color will end up in my etsy store.
cal dyed and blocking
i mixed about three different shades of blue in a dye pot. no idea of how much. just kept adding till i got a deep royal. i started with dylon ocean (light blue) and blue jean (dark blue) then added a whole bunch of blue food coloring to brighten it up. white vinegar and salt as mordants. vinegar because i was dying wool, and salt because the dylon dye called for it. simmered it on the stove for about 45 min. periodically pulling the swatch out to check the color. then rinsed thoroughly in cold water once i was done. the result was that the red turned to a gorgeous deep plum color and even the purply black seems more purple, so i ended up with a deep tone on tone purple. it was even better than i had hoped. i thought it would be purple with black but the black seems to have lightened up and the toning is much more subtle. overall i’m thrilled and hope my niece will like it too.
when i took this picture i realized i had made a mistake down in the first pattern repeat so had to very carefully clip it out res-stitch it. now i’m really glad i made a swatch and had a bit of extra yarn in the right color!
this was as close as i could get to the new color.it’s showing up a little redder than it should be, i just couldn’t get the true color. it is about that dark , but is a tone on tone blackbery purple. the pattern really shows up now and i love it!
day 3 eat sleep knit cal
i finished the last 7 rows. though i was distracted and had to redo the last three rows.. twice! :argh! in my defence i had my kid home sick and i’m fighting the flu as well.
apparently my scale is not as accurate as i would have liked. i had to frog my swatch to finish the last row and still ended up with only about 15 yds to spare. however i did win the came of chicken since i finished without running out:) i was hoping to put a border on the shawl but no yarn left and i don’t have anything in my stash that goes well enough. so it will stay as is. planning to dye it tomorrow if i have the right color in the basement dye stash.
apparently my scale is not as accurate as i would have liked. i had to frog my swatch to finish the last row and still ended up with only about 15 yds to spare. however i did win the came of chicken since i finished without running out:) i was hoping to put a border on the shawl but no yarn left and i don’t have anything in my stash that goes well enough. so it will stay as is.
now to see if i have the right blue dye in the basement dye stash to fix the color. i will post a picture of it again when i get it dyed and blocking or blocked.
day 2 eat sleep knit cal
lots done today. i only have 7 more rows to do tomorrow. looks like i’m playing chicken with this one though. it’s taking about 1 gram per row and i only have 9 grams left. so it all depends on how accurate my scale is.
day 1 progress
i got almost up to the 16 star pattern set done. not bad for the first day, i think if i keep this up i can get it done in a week like i was hoping. we’ll see how much i get done tomorrow….
joining my first cal
need a birthday gift for my niece so i’m joining a kal (cal) for a space shawl with some lovely soft yarn stashed ages ago from eat sleep knit. ( i get a lot of my doll yarn from there. the malabrigo lace is perfect for the tinies and sooo soft. this colorway just didn’t work out and i couldn’t bear to give it away so i’ts been sitting in my stash for years!)
this is just the swatch to check my hook size. and i’ll use it to make sure i have the right blue tone, before i dye the whole shawl
the color way looks prettier/brighter than it really is, and it really doesn’t do the pattern justice, i’m more into tone on tone than variegated yarns lately. but the yarn is so nice i’m going to over dye it blue once i’m done to make a lovely purple and black tone on tone shawl.
i’m going to
New chair, new bear
amber takes a break from test fitting her new hat to checkout the bargain chair we got in the clearance section of pier one (it’s a cell phone holder and was marked down from $23 to less than $6 so we snagged both of them 😉 )
she is also cuddling a new bear by honeythorpe, the little girls were much more excited with that parcel than my usual purchases and are having battles over who gets the bear. last i saw they were drawing up time sheets!
we may have to have another lesson on sharing :lol but amber got first dibs as her reward for patiently sitting and letting me try my new crochet hat pattern on her. i still have to sew ends in, crochet the trim and block the flaps to take out some of the curl….so it actually sits like it is in the picture.
i’ve got patterns worked out for my pukifee, littlefee and minifee sizes now, but am running into a snag on the realfee size. they have such big elf/animal ears that the ear flaps just look silly and plain caps are too boring so i’m still trying to decide what to do for them. i’ve done lacey berets before but i wanted something that was a closer fit.
fireplace final installment
grate painted black looks like a well used cast iron grate.
thread fire led lights through logs btw i ended up painted the lags with my ultra matte varnish because the ash kept getting all over my hands at this step Lol
put crumpled cellophane over the lights. this was included in the kit and just needed to be cut. i’d have preferred something more orange but couldn’t find any.
punch holes for wires in back wall. i couldn’t find my awl so i used a large yarn needle and put in three small holes instead of one larger one. it really didn’t matter in the end.
back view of wires threaded through
attach wires red to red, black to black
tape everything down. the little white thing is an on off switch so the lights don’t go continuously.
finished!
i took a video of the fireplace with the lights flickering and it looks awesome. but apparently i can’t upload video to flickr, so i’ll have to figure out another place to upload it and then add it in.