Upcycling!

Here is a beautiful container of our daughter's favorite yogurt. Yum!


But what's that sticking out of the top?


Yarn, of course! The beautiful, naturally-dyed superwash merino fingering weight sock yarn from Tactile: A Fiber Arts Studio that I used for my Lace Ribbon Scarf, as I mentioned in my last post.


It certainly helps manage the yarn and keep it neat.


This is step one in creating your very own yarn holder. In my case, I used half a bag of leftover dry kidney beans from the pantry.

Step two? Use a pair of scissors and cut a slit and hole in the lid, natch.

Knit on!

Good News: Lace Ribbon Scarf; Bad News: Sun Damaged Scarf

First, the good news!

I had a lot of fun knitting a Lace Ribbon Scarf.

Alas, I have become addicted to Addi Lace Turbos. So pointy! So fine! Well, it's better than a crack addiction, right?

The yarn is a beautiful, naturally-dyed superwash merino fingering weight sock yarn from Tactile: A Fiber Arts Studio. It's dyed with indigo, which means that it "crocked" (vocabulary word of the day) dye all over my hands as I knit. It's very interesting to have blue hands, and dark blue lines showing the precise path that I wind the yarn over my fingers to tension it. I should have taken a picture of my hands, but I was a bad blogger and didn't think of it.



This is the scarf in progress on crack needles Addi Lace Turbos, size 3. Also, you can see some beautifully purpley stitch markers from JL Yarnworks, and one of my own row counter stitch markers.



And here she is blocking. Pretty, yes? I love it, it's a lovely little decorative accent to spruce up my otherwise drab wardrobe.

And now the bad news.

Some of you with very long memories will remember that I started knitting a Falling Water Scarf a while back with some purple sock yarn that I just loved. I blogged about it here.


This is the "before" picture.

I finished the knitting, um, about 18 months ago? I'm not sure. And I stuck it in a bag to await blocking. At the time the household was rather unsettled, in the sense that we were doing a major remodel on our house. All three of us slept in the uninsulated, bare-studs living room for months, and for a couple of weeks we had to remove all of our belongings from the house and live at a motel. So -- I had a wee bit of trouble finding an area where I could block my scarf without insulation bits raining down on it or sawdust coating it. I should have borrowed a friend's spare room or something, but -- OK, I'll say it -- I got lazy. I stuck the scarf in a clear ziploc bag and let it sit on my desk in my home office, one of the relatively unscathed rooms during the remodel.


This is the "after" picture.

It was hard for me to photograph properly, but there is bad sun (or desklamp?) damage to this scarf now. It looks really crappy, to be blunt.

I am thinking of attempting to over-dye it with purple food coloring or Wilton's food color paste, both of which I have purchased. Again with the laziness and procrastination, right?

Any tips for me on dyeing? Help kick-start me into dyeing this, already!

More Row Counter Stitch Markers

Yet more row counter stitch markers:



Two of these were a gift for someone in my Stitch 'n' Bitch, and the third is mine because I love purple (had you noticed?). Alas, the purple beads in the ring were a little smaller than the black ones I've used previously, the ring was too tight and it broke.

I will re-do the ring with black beads. Meanwhile I'm using it, but I have swiped a ring from one of my earlier efforts.

I might be over-doing it with the dangle on the bottom. As much as I like the look, it can tangle in the yarn a bit. We'll see, I can snip it off if I get too tired of it.