Hand dyed baby socks

This autumn I met a really cute and sweet baby boy who happened to turn 6 months old in September. Since I didn't want him to freeze during the winter, I decided to give him a small half-year-present:

Pattern: Vauvan ryppyvartiset villasukat
Needles: 2 mm
Yarn: Novita Wool, hand dyed with birch and onion

So, the first skein of hand dyed yarn used! The 50 g of Novita Wool was almost perfect for a pair of baby socks. There wasn't much of the yarn left when I finished these. I guess I have to hope there'll be more babies soon! :)

A 6-months-old little fellow is also very, very curious. Everything around him is interesting, especially if the things are colourful. Therefor I thought the boy also should have something to look at, and I sewed on these small teddybears :) Really think they brought that something little extra to the socks.

Happy yellow  and teddies for a happy baby boy

One more geek kept warm!

A good friend of my graduated from Helsinki University of Technology (or Aalto university) and now that he was an official nerd (i.e. engineer), I thought he needed something geeky to keep him warm during the winter. I looked for different patterns for a while, but this was in the end the geekiest pattern I could find:

Pattern: Geek mittens

Yarn: Novita 7 Veljestä

Needles: 3 mm

I skipped the penguin and made them a little bit smaller but for the rest I pretty much followed the colourwork-pattern. And they should be quite warm too, thanks to that colourwork and doubble yarn on the inside.

It would by the way be interesting to know if the numbers actually mean something! Anyone out there who speaks 10110001-language? :)

Colour it with nature!

Yeah, that's what I did this summer at work! We dyed yarn using natural colours, mostly different plants. I already gave you a sneak peak in my previous post, but here comes some more pictures!

First we started with aluna salt to make the wool ready for the colours. Then, here's also a picture of our first "soup", i.e. onion.

During the summer we tried a lot of different plants etc. This was the first time I tried to dye wool, and I have to say I'm really amazed by the wonderful, beautiful colours I got. I mean, look at them!! Wow!

From the left to the right:

- cochineal, second round (kokenilli, jälkiliemi), on white Novita Wool

- cochineal + madder (kokenilli + krappi), on white Novita Wool

- madder (krappi), on beige DROPS Nepal

- onion (keltasipuli), on white DROPS Karisma

- onion, second round (keltasipuli, jälkiliemi), on white DROPS Karisma

- tansy (pietaryrtti), on white Novita Wool

- birch, second round + onion, third round (koivu, jälkiliemi + sipuli, kolmas liemi), on white DROPS Karisma

- birch (koivu), on white DROPS Karisma

- onion, second round (keltasipuli, jälkiliemi), on grey DROPS Alaska

- first birch + onion, third round (koivu + keltasipuli, kolmas liemi). Then later dipped in woad (morsinko), on white L.O.O.Y. Ekologsk ull

- red onion, second round (punasipuli, jälkiliemi), on white DROPS Karisma

- red onion, (punasipuli), on white DROPS Karisma

- first birch (koivu), then later in cochineal (kokenilli), and then a third round in woad (morsinko), on white L.O.O.Y. Ekologisk ull

- woad, very late dip (morsinko, hyvin myöhäinen kasto), on grey DROPS Alaska

- woad (morsinko), on grey DROPS Alaska

And here's a close up of what you can get by using mostly onions (easy to do at home): onion: first round, onion: second round, onion: on grey yarn, onion + birch: third round, red onion: first round, red onion: second round

I found it really interesting that the yellow from onion turned green when the yarn was grey. Then I also liked the woad very much, since it gave a blue colour, which you normally only get from indigo. It also was the magic key for my favourite dyed yarn from this summer: the bright green. First it had a rather dull yellow colour from the birch leaves, but then - voilà - dip it in blue and you have an almost sparkling, delicious green colour!

I only used superwash yarns, like DROPS Karisma and Novita Wool, so that of course also helped to make the colours really bright. But still, everyone told me I succeded very well with this for a first-timer. Maybe it was beginners luck? :)

However, I have one skein that didn't turn out that well. Or at least not as it was supposed to, but I guess it's quite funny like this too :) First it also had a dull yellow colour, then I tried to save it by adding cochineal to it, but something went wrong and the colour I got was an ugly violet-brownish shade of grey. With really dark violet spots. Then I tried to save it once more by dipping it into the blue woad, and this is the result:

I really hope I may continue experimenting with natural dyes next summer again at work, because this was really a lot of fun! The only problem is that now I have like 15 different coloured skeins, all of them only 50-100 g. But I'm sure I'll come up with something to do with all of them! :) One skein was actually already used for baby socks, but more about that later... ;)

Truly, deeply black

Last spring I had time for a few courses from the handicraft teaching program. One of the compulsory ones was a basic course in knitting and crotcheting :) Sounds like fun, doesn't it? We just sat in a class knitting and/or crotcheting during the lessons. Talk about a fun way to get some credits for studying!

Anyway, I have a lot of smaller projects I finished during that course, but I decided to begin with the biggest one: a black sweater.

Pattern: partly my own, partly Tubey by Cassie Rovitti 

Yarn: Novita Kelo

Needles: 8 mm

In Ravelry 

I think I will have to do the Tubey-sweater again sometime, with different yarn. I'm not at all satisfied with the way this yarn looks in this sweater. The main reason for why I chose it, was that a) I already had some of it in my stash, and b) I didn't have enough time to knit a whole sweater with thinner yarn. 

I like the Tubey design, though. With the graphical, a little bit Snow-Whitey neckline. But next time I think I'll try to do a similar neckline without dividing the sweater in two peaces. Although that, too, makes the design a bit special.

Anyway, it doesn't fit that well and the thick yarn and big loops in the stitches makes it rather compulsory to wear a black t-shirt underneath. But at least it's quite warm, yet not too warm. The idea was to make a sweater that I could use during the winter on slightly more convival occasions. Like when you need to be kind of elegant, but still a bit cosy. I still do thing the design suits that purpose very well, however the thick yarn maybe doesn't.

So, in other words, this is the first project in a while that I'm not that happy with. Haven't actually used it at all yet, eventhough I finished it already in May. ...Although, it hasn't perhaps been cold enough just yet... :) 

And YES, I, once again, used that same textured pattern! :D But now I promise it'll take a while before you see it again!

Then, s small sneak peak of what's coming up next time on this blog:

Socks for a diving suit!

Well hello again! What have I been up to this autumn, you might think. Well, quite a lot actually. That's why it's been a bit quiet in this blog for a while. But the good thing with the fact that I've been busy is that I'll soon have a lot of nice stuff to show you! :)

First, a project where the deadline was coming up very, very fast:

My colleague at work needed a pair of almost kneehigh, tight socks to wear underneath her diving suit now that the waters are getting chilly up here in the North. I had three days time to finish them. And I did! :D

Pattern: from my head

Needles: 3,5 mm

Yarn: wool mixed with dog hair

The yarn was very interesting. My colleague asked me to use some of her own yarn. Most of it was wool from one of her own sheep and the rest of it was hair from her own dog. Together the white and the yellow turned into a lovely, pale beige colour. And since it contained some dog hair, it was really, really warm. I've tried one of her stoles knitted with this same yarn, and if you compare it with a regular stole made of 100% wool, the difference is huge! Too bad they don't sell yarns like this in shops... I'd use it for all my winter clothing!

Since I had to finish these socks very quickly, I didn't have time to do anything else than basic socks, without any fuss like cables or something similar. But once I reached the tip of the toe, I couldn't help myself. They just looked so dull and boring. I simpy had to add this small stripe made using the same textured stitch than in my grey scarf. And at least my colleague thought they looked cute. And she also said she'd never had socks that fit her feet so perfectly before. So I guess she was pretty pleased with my superfast work :)