Purply blue hat

I had a piece of a thrift store sweater left over (bottom front) - not yet unraveled. I dyed it that way (progressive-type dyeing), and only unraveled it thereafter. It was an interesting effect, with color gradation from top to bottom, but also within each stitch - outside of stitches took more red dye, inside of stitches more blue.

I knit it into a hat of my own design. The seed stitch border looks nice, but is not quite as warm as a ribbed border which draws in close to your head. I like the way the purl-diamonds turned out.

Train tam

This hat was a Christmas present - very well received and fun to knit. I followed the pattern very closely, and added some embroidered flowers. The pattern is a free one: http://cosymakes.com/2007/08/18/train-tam/

Second socks

A second pair of socks, made from a pattern in the two-socks-at-a-time book. These were a lot more difficult than the first pair. The yarn was thinner, and the dark blue color made it hard to see the stitches. The heels also got messed up at first, which took a while to undo and redo. Whew, I am glad they are done.

Fingerless gloves adapted from a pattern in the book "Homespun Handknit". The yarn is recycled from a thrift store sweater - the label said it was knit in Nepal. The original yarn color was undyed off-white, and I dyed it with food color. This yarn was interesting in that it was very "sticky" - lots of little grasping hairs on each thread. Undoing a row felt like taking apart velcro.

Fiddle faddle

Holiday stars made with bits of leftover yarn. Pattern is from Elizabeth Zimmerman in her book Knitter's Almanac.

Basketweave blanket

The yarn for this blanket was recycled from a thrift store JCrew sweater. The yarn was thick, soft, amazing. The first photo shows a strand of Cascade220 (the thinner strand) compared to the yarn from the sweater.

Now, I usually do a gage swatch, but for this blanket I didn't, I just cast on 144 stitches as the pattern requested, and knit until I ran out of yarn. Well, those 144 stitches produed a blanket over 5 feet wide. And because it was recycled yarn from 1 sweater, I was limited on how much yarn I had. So it's only 2 feet tall. I was originally going to send this to Afghanistan, but the size was outside their requirements, so it's staying here to be my thick, soft, amazing [and very wide :)] futon blanket.

Black walnut dyeing

Black walnut husks make a very strong dye, and I wanted to try it on some yarn. Luckily, my parents have some majestic black walnut trees on their place (above). The nuts fall to the ground (below), which make them easy to harvest.


I used a piece of wood to separate the husks from the nuts, then put the husks into enough water to cover them (below), and let that soup sit outside for a couple days.


Then I strained out the bits and pieces of the husks, and put in the yarn. I put one skein in for 24-hours, and it turned a darker golden brown. The second skein was put in for shorter times - dyed so it would be self-striping. From doing a little research on black walnuts, some folks recommend heating the dye, but I dyed these outside in a bucket and it seemed to work well.