Friday, September 2, 2011

Spring at last!

I'll admit, I haven't been expecting sunny Spring weather, although we've had strangely nice weather lately. The first two days were awful, because I couldn't wash all the little clothes faster than my mudlets could unwash them! But when the mud dried up and they were outside playing all day, I got a little knitting in.

This is basically all I did for August.


And I had to resist the temptation to kitchener the toe until September 1 (at 5pm) so that I could claim 10 points for detention. They are Charades, knit top-down (for a change) in worsted weight yarn and 3.75mm needles. I'm wearing them now (at MacDonalds again, using the wifi) and they're very warm. But I'm going back to toeup...

I also entertained myself with a little dyeing, because I had a Babyniece project in mind that required skintoned yarn. I skeined up the leftover ball of madelinetosh sport (the good stuff for my little niece) and put 30g of coffee grounds in some boiling water.





Soaked the yarn in some dishwashing liquid (to make it soak in quicker) and citric acid (to make the color stick better; like vinegar but smells better!) for about 20 minutes.






Then kept it hot but not boiling in a pot on the stove (and yes, I strained out the coffee grounds through some cloth first! Was glad I thought of it in time...)




Turned a good color. The little white bit is the original color. Since this I overdyed it in a very pale red, because it was a little too yellow.




(Esther, don't read my blog for a while or look me up on Ravelry if you want Surprises next year, ok...)




















It's going to be a small Poppy. Since it's 5ply instead of 8, it should come out smaller than Jasmine's one, and I'm going to make babyniece's Poppy with a matching Bloom. I asked my sister-in-law if there were any Ravelry patterns she liked, and she sent me a list, including Bloom, which I'd wanted to make in the past but hadn't gotten around to. I thought, "I'll work out how to shrink it, to make Babyniece and Poppy matching dresses", so I was pretty pleased to find that, after buying the pattern, it included a free pattern for a matching doll dress! lol.


Anyway, the real reason I've been itching for Spring is to start my second year as a Slytherin. LOL! I'm addicted to this silly game because the others are so funny! There are about 160 Slytherins, and this year I got a job as reporter for the Dungeon Bulletin Board, which is fun. So, at 5pm (because we all go by the same timezone) I put in my OWL proposal and it was approved in no time. Before it was approved, though, I was working on my first class assignment, for which I am doing Bloom in Green, and I plan to do... erm... one or two other projects for Babyniece this month.




Though I seem to have gotten sucked into the ridiculously funny Toilet Roll Holder KnitAlong that the Slytherins have agreed upon as the perfect Astronomy assignment, since we're studying Uranus.




Giggles. I know. I'm 9 years old.





5 comments:

Lynne said...

The Charade socks are lovely - a great match of pattern and yarn.

kelgell said...

Oh fun! I love the babyniece idea. It's going to be so cute. And all that hogwarts stuff makes me laugh. Glad you're having fun with it.

Sinéad said...

Love the socks, really pretty and look lovely and comfy too. The yarn you dyed turned out great!

Ruth's Place said...

Gorgeous socks. I'm about to cast on that pattern myself.

Love the way the yarn has turned out.

Tara said...

Obviously, I'm 9 years old as well, because that's an HYSTERICAL project for your astronomy assignment! LOL!!!

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