Leah - A Tutorial! Adding ready made squares to your blanket

Ok so here's the square I made today somewhere where it wasn't suitable to take the whole blanket. It's sat next to the "hole" it will fill soon. So step one - check your colours :)


Step 2: on the side of the single suare you'll have the edge you need to sew in, Seeing as this is the non slipped stitch edge you need to work with the ribbed edge you have. Go through both the ribs with your needle.

Step 3: Line up your square to the edge it needs to be sewed onto. The green is already part of the existing blanket, had I not pre-knitted the square the is th e edge I would be using to cast on my next square. Push the needle through the slipped stitches (both)




This is how it looks after a few stitches. Tried to find slightly contrasting colours so that you'd see the stitch but that it wouldn't show up too much on the blanket. The thread i'm using is slightly lighter purple (more obvious on the green)

This is how the back looks after sewing it all the way.





And the front..



ok now the other edge. So orange is the original blanket and purple is the one I need to join, you can see the slipped stitches clearly on the orange (The V's)




Sew across both:



Back view:


Front view:



Whole view (front):


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Leah: Quick "Blanket Status" catch up

Well, as you know my sock blanket project began a few weeks ago with a trip to a friends house who convinced me to have a go at knitting. I'd been inspired to try by you and my mam had taught me in the past so I thought I'd give it a go. Armed with the instructions, a few mini balls of sock yarn and two dpns I had a little go and made:




My very first square! As you see there are mistakes and the "ridge" is on both sides but I didn't care, I had begun! Few days later I had achieved:




This!! A mini blanket! My squares were defo getting better and I had just learnt how to knit straight onto the blanket instead of sewing the squares in. As I had only been given a few small balls of yarn I was running out of variety but luckily one or two had long colour repeats and so I could get away with a few extra squares from the same yarns that looked different.

Then something awful happened - I started looking into buying my own sock yarn - DISASTER!! I'm now officially hated by my bank account! While waiting for my new purchases to arrive I started reading up a bit more on this blanket and realised I'd gone about it the wrong way, I should have started with the bottom of it and worked up and so I decided to add a chain out to the left to make the foundation of it:






I pretty much paused with the blanket while I made a kindle cover for myself (excuse the safety pin holding up my dropped stitch):



But then dearest Oliver decided that he loved the kindle and stole it from me! Instead of buying him his own for his upcoming birthday I decided that he could have mine until we go on holiday sometime and that I'd make him his own manly Kindle cover. Here it is nearly finished:




As soon as I finish it (4 triangles, weave in the ends inside, sew zip on) then it will be full steam ahead on my blanket. I have done a few bits such as bulk out the right hand side and added a few lighter colours in, this is how it looks at the moment:




Dumb taking a pic on a dark background but I swore I'd blog before bed and it's nearly half midnight :s!!!

Anyway, here's the 17mini skeins I've siphoned off for you so far Sara dearest:




Top down:
2x KG
6x colinette jitterbug
1x drachenwolle
Rest are randoms from bigger balls from eBay/forum!

Stash pics tomorrow :) Nos da xxx

Blanket so far

It's getting wide :) Mutant square is on the right xx

Kool-Aid dyeing in stages

Copied from my blog here for easy reference.

First grab your yarn, and your kool-aid sachets. Choose your colours wisely ;)

I bought my kit from DT Crafts and this is their method. 

Unwind your skein of yarn. Posing it for a picture is optional.

Let the yarn soak for up to 45 minutes. This needs to happens so that the dye penetrates the wool completely, otherwise it goes blotchy. Depends what effect you're after I guess!

Note: This one just looks like spaghetti, my previous skein (90% alpaca, 10% nylon) looked like curly noodles after soaking!

Pour your kool-aid into an empty (clean) bottle. Note how the powder is white, yet magically turns blue when it touches water!! :)

Make up all the colours you need while the yarn is soaking. It doesn't take too long. 

These are Ice blue raspberry (blue), lemonade (yellow) and strawberry (red).

Take out the yarn from the water it's been soaking in, and squeeze the excess water. I squeezed a bit too much, and by the time I got to the second and third colour had to put some water back on it. A spray bottle might be an idea if you have one, to keep it damp. 

I'm awful at not tangling yarn while handling it! This is how not to do it! :)

Pour/dribble/drizzle/chuck your dye over the part of yarn that you want that colour. This time I did it in sections, the first time I dyed I did vertical stripes, which means very short colour repeats, and much more blending of the colours. Check underneath to make sure you don't have any white bits, and fill in the gaps if you don't want them. You can gently squeeze on the yarn to get the dye to move around a little more. 

Once you've done all the sections, you need to 'cook' it to fix the dye. The citric acid in the kool-aid just needs heating up. Scoop up your yarn and put it in a pot. Add water because it's really important that it doesn't boil dry. Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

(You can also do this in a microwave - put in a microwave suitable container, add some water and heat on full power for 3-4 minutes in 30 second blasts. When I did the first one mine took longer, I wanted to be sure that it was bubbling!)

(You can also steam the yarn on the hob for 20 minutes, or for 5 minutes if using a microwave steamer.)

Just to show the almost finished object :)

Simmering away nicely :)

Take the pot off the heat and allow to cool. Once this is done rinse the yarn well - insects are attracted to the sweet smell of the kool-aid so make sure you double rinse it! 

Once rinsed, lay out flat to dry, you don't want gravity over-stretching your yarn and ruining it! 

Once dry, rewind into a skein until you want to wind it into a ball. It's better to leave yarn in a skein until you need to use it, as winding yarn into a ball puts tension on the yarn, stretching it. 

Have a lovely Sunday :) 

xx

Making the most of it

Morning :)

It's my last day of late shift today - thank god! - but that means that I probably won't be able to churn out as much as I have been. Started the orange one last night while watching Eragon, and finished the other two this morning before 11.30 :) I have a couple of balls of wool that are 10g or less, put a picture on my blog. The blue is all gone, but if you want I can send them to you? You should be able to get 2, maybe 3 squares out of them all. Let me know!

xx

Today's Haul

Hey Blodyn,

So I thought I'd start us off! Here are the 4 squares I made today. I've got less than 1g of that blue left now, which is a shame because it's a gorgeous colour. It's a The Knitting Goddess mini skein, in Ocean. She sells it in a full 425m skein of 4-ply yarn too, which is brilliant news. It's now officially on my 'to buy' list! 

The third orange/purple/pink square underneath is also from The Knitting Goddess, but this time in Sunset. Also a really nice colour! 

I wound the pink skein of Colinette Jitterbug yarn I had from the Creative Pack into a ball earlier. I knit a square from it, and I think we may have a problem. It's a heavier 4-ply than anything else I've used in the blanket. See how it's thicker than the knitting goddess yarn?

I'm hoping it'll be okay. I knit that as a standalone square, but I'm going to knit one into the blanket tomorrow (hopefully) and then I'll let you know. I'm guessing that all the Jitterbug yarn will be heavier than what else we have. 

Sweet dreams, and happy knitting :)

xx