Fun with Kool-Aid

A while back I bought a bunch of white/natural colored wool yarn with the intention of dyeing it. Well, the day has finally come! Last week I saw this tutorial on dyeing with Kool-Aid, which I happen to have a ton of (yes, we love Kool-Aid around here), so I figured why not?

I rarely do step-by-step stuff on this blog, mostly because I'm lazy and forgetful when it comes to hauling out my camera until things are finished, but today is a new day! Woohoo!

First, I wound the skein around the back of a chair so that it'd be one even piece and easier to get the dye on evenly. Sorry, no pic of that, but I'm sure you can picture it in your head. Next, as per instructions, I soaked it in a bucket of warm water with a little white vinegar.


Here's the initial colors I started out with. Lemonade on the left, Blue Berry Blast on the right, and kind of a mix of the two in the middle.

And a before pic (kinda looks like spaghetti, doesn't it?)



First lesson I learned? Three packages worth is not going to be nearly enough. Crap. So off to the store I went. Of course, I had to be dumb and forget to get more lemonade (I was distracted by the unusually wide variety of flavors they had at the particular store I went to), so I settled for Lemon-Lime instead. In the end, I think I ended up using something like 7 or 8 packets.

Here's the after:



Note to self, next time wear gloves.


After a couple zaps in the microwave, I let it cool and then started rinsing. This wasn't in the instructions, but after rinsing I stuck it back in the water/vinegar mix for a few minutes. And now here it is outside, drying.


I'm surprised by how vibrant the colors stayed. If I'd known they would set that bright, I probably would've diluted the kool-aid powder a bit more. I was hoping for more of a graded effect of blue-green-yellow, but my lack of yellow kind of nixed that. Still, I think it'll make a cute pair of longies or something. And I figure I can always try selling it if I don't like it for E. I'll try and take another picture after it's dry and I've wound it into a ball or skein.

Saturday Night Sewing

I am on a hot sewing streak this weekend! It must be because I decided that I was going to have a bunch of crochet done by Monday and I'm such a terrible procrastinator, haha.

In any case, yesterday, I finally tried sewing my own cloth diaper. I've been wanting to do it for a while and even cut the pieces earlier in the week out of some scrap flannel someone gave me, but I only got it all assembled yesterday. It was actually not nearly as hard as I thought. In fact, I was kind of shocked when I finished it and it actually looked like a diaper!

I was so excited that I immediately put it on the munchkin - over her regular diaper. Not only did it fit, but with room to spare, so I'm thinking it's probably a wee bit big. I'm going to have to go back and tweak the pattern a bit. Still, I did take off her regular diaper and have her wear this to dinner (with a cover since it's not waterproof), and it worked great! Homemade diapers, here I come!

I also finished a project for a bi-weekly Project Runway Challenge my friend Tracee came up with. The assignment was pretty straightforward: take a piece of clothing from your closet and turn it into something else. I really wanted to take one of T's Hawaiian shirts and turn it into a button-back dress for E, but I couldn't quite convince him to part with one. It was probably for the best though as I suspect that may have been too difficult a project for me. Instead I took one of his old t-shirts and turned into a little tank dress. And just for kicks I added a little appliqué robot. It's my first recon project, and it's also my first time doing any time of gathering for the skirt. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

I have to confess though, I made a pretty big mistake last night when I put it together. I sewed the right side of the skirt to the wrong side of the top, so all the seams are showing now on the top. I about cried when I realized it because it was kind of a bitch to sew with all the gathers and whatnot. But T said it wasn't that noticeable, so rather than spend all night ripping it out, I decided to do as Tim Gunn would say and carry on and make it work.

Here's the before:

And the after:


And here's E wearing it with a smile (she kept pointing to it and saying "bobut"):

Less than a success

Here's another bit of crochet food that didn't quite turn out. It's supposed to be a pear, but it ended up kinda gigantic and looks more like some sort of gourd. I'm going to have to tweak the pattern a bit to get it to be more pear-sized.

Other than that, I've been very busily working on other food items that I'm hoping to get up in an Etsy store very soon. Stay tuned.

woohoo!

I finally finished the nap mat! And let me tell you, it was WAY harder than I thought it was going to be. Or to be fair, it's not that it was hard, just lots of steps and very time-consuming. It did turn out pretty nice though. T told me I should make them for money and I told him I'm never making another one again. Although, technically that's not true since I have to make one for E too, now that I've signed her up for Mother's Day Out (better known to the rest of the world as preschool) this fall. I think the next one will definitely be easier, now that I have a clue. I'm also probably going to make some changes to the pattern I used to make it less complex.

Here's a couple more pictures of it rolled up, so you can see the tabs and the carrying strap:

Finally finished something

The irony is, this is something I just started at Knitting Night In on Saturday. I know, I'm terrible. It's just so much more fun to start something new. Anyways, this is the wool soaker that I mentioned before. I knit it using this pattern, but as usual, I skipped the swatch guage so it turned out gigantic (if you look close, you'll see that I've already folded the waistband down too). There's a reason I never normally knit clothing. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll probably go down at least a couple needle sizes.

Still, I think it's salvageable if I felt it a bit. I do really like the colors, and the stripe used up the small bit of pink yarn I had laying around. Although now I'm wishing I had more pink since I still need to add some ribbing or ruffles around the leg holes, but I'm going to call it done enough to post.

Front:

Back:

Busy bee

I spent the better part of the weekend working on various projects. Unfortunately, not a single one is totally finished, so I have no pictures to post just yet. I was just saying the other day how I have a terrible habit of starting things and then never finishing them. I need to work on that. But in any case, I'm hoping to finish at least one thing tonight and get some pictures up. This weekend's big project was a nap mat for my friend Meighan's daughter. She bought all the materials some time ago, but I just finally started working on it last week. Like most of the things I aspire to make, I thought it was going to fairly easy, but it did turn out to be more complicated than I thought. Just lots and lots of steps to go through. And me making dumb mistakes that I had to go back and fix didn't help things either.

Other stuff I've been working on: more crochet food, including sushi! And sewing cloth diapers and more wipes. Not nearly as fun or exciting, but practical and necessary. I'm also trying my hand at knitting a wool soaker (another cloth diaper accessory, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about). It's a little funny that I've waited this long to make something like that, considering that it's actually pretty easy to make. I also really really want to try dyeing some wool yarn I have with Kool-Aid, but I'm going to hold off until I get some other things finished first.

Rise & shine!

Now I just need to work on a cup of coffee and maybe a carton of milk. Thinking about pancakes too.