Grey – Page 2 – Hopefully Creative

Octopus Award

Making a plush to celebrate a fellow skater

Our new tradition of making an award for the end of roller derby season took place again. I got to make an award for one of our newest skaters. My inspiration came very late, but when it did, it hit hard. My skater is someone who does all kinds of things; in her daily life she’s a hairdresser and a barber, is getting married soon, moving into her house etc. I wanted to reference all of that, and include her way of turning around on roller skates, which is more of a ‘disco turn’ than a step transition. So I decided to make an octopus plush with a disco ball for helmet.

Gray and yellow octopus plush with a sequin 'helmet' and cardboard icons around its tentacles.

Back of gray and yellow octopus plush with a sequin 'helmet' and cardboard icons around its tentacles.

I already had the Octopus plush pattern from Choly Knight, so I decided to reference that. Since the normal round arms from the pattern wouldn’t be conducive to give a ‘holding something’ impression, I wanted some longer arms. Reddit came to the rescue with this post by CynamonoweKrzeslo, where the sewist also helpfully shared the pattern for their tentacles. I enlarged the pattern a little until it was the size that I wanted and cut some out in a grey fleece and yellow bobble minky. The test-tentacle looked great! So I cut out eight more before heading to bed.

The next morning, I assembled all tentacles and needed to decide on the size of the head. In the end, the original Octopus plush pattern head shape, the eyes and laughing mouth were all enlarged 150% and printed out. This looked great, so I embroidered the eyes and mouth on and assembled the plush together. One of its arms is put into the disco fever pose with a little hook that you can hang a tiny loop on. The helmet is made from foam and an overlay of sequin fabric (for a disco ball effect) – I am still finding sequins in my house. The pattern was based on the normal head shape of the octopus plush with a little extra space. Some ribbon is used for the straps.

Gray and yellow octopus plush, with zoom on the ring and key cardboard icons around its tentacles.

Gray and yellow octopus plush with a focus on the donut and comb cardboard icons around its tentacles.

To reference all the items, which I wanted to keep removable, I chose word icons (to keep a similar style) and printed them on cardstock. I put two together with a loop of sticky tape to get them to stay around the tentacles. There are two roller skates, a ring, a donut, a cupcake, a comb, scissors and keys. I also wrote a rhyming poem to explain what I did. The helmet is also removable, so it can also be a ‘naked’ octopus.

I think he’s adorable and I hope she’ll enjoy having him around!

Vest for Warmth

Adding an extra layer for warmth.

I am not a warm-blooded person. I’m more a lizard in disguise and since that blue coat that I’ve been dreaming about hasn’t materialized yet, I’ve been wearing my dinosaur coat most winter. Sadly, the weather has been quite miserable and my office is also a cold, cold place. To catch two birds with stone, I decided to make a vest to wear over my clothes and under my coat.

I settled on the fur vest from Model 28 in Simplicity Naaimode 31, also known as view D of Simplicity 8218. I went through my stash and decided that I wanted neutral colours, black and grey maybe? So I pulled a number of options and started putting the pattern pieces on. In the end, I chose a thick grey fabric that had some bits cut out already and a thick black fabric that also had some parts cut out before. I think I inherited these when a friend tried to de-stash.

For the outside, I chose the black and I cut the two fronts, the back and the collar. The grey was the inside and since the collar was a folded one, only two fronts and a back were needed. Since everything is enclosed, I thought that it would even be possible to wear the grey on the outside. To achieve this, I added a little elastic loop to one edge. Then two buttons were positioned, one on the inside and one on the outside to keep the little vest closed. I think the buttons are very cute.

I have worn this thing a lot over the course of the past few months, it’s truly been a warmth saver and makes me so much more comfortable. It’s also slightly more elegant than the oversized bodywarmer that I’d been wearing before. All in all, good project!

Grey-diation Shawl

Adding some details to stave off endless repetition.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about this shawl. I finished it a couple of months ago and from what I can recall, the knitting was very boring. However, it does have good colours, grey, white and black go with everything! And I have worn it out a few times since, so lets try to recap anyway.

My Ravelry notes indicate that I started this new shawl on July 1st, 2023 and finished it on 11 October 2023. Not too bad of a turn around. The pattern is Aranea by Erika Wine and I later incorporated Asscher by Christina Danaee into it because I was so bored. The yarn was the ‘grey-diation‘ yarn dyed in December 2022. The pattern is fairly simple, the only thing to remember is to make the ‘spokes’ by effectively knitting i-cord along the edges and three other spines. In the beginning, a stitch is increased on each side of each spoke every fourth row. Once you pass 40 stitches between two spokes, you start increasing every other row.

This is a lot of knitting stockinette and for some reason, my yarn didn’t want to run out. The shawl is supposed to end when there were 80 stitches between the spokes, but I still had a lot left when I hit those 80 stitches. So at some point, I wanted something, anything else to do but knit-stitches for an eternity. I found the Asscher pattern, which has a pretty cool eyelet pattern on the back and started incorporating those instructions in between the spokes. I deviated at some point and made an extra triangle. I also needed to keep in mind that the i-cord binding still needed to happen, so I kept weighing the yarn to make sure I had enough. Once I reached the end, I followed the bind off instructions and wet blocked it.

Since I wanted the lace design to stand out a little more, I blocked it with straight edges instead of the spiderweb intention from the original pattern. This was probably not the best idea because what I liked most about the Aranea pattern was the spiderweb effect. However, I’m definitely not making this by hand ever again. I had to force myself to finish it. It has turned out a pretty decent size and it’s definitely wearable. I now also know how that gradation effect in yarn will play out when knitting. I have learnt (again) that endless stockinette is not my forte and will try to keep this in mind with future projects.

Family Projects

Dyeing and crafting with family.

Relatively recently, in May, my brother Peter and his partner Cathelijne came to visit me. We’d planned to do some yarn dyeing just for them to see what it was about. We chose two skeins for each after deciding what I would make from the finished yarn and set to work.

My brother wanted to use the Natural Boo DK yarn, a merino and bamboo mix for a hat/scarf. His plan was to do blue with yellow resists. Surprisingly similar to my starry night sweater – I did not influence this! His yarns were left dry and he added tie wrap resists. A fair few, just to see what would happen. We dunked his yarn into a mixture of blue and navy dyes and pulled it out once that was all set. When we removed the resists, it turned out that if you put two relatively close together, you just get a larger resist. He then added yellow over the top with a syringe. It turned out pretty cool!

Cathelijne wanted to have a triangular scarf like my fringed one. I told her that would be cool, but I wasn’t going to knot all those fringes again, we’d figure out something else. So she settled on Quarter round yarn (fingering weight 100% merino) and would be doing one part grey with yellow and blue speckles in the white parts. This yarn was pre-soaked and once wet enough, we added a little bit of grey to the pot and created a nice construction to keep enough of the yarn white. Once the grey had set, we pulled it out, and she hand-speckled citric acid mixed with dye over the top of it. Most of the speckles are blue and yellow, but sometimes two landed close together and there’s a tiny green area.

All projects were knit on the knitting machine. For Peter’s snood, I cast on a fair amount of stitches on every alternate needle. I made a two eyelets a few rows in and then hung the hem. I continued until almost all the yarn was finished. The bottom hem was then sewn so it looked like the hung hem at the top. I also wanted to make a cord, and I figured, there must be a way that this machine can do i-cord. So I fumbled with the settings and zipped my way through probably several hundred rows to make a nice i-cord to thread through the upper hem.

The bamboo earflap hat was based on a pattern from Clearwater Knits, Earflap Hat by Irene Woods. Since I used a different gauge and a different head size, I recalculated everything. It was started on the knitting machine with e-wrap cast on on 134 stitches, then 18 rows of plain knit, then the flaps were created over 32 stitches from stitch 13 inwards. It was basically like a big sock heel. Then 18 more rows and the hem was hung. Then I knit until I almost ran out of yarn, pulled it off the machine and knit up the top by decreasing in 12 sections. I left two stitches out for seaming up the back. Lastly, I put some fleece into the flaps for added warmth and added braids to the bottom of the flaps.

For the triangular scarf, I used exactly the same pattern as for the fringed scarf, but I left off the fringe. When I got to place where you need to start decreasing again, I did a row of decorative eyelets to mimic the ones that would be along the spine too. I then finished the scarf the same way as my fringed one and put it out to block. Once it was fully blocked, there was still some yarn leftover to make some cute little tassels. There’s one on each long end and two on the point.

All in all, I think this was fun to do with family!

Rainbow Bright Side

Nice pops of colour and texture on otherwise plain grey.

I saw the The Bright Side scarf by Lori B at some point last year when I was looking for scarf patterns on Ravelry. I was immediately intrigued. It looked like such a fun idea to have different coloured bits of texture in a scarf. This was one of the projects that I really wanted to make and finish. So on November 1st, 2022, I died some Chester Wool Company Alpaca 4ply Sock yarn in a nice light grey while leaving some yarn out of the dye pot. A short rainbow gradient was then applied to the undyed section and further steamed to set. It hang out in my house for about two and half more months before I finally picked it up and started my Rainbow Bright Side.

This was my travel project from January 14 until February 19. It was in a plastic bag in my rucksack and traveled with me on daytrips and to the office. I would sometimes do some knitting on it at home too. The pattern is very simple, there are some edge stitches on both sides, but in the middle just knit (and purl on the reverse), if you come across some rainbow stitches, purl them on the knit side and knit them on the purl side. You’ll end up with a giant crescent shape at the end. As the rainbow was dyed on the skein on one side, there’s approximately the same amount of stitches between each section of rainbow. As the width of the scarf changes all the time, this means that some interesting pooling can occur if the circumstances are just right. It’s very fascinating to see how these develop while knitting.

As you end on the widest part of the crescent, I had a hard time estimating how much yarn I still needed to finish. In the end, I won yarn chicken by about 4 cm and felt very lucky about that. I really didn’t want to take that many stitches out again. After winning chicken, the scarf was wetted and the blocked. I tried to pull it into an aesthetically pleasing shape on my pool mats. I think it worked. The point of the triangle is not in the middle of the scarf, which means I can wrap the short side around my neck once, but the long side twice. It also goes with a lot of different things because the colours are both neutral and bright – at least in my opinion. It’s already seen some wear, and I’m sure it’ll come out more often!

Proof of Concept Dyeing

Trying out some more dyeing ideas.

“What happens if you separate out random partial sections of yarn and dye those a different colour?” Was the question that spurred the 28 March round of dyeing yarn. I wanted to try and see if it would 1) be possible to even separate out different parts without making it impossible to ball up later and 2) whether that would then create a more random pattern. I started with two skeins of Krypton 4ply yarn and started pulling out random strands and strand sections. The majority of the skein was dyed with a low percentage of black. It’s more grey in appearance because of that. The strand sections that were left out were dyed a nice dark green.

The second skein was Alpaca 4ply sock and got the same separation treatment. I wanted to dye this a bright light blue/turquoise colour with the contrast being navy. However, part of the skein that wasn’t supposed to be navy fell into the pot so there are some more blue spots than intended. I also had another skein of Alpaca 4ply sock that was dyed in some leftover yellow dye. Later, some orange and brown speckles were put over the top.

The first and second experiment also had some leftover dye in the pot, so I wanted to test out the Tweed Effect DK yarn that’s been hanging out in the cupboard too. I took a full skein and started it on the yarn winder until about half was into a ball. Cut the skein and had two tweed experiments. The ball was unwound gain and dropped dry into some blue dye. It did actually take on the barber pole effect that was indicated on the website. The green experiment was not as successful. The yarn came out very uneven and without much barber-poling.

After these experiments, I’ve been able to answer question 1. Yes, it is possible to separate out without making it impossible. It did take a bit longer than normal because certain bits didn’t want to let go of each other. I’ve not gotten around to question 2 though. I’ll report back once these yarns have reached either the knitting machine or the needles!

Knitting Machine Scarf

Dyeing and knitting a stripy scarf.

Since the knitting machine entered my life, I’ve been looking for things to use it for. Recently I watched a tutorial about knitting a very pretty scarf on a knitting machine. It’s by Ingunn Hvatum and can be found here. The pattern itself is not very difficult, so it seemed like an interesting challenge. It did take a little bit of learning to achieve the eyelet edge smoothly, but that’s what practice is for!

You start with three stitches and every second row you create an eyelet and make the scarf that little bit wider. This is done until you are halfway through your yarn (in my case), or if you follow the instructions until you have engaged all needles. Once you are halfway, you knit 4 rows and then start decreasing one stitch while still creating an eyelet. Once you have three stitches left, you bind off.The last instruction is to crochet a chain and thread it through the eyelets.

For this scarf, I used one skein of self-dyed 100% merino wool (Quarter round by Chester Wool), which is around 400 meters. The skein was dyed a light grey while keeping a small section out of the dyebath. After the grey had set, the white area was overdyed with a mix of navy and green dye which resulted in a sort of petrol colour. Some orange transfer can also be found from the rainbow skein that was dyed at the same time. The aim for this one, though, was to do dark green, but I do like this end result. At some point, I accidentally cut through a thread so I ended up with two balls of yarn, one about 97 grams and one 10 grams. After knitting the scarf, any yarn that was left over was dyed with the petrol stock to make the crochet chain for the eyelets. All in all, a happy accident.

Once the scarf was knit, I had to block it because it was rolling over on both the eyelet and the neck edge sides. I thought it would be a right angled triangle, but while blocking that turned out to be wrong, so the point is a little more obtuse than I figured it would be. I still like it a lot. Once the crochet chain was attached, I still had a little bit of yarn left over, and I decided to add tassels to the points. Not sure how they will do if this thing ever sees the washing machine, but that’s a concern for some other time. For now, I’m just going to enjoy wearing this cute triangle scarf.

Leftovers Hat

With the last of the leftovers, made a jaunty hat.

After the success of the Nutmeg leftover sweater, I set out to finally get rid of the last bits of that yarn that had been hanging out in the stash for way too long. So on New Years Eve, I got the knitting machine ready, and cast on some stitches to see what the settings needed to be. Turns out that it was impossible to knit this yarn when casting on on every needle of the machine, so I had to skip every alternate needle. This did mean that while knitting, it was very wide but it would shrink in width and expand in length when off the machine. Since I was fairly uninterested in actually doing a super good job, I just cast on the maximum amount of stitches that would fit and figured it would probably be fine.

I was actually inspired to knit this thing by this video. While looking for a tutorial for a triangular scarf on the knitting machine, one of this channel popped up. After I watched it, it moved on to this new video and I decided to watch that too. I didn’t do any of the special things, but I did get the idea that rectangle hats were a thing. So after the cast on, I just knit until there was no more red yarn, then I switched to the white until that was all gone too. Next up, blue and because I didn’t think it was long enough yet, I also added two of the leftover tiny balls of grey. The rectangle of knitting was taken off the machine and I used knitting needles for the cast off. Then I sewed the sides and top together et voila, hat!

Since there is no further stitching in the hat, you can just fold over the bottom grey edge any way you want. I’ve been doing a fold in such a way that there is a three layer bottom and no purl is on show. Of course, you can also just fold it over and have purl visible. The points of the hat can be back to front or side to side or at any given jaunty angle. In the end, I used 45 g of grey, 15 g of red, 15 g of white and 37 g of blue. This means that I now only have 34 g of grey and 27 g of black leftover. We’re getting to the bottom of this particular yarn stash!

Dyeing with and without a Plan

Adventures in dyeing, with and without a plan.

Last Friday, after some very busy weeks at work, I needed to take the day off. First some sleeping in, but then I decided to actually go do something. The plan was to dye a skein in the colours of my Momiji coat so I could knit some sort of neck covering. I grabbed some superwash merino aran wool and put some tie wrap resists on it. The plan was to dye the skein (dark) blue with white spots. Then I could syringe some brown/orange dye into the white spots. The skein went into the pot dry and immediately soaked up some of the navy/blue combination dye. This means that some areas are lighter blue than others. It’s also a little darker than the aim, but I hope it’ll still look good once knitted up.

While I was waiting for the dye to set, I decided to experiment some more. The second plan was born quickly: lets make some rainbow yarn! It’s a superwash merino sock yarn that was soaked beforehand. I put it all on some plastic and prepared my dye colours: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue and purple. However, when I started syringing the ‘orange’ dye on my yarn, it turned out that it was red – always label things, don’t just guess (fail 1). I added some actual orange next to it. Then I wanted to put on some yellow, but I put it on the red side, not the orange side (fail 2). So I quickly put purple dye over it to keep some sort of rainbow. Less ideal. Next step, the blue that decided to squirt all over the still white part of the yarn (fail 3). I sighed, added the turquoise and green and then decided to just use the remaining white bit for colour speckles. So I put some of the leftover dye in the white area. This skein turned out partially rainbow partially speckle. We’ll see how insane it’ll knit up.

I still had two more skeins soaking without a plan – I guess I started the day a little ambitious. Luckily there was still something that I’d wanted to try for a while. A sock weight skein with colour gradation, by leaving it in longer in some areas than in others. So I put some grey dye in the pot, and added tie wraps through which I could jam wooden sticks to keep an amount of yarn out of the pot. I set a timer for three minutes and lowered a little more yarn into the pot every time it went off. I did forget to take off the tie wraps, so I accidentally added resists. However, I’m happy with how it turned out, so that’s not a waste.

The last skein was just.. put it in an oven dish, add water, squirt leftover red and orange dye on top and heat set it in the oven. No rhyme, no reason, just bright colours. Not sure what I’ll end up doing with that. I think it is aran yarn, so it should knit up pretty quickly once I get around to it. All in all, I really enjoyed my day of dyeing! However, dyeing eventually leads to having to wind up the yarn, and that’s never super fun. So today I set out to buy myself a helpful tool. This yarn winder thing is so helpful, much quicker and easier than when I play around with a plastic bottle. Of course, it still takes forever when there’s a knot, but I did manage to wind up one of the aran balls in about 10 minutes (win!).

Finished but a Fail

Making a jumpsuit that I’m afraid I’ll never wear.

With the first in-person graduation looming, I set out to make a new outfit. I’d settled on a Mimi G pantsuit (also known as Simplicity 9097 or Simplicity Naaimode Magazine 50, pattern 24). I had some grey fabric in the hoard and decided to make the lapels from a contrasting fabric for some interest. My first thought for the contrast was some shiny black fabric but it was a bit much, so found some black dotted stuff. I wasn’t totally convinced and went to the fabric market in Rotterdam to look around for something better, nothing caught my eye but I did return home with 3 or 4 new lengths. I guess that’s why the hoard only expands and never seems to contract..

Anyways, settled on the fabric, I made a sort test version from some cotton-poly in the stash and determined that the size 38 I was trying to make was a bit large. I removed 6 cm from the neck edge to make the waist sit more at my natural waist and had to take in the darts in the back a bit. After cutting the pattern from the grey fabric, I had to make more alterations. The bust was a bit too big so I took in that seam. The legs were so long that even with my highest heels there was still pooling on the floor so I ended up with an 8 cm hem. I chose some smaller buttons and therefore had to put on some more than the pattern specified. The lapels and the top layer of the waist ties were cut from the contrast fabric which I think ended up looking very good.

All that said and done, I put it on with a bra that would mostly work and I was just.. not happy. The back was too low, the neck too deep, a little tight in the neck and I just felt too exposed. So up into the hoard I went, and returned with some black stretchy mesh. I cut into some sort of triangle, applied bias tape and snaps to the top and attached that to the bra to at least cover some of the cleavage. It wasn’t enough for me to feel happy. I think I might be happier if I could wear something under it, but with 30℃ weather predicted, that seemed like a bad idea.

I do really like the pockets and the fact that all the seams are finished on the overlocker before stitching them together. I think this might be the nicest looking thing I’ve made in a while. It looks so clean on the inside! The way they made the lapels is also appealing to me, with buttons only on one side of the neck edge while the other side folds over. Unfortunately, I chose to take in that bit just a little too much so now it’s not as comfortable as I would like, but perhaps some fudging with extra elastic can make that better.

For now though, it languishes in my cupboard, waiting for the day I feel brave enough to wear it out. So far, that day has not come yet..

Edited to add: It took about a year (or more) before I figured out that I could just cut the top off, hem it with some bias band and can just wear them as pants! They get worn fairly regularly now!

Tag: Grey