Tag: Stars

Cosy Halloween

A cosy halloween pumpkin in 12 steps.

I bought a super cute cross stitch pattern of a pumpkin under a leaf that I wanted to stitch up. Due to the light colours of some of the outside stitches, it didn’t feel right to stitch on white. So I decided to dye some embroidery fabric blue with a cotton dye.

Two squares of blue self-dyed fabric on a green towel.
Two squares of blue self-dyed embroidery fabric
Preparations with thread and blue fabric in an embroidery hoop

The intention was to have an uneven fabric, with some lighter sections. After the first bit of fabric went into the bath, I decided to add a second. This is why the left bit of fabric above isn’t as dark. It wasn’t in the dye bath for nearly as long.

Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 1/12 colours completed
Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 3/12 colours completed
Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 5/12 colours completed

I liked how it turned out and chose the darker one for my pumpkin. I cut all the threads and put them through a cardboard thread holder. I always estimate that a length of 6 strand embroidery floss will make around 180 stitches (60 per double strand section). So I measured accordingly.

Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 6/12 colours completed
Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 7.5/12 colours completed
Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 8.5/12 colours completed

Then I got to work. I wanted to start near the middle, to make sure everything would work out, so I stated with the darkest green first. Then came the purple and the black before the first orange was added. That first one brought him firmly into temporary spooky territory.

Pumpkin under a leaf embroidery with 9.5/12 colours completed
Finished embroidery of a pumpkin under a leaf
Framed embroidery of a pumpkin under a leaf

The third and fourth orange were added before the highlights of light yellow and light green were completed. I do think it looks a little magical with the nice stars all around. I really enjoyed this project. It went quick, the amount of stitches was doable and the outcome is really lovely.

ProjectPumpkin Cozy Halloween Night
Authornathnolu
TypePattern only
Search wordspumpkin; leaf umbrella; stars
LocationDrive
#stitches2290
Purchased09-01-2026
Date started25-01-2026
Date finished01-02-2026

I’m Dyeing (Wool)!

The first step of the journey to make a night sky on my body with yarn.

Ever since May 2018 when I saw the image below on the new Facebook page of a knitting shop that was to open in Vlissingen, I’ve been obsessed with recreating this. While I would have loved to support the shop, the colourway that they had of this was very blue and not very night-y, so I decided to wait until the next dye-run was completed. However, before I could get my greedy mitts on it, the shop sadly closed in 2019.

Image is from Knitwit Vlissingen

Months of feverish Etsy-searching on, and nothing would come remotely close to what I dreamed would be my starry sweater. Several times over the years, I went into the Etsy and google searches looking for my perfect starry night yarn. Then I decided to just take the plunge and order yarn and stuff for dyeing. I filled my online basket, got scared and deleted it all again. Cue several repeats of that too. Then came lockdown, and two months in (May 2020) I decided to give myself permission to actually spend the money and buy the things.

  • Type of Yarn
  • The Dyeing Cupboard

So off I went to worldofwool.co.uk and got myself 5 skeins of Cheviot Superwash Aran, Eurolana dyes, some other random single skeins and a drop spindle kit (potentially more on that.. in the distant future). Once the lockdown was eased a little, I went on several haunts to the local second hand shop and got some pans, stirring things, and eventually a steamer – very good bargain there. I’d read that you really shouldn’t use the pans for dyeing for food so separate everything was needed. Hence also the creation of the Dyeing Cupboard. And then all the equipment sat on the Dyeing Shelf, sat some more, and sat some more. Until the very final day of my Winter holiday, i.e. last Sunday, when I decided I was going to Do. The. Thing. Today.

  • Samples
  • Daylight – Colours seem more muted here

I used these instructions and set out to dye some test bits of yarn. That seemed to go well enough, so after some more general being scared, I actually dyed my first skein. I figured that the final result would only be visible after drying and I wasn’t going to wait for that, so I did all five that afternoon. I used yellow, navy and blue to create a sort of variegated night sky with somewhat random bits of yellow.

  • All my nicely dyed skeins
  • With their handy tie-rip handles

Since I quite enjoyed the process of puttering about with dye and yarn, I bought myself some more skeins this last week and hope to get some more funky yarn dyed in the future. As for knitting this up into that perfect sweater, that’s going to have to wait until I’ve finished my current ‘fallen leaves’ sweater. I’ve just divided the body stitches from the sleeve stitches after the yoke, so there’s been some progress?