Yellow – Page 2 – Hopefully Creative

Haberdashery Cowl

Knitting one colour at a time but still ending up with a continuous two-colour project.

This cowl has been my travel project since June 2024. This means that it was almost always in my bag and was mostly worked on while I was on the move. I mainly chose it as the travel project because it wasn’t too complex, but there was still some interest in it. Not endless stockinette but a slip stitch herringbone pattern. This meant that I only knit with one colour at a time while slipping stitches of the other colour to create the pattern’s chevrons.

Blue and white/yellow chevron cowl, edge and outside

I found the pattern because it happened to be in the pattern magazine that I had purchased to make this sweater (which hasn’t happened yet). It’s called the Haberdashery Cowl by Ashley Rao and came from Interweave Knits, Fall 2013. I did not pay attention to gauge and it shows. The original is very loose fitting and uses a button to close tighter, but my version didn’t need that. I think it’s because I chose a slightly thinner yarn too; self dyed alpaca 4-ply sock yarn in ‘white with yellow, orange and blue’ and ‘blue with dark blue spots’.

Haberdashery Cowl herringbone pattern on paper

Haberdashery Cowl, light blue and yellow striped knit cowl in progress

The pattern consists of a written section and a charted section. The charted section is published in white and brown, to correspond with the colours of the example cowl. However, mine was going to be blue and yellow and I kept getting extremely confused by the colours, so I redid the chart in excel in my colours and printed it. I added some tick boxes to the right so that I could remember where I was. I think it saved my sanity.

Blue and white/yellow chevron cowl, edge and inside

This thing is also pretty cool on the inside. The beginning of round is just visible on the left where I made the yarn cross over each other. I did block it because the bottom edge was very tight, it’s loosened some with the blocking. Of course I’ve finished this winter item just in time for Spring, it was over 20 degrees Celsius yesterday. So I don’t know how much wear it will see in the next few months. But I am happy that I managed to finish it and I’m ready for a new travel project!

Cowltopus

Joining a mystery knit along to make an octopus inspired “cowl”.

For the first time ever, I participated in a Mystery Knit-a-long (MKAL) last month. A KAL is a project where you get some part of the instructions and should complete those in a set time period. Mystery just means that you haven’t got a clue what the end result is going to be.

Sometime in September, I saw the announcement for the Cowltopus MKAL by Laura Nelkin, an MKAL that was to take place in October. It was on sale and it seemed like a fun idea, and I really like octopuses, so what could go wrong? Well, I forgot about it until about two days after the first clue came out and I hadn’t done any of the prep work. The prep included finding the right yarn and swatching it. I found the yarn I wanted to use, but it still needed to be dyed.

Glas octopus with yellow, retrieved https://www.oceanactionhub.org/octopus-species/

Glass octopus with orange and brown, retrieved https://octolab.tv/species/glass-octopus/

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn around 225 m/100 grams. There should be a main colour and a contrast colour, and both can be composed of mini skeins or just a single colour skein. There should be contrast between the MC and CC and gradients are encouraged. So I looked on the internet for different kinds of octopuses and settled on the quite elusive Glass Octopus Vitreledonella richardi. To match the inspiration, my MC was one full skein of Ultra DK in light blue. For the contrast, I chose to split a skein of Ultra DK into four section and dye them in a gradient from yellow to chestnut/brown.

Two skeins of yarn, left Contrast yarn from yellow outside to brown inside, right Main yarn in light blue

All skeins of yarn for the cowltopus. From left to right, yellow mini skein, orange mini skein, blue full skein, dark orange mini skein, brown mini skein

Once the yarn had dried, the gauge swatch got going. The swatch indicated that I had to size up my needles a little because I couldn’t get gauge otherwise. The first clue had come out on October 3rd, and was supposed to be done by the time clue 2 would be released a week later. I managed to get my yarn dyed and swatch ready by the 7th. On the 13th, I finished clue 1, to get right back on with clue 2.

Hood with yellow - orange gradient, end of clue 1 — Clue 1

Clue 2 went really smoothly and was actually finished on time, done by the 14th. This wasn’t super challenging yet, so I sailed right through it. The only new things were magic knots and needing to pay attention to the stitches. The third clue was where it got interesting. There were two options, brioche knit or ribbing. So I decided to learn something new and got going on the brioche. It wasn’t as scary as I was worried about. The instructions and video companion were very helpful and it all went according to plan.

Hood with yellow - orange - dark orange gradient, with brioche edge, end of clue 3 — Clue 3

Clue 4 was the last clue and where we were finishing the cowl – that turned out to be a hood. It was more brioche but now with waves in it. Actually quite fun to knit! The pattern is designed in a way that you shouldn’t run out of yarn unless you choose to ignore the instructions – my bad. I was supposed to start the end with 4 grams remaining, but I had 3.6 grams of yarn left. In the end, I had to tie in 15 cm of leftover yarn from the dying process to get the last few stitches finished.

Finished cowltopus with knitted octopus — Clue 4

Finished cowltopus, end of clue 4 — Clue 4

I enjoyed learning new things and not knowing exactly what was going to happen throughout the KAL. I’m not discounting doing one again even though the resulting hood isn’t totally my style. I’m very happy that one of my colours was solid, because the finished hoods from other knitters are overwhelmingly busy. I’ve not found much reason to wear it yet, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Sometimes having a fun process is more important than having a good result.

Batwing Knit

A vintage knitting machine pattern in some muted fall colours.

The booklet that came with my knitting machine also had a pattern for a striped ladies pullover with V-neck, DP 2219. This seemed like a fun thing to do with the knitting machine that wasn’t a rectangle of some sort, so I set out on a quest to complete the pullover. This started with dyeing yarn. I chose upcycled quarter round yarn, a sock weight with 425 m/100 g and tried to dye it in the colour scheme of a picture I found on the internet.

It didn’t turn out the way I hoped, although I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for. However, once I started knitting it up, I knew it didn’t really fall within the colours I would love to wear. Still determined to see if the pattern would work, I continued. I made one major change, by decreasing the depth of the v-neck, but apart from that followed the instructions. I finished knitting the front and back, and blocked them. Then I lost motivation and it sat in a bag for a while until I met up with a friend. These colours suit her much better, and I knew I needed some sort of external motivation if I were to ever finish it, so I asked if she might be interested. She was.

Batwing knitting machine sweater on a dress form, front

Batwing knitting machine sweater on a dress form, v-neck detail

So I knit the neckband and after some cursing and annoyance managed to get that installed in a way I liked. It’s probably not the way the pattern intended, but it’s on there now, so it’ll do! The sleeves and bottom still rolled quite badly, so I decided that it needed cuffs. I first knit some in a mock rib on the knitting machine and had them attached before deciding that the join was too awful. So I ripped it all back, cast on ribbing and knit it by hand, both around the cuffs and the bottom.

Batwing knitting machine sweater laid on the floor, front up

Batwing knitting machine sweater laid out on the floor

I think I probably asked before summer whether my friend was interested (providing no guarantees on when it would be completed) and it still took me until September to get it finished, but it is done! She enjoys it, I’m happy to have made something out of the yarn that I wouldn’t use for myself, I liked testing the pattern and doing something different on the machine. A bit delayed, but still a win in the end!

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!

Apiarist Cowl

Honeycomb cowl from some blue and yellow yarn

Some time ago, I bought some lovely blue fabric to make a new winter coat out of. I’ve even decided on the pattern but I’ve not yet managed to convince myself to actually start the project. Instead, I’ve been working on accessories for that non-existent coat. The plan for the coat is that it will be blue with yellow accents and while I’m not sure if that’s going to work out, I have started with that idea in mind anyway.

Since I knew I needed a scarf and potentially a hat to go with my to-be-coat, I dyed some yarn with blues and yellows. I chose Ultra DK and added a fair amount of bright blue speckles and both soft and bright yellow speckles on 22 September 2023. Somehow the yellow came through a lot better but I do like the specks of blue here and there.

Once it was dry, I had to find a pattern to use. The one I chose was the Apiarist Cowl by Claire Borchardt and I started knitting on November 12. I did make a fair few changes to the pattern since I didn’t like the ribbed edge that the original has. A seed stitch edge was included instead. The hight of the honeycombs is also one stitch less (mainly because I can’t count for shit and messed up the first one and decided to go with it).

This was a quick knit (for me) that was mainly completed on trains over the course of a month and a half. Finished on December 26 and since worn fairly often. It’s just a little bit tighter than the Linen Stitch one that I’ve been wearing a lot this fall and winter. Did I entirely forget that I made another one that would work much better; yes. It’s been living in a box since I had to move all my shawls, scarves and gloves away from the hallway where they had been living due to construction dust.

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!

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!

Yellow – Turquoise – Orange

Made some baby gifts from self-dyed yarn and other happy fabric.

Baby gift time again! First up, dyeing. On the last day of 2022, the second dye project was a single skein of Chester Wool DK 115 (Worsted) 50s. It is 100% merino and has 50 grams in a skein for around 100 meters of yarn. Since I still had soft yellow dye stock left from the other dyeing I did that day, I put 20 ml of the stock in my pot. Then I added several resists around the skein and dropped the thing into the pot. When it had simmered for long enough, I took it out and dyed the resists turquoise. I couldn’t resist adding some speckles and chose orange. All in all this meant that the skein turned out extremely bright and cheerful. If you ask me, perfect for a baby.

Since there was going to be a new baby, I set out to make some baby things and settled on these two patterns: Easy Peasy Baby Ball by A la Sascha and Tiny Tot by Kristen Rettig. One is a rectangle hat with tassels or pompoms and the other is a ball. I used up the entire skein in the making of these projects, so no leftovers!

I’ve also had a bit of flannel in the stash with a similar colour scheme. There’s also some additional red and green, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. The flannel was bought to make some poppies, so I set out to do exactly that. I tried to make these somewhat symmetrical with the plaid, so the scale was based on that. There’s some difference between these two poppies, one has a green stripe near the head, the other green. One has larger hands, the other smaller, but they are still very similar.

Both knitting patterns were quick, easy to knit and went smoothly. Of course the hat is way too big for the recipient, but I guess my track record stays intact on that score. The last item for the little baby was a spit scarf. Now with skateboarders, rope jumpers and a terry cloth back. It feels very soft even if the snap is on the wrong edge.

I hope the little one will have a marvelous and colourful life!

Dress-up Tail

Getting a kid to turn into a dinosaur!

So, I just made the thing that I’ve been sort of vaguely but not really wanting to have for a while now. I’ve not made it for me though. It’s a *children’s* dinosaur (or dragon if you so prefer) wearable tail. With some fleece blankets, a lovely tutorial from Andrea’s Notebook that I only vaguely followed and a few hours and I’ve hopefully made someone’s new favourite item of clothing.

I chose some blue/green fleece that has been in the stash for the tail and some yellow for the spikes. The measurements from the tutorial were loosely followed, although I did sew a tail with a flat bottom and as such had fewer cut offs. The spikes were drawn and cut very loosely and then sewed together to be turned inside out. There’s an overlap on the spikes because I didn’t really measure and sort of eyeballed everything. The Velcro on the waist straps was some blue stuff I had left over and I thought it would look nicer than black or white. For the same reason, I didn’t zig zag topstitch the straps but just used a normal topstitch. I’m firmly of the opinion that it does indeed look nicer.

The last real change from the original pattern was to add a zipper to the underside instead of stitching it closed. I figure if this kid would wear his tail and then run around in the mud, his mum or dad would appreciate chucking it in the laundry. If the innards are removable, then that’s much easier. I didn’t have a coordinating zipper colour, but I did have a coordinating zipper pull. So I stitched in a rainbow zipper with a nice teal pull. All in all, a lovely quick project that was completed in a few hours. It also made me giggle when I put it on the 100+ year old mannequin. Somewhat.. anachronistic. I hope it’ll be enjoyed by the intended recipient!

Grabby Oven Mitts

Making some new grabby oven mitts with coordinating colours and fabrics.

At some point in the past, I found a pattern for grabby oven mitts from so sew easy. They call them ‘pinch grip oven mitts’ and they are quite different from my first attempt at oven mitts. Of course I needed to try them since I still had some of the original oven mitt interlining in the hoard. The pattern works in such a way that you basically sew two mitts, put one inside the other and then connect them at the armhole. To do this, the pattern calls for batting on the lining and insulation on the top layer. I decided to do insulation on both layers as my previous mitts proved that two layers of insulation are definitely necessary.

Strips of the cottons were cut out to the width of the pattern pieces and strips of the insulation were sewn on using the lines on the insulation. The original mitts are very long, but my fabric wouldn’t accommodate that, so mine are shorter. I also think that I probably made a mistake at the ‘corners of the mouth’ as they look a bit weird, but it still seems to function. Two of the mitts are slightly smaller to fit my tiny hands and the other one will find a new home somewhere. The combination of fabrics is such that I could get the most out of the interlined strips, and piecing is fun right?!

I started these a few .. weeks? months?.. some time ago, but only finished them now because the finickity binding on the arm hole edge needed to be completed. I’d initially sewed one of the mitts together and then tried to sew the arm hole edge and just got frustrated and chucked all of it in the bin of shame. However, holiday led me to finally tackle this problem and now I have new oven mitts!

Tag: Yellow