Tag Archives: printing fabric

Snapshots of Busy Saturday

muslin blanket set
baby blankets are finished

foodcoloringdevastation
food coloring I used to dye a lot of wool–after the cat jumped up on the table and got it all over her paws

handmade ring sling rings
a finished baby carrier

food coloring dye day
dye and washed yarn ready on the drying rack

new books
new books to read

Snow Day

Like many folks across the midwest today, I am sitting inside my house, watching the snow pile on the ground fast and furious, and enjoying a quiet day off work. The longer it snows, the harder it seems to snow. It seemed like a good time to take stock of all of my works in progress.

Brocks Aran
Brock’s sweater has continued apace, but I set it aside about a week ago because I was jonesing for something with a little bit more color and a little bit less mental involvement.

garter stitch baby kimono
Insert the Garter Stitch Baby Kimono. I’ve been working on this sweater a stitch here and a stitch there for the last couple of months, but this past week I decided it was time to finish it. (This has nothing to do with feeling like my due date is suddenly much closer than it was two weeks ago.) This is my kind of dye job. Bold. Bright. A little garish, perhaps, but completely adorable at the same time. (Yarn is Vice Yarns Paradigm in Plain Jane.)

baby hat
The sweater used most of the skein of yarn, but I wanted to make matching accessories anyway, and I just happened to have an undyed skein of yarn that is, if not the same base, a very similar one. I cast on a little hat and am planning on making a pair of Stephanie Pearl McPhee’s Cutest Booties in the undyed yarn with the bright yarn as the ties and the pom poms…I should have just enough yarn left for that.

latest handspun
Last time, I showed you some singles on the bobbin of the yarn I was currently spinning. The photo above shows what those singles became. It’s a squishy worsted weight two-ply yarn that I think needs to become a great big, warm, squishy shawl.

shawl ingredients
Pairing it with this undyed skein of merino yarn should help stretch to make the handspun into a great big shawl. This will be my snow day project–seeing how much of it I can get done before the snow clears up.

wensleydale
And if I need a break from knitting, I’ve got this lovely little ball of Wensleydale that needs to be spun up as well.

Stripey Baby Blanket
Or I could try my hand and decorating some more fabrics.

Stay safe and warm everyone!

Fabric Friday

Christmas ended, and I realized that I have less than four months until the baby gets here. For some reason, instead of unpacking the rest of the house and cleaning everything from top to bottom (though I am sure that will come), I am feeling compelled to sew everything for the baby we don’t have yet. When I can’t sleep at night, I browse sewing patterns online for babies: diapers, blankets, clothes.

While I have conceded that since I don’t really sew very often, it might be better for me to buy my cloth diapers. And while I might make a small garment or two for the babe, I really am not willing to put the time commitment in to sew everything a little one will need. But I have found a few projects I think I can tackle.

First, Brock and I really want a ring sling each. I had a Maya Wrap with Athrun that I really liked, but don’t have any more. Since those wraps run around $70 each, I figured it could tackle the project for the both of us. I happened across this pattern, put together by Maya Wrap. They even recommend where to buy the rings! I’m very excited to try this out. I found some osnaburg fabric from fabric.com, which I read is a good choice for this type of project, though to be honest, I know nothing about it.

I also bought some muslin, mostly to experiment with the printing I keep talking about doing. (I was thinking about making a light weight scarf for myself with hot pink sheep on it, actually.) Since my nesting instincts seems to require a lot of browsing on pinterest, I came across a baby blanket DIY the other night.

So now I have something to do with the large swathes of fabric I was planning on covering with sheep prints, you know, for practice.