Showing posts with label homemade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homemade. Show all posts

Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Brioche Hat Madness and Plans for 2016

Brioche Hat Madness

The last couple of weeks I was rather productivly knitting! Hats are great projects for gifts, they are finished in a reasonable time and give this feeling of accomplishment :)

I discovered the pattern Liguria by Katrin Schubert on ravelry, and immediately had to try this. It was my first time knitting two-color brioche and I fell completely in love. If you have never tried this, you really really should!
What came afterwards was that my family  asked for getting hats like that one too, but in their favorite color.... so all in all I knit three Ligurias!

My second Liguria in "The Grateful Dead" colors for my dad (Madelinetosh DK Baltic and a leftover red yarn from my stash)
the first Liguria I made in Madelinetosh DK Baltic & Grasshopper
my third Liguria made for my mum in Madelinetosh DK Lepidoptra
After that I wanted to have new hat for myself as well, and I dyed some DK weight yarn in two beautiful browns for it. I also used 2color brioche, but this time without a pattern, just started knitting:

dunkel dk in "old leather book"
dunkel dk in "my boyfriends guitar"











improvised 2color brioche hat in my favorite browns


 In between all those hats, I even managed to knit a pair of socks, which I really love! I used the very popular free pattern Hermione's Everyday Socks from ravelry and my own plant dyed sock yarn:
plant dyed sock yarn (birch leaves and indigo) photographed in summer 2015

plant dyed socks photographed in winter 2015 (the summer colors are more accurate for sure!)

"Dunkel yarns"

Recently I also got much more into yarn dyeing with acid dyes. I am having so much fun with it, and I love the layered semisolid look of the yarns.
Not so much spinning, as spinning only white fibers can be quite boring. And I want to dye yarns this time around, not rovings :)
Maybe soon there will be some handdyed yarns in my etsy shop, it's long overdue that I revive that shop again!

dunkel dk in "rainy day", "my green sofa" and "hay bale"




my absolute favorite: "rainy day"

"rainy day" photographed in the sun


Plans for 2016

I will spend the beginning of the upcoming year once more in the hot summer of Brazil! Nevertheless I have plans for knitting, especially during the 12 hour flight. I am planning to make a stripey cardigan out of my handdyed dunkel dk yarns. Just top down, raglan increases, a bit  of bust shaping and color changes, similar to the paulie cardigan on ravelry.

Other than that, I have the goal to make more garments in the next year. I just love knitted cardigans, and hardly ever make any, because I am afraid it would take too long. So that should change!

A beautiful pattern on my radar is the hooded cardigan Kerrera by Gudrun Johnston. Such an amazing design! I am planning to knit it out of Madelinetosh Vintage.

Other plans? Be happy and enjoy what I am doing. And to finish my PhD :-P

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Saturday, 6 September 2014

Homemade Blending Hackle

My love is experimenting on how to build a nice blending hackle. For the first try he took a piece of wood, drilled some holes and fixed nails that are 120 mm long and 4.5 mm thick.


The disadvantage with the nails is that they are a bit too thick and not so smooth at the points.... around here we couldn't find any nails that are thinner and still that long.
For the next model we are planning to use stainless-steel tines with a thickness of 3 mm.

Here are some pictures of our prototype in action!
First we dyed some merino wool and tussah silk in pretty colours, and now we are blending them on the hackle. On the last picture you can see the first combed tops - they are heavenly fluffy fiber "clouds" and I can't wait to spin them!


Here you find an instructive and funny video on how to blend fibers on the hackle!