Exactly as planned....

If you've been watching this space, you'd know that I've been experimenting with the knitting machine, knitting needles, yarn and dye. Seeing what happens....
I machine-knitted some cream coloured wool, dyed it BRIGHT green (yikes!).. then dulled it down with red to make a lovely lichen-mossy-tweedy colour.... then hand-knitted (and frogged and re-knitted) a cap sleeve top and a little gumnut-baby hat.
A handwash and blocking produced a lovely tweedy set for a 1-year-old gumnut kid. But I thought how little time a busy mother has to handwash knits, so I did a test-run through a wool cycle in the washing machine. Baby Alive modelled the hat (because there were no balloons in the house) as it dried. Hmmmmm..... a soft minty green...

....which, when it dried, had a layer of rusty-red on the surface. Eeeuw! (I was so horrified, I didn't take photos of this stage of development).

With nothing to lose, I tried it through a normal wash in the machine, thinking it might felt a bit.So Baby Alive has a nice new ice-mint coloured, felted tunic and gumnut-hat.... and I have a better idea of a few yarny processes (which was the plan!). And that one-year-old will have to wait a bit longer for a new outfit!

Behind the scenes

Another week has flown by and I still have nothing that I can show for it. I've been tinkering away behind the scenes, working on something to raffle for a Red Cross/Japan fundraiser and a new pattern.

But I've nothing to show you, except the bits of knitting machine experimentation I've done in fits, starts, dribs and drabs over the last week or two.

I've made a (seriously flawed) set-your-teeth-on-edge-squeaky acrylic rainbow scarf with a small girl. I've tried cut-and-sew experiments with cotton yarn.
I've tried throwing the cut-and-sew experiment through a clean-it-or-kill-it cycle in my gung-ho front-loader.

Despite a few fluffy ends poking through, it looks like it'll survive. I'm going to try a tighter, wider overlock and give it another go. This area has enormous potential..... (insert little squeal here...).

And then there was a spot of experimentation with food colourings and machine-knitted lengths.

This piece (below) was knitted in cream coloured yarn. I gave it a food-colouring bath and turned it budgie-green (eek!). Another bath (this time with RED in it) resulted in a tweedy, mossy green. Lovely. (Insert more squeals). On Thursday night, the incredibly generous and kind Angela showed me how to clean and service my machine. She loaned me a new sponge bar and showed me how to do some fancy-schmantzy stuff.

I'm a bit excited about the prospect of being able to create shape on the machine, but so far the wee girl and I are trying out pattern cards.... great fun.

Next week, I hope to have more results on the surface of things as well as some bits of yarny fun on the side.

But I'm pretty sure there will be a fair bit of yarny fun on the side.

Garment dyeing - Lesson 1...

Always use pure cotton thread when you're making a cotton garment that is to be dyed.  This will ensure that the dye takes evenly thoughout the garment.

Lesson 2 - Double-check that the bobbin you wound with cotton thread is indeed the one that you put in the machine....

...because polyester thread will only have to be unpicked and re-sewn with colour-matched thread (likely to mis-match as the garment fades!!).

This the Funked Out Peasant Blouse pattern I won in Little Munchkins' giveaway a while ago.  I tried it in a white-based printed cotton lawn from IKEA - keeping costs down if it all went horribly wrong.  White is not my colour so it was doomed to the dye-bath from the start.

The result...

I chose the cap sleeve version and skipped the hip band (a bad look for those of us lacking leg length).  I used an invisible zip in the side (instead of the dress zip that was recommended).


In the end, it's not too bad, although not the most flattering of shapes for we short-waisted/short-legged/short-everythinged gals.  It'll look better with slim black pants underneath to create a bit more body-reference in the silhouette.  Next time I'll add more flare at the hip to fix that bunching-up business at the waist, and try it in a more fluid fabric (fine viscose?... viscose jersey?).


Do you like how - instead of wasting time cleaning the studio when I could be sewing - I've just used a blurry Photoshop filter?  I'm desperately trying to work out a way that this trick can be applied to the real-life studio.