Wow. It's been a while...
Yeah, so it's been like a month since I've updated. Time flies when you are cursing yarn....
So, the June challenge for the Bag Me KALwas to use orange and/or yellow yarn AND a novelty yarn. You could use other stuff too, but that was the challenge.
So, not finding any acceptable and affordable (for me, anyway) yellow or orange yarn, I decided to make my first dye attempt. Wugh.
I had some food coloring and vinegar in the cupboard and, having watched my craftylicious friend Nicole do marvelous things with Fisherman's, I decided to give it a try. And she gave me a 50% off coupon for the yarn, so I had little to lose. Except my sanity. Sigh.
So I tried yellow first. Put the whole 4 oz in the pot, it sucked up the dye like you wouldn't believe but the next day, after draining and rinsing, there were spots with NO dye.
Damnit. I figured it was because I was trying to put too much in the pot, so I halved the skein and overdyed with orange koolaid. Which pissed me off, because I wanted the whole 465 yards of it for the bag I was creating. So, the overdye was mildly successful - the yarn was still kind of mottled, but it wasn't bad. So, I overdyed the yellow too. Same thing - the color took better, but the sections that hadn't taken before were lighter than the rest. The nice thing about koolaid dyeing is that it smells WAAAAAAY better than food color & vinegar. And jeebis - it took forevah to dry.
So, resigned to having mottled yellow and orange yarn, I swatched the orange and hoped for the best. Here's the orange, pre-felting:
Then the real trouble began: My test swatches of the yellow & orange didn't felt! Well, the orange did a little, but nowhere near what I wanted. The yellow when combined with the various nogvelty yarns did not felt at all. Oh - and the sparkly fun-furry yarn I bought cheap at Hobby Lobby (Party Girl, i believe it's called) is truly, truly fugly after washing. So, I dithered for days and days, trying various things, none of which I liked. And I cursed. A lot. And I haunted the craft stores, looking for yellow or orange fun fur. Crap. Michael's had it on sale for $2.77, but no yellow, no orange. I got some fugly fun fur striping stuff in desperation, but it just did not work for the project. Much cursing ensued.
I finally said fuckit and knitted a tube with a flap, with the vague notion of making some kind of flower with the Bernat Boa and something....and lo and behold, the damn thing felted. *faint* I hate the flower, but by the time I got that far, I didn't give a damn anymore, LOL. The purse was gifted to one of my son's friends at her birthday party this past Saturday. (Well, ok, it's his wife. They married at the homeschool co-op last fall. She also married another little boy from church, and I think my son married him too. As long as they are happy....) She was delighted with the purse, even before she found the $5 I tucked inside.
So, the June challenge for the Bag Me KALwas to use orange and/or yellow yarn AND a novelty yarn. You could use other stuff too, but that was the challenge.
So, not finding any acceptable and affordable (for me, anyway) yellow or orange yarn, I decided to make my first dye attempt. Wugh.
I had some food coloring and vinegar in the cupboard and, having watched my craftylicious friend Nicole do marvelous things with Fisherman's, I decided to give it a try. And she gave me a 50% off coupon for the yarn, so I had little to lose. Except my sanity. Sigh.
So I tried yellow first. Put the whole 4 oz in the pot, it sucked up the dye like you wouldn't believe but the next day, after draining and rinsing, there were spots with NO dye.
Damnit. I figured it was because I was trying to put too much in the pot, so I halved the skein and overdyed with orange koolaid. Which pissed me off, because I wanted the whole 465 yards of it for the bag I was creating. So, the overdye was mildly successful - the yarn was still kind of mottled, but it wasn't bad. So, I overdyed the yellow too. Same thing - the color took better, but the sections that hadn't taken before were lighter than the rest. The nice thing about koolaid dyeing is that it smells WAAAAAAY better than food color & vinegar. And jeebis - it took forevah to dry.
So, resigned to having mottled yellow and orange yarn, I swatched the orange and hoped for the best. Here's the orange, pre-felting:
Then the real trouble began: My test swatches of the yellow & orange didn't felt! Well, the orange did a little, but nowhere near what I wanted. The yellow when combined with the various nogvelty yarns did not felt at all. Oh - and the sparkly fun-furry yarn I bought cheap at Hobby Lobby (Party Girl, i believe it's called) is truly, truly fugly after washing. So, I dithered for days and days, trying various things, none of which I liked. And I cursed. A lot. And I haunted the craft stores, looking for yellow or orange fun fur. Crap. Michael's had it on sale for $2.77, but no yellow, no orange. I got some fugly fun fur striping stuff in desperation, but it just did not work for the project. Much cursing ensued.
I finally said fuckit and knitted a tube with a flap, with the vague notion of making some kind of flower with the Bernat Boa and something....and lo and behold, the damn thing felted. *faint* I hate the flower, but by the time I got that far, I didn't give a damn anymore, LOL. The purse was gifted to one of my son's friends at her birthday party this past Saturday. (Well, ok, it's his wife. They married at the homeschool co-op last fall. She also married another little boy from church, and I think my son married him too. As long as they are happy....) She was delighted with the purse, even before she found the $5 I tucked inside.
posted by AMGblaghs at 4:53 AM
1 Comments:
OMG!! *laughing my ass off here* Well the awesome thing is you hand dyed your yarn.. definately braver than me. I had some cursing moments when I was doing my bag.. its damn hard finding yellow and orange in any type of yarn.. whats up with that. But your bag came out beautiful..!!
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