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!
Hopefully Creative 