Getting Crafty

I’m a hardwired crafter with mediocre skills that no amount of classes and rehearsals can change, but when the itch strikes to take up a project, I usually dive in feet first, and I dove in hard over the holidays taking on new knitting challenges, dying wool in lots of bright colors and then figuring out what to do with all those colors. We acquired a ton of single ply merino wool which we currently sell at the farmers market because we ran out of our own flock’s yarn and I felt like I should get familiar with it.  I knit this vest in the round up to the arm holes and then back and forth to the shoulders, stitched the shoulder seams and then picked up the stitches for the neck and arm hole and knit the borders. I’ve never done a serious cable project before, I’ve never cooked up my own pattern and did both here. I definitely got a little lost at times, but my other first was learning how to pull out screwed up stitches without having to pull full rows apart.  Non-knitters, I’m sure I’m losing you here. Sorry!

While the vest was underway, I took five white skeins of the same yarn and experimented with dying in different colors. While there aren’t many variables to dying, it seems like such a leap of faith to submerge pure white merino wool into a pan of colored water. I’m happy with most of the results but that yellow is way too much.  I think I’ll dye that again to tone it down.

 

The next personal challenge was figuring out what to do with the colored yarn.  A hat seemed like a good way to pull all the colors together. I knit this hat with two colors at a time.  Unfortunately, it came out a little on the big side.

I still have plenty of yarn, so I’ve started a second hat that I hope will be a bit smaller.

 

Peggy