Saturday, June 14, 2008

New in Blue


Some friends were moving and needed to get rid of this chair. It's very comfy and rocks, but the slipcover was stained and the off-white color wasn't great for my room and showed cat hair easily. A jar of blue dye seems to have solved the problem! I thought that dying would be much more complicated than it was, but you can do it in a bucket with cold water if you are dying plant-based fabrics (there was no tag on the slipcover, my guess was cotton or cotton blend).


You do need a lot of salt to help the dye get into the fabric and soda ash to fix it. Places that sell the dye should also sell the soda ash. In the end, the project cost about $15 (and the chair was free!) My dye job isn't perfect. There are a lot of color variations, but I kind of like it that way. I'm not sure if the problem is - maybe my fabric wasn't actually cotton or had a lot of something else blended in? Maybe I didn't stir enough. Maybe I didn't fix it for long enough. In any event, I'm much happier with my chair!

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

the perfect project for the homespun!


I spun this yarn a while ago. I started it in Maryland and finished shortly after arriving in MA. But it sat around for a while before I decided what to do with it. Even then, I cast on, started and frogged about 5 scarf-like-things before feeling optimistic. But this is the right thing. I was partially inspired by Ice Queen from knitty (if you look carefully at the pictures you'll see some beads) and partially by the Not So Rugged Scarf from Knitting with Balls. But I'm quite pleased with how it looks. The beads aren't too noticeable, but the reflect light nicely. Now, if only I had managed to finish it when it was still cold out!

Sunday, June 01, 2008

What I did during my camera's vacation

I spent weeks frantically searching for my camera. Finally, the night before she was planning to leave for the summer, Eliza dumped out her messenger bag and found it hiding at the bottom. I was sad to miss photos of two adorable projects of my own invention that have already been given away as gifts: a pair of tiny Red Sox attached to a magnet for one co-worker's birthday and a cigarette box cozy for another. I might try to steal them back for a moment to get pictures.

I also just finished a scarf out of horrible red heart acrylic for some gay Presbyterians. I knit 'till I couldn't stand it anymore, then added a fringe to get as much length as possible.