Teach 'em young

I spent a while this afternoon playing with Kool-Aid dyes and 3 skeins of sock yarn with my youngest DD. What better way to spend a half-term cloudy afternoon - creative, educational and yarny!

I let her choose the colours to be used and then showed her how to make them up into the dyes.


She came up with the first colourway - her favourite - a rainbow one of course.

Then we decided together how to use the remaining colours on the other 2 skeins of yarn. Here are the results:
This one is a gorgeous bright mix of red and orange, which hasn't shown up in the picture well at all - goodness knows why not.

Then this one which is the leftover blue, green and lemon.

Cool!

Crochet adornment

I've felt more like experimenting recently with the lovely range of colours I have in the mercerised cotton yarns and glass bead stash.

These are two of the end results, currently for sale in my Etsy shop:

This was my first play, in beautiful aquamarine shades which I seem to be drawn to at the moment.

Must be something to do with catching glimpses of the sea so frequently!

The second one is also inspired by the coastline, with a combination of neutrals, browns and blues - more like the sand, rocks, and sky.

I really enjoy combining the colours, threading the beads on to the yarns and crocheting them together right now.

Of course this means I'm on the lookout for more large-holed beads to use, so I'll have to go bead shopping during my time off work next week. :-)

Perfect Pink Poncho

The visit from my family last week resulted in an impromptu knitting project - a cute little poncho for my gorgeous niece, who is now 1 year old.

My eldest put her poncho on the little one and she looked so adorable that I agreed to make one for her.

I've used all stash yarns (phew, another small bite out of the huge mountain of yarns!) - Wendy Supreme DK cotton and Patons Sorbet knitted together, and Wendy Shimmer for the edging.

It's a really simple garter stitch poncho with a crocheted edging and applique.

I have to package it up to send it by post to her as we won't see them again until the autumn, when there will be another little one added to the brood! Hopefully I'll get sent a pic of her wearing it in return.

Forget me not

Slow progress this last week or so as we've had family visiting. It was wonderful to spend time with them, so the Forget-me-not socks took a back seat.

I did manage to finish them the night before our visitors left though, so my Mom got to see them done.

It's not the world's best picture but the only time I seem to get for crafty stuff right now is after dark.

They feel lovely on - really soft and silky. I used the Panda Cotton Print (a great-value bamboo/cotton blend) in the Strawberry-Lime colourway, and of course my DDs both love it. I may have to buy some more to make socks for them.

There was yarn left over from both balls, so they could have been made longer but this is a cuff-down pattern. I guess the leftovers would make great hairbands for my DDs!

I'm glad I also bought the same yarn in the Chocolate-Almond colourway - now to find another short-ish pattern..