{ I Made T-Shirt Yarn!}

I think I found this tutorial through one of the link parties I like to visit.  Making of T-shirt Yarn on the site Craft Passion. Here's the direct link: http://www.craftpassion.com/2009/05/recycle-tutorial-making-of-t-shirt-yarn.html

 Mr. Pie faithfully offered up some t-shirts he wouldn't wear again ( I think maybe he thinks this'll mean less money spent on new yarn. tee hee hee)

And I made yarn out of it!!

It's a tad thick and thin, which might be because I can't cut straight to save my life.  I'm thinking market bags maybe?  What else would you knit with recycled t-shirt yarn?

{Red Dwarf Socks}

Anyone remember this sweater that I recycled, and was going to become a different sweater but instead became an epic failure? (in my defense, I had no clue what I was doing and didn't follow a pattern. Yeah. I know. lol).


This soft fuzzy angora blend yarn has been sitting in my stash since almost the conception of my blog and now it's being it's being reincarnated a second time. This time: socks! I cast on my Red Dwarf Socks last weekend and have only had time (or energy) to do a few rows each night. The repeat pattern is super easy to remember and I love that the pattern is written for toe up on two circular needles, since that's my preferred sock method thus far. I'll still have to figure out how to alter patterns to be able to do them that way if they aren't written from the toe up. Can't be that hard, can it? hehe

Here's what sock 1 looks like so far:


The pattern in this yarn isn't as pronounced as in the pattern's picture, but I still think it makes a pretty little detail. I don't think I'm going to do the pattern again on the back of the socks once I'm up on the leg as the pattern calls for. I'm thinking instead I'll just do ribbing around the back for a better fit because the yarn doesn't have a lot of elasticity.

{Christmas Eve Crafting}

Has anyone else noticed how the whole design blogosphere has gone wild for burlap? It's everywhere! Just this morning I've seen it as pillows, chairs, bags, drapes, and valences to name a few! I'm on the hunt for good ways I can begin to use up the yards and yards of burlap I have left over from the wedding. Here was it's original purpose:


So consequently I have about 8 total yards of natural burlap cut in to 18" wide strips that I had the presence of mind to keep (unlike so many of my other crafting leftovers. GAH!)

I was inspired to make some valences for my front room, but I'll need curtain rods before I can do that. I had the itch this morning and needed to do some crafting that only required materials I had on hand!

Then I came across these simple napkin rings at maya*made and it got me to thinkin'. So I scrounged around to see what I had that could substitute for some of her materials. Here's some shots of my process:

Dang, burlap is really messy!

I'll do a tutorial if anyone is interested, but I think it's a pretty straight forward project.

Tools needed: glue gun, scissors, needle with a large eye
The materials I used: burlap, toilet paper roll, green ribbon, brown ribbon (for covering the seam), a small bead

Here's the finished look:


They add a pretty little detail to the dining room, for sure. It's not my favorite project of all time, but it kept me occupied for an hour or so. hehe :) If anyone has any awesome ideas for using burlap, I'm all ears! :)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas Eve with their families. I miss my family dearly this year and wish more than anything that Mr. Pie and I could be home this Christmas with them . It'll only be a couple more years until I move back to the west coast where they are, but that doesn't seem fast enough! I think this is my 9th Christmas in a row away from family... sigh... I'll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams. :)

{Coolest. Idea. Ever.}

Christmas Wrapping - Reusable, Affordable and Green! from HowDoesShe.com


I LOVE LOVE this idea and I think I might have to do this next year... maybe I should start shopping for fabrics right away?? I want some sophisticated pretty Christmas ones!

What do you think - could you and your family make the switch?

{ Another Crafty Project }

I'm pretty proud of this quick little task! It's not a Christmasy craft, but that's okay. My inspiration for this project came from A Soft Place To Land (she's got TONS of awesome crafts!).

I have about half a dozen glass vases around my house and they really don't match the rustic/warm theme of my decor. I try to fill them with seeds or stones or something natural so they aren't so harsh, but this works WAY better! Was way easy too!

I bought a hot glue gun! Just start at the bottom, trying to
be sure that you get the base nice and straight.

Keep going around and around until you're at the top!
My twine was really thick; I wish I would have paid
more attention to getting it tight to the row below.

Ta Da! Some branches from outside finish it off, and I'm the happiest
I've ever been with my end table. :)

Oh, and here's a picture of where my Christmas tree landed:

Alright folks! I'm pretty determined to finish off that scarf today, so I better get started. I really want to cast on some mittens soon! I want them to have a nice long wrist part that will tuck under my coat! I'll let you know when I decide on a pattern for that. :)

Only 4 more sleeps until Santa gets here!!!

{ The Great Snows of '09 }

Holy Crow, People. I'm sure many of you out there are in a similar situation right now, but this is not normal for our tiny town in Virginia. Apparently we haven't had more than 5" since about 1991, way way before I moved here! Take a look at what Mr. Pie and I woke up to:

!!!

16" and it's still forecasted to snow all day today! Mr. Pie couldn't even make it to work!

So today is going to be a cozy day inside. hehe Good thing I got this little project done yesterday! I've done this once before, where I took the branches that you cut off the bottom of your christmas tree (to make it fit in the stand) and tie them together with some twine. This is hanging in the hall now:

I really like this look! I like that it's rustic, unexpected and uncomplicated. Though it seems to me like it needs just a little something. Any ideas?

Projects Started and Projects Updated

Before I talk about anything I'd like to remind one and all, before Monday:

Do Not Forget to enter my Yarn Giveaway to
celebrate my 100th post!

I'll draw probably about 5:00pm EST I think, and I'll count all entries up until I've run the numbers through random.com.

So, on to other cool business! I've been a busy bee so far this weekend! On top of a TON of homework that needs to get done, I've been taking time out to both finish up a few projects around the house, and then to start a few new ones.

Remember when I posted about my room change around? You've seen pictures of how the dining room came out, but here's the other end of the house where the credenza came from and the chest got moved to.


The picture was there originally over top of the credenza; we just swapped out for the chest in the same spot. The peg rack we made and hung last weekend out of just a 1x4 and some wooden pegs painted green. Just 10 minutes ago I finished throwing together that little no-sew slip cover for the piece of foam on top of the chest. Now I have a cute spot for people to take their shoes off and hang up their coats! All in all this project cost me maybe $20 in fabric (entry and dining room together) for a look that has really made me feel like the house has been jazzed up!

Does this little bird guy look familiar? He was a left over scrap from the blinds re-do that is in the picture above. I liked him so much I put him in a frame and hung in the next room!


So that was tonight. hehe LAST night I decided to take my own advice and I started to unravel one of the sweaters that was in my frog pond. This one was 50/50 Wool and acrylic and it's VERY bulky. I've been enjoying knitting in bulky lately so I thought this would energize me. And has it ever!


As you can see I'm not quite done and I already have a whole lot of this stuff. I love it! This morning I decided to try and see if wool/acrylic blends could take colour and the answer is well... yes. But not how you would expect it to.


This came out much greyer than I imagined it would, but that's okay. It's not a large piece and I used a TON of colour (both Kool Aid and food colouring) in blue with a touch of red added so it wasn't so bright. I think I'm going to use it as a contrast for my first project.

Which was to be, I decided with yarn in hand, to start those sock-slippers that I've been promising Mr. Pie. My problem in the past is I've always hated doing the whole double pointed needles thing. This time I went in search of a Two Circulars pattern for socks and found Silver's Toe-Up on Circulars Tutorial.


I can not tell you guys how stoked I am about this. I am SO excited I found a way I actually LIKE to knit socks! I only have two circulars in the right size and length in about two sizes, so I'm really really hoping that Santa is going to bring me a set of Knit Picks Interchangables for Christmas! ;)

I only have a few Christmas items left to finish, but mostly small stuff. Package toppers and some smaller gifts. I love it! I just have Mr. Pie to worry about now!

Major Score!

Today, Mr. Pie and I took a walk in the little downtown area of our tiny town to have lunch and see what's new in the shops and such. One of my favorite little stores is a cute consignment clothes shop that always has name brand baby clothes for like $2 each and has a "give away" bin for clothes that are more worn than she feels comfortable charging for. I've always taken a little bit of time to go through and see if there was anything knitted that I could pull apart.

Well! Today when we went in they had actually moved up to the store front level (from the basement level) and had much less space than before. I looked around for the freebies, didn't see them, and was preparing myself for the worst. When we asked the owner if the bin was still around, she took me down to her old store and me go through a bunch of boxes! Check out my haul!

From left to right we have a ladies size M in 100% cotton, girl's size M in 53% acrylic, 47% wool, girl's size S 50% nylon, 18% angora, 32% lambswool, and a men's L in 55% cotton, 15% wool, 15% rayon, 15% nylon.

Along with the yarn I scored a zipper (on the green one) and 4 buttons (on the peach one). Woo!

The lady is still going through inventory and said that she would put aside more sweaters that had big chunky knits. YAY! It's like I've found the ultimate source for sweaters that need rescuing! :)

Now, to go put them in my stash on ravelry. I love that part!

Random Thoughts and Confessions

This post will be mostly composed of thoughts and occurrences that didn't really merit a blog post on their own, so I let them accumulate until they made one post. hehe So expect a pretty random post today!

First, a confession. I won these lovely stitch markers made with little painted cats on a blog give away! I was stoked, because I think stitch markers are so so fun to collect! But... (and here's the confession part) I totally can NOT remember who sent these to me! ACK! I haven't sent this nice lady a thank you note, because for the life of me I can not remember from which of the sites I follow that I won these on! So please, if this was you, forgive me! My brain is being bombarding by school!! Please let me know so I can thank you!

Aren't they cute??

Last weekend while I was mulling over my very lack-luster knitting as of late, I decided to unravel one of the sweaters in my frog pool.


Unless you don't get this impression from the photo: this is a LOT of yarn. I was kinda disappointed too because I thought it was going to be closer to a sport or worsted weight, and instead I'm guessing it's closer to lace or light fingering. Ever since that scarf I knit mom I've kinda given up on really little yarn. I love how it looks knit up! Don't get me wrong! But it takes forEVER to knit up! LOL

I got to thinking... do you think someone would pay for this much yarn? Someone who likes knitting socks maybe? Or someone who has a drop spindle and would like to twist two or three together to make a thicker yarn? I'm not entirely sure, but it's gotta be close to 2000 yards... 100% cotton. And if I was going to sell it, what does a person charge for recycled cotton? I thought I would seek our your opinions because you're always so helpful. :)

Then, my last random thought. I was going through my stash the other day looking at what I had and searching for inspiration to cast on a new project, and came across these:


I'm beginning to accumulate bits and ends of yarns that I've knit with. What in the heck do you do with these?? It's too much to throw out, but not enough to knit anything I can think of. Do you guys store them seperate for doing colour work maybe? I'm going to have a million of these things if I just keep 'em!

School update: today marks my 1 week anniversary of starting classes at Hollins. I am wore out, plain and simple. Right now homework is sucking my energy like a vampire. Ugh. Is this related to my lack of knitting mojo? Discuss.

Recycling A Sweater Tutorials

No... not a tutorial from ME silly! I'm not enough of an expert at any of this yet for me to be trying to teach anyone else! But I thought I might share a few sites that I went to when I was researching how to recycle a sweater. It's crazy fun and oh so gratifying. Enjoy! :)






www.recycleyarn.com

(doesn't that look FUN? hehehe!)











Craft Stylish's version here is close to what I do when I unravel than the previous example.









Or this one here from My Virtual Sanity was the version that I relied heavily upon.










Enjoy your recycling projects! Be sure and let me know about all the cool stuff you're gonna make for next to nothin'!

I've declared today a KNIT day!

After a week of getting almost no knitting done in favour of projects more new and exciting, I've declared today a day for knitting. Hopefully I'll get a good chunk of my tank top done, and maybe even finish off that gray and burgundy hat.

Before doing that, though, I had to wind that newest recycled yarn in to balls so that it wouldn't get knotted and tangled. I've learned this the hard way having had to throw out a ton of that cotton yarn that I frogged from the sweater. Here is the rest, looking lonely and forlorn:


If there is anyone reading this who owns a winder and thinks they can make heads or tails of this bag, they are welcome to it. All 1600 yards of 100% cotton lace-weight yarn! Yours to keep! :)

Here's the first 3 center pull balls I've made per these instructions (near the bottom of the page) on Knittinghelp.com made from the bulky angora blend that I am so excited about.

I have these three, plus two more 50-yard skeins drying, and one more sleeve plus a half back to go on the unraveling, so I'm thinking I'll have maybe 450 yards or so! I've decided it is destined to be this pullover:

I'll have enough yarn for one of these in a my size, a medium, and I think the natural colour will actually suit the design very well, negating the need to continue experimenting with the dyeing process. I think I need some time to recuperate from that one! I did cast on a swatch using the dyed yarn and my size 15 needles though, shown here:


My gauge is a tad off. There are too much stitches for ever 10cm. That usually means I should use a bigger needle, right? What do you do if this is the biggest needle you have? Should I just use the stitch measurements for size Large and that will give me a size M? It's not TOO far off, only 1 stitch.

Must... not... cast on... another... project. Must... resist... the temptation!

Attempt #1: Epic Failure

I suppose it was bound to happen eventually, right? I've been trying so many new crafts lately and, mostly successful with these endeavors, so I was totally due to fall flat on my face at something.

So I tried the KoolAid dyeing this morning, with much trepidation, on my newly frogged (recycled) yarn angora/wool/nylon blend from this sweater:


If you can tell it's terribly fuzzy but it's oh so soft! It's also got a tan strand and a white strand that runs all the way through the yarn, which I was hoping would make for an interesting colour variation. So here's what I started with:


So I did my reserach on Ravelry with the help of some very knowledgeable women, then got to work. At first I poured both packets of Orange koolaid in to the bowl, decided that was way too much, dumped out 2/3 of the bowl and added more water, THEN dunked in the yarn. This was my first result:



Soooo... I was thinking that the Nylon probably wouldn't absorb as much of it, right? And well maybe by only doing 4 rounds of 2 minutes in the microwave it won't soak in quite so much. Ummm... not so much. Traffic Cone Orange wasn't my goal. So I decided I would try to put the red over the top to make it more... oh I dunno... reddy-orange like a fall colour. Here's my second result:


Better, right? But still NEON. I guess I"ll have to find some green dye if I want to muddy it up some? Or you know... just knit it as my swatch piece for gauge and be DONE with it. LOL Oh, and I totally didn't use gloves either! Hehehe! I'm typing this post with some very red finger tips!


So now I'm at an impasse. Do I use more of this soft cuddly yarn to keep experimenting with? Or do I just knit it up in it's boring white/tan colour way? I'm thinking it's bulky enough and that I'll have enough of it (about 600 yards?) that I can knit something pretty nice.

I would really appreciate any feed back from the more experienced dyers! What the heck did I do wrong and how do I do it right next time? LOL

The Stash: Episode 1

Today, my new friends, is a special day. I have begun to assemble a stash! I bought a big blue tub to start putting all the yarn that's left over or that is being kept for future projects, along with any odd and ends that are knitting related. See it here in all it's glory!


What you are seeing in the box is mostly junk acrylic yarn my grandma gave me to learn with except for the three skeins of brown worsted weight that will be my dad's pull over for Christmas. I'll let you guys know when I start that one. I was thinking it was going to be next on the needles, but with all this garter stitch overload from my tank I may want to do the lace scarf first. lol

You also will see, tucked in to the corner, a drawstring christmas bag that Grandma gave me to put my first project in, and the knitting book that I bought 8 years later to RE-teach myself how to knit. Well... it was really just a brush up, right? hehe

In other Stash-related news, I've decided to start reclaiming yarn from used sweaters! I'm so excited about this, but was sooo nervous that it would be a ton of work, difficult, or not worth the effort! Let me tell you now: It is SO easy! And SO Fun!! Here's a picture of my first's afternoon's haul of about 1300 yards, and I still have 1/2 of the back of the sweater and another sleeve to do!!


I'm estimating in the ballpark of 2000 yards when I'm done. A similar 3-ply, 100% cotton yarn averages at about $6.00 per 400 yards. I only paid $3.50 for this sweater, and I'll probably get about $30 worth of yarn out of it! I chose this 100% cotton for my first project for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's abundant at the thrift store and I wanted to know if it was going to be any good to use. Secondly, I wasn't going to be deeply hurt if I managed to ruin this whole process in my first go at it. And last, I liked the colour of this yarn, and there was plenty of it in this men's XL sweater. I know it's harder to see in this picture but it's a three ply with one strand a golden colour, one copper and then one a kind of pewter almost. Pretty cool. Here's more of a closeup:




These beauties spent last night soaking in a luke-warm bath in my washing machine along with a bit of shampoo, so hopefully this morning they'll be okay to be squeezed out and hung up to dry. I'm HOPING it's going to relax it a bit to get rid of all of the kinkiness to the yarn.

What might I possibly use this yarn for, you ask? I've given it some thought. I could make this shawl and still have half of the stash from yesterday left over.


Or if I double over the yarn, I could attempt this cardigan, which even though it's *totally* my style and I would LOVE to own it, is probably over my head right now. But you know, for in the future, once I'm good at this. hehe



I'm also pondering sending a bunch of it to my mom for christmas so she can make a market bag that she's had her eyes on. I'll let you guys know later today how the yarn comes out after hanging. And Ooo! I've also started to make stitch markers for my first ever Ravelry SWAP! I'll post those later too! I think I've become obsessed with my blog! Thank you so much to my first 4 followers!! :)