Happy Yarn Bombing Day!

.....yesterday. I'm a bit late - but! I have exciting yarn-bombing related news! I've been published in a book of yarn-bombing photos. The book isn't released yet, but I have an advance copy, and it's a great little book with pictures of yarn bombing from all over the world. Plus it has a squishy cover! If you want a collection of inspiring yarn bombing photos it's an awesome choice. This is what it looks like:

In celebration of yarn bombing day, I went out with some friends and two bags full of yarn bombing bits. We didn't get through everything (we had to get to a play in the evening), but we put up quite a lot. Observe:

Handspun and WIPs

Today I've got some pictures of handspun yarn! Always exciting.

First, a couple small skeins of handdyed laceweight. The colours you can get with food colouring are really fantastic, I'm so pleased with how these came out. This was the first time I've dyed the roving and then spun it.

There isn't enough yarn to do much with, so I'm going to try making knitted jewellery with these. I really love the lace necklaces people make, and I've been meaning to try it myself for a while now.

As you may or may not know, I'm fond of taking yarn apart and respinning it. I had a bit of bulky yarn that was blue, green and two shades of purple. I separated it into colours, and respun it into two singles, a blue-green one and a purple-purple one, then plied those.

I like the yarn I spun much better than the original.

I tried to make a tam, but I ran out of yarn too quickly.

I really don't want to go buy more yarn. I think my options are to finish it with a contrasting colour (something plain though, maybe black? It's already pretty colourful.) or take it apart and make a toque instead. I'm leaning towards the second option, but I really don't know. Maybe it'll go into the unfinished projects bin and I'll forget about it for a couple months.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was going to try making socks.

Well, I'm trying. There are several things that have come up, and there's no way my socks are going to match now. First problem:

Wtf. There is no way these are the same dyelot. I feel so betrayed! The dyelot on the label was the same!

Second problem:

How did this happen? Dramatic tension change? Was I just really nervous for the first one? I just don't know. Maybe I can block them to the same size? (This seems unlikely but I'll try anyway.)

Sigh. I guess it will be sort of ok. Listening to the Robot Pirates helps a bit.

Good news though! I finished embroidering needle sizes onto my circular needle case! It's on my wall above my bed now, terribly satisfying.

For someone who is obsessed with knitting and yarn as much as I am, I appear to have a severe lack of scarves. This is madness!

I started a lace scarf last night. I've had this yarn forever, it's really lovely, I am so excited to be using it at last.

Plans

I just finished reading Sweater Quest, by Adrienne Martini and it has inspired me! First of all, it's a great book, it has a great flow to it, and I read it in a couple days because I couldn't stop! I totally recommend it. It inspired me to work on more interesting/challenging projects. I've made a few shirts and a sweater before, but now I want to learn Fair Isle...not on the same scale as Martini, I'm going to try a hat first. A wander through Ravelry came up with a few patterns I liked; atm I'm leaning towards Tracery Tam, but still considering Joni, Midnight Sun Tam, Floppy Fairisle Hat, or Star Flower Tam. Too many choices! The Fornicating Deer Chart definitely deserves an honourable mention though.

I also want to make socks! I haven't made socks before, mostly because I'm not really a big sock person...I tend to wear thick tights or nothing. But I think knitting socks is something I should know how to do, so I picked up some orangey-greeny sock yarn from Michaels, and I'm going to use Knitty's Universal Toe-Up Formula.

I've finished a couple more hats, which I'm happy enough with, but not really excited about. I'm going to take them to Rare Funk sometime next week...I meant to take hats this week, but I had a whole bunch of assignments to catch up on, and couldn't seem to find the time.

This hat is crocheted, I started it about a year ago, but only just finished it. I've made a similar hat before, I really like the spiral pattern. Acrylic single-ply yarn, it's really soft and I like it! It does pill a bit though.


This one is 100% wool. This is the first hat I've knitted, and I didn't use a pattern (of course) so it's a liiiiiittle wonky...but still wearable! I am reasonably pleased with how it turned out.

Next I'm going to see if I can make red and aqua look good together. This could be interesting, here's the yarn I've got:

It will at least be distinctive.

I also got some colourful tape for hula hoops! It's actually hockey tape from the sports store, it's cheap and colourful and I got a whole bunch of colours. So now my hoop has a few different shades of blue on it, so exciting!

I'm making a couple more hoops for friends, which is exciting, I've made back the cost of the materials already. Not sure if anyone else wants to buy hoops from me, but I still have pipe left over, so possibly I'll just make myself some different sizes.

In dumpster diving news, I found 21 tubes of watercolour paint the other day.

They were all in clean packaging, I don't know *why* they were thrown away. More free stuff, I guess, but still. No wonder everyone hates north america.

I'm home for thanksgiving this weekend, and I found some yarn bombing! I wish I'd had a camera with me, but no. In true London, ON fashion, it had been burned by someone...wtf?! It looked like it had been nice before...

Yarrrrn Bombing!

As you may (or may not, that's cool too) have noticed, I have not yarn bombed anything in *quite* a while. That has now been remedied! I was feeling all restless last night, so went out and put up a bunch of tags! And here they are:

A little green knitted tag on the bridge into the park. Tags in the park get taken down pretty much immediately, so this is a test to see if the bridge counts as the park. I really like how this picture turned out!

Bio-hazard logo! I crocheted this aaaages ago, but for some reason had not put it up until now. The black yarn is acrylic (well, I assume acrylic, the label says "100% unknown fibres") and the green is wool, I'm interested to see if the wool felts at all. I loooooove biohazard logos, I want to make a sweater or something with one eventually.

A green and grey crocheted tag. The stitch pattern is from The Complete Book of Crochet Stitch Designs: 500 Classic & Original Patterns, though I added the colour changes. I really like how this one blends into the tree.

I have no good reason for calling this one "Bench Press," but I'm going to anyway. Knitted with some random yarn, possibly not by me. It's one of those random bits of abandoned knitting that just seem to spontaneously generate themselves.

Making bobbles with varicoloured yarn is really really satisfying. Crocheted with acrylic.

Knitted pink lace. This is more of the scary "100% unknown fibre" yarn, except this is even worse than the black stuff, which feels mostly ok. This stuff is a little like knitting with sandpaper. It's bright and stands out, which is nice, but I'm so glad it's almost all gone.

Green acrylic and novelty yarn! I was doing stripes, but then I got bored, so there's some lace at the top for no good reason. This one is visible from the Perimeter Institute! I sort of want to make something that says "<3 PHYSICS" and put it up near there.

Because I was soooort of near Michael's when I went out to take pictures today (it was dark when I put stuff up), I visited the dumpster briefly. I was wearing sandles with no socks, so I wasn't really planning on going it, but then I saw buttons! And there wasn't too much glass (and I didn't hurt myself until I got home again by walking into my bike!) so yes. I only checked out a couple bags, and look what I found:

I am super excited by a lot of this stuff, particularly the yarn (YARN), the shape cutter thingey (which works!), and the dowels (I'm going to make spindles!). The white things are envelopes, and the things with pictures of wine are fake wine labels to put on top of real wine labels, so you can pretend you're drinking blood, har har har. There were thirteen packages of them...I'm not sure what that implies. Also, buttons!