Tutorial: Felt Gingerbread Ornaments

Has the cat eaten your baubles? Got a bare spot where you've taken the crackers and candy canes away on Christmas Day? These gingerbread shapes are so quick and easy to make and can be hung from your tree or strung together to make a garland. All you need is:

• A piece of thin card
• A pen
• Sharp scissors
• Felt in a tan/fawn/biscuit colour
• White/cream & Black embroidery thread
• Embroidery needles
• Soft toy filling

Fold the piece of card in half and draw half a gingerbread man shape. The will make sure your man is nice and symetrical. Cut him out and unfold him. (I'll happily provide a downloadable PDF of shapes should anyone want one)

Draw around your men on the felt, fit them as closely together as possible to make the most of the material. Cut out the shapes. The sensible person will now embroider one half with the design of their choosing. Give the man eyes, a nose and mouth and buttons (if you wish). I gave my man eyes and a nose and a belly button using a french knot.

Place two man shapes on top of one-another and start stitching together using a simple blanket stitch. Start at one shoulder and work all the way around to the other shoulder leaving the head un-worked.

Now for the fun.

Grab a small hunk of filling and tease it apart in your fingers to fluff it up. Start to fill your man. I found that using the end of a crochet hook helped to fill the extremities.

Sew up the head, secure the belly button on the back of your man with another french knot and slip the needle up and out of the top of your man's head.

Make a loop and secure.

Thread the loop with ribbon and hang your man in the tree.

Make other shapes too, hearts, Christmas trees, stockings and stars will all work well. Use them as little samplers for trying out different embroidery stitches. The stitch below is rosette stitch which looks like gorgeous icing dribbled all over a cookie.

So have a go, I guarantee you that making these charming ornaments is about ten times quicker than this post took to construct. Thanks Blogger!

Christmas Knits Part 1: Kilt Hose

I’ve had an extra long weekend off work this week, first day back today. The problem with long weekends is that I want to procrastinate, even if there are 50 new emails in my inbox highlighted in red, demanding attention.

So, to prolong the procrastination I want to talk about Christmas knitting.

Yes, the time has come. There’s no use fighting it. In fact I saw a few threads on Ravelry about Christmas in July…I steered clear.

I started my Christmas knitting when I got back from holiday in August with these little beauties:

A pair of Kilt Hose for my Scottish Step-Dad-In-Law Jim. He’s a proud Scotsman and I have to admit to sometimes not understanding a word he says. I find that nodding and giggling at him usually does the job. He’s probably funny, I never met a Scot who wasn’t (something about living in the rainy cold gives you a nice dry sense of humour).

In the summer, as I was knitting my first pair of socks (a disaster) he happened to mention that the kilt hose he buys are rubbish these days and they’re not like his mum used to make. He also mentioned that his short legs were the bane of a Scotsman’s existence when it comes to Kilt Hose. They’re just all too long! Foolishly led into it, I reckoned I could make some for his Christmas present and if they were good enough he could wear them for his daughter’s wedding in May.

So in the search for Kilt Hose on Ravelry I came across a few traditional type hose (all with comments exclaiming how complicated they were) and then I came across Toirneach from Knitty. I had a brief look through the pattern and it looked ok. Unfortunately I didn’t like the Amphora lace cuff. It wasn’t for Jim, it seemed too feminine. So true to type, I decided to do what I always do on these important projects. I decided to try something completely new to me. Cables. Also true to type I didn’t just start of with a simple 2 x 2 cable. I started with a nine stranded plait. It was too small and not stretchy enough, so after about five started and frogged cuffs, I ended up with the simple plaited cable repeating pattern which is nice and stretchy because it’s kind of like a large scale rib and I used the leg pattern from Toirneach with a short row heel rather than a heel flap.

I’m rather happy and perhaps most worried by the fact that Jim’s leg measurements are almost spot-on the same as mine. I mean, he told me he has short legs, but really?

Dyeing wool with food colouring Experimentation

I dyed some more wool at the weekend using food colouring again. I wanted to have a go on some nice plain white sock wool after the attempt at dyeing the recycled sweater yarn. I got all inspired by the colours in Zauerball Crazy Tropical Fish which has lovely tones of blue-green, yellow, orange and red. The result was quite heathery in places which is not particulary what i was aiming for, i wanted graded colour but i didn't really want the dye to stick as quickly to the skeins as it did, leaving white sections.

Possibly it might be something to do with a few factors. this time there was

• Much more vinegar than last time in the soak water
• I don't think the saturation of the food colour in the water was as good
• the amount of soak time the skein got was much less compared to when i dyed the jumper yarn

I'll be doing a lot more experimenting in the next couple of months with varying amounts of colouring, vinegar, soaking time to see what effect it has on the outcome of the yarn.

The method i used to dye these skeins is below.

I'm quite pleased with this skein but wish there wasn't so much heathering.

This skein is much too orange for my tastes. I like the orange but don't want the full skein this way. believe it or not this should have been orangey-red but that didn't exactly work did it. So i'll be dip dyeing a section a darker red. Maybe the dip dyeing will avoid the heathering.

How did I do it? Read on!

1. Skein the yarn however you wish.
2. Soak the yarn in 1 and a half litres of water mixed with half a litre of white vinegar in a bowl or bucket. Press down into the liquid until it's fully submerged. Make sure none of it is pokeing above the surface. Leave for 1 and a half hours.
3. Prepare dye solutions as you fancy. I used about half a teaspoon of wilton colouring gel per 400ml water which was enough for the blue-green, but not for the red, hence the bright orange colour.
4. See this post for the method of handpainting
5. Steam for 60mins in a veg steamer

Next time i'll be having a go at dip dyeing!

What's on the needles this week... (and a Drops Delight yarn review)

I started another pair of socks this week. This time i am knitting hedgerow socks, simply because i liked the look of the rib and i wanted to try:

a) a different method of sock - this time cuff down rather than toe up
b) a different method of heel - let's get crazy with the heel flap
c) a new toe. A round toe. Oh my.

Is it going well? So glad you asked. From a pattern point of view it's a simple, lovely pattern that has been going smoothly and fairly quickly. I'm not a super fast knitter i have to admit. I started them on the 2nd and it's now the 8th. Having said that i haven't knitted every evening, although sunday was almost a full day. I could probably finish my first one tonight but i don't feel like knitting (GASP).

What's the problem?

The frickin yarn. Oh god it's horrid stuff. Garn Studios Drops Delight. There are some pros, but the cons far outweigh them.

The pros:

Seriously, the colourways for this stuff looked unbelievably gorgeous on the website (i know, i know, get what you ask for when you can't pick up and squish the balls). I am loving on the blue at the moment, big time.

It was cheap as chips, about £2.25 a ball.

It's superwash so i can stick the finished article in the washing machine allegedly (the jury is out on this one pending proof that they won't felt - see below)

The cons:

This yarn is seriously hairy and therefore sticky, meaning that tinking is an exercise in patience and frogging would be nigh on impossible. I have no confidence that it will not felt because of this hairy stickiness. If it's sticking to itself without the aid of hot water and soap, God help me.

The green colourway i purchased is running all thick and slubby for long runs followed by tiny skinny over twisted sections that threaten to snap if you look at them wrong. The blue isn't as bad, but still variable.

The stitch definition is RRRRUUUUUBBBISH. Seriously, don't even think about using this yarn if you have a pretty pattern. You won't see it.

It has no give, therefore hurty on the fingers.

It's not the softest which is ok for my socks, i don't mind a scratchy pair of socks at all. I wouldn't use it for a scarf though. No no no.

I've heard this yarn proclaimed as a cheap Noro (i have no experience of Noro, nor do i want to if it's more expensive than this and behaves similarly). So if you like Noro Kureyon, give it a try, it might well be worth the investment of £2.50 just to try it.

(I messed about with the colours in photoshop so my socks actually look like the yarn they're knitted from, yay!)

Dyeing yarn with food colouring (on recycled sweater yarn). A journey.

On saturday i decided to do something i'd been dying to do for a long while. I went out charity shop shopping for a wooly jumper. "Que?" i hear you ask. Well, the jumper was not for me to wear. I've been reading all kinds of funky tutorials over the past few months about unraveling jumpers. But why? Well, a charity shop ("thrifted" if you're in the U.S) jumper (sweater) is a reeeeeeaallly cheap source of yarn. You can get maybe 800 yards of yarn out of the right jumper.

If you want a good tutorial on ripping up jumpers for yarn, see here. She explains it way better than i could so i won't even try to tute.

So i found this fairly disgusting jumper for £4.49 with a tag that states it is Pure Lambswool. Well that's gold mine right there. I Hated the colour though, some kind of insipid heathered baby blue. Ew. So i decided that it was my time to dye. This is what i'm going to show you. How i went from this

To This:

What You'll Need:

• A Bucket
• White Vinegar (lots)
• Water
• Food Colouring of your choice
• Cling Film
• Steamer/Microwave

You can also do this with new yarn that you've bought from a shop. Just make sure the yarn is a plain, white or cream yarn. It's worthwhile to mention that the lighter your yarn, the more successful you'll probably be with dying and also the more "clean" your colour will be. The colour i used was Violet, but it came out mauve in areas and purple in others because i dyed over blue yarn.

First step. Skein the yarn, you can find tips on how to do this on Youtube. The longer your skein the longer your colour repeats can be. I used the edge of the table for my skeining. Next, soak the skein in a mixture of white vinegar and tepid water. I'm all kinds of nuts and therefore i have a large stash of white vinegar that i use for cleaning, softening towels in the washing machine and pickling stuff. The first time i dyed, i used about 5 parts water to 2 parts vinegar, but the next time i dye i will use more vinegar. The vinegar helps the food colouring to stick better, opening up the fibers and scales in the wool.

Leave to soak for at least an hour, over night if you can wait that long. After soaking, lift out the skein and squeeze out the vinegary water. If your yarn is superwash you don't need to worry too much about felting, but if you have new yarn that says to handwash only or your yarn is from a jumper that tells you to handwash only, be very careful not to agitate the yarn too much, you don't want it to felt and leave you with a lump of yarn you can no longer separate. So squeeze (don't wring) until damp.

Lay out a load of cling film in a circle and lay your damp yarn on top

Mix up your desired colours. I bought food colouring gels from Hobbycraft (i swear they stay in business because of me) so i diluted them in vinegary water. If you buy the watery ones ready mixed from the supermarket then you probably won't need to dilute them, but stick a couple of drops of vinegar in them for good measure.

I used probably the worst colours for photo purposes EVER. Violet and black. Can you distinguish between them? No. Is the second photo pointless? Yes.

So i decided to do two sections violet...

And two sections black...

Trust me, there were separate colours.

Then i wrapped the whole lot up in a yarn sausage encased in cling film and transferred to my steamer. Now. My steamer is pretty rubbish, so unfortunately placing the yarn sausage in the bottom basket was not ideal because the bubbling water spilled into my sausage and diluted the black dye. This left me with a dye job i was unhappy with, so rather than spend time trying to love the crappy look of the faded black, i decided to just re-dye it violet some more. So i repeated the process again, steaming for an hour this time in the second tier of the steamer. Alternatively, wrap your sausage and whack it in a microwaveable dish on high for 15 secs. Remove it and allow to cool. Blast it for another 15 secs. Repeat once more.

After steaming i took the basket off the heat and left it to cool. Don't run cold water on anything. There is more felting misery to be had by running cold water on hot yarn. When the sausage is cold enough, remove the cling film and rinse in a little cold water. Squeeze the yarn (don't wring!) and hang it somewhere away from cats, kids & dogs to dry.

Once your yarn is dry, twist it into a twisted skein, stand back and admire. Maybe you can even shout "I made that!"

So i'm not 100% overjoyed with the effect i got, but i blame it on the somewhat damaged yarn, the original blue colour and the rubbishness of the steamer. However, tonight i have new, clean white yarn soaking in vinegar ready to be sacrificed for the greater dyeing good. More later this week.

The sock.

So after the debacle that was the first attempt of this pattern (more like a recipe than a strict "you-must-follow-me-to-the-letter pattern) that i mentioned in my last post, resulting in a frogged mess, i bring you:

The first sock

Nail biting stuff i know. I can't help but be excited though, i know i'll be forgiven by the sock knitters out there. Someone on one of the Ravelry forums described socks as "like tiny custom knit sweaters for your feet" and attributed that to the marvellous wonder of knitting them.

For me, i am in love with toastie tootsies. Always have been. I am the most punk rock, hard core bedsock wearer of them all.

Wonderful feelings!

I was wondering why my new snowflake napkin rings were getting so many hits on etsy... So I checked the main page and there I am! My napkin rings are one of the items featured on the gift guides on the front page! I'm so excited and a little ashamed that my shop is so empty, but hurray!

I'm glad it's midweek. My 9 - 5 job is crazy at the moment so I'm not as productive as I'd like. I still have some interesting ideas in the pipeline though.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Huge Felted Bowl

Remember the massive felted bowl i was on about in http://woolboutique.blogspot.com/2009/11/mahooooosive-bowl.html this post?

Well i finally finished it on Sunday and got it listed and sent to it's prospective new owner. I wasn't sure whether she would go for it, as it shrank way more than i expected. I'd made it over-sized by 2 inches in every direction, but the bottom shrank more than the sides and i ended up with something i wasn't sure whether i liked proportionately. I thought maybe the sides were too high and the diameter was too small.

Anyway, thankfully my etsy buyer liked it and agreed to buy it. I am so proud of my first sale but i think i need to be more accurate in pricing my work for sure. I only just covered materials with this sale and after a week of relentless crochet, that seems a shame.

I'm so proud of how it turned out i think i am going to make more...

Sneaky Snowflake Preview

Today i made this...

It kind of looks like a crazy accupuncture snowflake right now, but once it's dried and starched again and pressed it's ready for it's purpose which shall be revealed in due course. I also know (and am slightly concerned about) the perils of rusting pins. I'm off to get some brass ones tomorrow if i'm to make more of these.

I think i'm mostly impressed that i made the pattern myself. I only had to rip it out and start again 20 times. I wasn't frustrated in the least (i'm not sure whether sarcasm carries well in blog-format).

Monday again tomorrow. How did that happen? Here's hoping this Monday rocks.

Mahooooosive Bowl

I've listed a few felted bowls in the past couple of days on my etsy shop and after i listed a lovely sage green bowl, i got my first convo enquiring about a custom item. I was over the moon.

There is a slight problem though. the custom order in question is for a 13 INCH felted bowl. Bearing in mind i haven't made one larger than a 6 inch diameter yet, this is no mean feat. I'm about half way through. I put the fruit bowl full of tiny satsumas and a 12" metal ruler in the picture so hopefully it shows some kind of scale.

This thing is massive so far as i'm allowing for shrinkage. I'm not even sure it'll work (which i've already mentioned to the prospective seller). I've got a can of spray starch handy for stiffening even more should it need it. God knows how i'm going to block this thing.

Anyway, i'm not pinning hopes on it working, or even managing to sell it afterwards, but it's a cool experiment! Hopefully i'll have it finished for the weekend.

Other things in the pipeline - napkin rings and festive ornaments. Yep, it's that time of year!