Third Year of Projects Week 4

So I've had a busy week of playing with yarn. I mentioned last week that I was designing a chart for a Celtic Knot Hexipuff, which I have now done:

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and if you're interested, you can access the chart for free here. It doesn't tell you how to make a hexipuff though, for that you will need the pattern for the Beekeeper's Quilt from Tiny Owl Knits, which I can highly recommend!

I've also swatched for Arielle. No idea of my gauge yet though, because I followed some advice on Rav and let the swatch hang under it's own weight for a few days to see how the cotton would stretch, so that will be my project for next week.

The main knitting I've been doing is Tubby here. I've finished the tub itself, but if you look to the right, you can see two small bubbles. The pattern calls for 25 of these, and they all need eyes! I hope I can bring myself to knit them all, they're incredibly fiddly and not very fun to make. I think I've decided that I don't like knitting toys with lots of small parts.

And this is why I said I've been playing with yarn. I've been winding balls of yarn that I got from ebay into skeins for washing, and in some cases dying. This is 25 skeins, including 10 which were originally 5 balls of yarn, so I had to split the two strands apart before skeining. Not pictured are the 18 other balls that I wound into skeins, which are all either drying or dying.

And then this is what I've been doing today. As you can see, there is some very greeny blue yarn and one skein of yellow. I've been playing with different dyes and concentrations to see what effect I can get, and I'm sure that next week will be full of pictures. I've used 2 colours of icing dye (though one doesn't seem to have worked and overdying will be needed), as well as some acid dyes I got from Woolfest last year.

So that's my busy yarny week. I think I need to relax now!