thing-a-day 2010

February 24, 2010

Blue Bird of Happiness Chick!

I knitted a Blue Bird of Happiness Chick today. If you want to knit one of these for Easter (you put a Cadbury's Creme egg inside), I have a free pattern for a knitted chick containing a creme egg on my website
http://www.pompomemporium.com

Filed under // Anjie Easter chick craft knitting yarn

Posted by anjie

Comments [4]

February 21, 2010

Day Twenty-One - Spinning

Today I spun for a couple hours. I've been working on this super thin yarn that will be plyed with another to make a crazy sock yarn. There are a total of 17 different colors and they are all a really nice merino wool.

I posted a animated gif file I made while spinning earlier this month, but you really can't see much of a dent on the two hours more I've added. It's so thin that it just doesn't add up quickly.

The colors may not look that great right now, but once plyed, the finished product will look closer to this other yarn (below) that I spun, only all of that was dyed with kool-aid and it's a much chunkier yarn.

-Robyn

All of my 2010 Thing-A-Day posts can be seen here

Filed under // robayre color fiber merino spinning wool yarn

Posted by Robyn Wells

Comments [2]

February 21, 2010

Knitted Red Cotton Necklace

I'm knitting a plain red necklace in cotton yarn, it's making my fingers hurt! I don't find cotton yarn as easy to knit with as wool, it doesn't have the same amount of 'give', especially when knitting fiddly items on DPNs. I'm using larger needles than I would normally, the cotton is quite thick, the beads are turning out to be quite substantial, good job I like a statement!
http://www.pompomemporium.com

Filed under // Anjie cotton craft jewellery knitting necklace yarn

Posted by anjie

Comments [8]

February 13, 2010

Day Thirteen - Teaching a 7 year old to knit

Today I taught my 7 year old niece to knit. She's been wanting to learn so I brought along needles and yarn. It's the second time I've taught a 7 year old to knit, but honestly, I think 8 would be ideal. Although she took it up pretty easily she also got lost just as easily and was hoping that what she was working on would be able to turn into a sweater, lol. cute.

-Robyn

All my posts for 2010 Thing-A-Day

Filed under // teaching children knit robayre yarn

Posted by Robyn Wells

Comments [0]

February 11, 2010

TAD 2010-11 Mentoring

A few weeks ago, someone contacted me through one of the meetup groups I am a member of and asked me if I would be her crochet mentor. Jane is a senior in high school and needs to learn and present a new skill to a panel as part of her senior graduation requirement. Today, we met up and went through a couple of basic crochet stitches and doing a couple of rounds (She needs 15 hours to complete this projects, so more lessons later!). She was a real natural and it was a lot of fun sharing. So, while she crocheted, I also started taking apart another sweater (the gray balls in the picture).

Filed under // crochet mentor yarn

Posted from Daly City, CA

Posted by kariz matic

Comments [2]

February 11, 2010

TAD 2010-10 Unraveled

Remember this sweater?

It mostly looks like this now:

(Yes, ONE of those balls was Day 7). Alas, I could not salvage the green or blue yarn - they are in spaghetti shreds in my scrap fiber (threads, yarn and fabric) "recycling" bin... for potential projects or recycling when it starts to overflow and i can't stand it anymore.

Note to Self: Do not pick out multi-colored sweaters for yarn unraveling unless 1. the colors appear in large horizontal (and I mean minimum 4" LARGE) worth-picking apart blocks or 2. you have a lot of time on your hands, you like the feeling of rawness in your fingers from unraveling a whole bunch of knots and you just generally want to waste the shreds of yarn you can't put back together.

Filed under // Yarn fiber pink recycle repurpose sweater thread

Posted by kariz matic

Comments [3]

February 7, 2010

TAD 2010-07 Yarn from old sweaters

I saw this done a few years ago and tried it once last year - had great success on a women's medium sweater - I think I got about 5 full balls of yarn out of it! I was out thrifting today and saw this sweater - perfect candidate at $2.99! I've never tried unraveling a multi-colored sweater and it is not as easy as I thought this one would be (I didn't think that little bit of pattern near the top would be such a time eater!). So far, I've unraveled a sleeve. Here are some pics:

... By the way - the green and blue yarn are just too short to get any good strands of yarn out of... any thoughts on how else I might use it?

Oh, and if you'd like to see how it's done, I found a pretty good tutorial here today: http://www.neauveau.com/recycledyarn.html

Filed under // fiber yarn

Posted by kariz matic

Comments [3]

February 6, 2010

2010 TAD - Day 6

Chakra coasters are complete!!!!!

Filed under // Crochet Yarn

Posted by p0ppy

Comments [3]

February 3, 2010

Day Three - Animated gif

I've been working on this way longer than I should have, and the result is not quite the image I had envisioned, but I am still pretty proud of myself.

I have been spinning some very fine/thin wool to make a sock yarn which I will knit up to make a pair of socks. I thought it would be pretty cool to make an animated gif of myself spinning yarn. I borrowed Matt's camera which has a program on it that allows you to set increments of pictures taken for a given duration. I started with a picture every second but that was way too much, so I set it for every 5 seconds. I spun for over 300 pictures and then using photoshop and imageready I put the images together for the result below. I ended up only using the first 75 pictures because it was taking so long and our "TAD"s shouldn't become a chore. I also made it only 100 pixels wide, but I wish it had been a bit larger.

I have only made a couple basic animated banner ad gifs in the past. I don't know a ton and have taught myself how to do this, so, no help from the computer geek boyfriend :)

-Robyn

Filed under // animation fiber gif robayre spinning yarn

Posted by Robyn Wells

Comments [5]

February 1, 2010