31 October 2007

tusen tack hemlis! jag postar bilder med mera till helgen!

27 October 2007

Well, what do YOU have in the shower?

dyeing yarn

Today I've dyed yarn for the first time in my life. I've been thinking of doing it for quite a while, but didn't buy the dyeing colors until recently. I wanted to try a method of dyeing in the microwave oven, described in Swedish here and here.

This is what the yarn looked like from the beginning.
dyeing yarn

First I washed the yarn very carefully.
dyeing yarn

And mixed the colors.
dyeing yarn

dyeing yarnI put the yarn (one skein by one) in a container that would fit into the microwave. With the help of spoons I "painted" the yarn on one side, pressed a little with my hands, turned it over to the other side and put some more color on. I had rubber glowes, but it didn't become as wet or messy as I had imagined.

Here's one skein ready to go into the microwave for 3x3 minutes (at full effect):
dyeing yarn
dyeing yarn

When cooled down I rinsed it in water (not hot!) (and a little ättika). I hang it in the shower to dry. It was really fun and easy and I'll definetely do it again. As for the dying colors I only bought red, blue and yellow and then mixed them. They weren't cheap, but as very little is needed I can see they'll last for many, many skeins to come.

I'll show some more photos when they're dry + in daylight.
dyeing yarn

19 October 2007

a little bit of Christmas

i made this one

Yes, I've been a lazy blogger lately. Since I begun my new job (1 Oct) I've been rather tired during the evenings (because of the pregnancy too), but I have been crafting from time to time ... just lazy with photographing it and blogging about it. Also, many things I make are secrets. It's for swaps and it's gifts and it's for Christmas. There's really not so much I can show yet.

So today I'll show you something old that I made many years ago (2000 I think) to decorate our front door. I got the inspiration from a magazine and when I found a tree in the forest that had fallen down after a windy night I cut off some of the branches in the tree top. I think it's quite pretty.

I know it's only October and the leaves on the trees outside are yellow ... but I'm dreaming of Christmas ;-)