knitting | Mustard Seed Yarn Lab

Category: knitting (page 3 of 8)

More progress

01.26.12 / Danielle / 4 Comments

Hi All! I’ve been keeping busy as my real job has been really slow. I finished another Gaptastic cowl for a friend’s wife. I knit it up in red Baby Alpaca. After knitting with Baby Alpaca, my fingers may never be satisfied with wool ever again. It was so soft and silky, warm and stretchy…aaahhhh….I’m hooked. Here’s the finished product, all packed up and ready to be given. I want to keep it. 🙂

And I dyed a skein of wool/silk for my friend who asked for a yellow skein. I love how it came out….I call the colorway “Bode”, after the sunny, happy, little blonde cutie it reminds me of.

Unfortunately, once again, the photo doesn’t do it justice. There are some darker orangey tones running throughout it that didn’t get picked up in the photo.

I started my very first toe-up sock!

It’s not hard at all! I just started the sock the same way I start my hexipuffs. It’s coming along slowly, but surely. It’s knit in the round on 2 needles, like the hexipuff. I find it to be a little fiddley, but I’m getting used to it. I love the color I’m using. It’s one of the Sanguine Gryphon skeins my sister bought me. The colorway is called Roja.

And now I’m about to start another commissioned project, yay!! 2 different friends have asked for the cabled slouchy hat I made my mother in law for Christmas. So tonight I will start the first one. I wish I could make my whole living knitting and dyeing yarn. This having a real job stuff just gets in the way!

I leave you with a picture of two super cuties who got to see each other for a playdate this past weekend. Emmet and Jack.

2 Works in Progress

01.21.12 / Danielle / 5 Comments

Here’s a quick Saturday morning update. I’ve only made 4 hexipuffs so far for the BeeKeeper’s quilt. They’re quite adorable, and I really need to be more disciplined and try to make at least one a day, or this quilt may take 20 years to finish! Each one takes me about an hour, although I think I’m getting faster. My friend Maiya came to visit last weekend and she fell in love with the quilt and she’s now going to make it too. And the best part about that is she bought 2 skeins of my yarn (Atlantic and Pacific) and she ordered 2 more from me which I have to start dyeing today (she wanted two different yellows, and I sold my only yellow skein.) That makes 6 skeins sold so far!!

The second project I’m knitting is another Gaptastic cowl for my friend’s wife.

He asked for one in red to give to her for Valentine’s day. What a perfect gift! (It’s my second commissioned project!) I went to the local yarn store to buy the yarn and I picked out Baby Alpaca. She won’t be able to wash it very easily, as Baby Alpaca has to be VERY gently washed by hand and air dried, but Alpaca is not itchy, and warmer than wool, and it feels like heaven! It’s so luxurious! I’m falling in love with Baby Alpaca, and I bought 4 skeins of it to dye. The problem is, I kinda want to keep it instead of selling it. Anyway, I’m more than 2/3rds done with it and it should be completed within a couple more days.

That’s all for now folks! It’s a snowy morning, and I should really get off this computer and take a shower and start dyeing a yellow skein of yarn. I will leave you with a picture of two cuties, because blogs are more fun with pictures. Here’s Emmet and his buddy Cooper at the Seacoast Science Center last weekend.

Have a great day everyone!

random happiness

01.13.12 / Danielle / 9 Comments

I’m sitting in a warm house, with leftover tacos and a chocolate chip cookie in my belly. The snow is still falling outside and I get to have a long 2 hour lunch break. The house is semi-clean, I just finished another knitting project last night, and I’m enjoying the anticipation of starting a new one. My family is healthy, and aside from a small case of sniffles, so am I. For whatever reason, as I sat here next to a fake fire, sipping a cup of tea, I felt suddenly overwhelmingly thankful to God for EVERYTHING. The big things, the small things, and everything in between. My life has been a blessed one since the day I was born, and I’m so undeserving, and so thankful.

This is what I’m spinning.

I’m in love with the colors and I’m going to try to dye some yarn with these variations.

This is what I finished last night. It’s the Gaptastic Cowl. It can be worn in different ways. See?

My brother in law, Chip, picked out the yarn for this. Good choice Chip! If I haven’t mentioned it before, Chip is a leatherworker, and sells his wares on Etsy too. You can check out his shop here. He is the owner of Hawk Studio. Crazy talented, and has great taste in yarn too.

I think I would like to start the Juneberry Triangle next. My sister bought me the yarn for it last year, and it was supposed to be my February project for this year. I’m a little ahead of schedule, but no doubt, it will take me longer than a month to complete. I will need help with the edging, I can tell already, but the incredible ladies in my knitting group will help me there.

I’m very lucky to have become friends with a group of ladies who get together on Sunday nights at Starbucks, all of them way more experienced than me, and soooo nice, as I find most knitters are.

Vicki, our fearless leader, (third from the left) is knitting a sweater on SIZE ZERO NEEDLES. A sweater! I would not believe it if I haven’t seen her doing it each Sunday. She is the one who inspired me to spin on a drop spindle. I watched her do it for 2 hours the first time I met her, and I couldn’t wait to give it a try myself.

I’ve had two sales so far in my Etsy shop! That makes me very happy. 🙂 Taking the pictures and trying to get an accurate representation of the color has proven to be the hardest part so far. Below, you will see my photography studio. (Otherwise known as our bedroom with a white fleece blanket.)

The yarn is very well behaved, each quietly waiting its turn. (The red gets a little uppity, but it’s red, and that’s how red is.) It’s the lighting that gives me problems. And my horrible camera. But I can’t complain about the subjects.

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Well, now it’s late and I’m going to bed. I wrote this blog at lunchtime today but had to wait until tonight to upload the pictures. Goodnight everyone…my bed and my book are calling to me.