FO Friday -- Power Puff Edition

I seriously had some grand plans for this entry.  I was all set to show you the first puff in my Beekeeper's Quilt odyssey, and officially launch our mini skein swap.  Unfortunately, the only thing that got finished around here was this:

Dudes, I am sick.  Not dying or anything... just at that stage of a cold where you vaguely wish you would.  Blerg. 

Anywho, I ran home from work, stopping to get a set of size 4 dpns, which oddly enough I didn't have.  Then I fished out the lovely stripedy sock yarn that I plan to swap and wound it into a cake.  Then I set about making my first puff, which currently looks like this:

Apparently, you start these little buggers the same way you would a toe-up sock.  Since I'm a rather monogamous top-down girl when it comes to socks, this was all new to me and took a little fiddling.  It'd be finished, but I didn't think it'd be wise to continue after emptying the bottle, above. 

And now what we've all been waiting for:

 The Power Puff Mini Skein Swap (What?  I've always wanted to be a Power Puff Girl.)

Who:  You.  And your friends, and knitting buddies and whoever.  Up to 20 people.  And yes -- if you want to be 2 people, you can send 20 skeinlets and get 20 back.  Just let me know ahead of time.

What:  Sock yarn, baby.  I'd prefer to avoid acrylic, but anything else will work.  Send out something you'd love to receive and good things will come back to you (in a neatly packed envelope, no less).  Each skeinlet should be 20 yards in length.  Once sign ups are closed, I'll tell you how many to send.

When:  Sign up by October 3, and send your yarn (and a self-addressed stamped envelope) by October 15.  I'll turn it around as soon as it all arrives, hopefully no later than November 1.  I'd promise earlier, but we have a few international folks who want to play and I want to make sure we have time for everyone's yarn to get here.  On the international front, don't let the SASE thing scare you off.  If it's an issue let me know and we'll try to work something out.

Where:  Email me by clicking that cute little typewriter over on the right (or message me on Ravelry -- my ID is cagirlygirl), and send me your email address.  I'll send you my mailing address and you'll be Officially Signed Up.

Why:  Because ZOMG, SO cute!  Also, it's fun.  And swaps are neat.  And I'll be really sad if I hold a skeinlet-swapping party and nobody comes.  What more reason do you need?  Oh.  You need actual reasons?  Well then...  It's way more fun to do stuff like this together, and I'll host Power Puff progress parties, and we can trade links to cute puff decorations, and encouragement when you have one puff down and 383 to go is always a good thing. 

Questions?  Shout out in the comments, or shoot off an email and I'll come up with some sort of totally plausible answer.

With that, I'm going to go pass out in a drug-induced stupor.  But when I wake up, I'm going to check out everyone's FO Friday posts.  I'm reasonably sure somebody else actually finished something other than Nyquil.  Ooh!  It's also Fiber Arts Friday!  Go visit them, too.

Cheers!

FO Friday - Yay!

Yippee!  I love it when I get to play along with FO Friday.  It makes me feel all warm and squishy and accomplished inside.  Awesome. The BIG project I tackled this week is my first yarn dyeing.  Yay, me!  And, lucky for you, I took pictures all the way.  Here's how it all went down...

First, I went out and bought some cheap wool yarn, which seemed like the best choice for experimental work. 

This stuff was super soft and squishy, and maybe not the best choice for dyeing since it's not plied, but who knows?  Not me, that's for sure.

Once I had the yarn, I pulled out all of my wilton food coloring bottles.  Oooh!  Pretty colors.  It was ridiculously hard to choose.

After much deliberation (sometimes known as waffling), I settled on red, and we were off to the races. 

First, I used my super fancy swift to un-skein (de-skein?) the yarn while Mr. Right warmed himself in front of the fire.  (Did I mention that the temperature here for the last few days has been hovering in the single digits? Brrrrrrr)

And it didn't turn out half bad...

After I unwound and tied skein #2 in the same way, I dumped them into the crock pot...

Disclaimer:  I did not actually heat the crock on the stove as pictured, it's just that the lighting is better here.  Promise.  I filled the crock with water and left it in the croco pot to heat up while I mixed up the dye.  Since I was doing 2 skeins, I dissolved about 1 teaspoon of food coloring in 2 cups of water. 

Don't mind the chunks at the bottom, I finished mixing everything up after the photo.  It was pretty, but a little lighter than I wanted.   So I added a bit (maybe 1/4 teaspoon) of purple...

And... it turned black.  Oops.  Ah well.  Might as well carry on.  That's what experimenting is all about, right?  Once the yarn was up to temperature and smelling for all the world like stinky, wet sheep, I poured the dye into the pot. 

I had to remind myself every 30 seconds or so not to stir since I wasn't using superwash wool (Don't be a cheapskate like me -- superwash is a really good idea when you're a beginning dyer).  But I sat on my hands and left it to percolate for an hour.

After an hour, I checked the water, saw that it was still bright red, then freaked out, having realized that I forgot to add the vinegar and convincing myself that surely everything was ruined.  No pictures of the freak out, but I did add the vinegar and let it cook for another 30 minutes or so.

Miraculously, the water was completely clear the next time I checked my yarn soup so I hauled the crock into the laundry room, and using my salad tongs, hung it over the laundry sink to dry.  Like so...

A couple of days later, I had a skein of yarn that looked like this:

And a second one that looked like this:

So now the conundrum... This is TOTALLY not what I had in mind.  The color is closest to the laundry room picture up there, but I was hoping for a slightly more uniform look and a deep, dark red color.  I don't hate it, I don't think, but I'm not sure it's something I'd use.

This is the part where y'all chime in and tell me what to do.  Do I stick it back into the pot?  Do I try again with some other yarn in some other color?  Advice, opinions, random votes and cookies are all welcome. (What?  When are cookies not welcome?)

And once you've solved all my problems, go check out the rest of the FO Friday posts and see what everyone else is up to.  It'll be fun.

FO Friday

Hey, guess what!  It's FO Friday again, and this week, I'm only sort of cheating.  That's some serious progress.  With Mr. Right (still!) away, I've been a busy little beaver.

As I mentioned on WiP Wednesday, Mr. Right's Avast finally counts as an FO -- zipper and all.  I'm super pleased with the way it turned out, and can't wait for him to wear it when he gets home.  Apologies for the weak pic, but it's dark around here these days!

And now a close-up of the infamous zipper in all its antique brass glory.  Ooh!  Ahh!

Yay for sweaters that *finally* end!  And even more yay for sweaters that finally end well.  Phew!  It's such a relief.

In other FO news (I know, right?  More than one in a week!  Crazy!)... Remember all that felt?

I hooked it up with a pile of embroidery floss...

And a few hair clips...

(Pretend that I remembered to take a picture of the clips, okay?  They look like these.)
And voila!

Courtesy of the Purl Bee (the awesome craft blog by the folks at Purl SoHo), the world's cutest hair clips. Pattern is here.  I LOVE them.  They're fairly easy to pull off, though I have broken 2 embroidery needles trying to get the embroidery floss through the felt.  And I think they look kind of amazing.

I was so excited, I made a pink one, too...

Actually, this is what made me think of turning Elijah into Eliza.  How cute would this little elephant be with a rose hair clip on her ear?  Seriously cute, is what I think.  Either way, I have 3 more to make this weekend, and then I'll be set for Christmas.  At least in the hair clip department.  Once I get the felt out of my system, it'll be back to elephanting and vesting around here.  But I gotta say, it was kind of a fun break.

My other HUGE project at the moment is Mr. Right's 30th birthday.  He's finally hitting the big 3-0, so we're celebrating in grand style.  I've been scheming for 6 months now, and it's all coming together next weekend.  Man, it's exhausting to keep a secret from your SO for 6 months.  It's killing me!  I can't divulge any more details without spoiling the awesome surprise, but I'll post the whole story and pictures once the cat's out of the bag.   Promise.

Hope y'all have a spectacular weekend!  You should start it by checking out everyone else's FO Friday successes over at Tami's blog.