Glacial Knits Podcast: Episode 6 - We Did the Thing!

Today, Jonas and Sari give an update about their retreat and vending experience at Zombie Knitpocalypse 2017 and give an update on the Outlander yarn club. Jonas shows off his purchases and Sari shows off goodies from the gift bags from ZK2017. Finished objects are proudly displayed and WIPs shared. Sair shares new colors for the shop. There is talk about Liv & Maddie and the summer of Football.

Post-ZK Update.

Outlander Yarn Club Update:

• Sign-Ups for first 2 months and full 4 month subcription only open until August 1st. Remember shipping to continental USA is included in yarn club price.

ZK2017 Shopping and Gift Bag Update:

• Jonas bought a lot of things:
  • Marigoldjen's BFL sock yarn in the Cumulus and Early Grey colorways
  • Undead yarn's Spider base in the Midnight colorway
  • Brew City Yarn's Pokemon mini skein set.
  • Brew City Yarn's House Sorting Shawl Kit in Ravenclaw
  • The Girl who Crafted's Foxy Sport nase in the Woodsmoke colorway

Sari got a great gift bag:

• Notions pouch from The Silver Shed USA
• Knitter's Pride Nova Platina size 5 (US) circular needles.
• Three Irish Girls ZK2017 retreat custom colorways (Ants Go Marching, Capture the Flag, Skinny Dipping)

What we're knitting:

Jonas

• FOs
  • Still working on the Angularity shawl by Josh Ryks out of Hazel Knits Divine in “Leaf Fall” and Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in “Wild Rice.”
  • Swatching for the Lane Mitts by Jensen Reyes out of Malabrigo Worsted in the  "Stonechat" colourway as part of the Gilmore Girls swap with Odd Duck Swaps of Ravelry.
• WIP
  • Copacetic blanket from the Tossing the Stash blog out of the Pokemon minis.
    

Sari

• FOs
  • Bevoled Trees cowl by Tracy Wright out of The Girl Who Crafted's Heart of the City Colorway.​
  • Vanilla sock out of The Girl Who Crafted Sparkle Sock in "Campeones" a test colourway inspired by Real Madrid Football Club.
  • Arya's Needle shawl by Lara Smooth out of The Girl Who Crafted Northern Lights sock in Wolves of Winter.
• WIP
  • D0 Not Speak to Me of Dragonfire socks by Kaity Melvin out of The Girl Who Crafted Northern Lights Sock in In Death, Sacrifice.
  • Up Next! Vedbaek by Karie Westerman in Kauni.

Sari shares new yarn colors:

• Dreaming on the West Coast inspired by The Wombats
• Oranje inspired by the Netherlands National Football teams

We briefly discuss the Disney Channel show Liv & Maddie. We more extensively discuss the wonderful footie that has been going on: Women's Euros, International Champions Cup, and Gold Cup.

We mention again where to find us:

Sari

• Ravelry – TheGirlWhoCrafted
• Twitter – @girlwhocrafted
• Instagram - @thegirlwhocrafted
• Email – thegirlwhocraftedblog@gmail.com

Jonas

• Ravelry – ShopBoyJonas
• Twitter - @jonassollers

You can find these videos on Sari’s blogs at:

• http://girlwhocrafted.com/blog
• http://girlwhocrafted.blogspot.com

FO Friday: It's Still Not the Thing I Wanted to Have Done

Hi all,

The blue wrap is still not done, but I have good faith that you will not see it again here until it's done. I have finished tinking back all the extra pattern repeats I wrote and hope to start the final edging piece tonight. It should be done soon. Then it has to block, which as I mentioned before has its own set of challenges.

So what is done? A project bag. It doesn't seem like much, and it isn't really, especially when you consider that I did all the cutting, sewing, and putting a drawstring in it last Wednesday and all I had to do was put on a snap and take photos, but it's what I've got. It's my first non-fandom-specific project bag, but it's out of some pretty geeky fabric anyway (which a friend made me a skirt out of!). I made this with the intention of it being the bag I offered up for the Prairie Girls Knit and Spin Legendprairie 2016 contest, and perhaps it will be, but I'm thinking I'll let the recipient choose their own bag at this point. Still, contest drawings were released today so I figured I'd better have something to show for it. It's now available in the shop if anyone loves it enough to buy it.

 

Also done (and really it was supposed to just be a thing I did for me because I needed it to knit socks for the KGK CAL), is a new yarn colourway. I needed a basic grey yarn to knit the body of socks (more explanation on that later), so I pulled a few skeins and dropped them in a dyepot with grey dye, not really intending anything to come of it. And then when I was skeining it yesterday I realised it was basically amazing and I immediately listed it in the shop. It's called "Lonely Mountain" after the dwarven home of Erebor in The Hobbit because the kettle-dyed grey reminded me of all the establishing shots of a lone mountain in the distance that you see in all the Hobbit films. It's not flashy or anything, but if you want a good grey yarn I think this colour is pretty fantastic.

 

Downton Abbey Swap 2015: Sent!

So, in my last post I told you all what I received in my AMAZING Downton Abbey swap package from Ravelry user goodstuff via the Subway Knits Downton Abbey swap. Now it's time to tell you all about the package I put together and how much fun I had doing it!

Teaser photo--here's what I sent to my partner moxydawg:

Yarn Dyeing: Downton Abbey Exploration

As you know, I’ve been part of a Downton Abbey swap via the Subway Knits podcast since the end of January. As such, I knew that I wanted to dye some yarn for my swap partner that was inspired by her favourite character. I happened to have a random undyed skein in one of the yarn weights she likes that I bought at a sale back when I was still just thinking about perhaps getting started in yarn dyeing, so I didn’t even have to acquire anything . . . except dyes.

I’d fairly exhausted my options when it came to the Jacquard acid dyes and while I know now that I can mix many colours to get what I want, I didn’t know that when I started thinking about colourways. Each of the Crawley women has always had their particular colour (or colours in the case of a few) to me and I knew I wanted to represent them as such. So I spent some time on the Dharma Trading Company site, at the recommendation of someone . . . though I couldn’t say who at this point . . . and found that they had the perfect colours for what I wanted to do: A peach, sage green, rose pink, and a lavender purple. I ordered them immediately and began the wait. After shipping issues (caused by my inability to type numbers in the correct order) and a phone call to Dharma by Jonas (in exchange for ice cream, as per our standard agreement) the order was re-placed and sent with newer, more expedited shipping. I received it last Friday and after acquiring new tester yarn last Saturday, I was on my way.

I first used the test yarn to just find out what the colours were when I mixed them straight, then I began building my colourways. I had a vision for all of them and with minimal mixing/effort on my part, I had produced colourways for Lady Edith, Lady Sybil, Countess Cora, Lady Violet, and Lady Rose by the end of Sunday. I had a brilliant time and everything was filled with fun and magic and I wished ever so much that I could just make this my life full time.

It took me a bit longer to get the yarns finally listed on Etsy (they still need better photos and not all of them have example swatches), because I do actually have a real job and a real life that needed handling, but those five (plus another that I’ll write about later) are now available for sale in my new Etsy shop that will be dedicated to my hand-dyed yarns from here on out.

Here’s a few teaser photos to entice you to purchase!

Video Game Swap Part 1: Yarn Dyeing

So, now that it’s over and the recipient has received all their things, I can talk about the most recent yarn/knitting/crafting swap I got myself into on Ravelry.

There’s a group called the Odd Duck Swaps of Ravelry, and they organize thematic swaps every single month of the year. The way it works is you generally have about a month to sign up, two months to actually craft/shop/mail the swap package, and then you post a thank you when you’ve received your package and the swap is completed. After hearing about how much fun people were having doing this, I decided to scope out the group. On my first visit there, I found out they were just starting sign-ups for a video game swap.

Now, (without getting into the whole ri-fuckin-diculous gamergate situation) I’m not the sort of person who has ever considered myself a “gamer”. I mean, I usually (but not always) enjoy games when I play them, but I didn’t grow up with video games and I don’t keep up with the latest releases and I don’t have a steam account or any of that. It’s just that it so happens that my first “real” fandom, and the fandom that just won’t quit and I never want to, is for a series of video games. So I’m basically SUPER into one video game and have played a few more and have a general knowledge of even more than that. But still, I thought the swap would be fun and I felt like I was comfortable enough with video games to be able to participate. So I signed up. And it was fun. And I will do more of them in the future, because it turns out I really like making things for someone else and the excitement of seeing their virtual excitement over receiving the items I crafted them.

This post is going to be the first of a two-parter on two of the new(ish) undertakings I began with this swap package. I included more than these things (I knitted this Zelda Triforce Scarf that was easy enough to make, but still deserves mention, for one thing), but these are the two things that really stretched into the crafting me of the future, if you will (and I will . . . sorry, that’s a reflexive inside joke that zero of you reading this will understand.)
Without further ado . . . yarn dyeing!

My recipient mentioned that their favourite game was Baten Kaitos, which is a Dreamcast (I think) game that I had never heard of, but my far more knowledgeable gamer husband and his college roommate had spent time playing. Because this game is old and I think it has a pretty small fanbase, there isn’t any merchandise out there for it AT ALL. This is okay, since my recipient also mentioned that they like Zelda and Skylanders and all sorts of things that have way more popularity than Baten Kaitos, but as a person who’s only into video games that have next-to-no crafting fanbase (as in, there aren’t indie dyed yarns or fabrics or patterns or any of that) I sort of knew how excited the recipient would be if something from a fandom you don’t expect to see anything from showed up in the package. So, since I’m newly immersed in a commitment to yarn dyeing, I decided to make my first real yarn dyeing adventure something inspired by my recipient’s favourite charater in Baten Kaitos, Kalas.
 
So, going off the photos I could find online, it seems like the character wears a light blue and darker blue armour set offset with brown leather strappings, so I decided that my yarn was going to be the dark blue transitioning into brighter blue and then the leathery brown. The bare yarn I selected to dye was a fingering weight 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon yarn. I had three 50g skeins, but this was my first time dyeing and I didn’t want to screw up three skeins of yarn in the event that everything went horribly wrong, so I only dyed one of them. I knew this would mean that I was giving the recipient barely enough yarn to do anything with and really it would be better if I could dye two skeins at once and at least give 100g, but I was really afraid of messing it up. Turns out I had no need, because this yarn is one of the best I’ve made to date. That could be because I’m a sucker for the blue/brown variegation, but all reports from those who’ve seen it in person are that it’s pretty badass.

I dyed the whole thing with Wilton’s Icing Gels using a plain stainless steel kitchen pot. Minimal mess, no harsh chemicals, beautiful colour. I highly recommend this method for anyone who might be thinking about dyeing some yarn, but doesn’t have a large kitchen or space for extra equipment or is even just a little nervous about the harsh chemicals in a working kitchen like I was. I’ve since dyed 20 more skeins of yarn in various colourways using this methodology, and the only thing I haven’t been able to get right so far is grey. Not a bad track record, and I hope you’ll all follow along with me on my yarn dyeing journey as I grow into this and figure it out and post all the pictures of my progress here for you to see. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll probably get a quicker peek at what I'm working on, but I'll make sure that everything eventually gets posted here as well!

To start . . . here’s a few photos of the special edition Baten Kaitos – Kalas yarn I did for this swap. Not bad for a first start, if I may say so myself!

 


Stay tuned for part 2 of the swap, where I give you a detailed tutorial on how I made a project bag!