FO Friday: Do Not Speak to Me of Dragon Fire Socks

I know I said I was hoping to have these done by last Friday so I could show them off, but (1) it takes a longer time to knit the feet portion of socks than I think it does and (2) I was taking a class at the local fibre festival that specifically said I needed a project to knit and it occurred to me that if I finished the second sock on Friday night then I wouldn't have anything to knit during class, so I stopped working on them and swatched for the hat I posted about on Wednesday instead.

Anyway, they're done now. I wore them the other day and I LOVE them. They fit so incredibly well and were absolutely lovely to have on my feet all day. Fantastic pattern. I highly recommend it.

 

It remains difficult to take a picture of my own feet, but I tried to give you a sense of the chain mail cable pattern on the front, the unique foot detail that's actually a really cool alternative gusset placement, and the leaf detail on the back of the leg. 

They look complicated, but the patterns are all super easy to memorize and they knit up really fast. The yarn does hide the pattern more than I wanted it  to, but it striped up in a fortuitous way and I feel like you can see the pattern well enough.I'll probably knit another pair with a more solid yarn sometime because it's such a great pattern, but I'm happier with these socks than any of the other handful of socks I've knit.

To recap:

Pattern: Do Not Speak to Me of Dragon Fire by KnottyKnerd (I was test knitting, but will link the pattern as soon as it becomes available.)

Yarn: My own custom dye that I made just to knit these socks "Elvenking", but is now available in my Etsy store.

My review... buy this pattern as soon as it's available. These socks are awesome. (And the yarn's not so bad either!)

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:

Resolutions Check-In: January

It’s a few days past the end of the month, but weekends tend to get away from me moreso than weekdays, so my first “2015 Resolutions” check-in post is a few days late.

I hope to do one of these at the end of each month this year to see if I can measure the progress I’m making toward my goals and resolutions that I posted at the start of the year. Hopefully it will help keep me accountable, if nothing else.

So. Let’s take a look.

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!

Future Project: The Yarn Dyeing Rabbit Hole

I just got a really big bug to learn yarn dyeing so I can make character/other things inspired colourways for my fandoms that don’t have yarn colourways *cough*DragonAge*cough* (curse my sudden craving for Anders inspired yarns.

I have no knowledge of how to do this, very little time, probably no skill in actually creating variegations, and absolutely no available space. This is probably going to be a chaotic trip down a rabbit hole unless I get some quick intervention from those who love me (and share my flat).

Wish me luck.