Dishcloth 8 of 26

8) Cluster rib:

I really love using cotton for these swatches so that I can use them as dishcloths, and in general, I am a big fan of cotton, but it just isn't as nice to knit with as wool or even acrylic.  Cotton doesn't have the stretch and give that other fibers do, so I have to be careful to knit loosely or else I get frustrated, especially when trying to slip stitches over others.

Hand spun and hand dyed

This is my first batch of yarn spun on my new drop spindle.  The drop spindle is a little easier for learning to spin because it is slower than the wheel.  I have more time to concentrate on drafting consistently.  I am still not great at being consistent, but I think I'm getting better.

This is also my first batch of dying yarn.  I just used food coloring and used a combination of yarn dying techniques that I have read about in books, including this one, and the directions on the food coloring box.  I figured that wool is a protein fiber and egg shells are protein, so food coloring should work on wool if it works on eggs.  I heated a couple cups of water to just barely a simmer and added vinegar and food coloring as specified on the box.  I used 65 drops of blue and 15 of red.  The water looked really blue so I expected the yarn to be more close to indigo than purple, but I still like how it turned out.  I was surprised to see how differently some parts of the  yarn took the dye.  I am excited to knit something with it to see how it looks knit up!

A morning of mending

A few weeks ago I had a really productive morning mending clothes.

I re-sewed seams in 2 pairs of pants, patched a pair of jeans, sewed buttons on 2 shirts, fixed the hem in a pair of dress pants, and fixed a seam in a shirt!  I can't believe I waited so long to take care of these!

Mending clothes isn't that exciting, but I did learn how to use the blind hem feature on my sewing machine for the dress pants, so at least I learned something in the process.

Dishcloth 7 of 26

7) Snowflakes:

Iowa Koozy - Hayden Fry

Another koozy. These are some of my favorite projects - someone made a joke about wanting a koozy with Hayden Fry on one side, thinking that would not be possible. I surprised him with this koozy and he was adequately surprised and excited!

Garden

Well, this isn't exactly a craft, but I am excited about it so I'm going to share. I planted a garden in May. Here is the BEFORE:

I got home from my week long vacation today and was really worried that it would be dead...but here is the AFTER:

Everything had grown and was ready to be picked! Look at all this! I even had 2 blueberries from my blueberry bush. Check out my web album if you want to see more before and afters!

Cole's Robot Quilt

I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything, but I finally have something to show for myself! I had great intentions of posting updates on this quilt as it went, but I was sick for a couple weeks, traveled, had guests at our house, etc, etc and never got around to it. So here is the finished product. It is a baby quilt for my friend who just had a baby boy. Their theme is robots, so I thought David Walker's Robots was an obvious choice. The pattern is my own. I did applique planets and rockets in the 4 corners and a big robot in the center - all inspired by the fabric. The shapes are free-hand, so not perfect, but I was pretty happy with the result.