Yester I handed in my last assignment before the holidays and after a quick trip into the city for supplies, I got crafty straight away. Taking advantage of Jamie having gone back to Geelong to celebrate his mum’s birthday, I did a couple of things I’ve never done before.

First of, I dyed yarn. I used food colouring and vinegar and this great tutorial. It’s a bit splotchy as you can see, but I’m quite pleased with my first attempt. I’ve been wanting to try this out for a while, but have been just too lazy about. It made a bit of a mess and stained my fingers because I didn’t have rubber gloves around. My fingers are pretty much clean by now though, and that’s mostly from normal activities like washing the dishes rather than standing around scrubbing them for ages.

Secondly, I felted. It was maybe 10 pm last night and I was bored and totally uninspired with all my projects. Browsing the new Knitty, I came across the Woodins and I thought there were just adorable. I realized I had some cream and brown wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills that I’d bought for the Deep V Argyle Vest before deciding it just wasn’t me.

I knit up these two really quickly. I didn’t really like the yarn on the skein, but it knit up pretty well. Since I don’t have a washing machine, I wasn’t really expecting to be able to felt these much, but I figured it didn’t matter too much since they don’t look too heavily felted in the pictures. I was wrong. I just filled the bathroom sink with a bit of hot water and set about scrubbing them. I don’t think it took even 10 minutes before they were felted to my tastes.

I didn’t have any stuffing on my hands, but I did what I’ve done before with the first time, cut up scraps of this very poufy thick-thin acrylic yarn I know I’m never going to use. For the second one, I thought I’d try filling it with rice to give it a bit of weight and I think I prefer it. I’ll probably do the same to the other one when I get around to it. Right now, I’m working on the log. It’s a darker brown than the original, which means that the pattern won’t be quite as visible, and I’m not going to use a lighter colour on the inside (simply because I don’t have one). Hopefully, it’ll turn out pretty good anyway.

Since my yarn is DK weight rather than worsted, my Woodins are smaller than the original, but I quite like it that way. The leaves are some leftover green DK weight scraps and I embroidered the eyes with leftover black sock yarn. For once, I was happy to have those partial skeins lying around.

I’ve also been working on this sock, that I started when Salina got too big and annoying to carry around with me. It’s Charade knit in The Knittery Merino Cashmere Sock in Moonlight. This yarn was actually a bit of a mistake. Purple’s not my colour and I was expecting something less purple from the photo on the website. I’ve tried knitting it up a couple of times, but have had huge problems with pooling. Charade was pretty much my last bet, and it seems to be behaving itself really well. There’s a bit of pooling on the cuff and heel, but I can handle that.