Suz’s Ramblings…

Last weekend I had the nieces over.  The husband and I picked them up Thursday evening and returned them Sunday afternoon.  Friday was spent in the pool at the in-laws house.  Saturday was crafting with Aunt Suz!

The older niece decided awhile back that she wanted to learn how to crochet.  So, I bought her a nice hook and a skein of yarn so that she could make a doll size blanket.  Much to my dismay, she couldn’t find the skein of yarn that I’d bought her.  Fortunately, it was a skein of Red Heart yarn.  My logic behind hooking her up with such a travesty of a yarn was that she’s a newbie, and besides, it had plenty of variations of her favorite colors, pink and purple.  Obviously, my logic was flawed.  So, I decided to take Dani’s advice.

Saturday afternoon we stopped by Knit Las Vegas and picked up some yarn for her to make a scarf with.  She already knew that I dye yarn and tie dye fabric, so she really wanted to be able to dye the yarn for her scarf.  With Christine’s help, we settled on a cotton/linen blend.  When we got to the dyeing stage, I tried to explain that the longer the stripe of color, the more stitches of that color you will have in a row.  However, I think that power of the MANY! BRIGHT! COLORS! were too much for her: 

Don’t misunderstand, I think that the yarn is quite pretty.  The only “problem” is that her stripes are 1-2.5 DC in length.  I crocheted a small gauge swatch of the pattern that she’d like to use:Fortunately, the curly Q pattern seems to work fairly well with the striping…the best part is she’s excited to get started on the scarf.

Also participating in the dyeing was her younger sister.  I unwound 50ish? yards of size 10 crochet cotton for her to play with.  The “Aunt Suz, we’re out of fuschia” should be a good indicator of more supervision being needed in the future (there was 4 oz of fuschia dye when they started):

I’m not sure that you can see the patch of brown in the lower left corner.  The blackish mess that starts in the upper right is actually more of a burgundy color.  Really doesn’t look all that bad in person, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the look she was going for…

Once they were done, the hubby and I got to play.  I did three onesies, as skein of Paton’s Grace, and a swaddling blanket, and the hubby did a swaddling blanket of his own.  It’s past my bedtime, so pics of the blankets and onesies are here without commentary:

In case there’s any confusion, I did the swaddling blanket with the swirls, and the hubby did the one with the inkblots.  The onesies will be in my Etsy shop in the near future, and the blankies are going to my best friend’s son.

Anyway, I’m off to melt into bed.