A Knitter's Way to Dye Easter Eggs

It's the time of the year again where one is thinking about the way to prepare the Easter meal for the family. But it's also about Easterly decorations. And being a knitter, I just couldn't go and do it the normal way. So instead of dying Easter eggs directly, I dyed the yarn and knitted around an (plastic) egg.
For the yarn dying I used the same method I used in March 2012 (blog post is here)
I measured out the right amount of yarn for three eggs (it's a bit more than 4 gramms - or twice the length from my storage chamber door to my sewing room door). Then I picked three flavours: Lemon Lime (green), Ice Blue Rasberry (light blue) and Cherry (red)

 I put the yarn into a small jar with 100ml of water and put it into the microwave for about 2 min or until all the color was drained from the water.

 After drying the yarn and knitting, the eggs has the perfect Easter Egg colours. The colours are a bit more intense than last time I did it, as I used less yarn and also less water.

 The whole process of the egg knitting is quite addictive and I ended up using quite a few scraps of wollmeise yarn I still have sitting around.

From the top clockwise they are:

- Sonne (sun)

- Campari

- Kool-Aid Cherry

- Sultan

- Pfefferminz Prinz (peppermint prince)

- Kool-Aid Ice Blue Raspberry

- Wolke (cloud)
- Fliederbusch
- Chim Chim Chimney
- No Wahle Watching in Colorado
- Gewitterhimmel (Storm sky) plus Limone
- Tiefer See (deep sea)
- Kool-Aid Lemon-Lime
- Limone
- Küken (chick)

SoFi 2015

This time we got lucky and had a cloudless sky during the Eclips today (SoFi = Sonnenfinsternis = Solar Eclips). The weather during the last one in 1999 was overcast and 't see much.
I have kept my special glasses from last time, and they were quite popular.
A collegue built a small pinhole camera and I tried to take a couple of pictures, but - as expected - they are far from professional.
Here almost at the peak:

 And already mostly over.

Still, pretty cool.
So we only need to wait for the next total one in 2081 ....

Socks Again

I know, socks are not the most exciting thing in the world. But I like them and I like knitting them. So socks it is ...

Those are again made from the Aldi Sockyarn (I still have plenty of that). Pattern is Anni from the book 'Op-Art Socks' by Stephanie van der Linden. Not the first pattern I have knitted from one of Stephanie's pattern, nore will it be the last.

 As a bonus an update on the scappy zigzag blanket:

I've got now 7 stripes and a width of 125cm (to 160cm length). I think I'll do at least one more in medium width (I have widths of 41, 51 and 61 stitches)

Cathedral Window

One thing I really enjoy when patchworking is to try new techniques. Not neccessary because I have a great plan or a finished object in mind, but just because this technique looks interesting and I want to try it.
Case in point: the cathedral window. I followed a tutorial on Moda Bake and this worked pretty well. Astonishing how much of the white fabric is used, really, considering how little is seen in the end (it basically lays four layers deep)

 It was super fun to make, though if I should do it again, I will find a different way to fix the inner fabric as in the ends the points there look pretty crappy:

For this project I ccould still hide those corners by making fabric covered buttons and sew them into each joint. And what I also don't like is that you don't have extra fabric on the outside to attach the borders to and you have to sew over the points of the windows. not sure how to fix this though ....

Look, Socks!

My local discounter had sock yarn on sale. Normally I'm not super thrilled by the quality, but this time I really liked it and also liked the colors on offer.
This pair is for me:

 And this pair is for my mom (as soon as I found some latex for the soles)