Rubberband Easter Eggs

Here is a quick and easy way to "color" your Easter eggs to give them a more personal and unique look.

1. You first boil your eggs and let them cool.
2. Then take rubber bands, e.g. from your newspaper, and wrap 2 or 3 bands around your hard boiled egg.
   
   
   
   
   Wherever the rubber band makes solid (flat) contact with the egg, no coloring agent will get to the underlying shell and it will leave a white line.
3. Dip egg in coloring bath and follow the dying instructions.
4. Once the egg has dried, take off the rubber bands.

Graduation: Spiral Ribbon Lei

Graduation ceremonies are just around the corner and it is high time to gear up for the festivities.

I dove into my ribbon stash (yippee, a reason to explore my treasures!) and found 50 yds of double-faced feathered satin ribbon to make a spiral ribbon garland.

I thought it would be a nice little change up from all the deadline knitting I have been doing over the past several weeks. Sewing ribbon is a very calming little task...

or at least, that's how it started at first... but... oh, boy, I totally forgot how much ribbon I have to sew up for a roughly 37" long garland! About half way through the "nice little change up" was dragging on... and on... and on...

Luckily I've made quite a few of them in the past so that at least now, I no longer had to mark the ribbon in even intervals for sewing anymore. I can now sort of zip along and then shove, twist and wiggle the lei into its shape. :)

And as I was struggling with my motivation, my thoughts started to wander off to my time in Hawaii where fresh flower leis and ribbon leis were given as gifts at all sorts of occasions: birthdays, Mother's Day, baby showers, retirement parties, weddings and of course - graduation! 

I really should go and find the picture of my graduation because I received so many leis (fresh flowers, ribbon and money leis) that I had this HUGE collar on my shoulders and could just barely peek over the top. It was an amazing experience... I was floating through the day with the sweet sent of all the fresh flower leis - and was sweating in my personal sauna under the weight of it all... but it was totally worth it and something I will remember for a long time. :)

BTW, you can currently purchase this spiral lei at my Etsy shop. Let me know if you would like another color combination to match your school colors and I will see how fast I can get the ribbon, if I don't have it in stock.

Congrats to all the freshly minted graduates!

White Caps - a Hoodie

This design was inspired by my family’s love of the ocean and beach and comes in sizes 2T [4, 6, 8, 10, 12] (shown in size 4).

 photo: Brandy Fortune

With the simple chevron pattern and its white garter stitch rows I’ve tried to capture the waves’ white foam when they break and roll up onto the beach.

  photo: Brandy Fortune

The 3/4 sleeves and a generous seamless hood (well, there is a 3-needle bind-off at the top) make this a comfy sweater for outdoor play in the sandbox or, if you are lucky enough to live by a lake or beach, at the playa.

 photo: Brandy Fortune

The sweater is knit in the round from the bottom up to the armholes. Then the work is split into fronts and back and worked flat.

The hoodie is worked from set aside sts and closed with a 3-needle bind off at the top.

The sleeves are worked in the round from the cuff to the shoulder and then sewn in.

The hoodie band is worked flat by picking up stitches along the front edges.

Because this hoodie is for the rough and tumble play of kids, I chose to go with a hardy yarn by Red Heart: Eco-Cotton Blend, made of 75% recycled cotton (fabric remnants from t-shirts fabrication), 25% acrylic; a medium weight (#4, worsted) yarn.

If you would like to knit this hoodie, head over to Petite Purls for the free White Caps pattern. Enjoy!

Learned Today: Felted Join

I've been working on a couple of non-blogable projects lately that are slated for magazines coming out in the Fall 2011 so that my blog has been a bit quiet

But, as with any project that I like to work on, I've learned a few new things along the way. Today, I will share with you my discovery of the "Felted Join".

One of my projects involved some super thick wool yarn. I have never before worked with super bulky yarn and was a bit worried about what to do when the time would come to weave in the ends from multiple balls... This would make for a very thick, not very attractive back side...

Before I got along too far, I went surfing on the web and soon found a great solution for my problem: the "Felted Join".

I could think of quite a few positive points about this join:

• Perfect for joining feltable yarn when adding a new ball
• It is super fast (~30 seconds)
• No bulk
• Nearly invisible
• No wasting of yarn

Wow, what more can you ask for?!

I've put together a couple of pictures to show you this great joining technique.

1) Two yarn ends that need to be joined.

This technique works only with feltable yarn (at least 30% - 50% animal fiber like wool, mohair, alpaca, etc.)

2) Split and fray yarn ends for about a 1/2 inch (max. 1 inch).

3) Stack the two frayed yarn ends so that the two 1/2 inch section lay on top of each other.

4) Wet the fiber by either wetting your fingers in a water glass and applying it to the ends or stick them quickly in your mouth to wet them.

5) Place the moist/wet frayed yarn ends on your palm, and

6) Rub your palms together to roll the yarn back and forth.

The heat from the friction together with the moisture will felt the frayed yarn ends together.

Tada! Your yarn ends have been permanently been bonded and this join will be pretty much invisible.


This technique came in very handy for my project and I highly suggest that you give it a shot too on your next project with bulky or thicker animal fiber yarn.



And if you have a non-feltable yarn, check out the "Russian Join". That sounds like a great solution for thick acrylics.

Happy Knitting!

Learned Today: Raised Increases

When I need to increase a stitch within the body of a garment and want to control the direction of the added stitch, I resort to the Raised Increase technique. It increases a stitch by working into a stitch in the row below the current stitch, hence it's called a  "Raised Increase".

There is a Right Raised Increase (RRI) and a Left Raised Increase (LRI) named for the side the increased stitch will rest on in relation to the root stitch.

The following pictures will show you the two raised increases:

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Right Raised Increase (RRI)

Summary: The RRI is worked into the right leg of the stitch in the row below the st on the left needle.


1) Work to the stitch for which the increase will fall to the right side of = root stitch.

2) Insert the needle from the front to the back into the right edge of the stitch in the row below.

3) Yarn over needle and pull through - knit the picked-up stitch from the row below.

A right raised increase has been knit.

4) Then knit the next stitch (= root stitch) on the needle.

This is how a Right Raised Increase (RRI) looks like:

You can see that from the root stitch a new stitch is branching off to the right.

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Left Raised Increase (LRI)

Summary: The LRI is worked into the left leg of the stitch in the row below a stitch that was just knit (and on the right needle).

1) Work to and including the stitch for which the increase will fall to the left side of = root stitch.

2) Insert the left needle from the front to the back into the left edge of the stitch in the row below.

3) Knit the picked up stitch from the row below.

This is how a Left Raised Increase (LRI) looks like:


You can see that from the root stitch a new stitch is branching off to the left.










I hope this helped. :)