Pastel Colors

I was totally obsessed with pastel colors this spring and though I haven't been knitting much, I did dye and then knit a pair of socks and crocheted a necklace and a pair of earrings.

For the socks I used a new to me yarn, 50% merino and 50% poly-amide. It is thinner than my usual sock yarn and it feels less warm because of the lower merino content. I had bought 300 g of it and dyed 50 g for a pair of socks, so I have 250 g more, which I intend to dye one day into similar pastel colors and make a spring sweater for Gaby.

For now, I only have the socks :) I wound the yarn into skeins, divided into 5 consecutive sub-skeins.  I dipped each sub-skein into the dye until it was exhausted, then added the new dye and dipped the next sub-skein and so on - a very fiddly and long process just in order to avoid breaking the yarn and having to weave in ends between colors. I know, sometimes I do act crazy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of continually knitting each sock from a single ball of yarn.

The socks are my usual toe-up recipe, fish lips kiss heels, 1x1 rib with Lory's twisted bind off. There is a difference between the two socks - one is knitted on 2.5 mm needles with 60 sts, while the second was knitted on 2.25 mm with 64 sts and magic loop technique. There isn't however much of a difference between the textures of the two, so in the future I'll keep to my preferred 2.5 mm sock needles.

And while I was still in the mood for pastels, I dyed a few strings of cotton yarn and made a necklace for Gaby. She already wore it and got a lot of compliments (which feels so good to hear!). 

And as it turned out that neither of her pairs of earrings was a good match for the necklace, I made her a new pair of earrings as well. 

Meanwhile, May came, the temperatures rose, we took out the light summer blouses and my plans for the pastel sweater became weather-inappropriate, so I've put them off for now. The transitional seasons here are so short some years, that the boots get changed directly for sandals and spring sweaters become redundant.

Marbled Pastels

I got an idea in my head to knit another Haruni for a present - my third Haruni, I really love this triangular shawl. And I imagined it in light pastel colors, combined around turquoise. I googled color combinations and I really liked this marble, so I tried to recreate it.

The yarn is Italian bobbin merino extrafine, which I have used before. It is super soft, 4-ply not very twisted yarn - a characteristic, which makes it divine to wear, but it has also a tendency to pill.

I was very happy with the yarn in the pot, but as it dried and I began to knit with it, I've been having my doubts. The yarn was a bit crowded in my small dyeing pot - 200 g is a bit too much for it, and the colors came very light with lots of white in between.

It looks colorful in the skein

but the knitted texture is very colorless, the purples and pinks are almost indiscernible. And these are so not my colors :( I love warm colors, I'm a red - brick - orange person, these cold pastels are too babyish for my taste. So far I'm planning to knit the shawl and if i hate it - I'll redye it into a solid darker color, probably dark teal or turquoise.

Rings Crochet Belt

Project: Rings Crochet Belt
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans various colors
Rings: zinc alloy
Hook: 2.5 mm
Time to crochet: a couple of hours

I was looking for quite a different crocheted belt pattern, when I came upon this photo and my daughter said she'd be happy to have one for her summer wardrobe. Given the various remnants of YarnArt Jeans that I have, this seemed the perfect little summer project. However, I could not find the right curtain rings, so bought these super cheap {ugly} earrings (only 50c the pair!) and voila - in only a couple of hours I had these lovely pastel color rings. If you don't know how to crochet around a ring - here's a video on youtube:

Then I arranged and rearranged the rings until I found the right color arrangement:

The rings are joined using a needle and the yarn tails: