Well, new pictures of old projects. Completed the Seraphina Shawl so here's the picture of the finished project. A friend of mine is modeling it for me.
Here is the shawl spread open so you can see the "wings"
And another shot of it wrapped around. This angle really shows the stitch detail don't you think?
Fleecing Shrugs
I also have another of those fleece shrugs completed. This one is a print fleece with a sleeve and collar insert made with Simply Soft Turquoise yarn. Again, a shot of the front so you can see the collar
and a look at the back which shows the lovely print of the fleece.
These shrugs are snuggly warm as well as pretty.
Doily Delimmas
Now to reach quite a while back in my blogging and bring up an old project that I had some problems with. I made a cute doily called the Cluster Stitch Doily. The project was frustrating me because I kept having to frog the last few rows, over and over again so I put it up. Well, about a year or so later I picked it up and went back to work on it. I discovered at that time that I didn't have enough thread on the core I had so I went into my stash and pulled out what I thought was a match. Now, I of course got the wrong thread (and eventually learned a valuable lesson in mercerized vs. non-mercerized threads) and once the project was completed there was enough color/texture difference in the two that I felt I needed to do something with the doily. I thought I'd either dye it or stain it with tea or coffee. So, up the doily went again until I felt like fooling around with changing the color. After a bit of research I decided to dye the doily with Kool-Aid rather than stain it with tea or coffee. I hadn't yet learned that mercerized vs. non-mercerized lesson else I would most likely have just given up on the whole thing. I chose a grape color thinking it might just come out a lovely lavender which would make the doily very pretty indeed. What came out was a partially pink product that looked like this:
I was dismayed to say the least (this is when I figured out the whole mercerized vs. non-mercerized thing mind you-- a valuable lesson for the future). After letting it dry I decided to leave it as it was and try to pass it off as a deliberate action on my part, lol! I know with Kool-Aid dyeing you have to set the color and for that you need vinegar so I rinsed the doily again and let it soak in a vinegar solution, then laid it back out to dry. The finished product came out like this:
Now I realize setting the color drained a lot of it from the thread and left a subtle difference in shades between the white and the pink, but I kind of like the end product. I've got it put up again and am mulling this over thinking that I can either leave it as is (after another washing of course to determine if the color is going to fade any more or stay as is) or redye the project, hoping for a deeper shade of pink on the part that took the dye and for a resistance to the dye on the part that didn't take the color. Ah...I can see this is going to be my last doily for a very long time!
