Today is my birthday and I’ve been surprised by my awesome husband with an incredibly lucky find of Bernat Handicrafter Cotton in the more elusive colours of their Fruit Line. He cleaned out their entire stock. As with all of their new or seasonal solids, they apparently can’t be bothered to show the new colours on their website or distribute them with any sort of consistency so this score was a lucky find and just in time. I think I now have all of their fruit colours (and plenty of them!) and will add them to my stash page shortly. So far I have Lemon (sunshine yellow), Mango (orangey yellow), Tangerine, Strawberry (bright fuscia but unfortunately scented so I will need to air these out), Blueberry (pretty vibrant periwinkle blue), Black Currant (grapey purple) and Kiwi (almost an apple green). I figured out these were the colours in the line because the pattern pamphlets Bernat published had the colours listed for a knitted fruit cozy patternsite, which is also not surprisingly, not posted to their web. Quite a glorious birthday haul if I do say so myself!

Since I’ve started making more accessories and things outside of the amigurumi realm, I’ve branched out into different fibers. While I still feel that unmercerized cotton is the best option for amigurumi, I’ve developed a fondness for wool, especially chunky single plys in bright transitioning or splotchy colours. Of course the cost of most luxury yarns, handspun or hand painted is more than I am willing to pay, but a true DIY girl at heart, I couldn’t help but want to figure out how to do it myself on a budget.

I read up and found that protein fibers (animal hair like wool, alpaca, mohair etc) can be dyed effectively with food safe colouring using Koolaid powder, food colouring or icing colouring, if there is an acid present to bond the dye to the fiber. That option was way more attractive than chemical dyes because I have a tiny kitchen and wouldn’t be able to store a dye pot and utensils, nor would I want to have to buy a dye pot and separate yarn dyeing gear. Armed with the gobs of information found here I set out to dye two balls of Stitch Nation Full O’ Sheep yarn I got on clearance with a mixture of KoolAid and regular liquid food colouring with lemon juice to bind the dye. I used the hand painted method outlined here for the colour changes and heat set the dye by putting the yarn in a steam basket over a pot of simmering water for 30 minutes instead of using the microwave since my microwave is tiny. Once it was steamed, I rinsed it but the water ran completely clear, which meant all the colour was absorbed into the yarn. I hung the hank outside in the sun to dry for a few hours and then it was pretty much good to go. Clean up was a breeze and I didn’t stain or destroy anything, which means this is pretty klutz proof.

I’m really happy with how it turned out, bright and fluffy and not felted at all. I will definitely be messing around with other colours as soon as my order of Wilton’s Icing Colours and Little lamb yarn gets here. It really worked out to be a good deal even though I used KoolAid which is pricier than food colouring. The yellow was food colouring and the other colours were KoolAid and as you can see, straight food colouring did as good of a job so I’ll be sticking to that in the future. Price breakdown:

Yarn: $8 (2 balls of 155 yards each)
KoolAid: $5
Food Colouring: $2

$15 for 310 yards of rainbow yarn I had fun making is an awesome deal compared to $9.99 for 95 yards of Crystal Palace Mochi Plus yarn (what I was thinking of buying even though the colourway wasn’t really exactly what I wanted) which would have added up to $30 for the same amount of yarn. Plus it makes the thing I make with this yarn, a little more mine, which I love.

I was making basic double crochet granny squares for a baby blanket but eventually my interest petered out and it became one more projects on the stack of partially completed. I didn’t think I’d really ever get around to finishing it so I turned it into a strip of granny squares to wrap around a telephone poll on my street.

Nine squares with 2 rows of single crochet border was perfect and stretched so tightly around the rough, weather worn wood that I am certain that thing isn’t going anywhere without being cut down. I used my usual unmercerized cotton yarn in 4-ply worsted weight, a combination of Lion Cotton, Bernat Handicrafter Cotton and Lily Sugar & Creme, and a 4mm crochet hook. The pattern was a slight modification of the standard double crochet granny square. We’ll see how long it survives before the anti-graffiti yahoos that run around slapping beige paint over ever speck of street art they come across, cut it down.

Last weekend was the big Vancouver anime convention, Anime Evolution. It was awesome, great cosplays, lots of neat events and the dealer’s hall was cool. I think as with Tsukino, I most enjoyed the artists and crafter’s alley. The panel went really badly but really wonderfully at the same time. No projector, speakers or screen meant the helpful videos demonstrating techniques could not be seen, and more people than we had bargained for meant we had to either turn people away or run out of supplies (we chose the latter and improvised as we could), but it all came together beautiful. People were really happy, appreciative and enthusiastic and there were some amazing guardian angel types helping everyone else out with the techniques, since the demos weren’t visible by most people in the room.

I had a great time though and hope to do this again next year, armed of course with more supplies and more vigilance about chasing down projectors and things way ahead of time!

I was fortunate enough to pop into Daiso on Sunday while on a quick trip to Vancouver. For those who don’t know, Daiso is a big Japanese dollar store type place where everything is $2 that carries housewares, stationary, paper products and a crafts section. Oh yes… that’s right… a crafts section. They’ve got yarn, crochet hooks and knitting needles, buttons, felt, all sorts of stuff. Despite migraines, a very busy and overheated store and exhaustion all around, I picked up some neat things for the arsenal. I’ve always loved the Daiso polyfill stuffing so I got some more of that, also found some cute plastic links that will make great stitch markers and a few other knickknacks. In a better mental state I’d have browsed around more and probably spent way more money, but it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t. The best thing about the trip, aside from the figma and gachapons the kid scored, was my newly discovered love of Bunny King and a big score of hard to find color cotton mill ends of Lily Sugar & Cream and Bernat Handicrafter Cotton at a local craft store in Steveston Village. Top that off with coming home to a newly arrived order of exotic yarn from Herrschners and I was on cloud nine. Be sure to check out the awesome engrish warning label on the styro beads “Never use it”… uhhh yeah.

I’m wanting to go on a videogame themed amigurumi bender, and I’d like to hear from the masses. I get a lot of positive feedback from folks along the lines of “I’ve been looking for a free pattern for this guy!” or gleeful statements of that sort… which makes me wonder, what other sorts of bizarre, obscure and awesome characters are people looking and waiting for?

So riddle me this, what characters or game themes would you like to get a free Amigurumi pattern for? I’ll pick one and do it up to the best of my ability then post it free. Please leave a comment or tweet me or something along those lines

In other news, I am getting all social with a facebook fan page (you can join by clicking the buttonmajigg to the right, no pressure or anything… just saying is all ) and twitterings… come join me yes? So it’s not just a big empty room with like my mom sitting in the corner.