Finishing Up 2013 With a Little Color

Christmas has come and gone, December is almost over and so is the year 2013. This year has ended a lot different then I would have thought it would back in January of 2013. I decided to not go back to school and instead picked up the fiber arts again. I can not wait to see where this all goes in 2014. But first I must talk about the projects of December.

Kool-Aid, vinegar, water and the microwave

During the summer I was shown a wonderful little knitted Nisse' (a Danish elf) for Christmas I decided I needed to make that out of all hand spun yarn, my hand spun yarn. The problem was mine was all natural color and I had yet to try dyeing any of it yet. So the the search began for the simplest way to dye just a small amount of red and green yarn. That is when I discovered Kool-Aid dyeing. I purchased cherry and lemon-lime.

We now have Green yarn

Since my yarn was a gray (it is the gray yarn on the sweaters and the Nisse') and not white to begin with I thought these colors would give me the perfect Christmas red and green. It worked great!

And now we have Red Yarn

Next came the knitting of the Nisse'. The pattern was given to me in a rough draft stage so through some trial and error I was very pleased with how he turned out. I now have a pattern that could be used to make many more Nisse' to hind all over the house, the forests or give as gifts.

Knitted Nisse

Well you know how it goes, I still had a little red yarn left and a little green yarn left, what else can I make. Nothing big but something for Christmas would be perfect. That's when I found these cute little sweater ornaments. Perfect. I started with one and then it snowballed. 

One little Red Sweater

I showed it to a neighbor and my Christmas knitting was put on hold and the sweater ornament business started. It was to close to Christmas to really do to much but I have great plans for next year. 

Two more done and another in progress

I loved how the sweaters had all the details of a regular sweater but just really tiny. You can see how small they were in the second picture they       are next to a votive. Of course I gave them all away and when I started to knit the last one for our tree I ran out of red yarn so . . . I have to dye some more yarn which will lead to more little projects and on and on and on into 2014. I have declared 2014 the year of color. 
Come back in January and see what I am up to!