Flowers and Craft Shows Part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted about flower hair elastics that I was making for a craft show. (Earlier this year I shared how I made them into headbands.)

This is part 2, showing how I make the hair elastics, and featuring photos from the craft show.

When I make the hair elastics, I try to avoid having more than 2 ends to weave in.

Make your flower. Do not cut the yarn. (Here I slip stitch to get the yarn on the back of the flower)

The first few stitches are the hardest, but also the most important, because they will be closest to the flower.

Using the yarn that you didn't cut, which should now be at the back of your flower, I re-insert my hook into the loop. Treating the hair elastic like a previous row, I insert my hook in the middle and single crochet around it. Sometimes my first one does not look tidy, so I take it out and try again. The straightness of the stitches will matter.

Once you've got the first one done, the rest are pretty straight-forward. I go all the way around the hair elastic, stopping every 10-15 stitches to smoosh them together. I like having the hair elastic completely covered, but if you don't, you can skip the smooshing. When you've come back to where you've started, look over the hair elastic and make sure you've covered it to your satisfaction. I slip stitch to the first single crochet, and cut the yarn, leaving a long tail for sewing.

To sew it down, I start with the end I just clipped, and work my way across the back of the flower, incorporating between 4-6 single crochets from the hair elastic. Basically, you want the flower solidly attached to the hair elastic. Because I use 6 petaled flowers, it is fairly easy to make sure the hair elastic is running exactly down the middle.

The apple farm craft show went really well. (OMG It was nearly 3 weekends ago already!!)
When we went last year, the weather was a lot warmer, and it was harder to sell winter-type stuff-- the sweatshirts that my aunt sells, as well as the hats and scarves that I sell. This year, we sold a little bit of everything. I sold all of my infinity scarves, which was awesome, and actually had the most successful show I've ever been at. The next craft show is the first weekend in October-- hopefully another cool weekend!

My table

The sweatshirts my aunt makes

My newest addition--stitch markers!

Flowers and Craft Shows

A few weeks ago, I posted about flower hair elastics that I was making for a craft show. (Earlier this year I shared how I made them into headbands.) Today I thought I would share how I make hair clips and hair elastics. ((Since this post has been languishing in my drafts, and I haven't had a chance to take pictures of the hair elastic process, I'll share that in a second installment))

The hair clips are a recent addition, and I am not sure how they will sell. I bought a 25 piece package of these clips from Hobby Lobby. I debated between these and the alligator clips, but I use this style more myself, and why would I sell something that I don't use? I got the 50mm size, which still had 25 pieces, whereas the next size up had fewer clips for the same price. They have lovely holes at the top, and these are what make them easy to attach.

After making the flower and cutting the yarn, I wove in one of the ends , and the other I moved so it was more toward the middle of the flower. (Note: I am only using what I have on-hand.) Because the holes in the clip were too small for my regular yarn needle, I found a different one, and then split the yarn. I make my flowers using worsted weight, which typically is a 4-ply. If you use something different, you may not need to split the yarn. The way you sew is entirely preference based, in my mind, but below are some pictures of how I do it.

This is the back of the flower

Halfway through sewing

Completely attached and ready to wear!

The reason I started the hair clips was due to having a number of flowers leftover (and having no inclination to make headbands. Bad Mary).

Several people asked what sort of craft shows I do. This first one is this weekend at a local apple farm. They've hosted a fall craft show for several years now. My lovely aunt does machine embroidery and applique on sweatshirts, and has turned it into her retirement job. I piggyback on her stall, giving her an extra pair of hands, as well as giving some lower price points to draw in more shoppers. I have been doing this for nearly 3 years now. Most of my products you've seen here: hats, scarves, shawls, and the variety of flowered hair accessories. I like keeping it to smaller items, as I can work on them nearly anywhere.
(PS: you can view more of my stuff at my Facebook page)
I will be helping my aunt at at least 2 other shows besides the apple farm one, one in early October put on at my university, and one in early November at my aunt's church.

Because I'm slow on the photos, the elastics will come around next week or so. And by then, the first craft show will be over, and I can share photos and stuff :)

Dyeing with food coloring

I thought I'd put together a bit of a tutorial on dyeing wool yarn with food coloring. I definitely use a bit of a trial and error method, just so you know.

To start, if your yarn hasn't already been skeined, you need to do so. I usually skein mine around two of my bedposts, because it's exactly 3 feet apart, and I recycle a lot of sweaters and I like to know the yardage of my yarn. The yarn I dyed this time was purchased: 850 yards of Sappho I from Sanguine Gryphon. (I forgot to add more ties on it- my yarn came with 3, 6 would probably be better, as the yarn gets handled a lot during the dye process)

Because I was dyeing with food coloring, I soaked my yarn in a bucket of water with a slosh of vinegar (I didn't really measure how much, sorry) This yarn is 100% wool, and I soaked it for around 45 minutes.


As you can see above, I use a lovely sand pail that I got for $1 at Michael's at the end of the summer. This one I keep separate and clean for soaking yarn (I have others for actual sand use, lol)

At my last dyeing session, I was visiting my cousin and dyeing yarn with her 3 oldest kids. She is a nurse, and conveniently had a bunch of old syringes that she let me have to use for my dyeing. This is how I put the dye on the yarn. I mixed up my dyes using recipes from Dye Your Yarn for McCormick food coloring. I used the neon pack- neon purple and neon pink, plus the blue from a regular pack. Raspberry: 1 pink (or red) to 3 purple, Purple: 1 blue to 3 purple.



Since the skein of yarn wasn't super big, I used my battered 7"x11" pan ( I think that's the size...) As you can see above, it fits really well in the microwave, which I think is a big plus. (Our microwave is supposed to be big enough to hold a 9x13, but I think this one fits more comfortably)






As you can see above, I simply divided the skein in half (okay, not simply, but roughly). I started on the purple side, and in the second photo, you can see where the purple dye separated a little bit. I really liked this affect, but I was originally going for a more solid skein with half purple and half raspberry. The bottom picture is from the first round of dyeing. This was one batch of dye, 2 colors, each in approximiately 1/2 cup of water. All the dyeing help I've read said that the amount of water doesn't matter, it's the amount of dye that matters. Hence the small amount of water. I actually love the McCormick food colors, especially in comparison to Kool-Aid. The McCormick already comes as a liquid, where the Kool-Aid you must dissolve in water first (thus needing more water). But, if you are just starting out dyeing, Kool-Aid may be a safer and easier experiment (and it smells better because you don't need the vinegar)

About the vinegar: food colors need an acid to help them bond to the wool. For Kool-Aid, it's citric acid, which is already in the drink mix. When you use either Wilton's or McCormick, you need to add an acid, and the one that is usually in most household is vinegar. I used white vinegar for this run.

For this skein, I ended up making at least ten batches of dye, both colors, to achieve the colors I wanted. Even then, the colors were not completely saturated. I'll advise you to be more careful and less impatient than I was, as this was not superwash wool, and there is the possibility of it felting if it starts to boil.

Every 3rd or 4th pass through the microwave, I drained off the access water, as if it built up, there was more chance of the dye moving around. Also, to be sure I had enough vinegar to help the process, either the 5th or 6th round of dye was 60% vinegar. In this round, I filled my little dye cups halfway with vinegar, added a bit more water, then added the dye. I'm not sure if it made any difference, but I felt better about it.

After finishing, I let the yarn cool- be careful not to shock the yarn by rinsing it in cold water- I used lukewarm water to help bring it down to handling temperature, and ran it under a lukewarm faucet to rinse out any dye that had not taken. Rubber gloves are great for this.

It took a bit to dry, and this is where my impatience hits. I started by rolling it in a towel and stomping on it, followed by hanging it in front of a heater, and the list goes on. What ended up being most helpful was the heat in my car. Obviously, you don't need to use this method, but I wanted to use my yarn ASAP.

When my camera battery died, my sister started taking photos with her camera, and for some reason, I can't get them on here. So here is the photoset that she uploaded to flickr: more pictures.

I hope this is a semi- helpful tutorial. Feel free to offer suggestions! I hope you have fun dyeing your yarn with food coloring!

You can see the finished product of the yarn here (or at least the beginning of it).