Dyeing wool - I wish

I have always wanted to dye my own yarn, but I have a really small kitchen. I can't really afford the space to have special pots to use with all the chemicals, etc. A lot of chemicals can be really toxic, and I don't want them anywhere near my food.

Then I found this Knitty tutorial on how to dye yarn with food colouring, and I couldn't wait to try it! I especially love the cold pour method described. I later discovered tutorials on dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid, a similar method, as described here.

My room here in Iqaluit has a big kitchen, and I would have LOVED to be able to do some yarn dyeing while up here - keep me busy in the evening. This would have been the greatest opportunity.



The only problem is that I can't get wool yarn in Iqaluit. To be honest, I was surprised they sold yarn at all - but it's all acrylic, and can't be dyed at all.

The best thing to get would be some yarn made from the undercoat of the muskox, or Qiviut. It is super soft and fluffy, and it would be nice to get something from the north, but apparently it is extremely expensive. Actually, it's supposedly the most expensive fiber in the world, and probably hard to find here since there are no muskox on Baffin Island. It's usually collected off the land since the animals shed it year round.

Wool Coat is Complete!

Yay! I finally finished my coat... now that the weather's warming up in Vancouver :)

This is the first big project I have completed in a while, and I am very happy with how it turned out. This is also the first coat I have ever made!


My favourite part about this coat has to be the buttons. They caused me some grief as the buttons I had originally bought didn't go that well with the leather - but then I found these vintage faux wood numbers at Button Button and fell in love! The only problem was that the buttonhole attachment for my sewing machine didn't make buttonholes large enough for my buttons to fit through... there are fancy buttonholes with no stitching showing (not sure what these are called any more...), but they take a lot of time and I don't think they would work with such thick fabric. So, I just put my machine on a zig-zag stitch and did them manually:


To say the truth, I think I prefer this to the machine made ones, as I have more control. My machine is probably older than I am, an I have never been fond of the buttonhole attachment.

I also had a moment of panic when I tried on the coat after putting on the buttons and had a thought that I looked like a clown... No idea where it came from, but after I saw it, it wouldn't go away. I asked my boyfriend, and he unwisely agreed with me, so I had to continue to panic until his sister came over and assured me that the buttons looked great. I now love them again!


Other than that, I pretty much followed the pattern. There are lovely hidden pockets in the front seams, and I'm really happy with the cream coloured lining. I wound up adding an extra line of stitching to make the collar sit right. I have a horrible time remembering which side to sew the upper collar to, and which side to sew the under collar to, and I seem to get it wrong every time - this was no exception. Unfortunately, you can't re-sew leather without destroying its integrity, and so the collar remained upside down. This may have something to do with it sitting funny... Hopefully I won't make that mistake again, but it looks good the way it is.

I can't wait to wear it tomorrow!