Natural Hand Dyed Yarn

 I've been playing around with natural dyes lately.
It was one of the things that I adored doing in school. I love that nothing ever turns out the same (which is both good and frustrating at the same time). I like the adventure of discovering new colours.

I didn't know what to dye with, so I decided on red onion skins, fairly cheap and readily available. Even though I may have looked crazy picking through the onion bin at Sobeys. 

I chose to dye a baby merino skein, an alpaca skein and a super wash merino skein.
Overall I was pretty happy with how they turned out. I want to play with more skeins and colours now.
Must study instead.

I listed them in my etsy shop!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/WanderIntoWonderland?ref=si_shop

Continuation of the apron.

I apparently am terrible at updating this.
School got in the way, had all my final exams and then went home for Christmas then had to come back here and get settled in with classes and whatnot before I had any time to work on anything crafty.

So I'm back to trying to work out the kinks in this apron.
The first thing I did was reduce the size of the bib
This is the bib before I reduced it.

I found it was a but too wide and maybe a bit too high.

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This is the bib after I reduced it 

I know it looks a bit lopsided, I just kinda laid it on myself. I liked the shape of this bib better. 

Next I made the tiers of the apron wider, I wanted them to reach around back a bit further. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of what they were like before.

My new fabric is in the washer now for prototype 2!

The Quest for My Product

Since my first, and only, post I've been having incredible difficulty finding the product that I enjoy making,  is sell-able, and I'm good at.
I've dabbled in everything, from knitting to sewing to paper craft.
In the past 4 months I've easily spent over $2000 on supplies for "brilliant" ideas that either didn't come out like I had envisioned or didn't sell.
I got accepted into school for medical sciences and decided to put things on hold while I'm away studying.
I'm 4 hours away from home with no car and incredibly bored.
Being bored has made my hands itch to create things again.
It started with knitting, my Winter Knitting Project, for myself is finished. I knit a cardigan. Well, it's almost finished, I still have to sew it all together.
I love knitting, but I find it's not something that one can make a lot of profit off of.
My cardigan for example, 6 balls of wool at 10$ a ball. I wouldn't be able to pay myself fully for my time in the price of the sweater. Plus knitting takes so long, I don't think it would be possible to fill an Etsy store completely with knitted products in a timely fashion. It would take me forever to knit enough product to even put in a store!

I've always loved aprons. About 2 years before I even started the textile program I made an apron for myself, bought a book on apron patterns and even designed a few basic ones.
After I graduated I designed a pattern for a two tiered 1950's style apron.
I never did anything with it until the beginning of this month, when I went home to visit on a long weekend.
I finished designing the pattern and bought some fabric to make the apron from.
The picture to the right is my final result.
I know the picture isn't the greatest, but my Judy is at home instead of where I am going to school.

First Things First

I recently graduated from a textile program. Despite learning that the average female artist makes $11 000 a year with a parttime job I have decided to try to give it a go.

I majored in knitting and surface embellishment (quilting, embroidery, fabric manipulation etc).
Now that I've graduated I feel kind of stumped, it's a bit hard trying to come up with things all on my own with no teachers to guide me.
I guess this blog will be where I put my inspirations and projects that I'm working on. Maybe sort out some kinks, I don't know.
I guess I'll see what I'll write about as it happens!

My Dad's friend at work is putting off a fashion show in support of breast and prostate cancer, she messaged me and asked me if I would be interested in submitting some pieces.
Of course I am!
I'm pretty nervous tho, it'll be my first fashion show outside of the graduation show.
I've been trying to come up with some pieces but I'm stumped.

I'll write more once I have some sketches done I suppose!