The Mei-Mei

I just thought I'd add a few photos of a human (in this case Mum) wearing the Mei-Mei.
This is now Mum's Mei-mei (with the border of the Mocha Roca) - pattern by Doris Chan.


It suits her too.

Nice colour

Some sock yarn I dyed for a swap.
Could have kept this skein. :o)

Fingerless Gloves

I'd like to say "I whipped up these gloves in no time at all" but I don't ever just 'whip things up', well not knitted things anyway.

I used this pattern. Except I wanted to do it in 8ply not 4ply.
This, of course, took several attempts to get started.
But I did and I think I fudged my way through it.


I intentionally knitted them in white so I could dye it once it was knit - most people don't realise you can do this.

How did I get the colour gradient, well there are two colours there to start with. The very ends are the colours I used and basically I dipped the gloves in and held them for different lengths of time in the dye. (The darkest the longest etc) and as I got to the middle I blended the two colours.

What's interesting, and you can't see it here, is how the colours go when you the ribbing stretches. It's a very unique effect, you'd never get it by dyeing the yarn before hand. I quite like like it.

Oh, I did wear the gloves at Bendigo, but I am not really a glove wearer so ended up with them off most of the time.

Another birthday swap

I'm not great at this birthday swap business...
I know they're coming but they always seem to sneak up on me.
I made a reversible drawstring bag this time.
The rest of the parcel was some nice Eki Riva yarn (I'm not a purple person, this definitely didn't come out of my stash!) some purple Kool-Aid, some Tpins and a Knit one coffee cup.

A Simple handspun scarf

I made this scarf very quickly, amazingly quickly as far as I was concerned.
Ok, it's not a huuuuge scarf but the point of it was as an example for blocking when I went to the Bendigo Show.

I knit it on large needles - 10mm from memory, and it is a simple K2tog, YO pattern.

It could do with a good blocking couldn't it?

The Rainbow Connection

I have never rainbow dyed. I love to dye yarn and have dyed quite a bit of stuff, but I have never done good old faithful rainbow dyeing.
This is because I am not fond of strongly variegated yarns, and I don't like colours mixing to brown.

So one weekend I thought I had better give it a go. I mean if I was selling kits I should at least have had a go at it myself.

I set up and threw all abandon to the wind (it was a actually quite cold and rainy) and made up my colours, curled my skein into a spiral in my plastic tub and went about adding colours in ordered randomness. I wanted some blending, but not too much, it was a fine balance.


I was very happy with the way it turned out - I had a good omen while I was dyeing, a big rainbow appeared in the sky.
I wasn't sure how it would make up, but I liked the colours in the skein so I set the dye and put it out to dry.

I couldn't have been more happy with the end result. Winding this yarn into a ball I found the blend of colours very pleasing. I could have left it sitting on my bench and just kept admiring the pretty colours.
But I wanted to make it up into something to see how it would come out.
Crochet was my quickest option, so I tried a Crobaktus pattern, but couldn't seem to make the decreases match as exactly as I wanted them too - also I wanted a long thin scarf cross shawl, so I undid it (several times) and crocheted my own version.

I was happy with the outcome.
Here it is blocking.

The yarn is a 5ply crepe yarn.






I wouldn't make everything in rainbow and I'm still not a fan of lots of variegation but I was really pleased with this one.

Mei Mei

I bought Doris Chan's Everyday Crochet a while ago. The first time I went through it I didn't think there was much in there that I would make, but I read it and reread it and rereread it. As I did things grew on me and I could see how I could change things to suit me.

I couldn't wait to try something, but what.

Well eventually I jumped in. A Mei-Mei (I believe you need the book to get all the details for this, but the book is worth the investment). However I added bits I liked from Mocha Roca like the border.

It took me a while to get the hang of how the instructions were written and how to do the yoke. I did join the Doris Chan group on Ravelry and found instructions Doris had written there - she seems such a lovely and approachable lady, always round to help.

I made this Mei-Mei with some Patons Soft Haze I had. I wanted to dye it a nice bright green, but soft haze is made up 70% Acrylic, 20% Wool, 10% Bamboo so doesn't take a strong colour.
This is a nice green though. (I used food colouring, Kool Aid and Landscape dyes.)

It didn't take too long to make up, although I didn't work at it every single day.
I have discovered that my tension relaxes, from what I did in my tension swatch, once I start on the actually garment, especially as I am whizzing along. This ended up making this little jacket too big for me. Mum was very happy to step in and acquire it. :o)
I used a little over 300grms of the Soft Haze to make this in a 40" size on a 5.5mm hook.

I think it suits her.
I'm going to make something from the book (probably a mishmash of a couple of other patterns) for me - not a Mei-Mei I think we're a bit old for dressing "Mother-Daughter" style.