Handmade Knitting Needles & Hand Dyed Yarns

Here we go, I'm finally getting to this years students, they are doing tremendous work and I really want to show them off.  Let me start with my 2nd year Intermediate 3-D students.  We began the year with Knit Picks Bare Wool of the Andes Bulky, and the kids got one skein each to dye with food colors.  These are some of their yarns above.  They also learned to use an umbrella swift and ball winder.

At the same time they began to build their own knitting needles with polymer knobs.  I gave them doweling to saw into lengths.   They sharpened them on the pencil sharpener and sanded them silky smooth.  They then got to choose a color for their needles.  We used several things for color; watered down acrylic paints, india ink, watercolors, wood stains, and shoe wax  (in several color ways).  After they stained their wood they buffed it to a sheen with a clear quality wood wax.  Thank you dear husband for the use of yours  :)

The needles above were by senior Ashley Chowdhury.

We had many interesting, fun knob shapes.  These here were pretty crazy and created by senior Tiffany Lee.  Fantastic attention to detail Tiff  LOL

Senior Sheila San Agustin striped her needles which I thought was very cool.  In fact, I really liked her geometric design, it reminded me of the knitwear designs by fiber artist Kathryn Alexander here.  

And below we have senior Lauren De Belen who came up with these lovely cherry blossoms on her knobs.

Junior Josh Berger did these super cool sculptural knobs, and below senior Angela Wan made adorable knobs with a Disney theme.

And everyone's favorites where the beauties above by senior Emily Yang who isn't even in the class.  She drops by every 7th period to give me help with my 7th graders since she knows I don't have a T.A.  She expressed an interest in learning to knit and making her own needles, so I worked with her during lunch and off she went creating these gorgeous knobs.  I especially like how she coated them with clear nail polish.