A pin button and an experiment.

Two Sundays ago I was invited to a birthday party and there I saw a friend who had a really cute knitted pin button. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

The pin button she had a very simple. It was just a little piece of knitted fabric attached to a pin-back button.

I decided to try to do one and see how it worked.

So, the odyssey of finding the right elements began! Which in real was only one thing: blank pin-back buttons.

I went to four handcraft shops and didn't find any pin-back buttons. The most similar thing I found were there some kind of wooden buttons and pins that. But the problem was... how to attach the pin to the wooden buttons in order to have a nice and durable result. The answer was NAILS. I bought the smallest nails I found (10mm).

Wooden buttons, pins and nails.

In addition to these material I needed of course some scraps of yarn (from the stash) and needles.

The first thing I did was to nail the pins to the back of the buttons. Even though these were the smallest nails I found they were still too long so I cut them to make them just long enough to hold the pin firmly in place.

Then I knitted a piece in stockinette stitch to fit the button leaving a tail long enough to thread it all around the knitted piece and tug it to stretch the fabric on the button... and voilà!

The knitted piece stretched on the button.

Some details:

* Yarn: Araucanía Ranco Multi (It is so funny that I had never heard of these yarns in Chile. They are supposed to be chilean. In fact all the names (starting with Araucanía) are places in Chile!)

* Needles: 2.5mm

* I casted on 10 stitches. Purled all odd number rows and increased using kfb at the beginning and end of each knitting row (even numbers) until I had 16 st. Then began decreasing on every knitting row til I had 10 stitches again and casted off.

* I threaded the tail all around the border and tugged it.

The not-so-pretty back side of the button.

And now I have this on my bag, along with two other pins I really like:

My bag.

A little closer.

I am thinking about making a smaller one. My bag is not very big and the buttons is maybe way to big for it!

Last friday we went to visit Kristín Hrund, who is a master in dyeing wool, to get some help to have our own very first dyeing experience. We took some white einband, álsalt and vinsteinn (I don't know what they are called in english) and turmenic. Yes. We wanted to see how turmenic would work. It was such an amazing color... this kind of very earthy yellow.

So, the result was this:

We're still VERY thrilled about the result! It is a wonderful yellow tone! And it smells really nice as well!