A sample of the many things I have up my sleeve at the moment:
I spent my weekend swatching with cotton yarn (also known as making washcloths). I am particularly charmed by this lovely newly-hatched-chick yellow. The cabled swatch also makes me wish I knew how to / had time to make soap, because I think I bar of homemade soap and that cloth would make a very lovely gift.
Comments Off on Cotton and Cables
Tagged Almost a Business, cables, cotton, dishcloth, In The Works, Inspiration, Knitting, knitting with cotton, spa cloth, swatching, washcloth
I didn’t think it would happen – I dismissed all talk of it.
But it happened – we got SNOW! Not only that, we should be around 4 inches by the time it stops – a positively HUGE amount for us!
The recipe for the French Onion Soup comes from Susan and it can be found HERE. It is AMAZING. I made some crusty bread today to go with it and pulled out my French Onion Soup pots, filled them with soup, stuck a thick piece of bread in each one, topped with grated gruyere and OH MY GOODNESS.
Best way to warm up on a snowy, blustery day!!!
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| Amigurumi Class |
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| New Spinner |
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| Knitting Around the Circle |
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| Making Up for Lost Spinning Time |
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| Lots of Spinning |
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| Knitting, with Spinning at the Ready |
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| Big Meeting Space |
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| Tons of Fiber Friends |
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| And Shopping |
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| Sharing Skills |
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| New Treasures |
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| Crazy Creations |
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| Peaceful Surroundings |
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| Posh Accommodations |
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| Awesome Food that We Didn't Cook |
Saturday morning is usually when I deep clean the apartment. Truth be told, there isn’t that much to do today. Instead of a morning of cleaning, I have an hour or so of small projects. In one sense, this is good because it means the apartment is all ready pretty clean. On the other hand, it is easier to say, “Oh, I don’t really need to scrub the shower this week. Let’s work on fibery projects instead.” And that my friends, is a slippery slope that leads to an apartment full of grime and yarn. And I don’t like grimy yarn, so soon I will give in a start the mopping floors.
Just to procrastinate a little bit longer, I’ll show what I did yesterday. It’s interesting because I worked on it so much, I didn’t do any knitting! I know. That hasn’t happened for awhile.
I warped and wove most of my second inkle loom project. This time I am using my own wool, the left over charcoal cascade 220 from the linen stitch scarf and some orange elann peruvian highland wool I had laying around. I think it’s coming out nicely, but it’s obvious (to me at least) that this is still a beginner’s project. I find that even when it comes to weaving, I prefer working with wool over acrylics. This wool forms a much softer fabric. It’s not as bulky as the acrylic was and it seems like it will be just as durable (and possibly easier to sew). I am making the longest project I can make again, for optimum practice weaving. I am not finding the wool to be too sticky on the heddles, and it’s going really quickly. I am already thinking about what my next project will be.
Next to my loom, I have a pile of cotton yarn in pretty colors.
Because I decided it would be fun to make some useful things for the shop, and because it looks like (though I do not yet have official confrimation) I am going to have my own booth at the Farmer’s Market this year! (Which means I am going to have to start doing my cleaning on a different day.) The cotton is just the tip of the iceberg really, but I have a lot of preparations to do, so I better go mop the floor so I can get started planning for this new adventure.
Comments Off on Slow Start on Saturday
Tagged Almost a Business, cotton yarn, inkle loom, Knitting, topeka farmers market, weaving
Comments Off on I am feeling productive I guess?
Tagged gardening, Knitting, manic rambling, Sewing
Towards the end of last year, I was kind of on a cable kick with my knitting. Of course most of my "knitting" time is actually spend browsing Ravelry and perusing knitting magazines rather than, you know, actually KNITTING, but still, I found myself drawn to cables. I have visions of knitting myself some kind of lovely cabled sweater or vest or something, but for now, I'm taking the edge off with little accessories.
First up, a hat. An impossible-to-photograph hat -- what IS it about purple?
Pattern: Bramble Beret, from the book Vintage Modern Knits
Yarn: Valley Yarns Northampton, less than one skein
Needles: US5/3.75mm and US7/4.5mm
Time: September 2011 (about two weeks, start to finish)
Ravelry project page
When I got this book for the library, as soon as I saw this hat I knew I'd have to make it. I decided to make it in time to enter it in the Harwinton Fair -- and it won a blue ribbon in the hat category! Even as I was knitting it I was thinking that it would be a perfect gift for my sister Katie. I mentally earmarked it as a Christmas gift for her, which is why I didn't blog about it sooner. (I did give it to her, and she proudly wears her Award-Winning Hat now :-) )
This wasn't a particularly difficult knit for me -- but it was very fiddly. I prefer to knit things like hats on double-pointed needles rather than circular needles, which always makes for some "octopus wrestling" moments once you work cable needles into the mix as well. The reason the pattern took so long for me to knit was because it has about eight million bobbles. I love the texture of the finished product, but oy, I never wanted to see another bobble ever again. The pattern is charted, and I found it to be very well-written and easy to follow.
I loved the yarn -- Valley Yarns Northampton. I actually got this particular skein for free, as a giveaway at the Storey booth at Book Expo America last year! It reminds me a lot of Cascade 220 -- a 100% wool yarn that I am told felts beautifully (though I've not felted with Northampton myself), but is still nice and soft and perfect for next-to-skin wear. I have already used Northampton again (see below!) and will do so in the future, too. It's a great basic yarn and comes in a lot of colors.
This particular color, of course, was nearly impossible for me to photograph. Neither of these pictures is quite right -- it's a deep, dark eggplant purple. So not only was it hard to get the color right in pictures, the project was so dark it was hard to capture the pattern too!
I had so much fun cabling with Northampton, I did it a second time!
Pattern: Twisty Sister Cabled Handwarmers (free pattern available here)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Northampton, less than one skein
Needles: US6/4.0mm
Time: November 25 - December 1, 2011
Ravelry project page
These were SUCH a fun knit -- I LOVED them and want to make another pair, if not more than one! They're a small project so they go quickly. The cable is intuitive and fun to knit, and looks a lot more complicated than it actually is so you get a lot of bang for your buck. The pattern is free, but is exceedingly well-written -- personally, I think the designer should have charged for it! It was better than any number of patterns that I HAVE paid for.
I used Northampton again for these (another freebie ball from Book Expo -- this one picked up by my coworker). It's a great yarn for cabling -- it makes the cables nice and plump -- and the finished product was so nice and soft and warm. I gave these to my sister-in-law Kate for Christmas, but it was hard to give them up!
I see more cables in my future...I'm just not sure what, exactly, they'll be a part of!
Comments Off on All twisted up
Tagged Handwarmers, Hats, Knitting
You knew there was absolutely zero staying away from this yarn, right? One single one-of-a-kind skein (the first MadelineTosh I’ve ever used! It is nice!) met up with a neat, quick, trim little pattern, and two of the most alluring tassels ever tossed.
It was easy as thinking about it to wind up, cast on, and tie off– the whole affair was begun and ended in about two days. Really, I couldn’t not.
And I have a fantastic new hat.
Thing is, I was going to send this as a mid-semester pick-me-up to my blue-eyed sister, Charlotte (seen in the Brindled Wrap here), because the color and style would suit her.
But… my mind changed. Blame the tassels. And, unfortunately, there’s not enough yarn left for another (if I’d been as clever as I wish I were, I’d have knitted two trim 55g hats, instead of letting the first run to a super-slouchy 66 grams, leaving the skein’s extra 44 grams to sit and collect dust in the yarn cabinet).
OH WELL. NEXT TIME.
PS: and, from now on out, TASSELS FOREVER.
Comments Off on Happy Valentine’s Day
Tagged crochet, crocheter, knit, Knitting, natural fiber, needles, online yarn shop, yarn shop
Comments Off on Happy Valentine’s Day
Tagged crochet, crocheter, knit, Knitting, natural fiber, needles, online yarn shop, yarn shop
My Tinder is cranking along pretty nicely. I’m over my snobbishness about seamlessness (namely, I realize that there’s a reason why things ought to have seams, and I don’t mind making them), so knitting the thing in pieces is no hardship.
I’m primarily concerned that I’m going to lose steam, and, as such, am knitting absolutely as fast as I can. It’s kind of an analogous problem to worrying about running out of yarn– you subconsciously begin to knit faster, in the hopes of outrunning your shortage of yarn.
I’m even making the sleeves simultaneously! I am just that worried that the project will languish with one sleeve left to go. I mean, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.
ETA: I’m actually all finished– all there’s left to do is photograph it (sans buttons), and then send it off in the mail. I can’t wait to show it to you! It’s a beauty!
