fall

This sweater has been in the mak­ing since May. The Redy sweater by ANKESTRiCK, knit­ted with one giant ball of Lion Brand Pound of Love that was frogged from Mike’s aban­doned project. I used 5mm and 4.5mm nee­dles to account for the heav­ier yarn. 

I like all the dif­fer­ent parts of it: the reversed stock­inette stitch, the dis­tinct seam­lines (made with purl stitch­es, not seamed), the com­plete­ly seam­less con­struc­tion, the fun­nel neck that is not very close to the neck, keeps warm but does­n’t scratch. 

The only thing I did­n’t like too much was the rolling of the stock­inette stitch at the col­lar, so I fold­ed the edge over about 2 inch­es and stitched around.

Unre­lat­ed note: I’ve also not had a hair­cut since Feb­ru­ary, because I don’t have a car and can’t jus­ti­fy tak­ing pub­lic tran­sit to the hair dress­er. But here’s a recent pic­ture of me depict­ing my cur­rent hair­style, and smug­ly mod­el­ing a knit sweater.

Ani­mal Cross­ing saves my mind. Any­one else play?

May every­one be well, and safe, and keep­ing good com­pa­ny with an abun­dance of yarn as we ven­ture into sweater season. 

Icarus

Fol­low­ing the failed attempt at mak­ing this sum­mer top, I frogged the project and used the yarn (Patons Hemp­ster) to make the Icarus tank from Knit­ty issue 47. 

I bought this yarn at my local yarn shop, The Yarn Guy, last sum­mer, and had since frogged twice, but it’s hard­ly split­ting, so it’s a nice a durable one. The Yarn Guy is def­i­nite­ly oper­at­ing online and has a huge amount of stock, real­ly friend­ly and help­ful folks, so please check them out if you’re look­ing to sup­port inde­pen­dent yarn shops in the Toron­to area.

I made some mod­i­fi­ca­tions so that it was knit­ted flat in two pieces, with lace pat­tern on the shoul­ders. Not that I did­n’t have the cir­cu­lars to knit in the round, but knit­ting flat just feels more straight­for­ward to me at the moment, some­thing I have the men­tal capac­i­ty to handle.

The rolling of stock­inette stitch at the hems blocked out sur­pris­ing­ly well. I’m hop­ing it won’t roll back much after wear­ing and washing. 

The mod­i­fi­ca­tions I made is for a boxy-shape top that is cropped length. It is worked flat and seamed at the shoul­ders and sides. It mea­sures 36″ around. The yarn is DK weight and I used 4.5 mm needles.

Back:

CO 86. 

Knit in stock­inette for 4 inch­es, then begin lace pat­ter as indi­cat­ed in the Icarus tank pat­tern for work­ing flat.

(It may be help­ful to note that it’s actu­al­ly eas­i­er to read from the chart than the writ­ten pat­tern, as there are a few errors in the writ­ten one and can cause some confusion.)

Repeat lace pat­tern until piece is 18″, BO.

Front:

CO 86.

Knit in stock­inette until piece is 15.25″. 

Work lace pat­tern row 14–19, but reversed and split up over the two shoul­ders, as follows.

On row 14, p 6, pm, p 5, pm, p till there are 11 stitch­es left, pm, p 5, pm, p 6.

On row 15, begin with the 10th stitch in the chart, and k both the 10th and 11th stitch­es (i.e. omit the cable twist on this row and row 18), then fol­low the rest of the chart. k till mark­er, then work stitch­es 1–11 of lace chart (omit­ting the cable twist in stitch­es 10 and 11).

Work the rest of the lace pat­tern as above rearrange­ment of stitches.

In the sec­ond repeat of the lace pat­tern, start shap­ing neck at the same time.

On row 14, p 28, BO 30, place the 28 stitch­es on spare cable nee­dle, then p the remain­ing 28 stitches.

While fol­low­ing the lace pat­tern (and incor­po­rat­ing 5 more stitch­es toward the cen­tre every time the pat­tern repeats), k2tog on the neck edge of each RS row sev­en times. The last RS row will be row 15. BO 21 stitches.

With RS fac­ing, attach yarn to the oth­er neck edge. ssk, then work the rest of the row with lace pat­tern row 15. 

While fol­low­ing the lace pat­tern, ssk on the neck edge of each RS row six more times. The last RS row will be row 15. BO 21 stitches. 

Block the pieces. Sew togeth­er shoul­der and side seams.

Hope every­one is keep­ing well, and find­ing some knitting/crocheting/creative projects that sus­tain a sense of well-being at the moment.

brings joy

Mike put up the tree last week. As we were look­ing through the orna­ments I real­ized that these rab­bit ones were made almost 10 years ago. The paint is a bit fad­ed and got bits of the tree stuck on them now but they held up quite well, giv­en that they were made of salt dough.

I thought they looked a bit cold this year so I made them sweaters. 

Also thought the Ice­landic Yule Cat needs some­thing spe­cial to stand on, so we all know it’s no house cat (though noth­ing wrong with house cats).

Small bits of craft­ing. Brings joy. (and pro­cras­ti­na­tion from work)

May your week be joy­ful and bright.

 

 

settling in…

I don’t think I’ve ever been away for so long, I’m so sor­ry folks! >_<

April was a very chal­leng­ing month. There was a great loss in my fam­i­ly, there were final papers for the school term, and we were mov­ing to a new place. The month felt like a blur, but at the same time each day felt excru­ci­at­ing­ly long, with too many thoughts and too many feel­ings. So have been spend­ing the month of May try­ing to set­tle in and feel­ing the earth beneath my feet again.

But I thought I’d bring a new thing when I return here. A how-to for a floor pouf!

The pouf is fin­ger-knit­ted and uses exact­ly two skeins of Bernat Blan­ket yarn. It uses the same tech­niques of four fin­ger knit­ting and turn­ing as the ear warm­ers, and the pho­to tuto­r­i­al is here.

The pouf is about 2 feet in diam­e­ter and 1.5 feet tall. I stuffed it with an old dou­ble size duvet. I do have to fluff it up after sit­ting on it, so for a firmer pouf it can prob­a­bly be stuffed a bit more with a queen size duvet or anoth­er blanket.

To make the floor pouf, cast on the first row and knit until piece is about 25″ long, then turn and knit until you have just enough yarn left to sew up the seam (about 50″ of yarn tail). The piece would be about 45″ wide.

Sew the short edges of the rec­tan­gle togeth­er using tapes­try nee­dle, tie off, then turn right side out. Weave the yarn tail through the stitch­es around one open­ing edge, then cinch tight­ly and sew shut. Fas­ten off.

Stuff with duvet. Using a dif­fer­ent colour yarn (I used a length of worsted weight yarn dou­bled up) that’s about 50″ long, weave through the stitch­es around the oth­er open­ing edge, cinch and tie with a remov­able knot. So that the duvet can be tak­en out for washing.

This is the first piece of knit­ted fur­ni­ture I’ve made so I’m quite proud :)

Hope to write again soon. Until then, take good care!

tchotchke the cat pillow

I bought some very chunky, very fluffy wool in Cape Bre­ton a few years ago. It knits up in var­ie­gat­ed stripes and I thought it would make a won­der­ful cat pil­low. And the yarn weight is great for the large gauge of loom knitting. 

I named the cat Tchotchke, because I like the sound of the word :D and because I have a lot of cat tchotchkes.

It’s basi­cal­ly a tube shape with­out any shap­ing, it’s the sewing togeth­er that makes the feet nub­by feet and the ears. It’s a very begin­ner-friend­ly project :)

Reg­u­lar knit­ting: Alter­na­tive­ly, if one isn’t into loom knit­ting, I imag­ine that this cat pil­low can also eas­i­ly be made with a 10 mm cir­cu­lar nee­dle and super chunky yarn. Just cast on 41 stitch­es, then knit one round and purl one round (garter stitch) until it’s 14 inch­es in length, then pro­ceed with the sewing instruc­tions. (I haven’t tried it though, so I don’t know if it might knit up small­er using reg­u­lar nee­dles, and one would there­fore make the cat shorter.)

I used:

41-peg loom, from this Loops & Threads set 

12-peg loom (option­al, just eas­i­er when mak­ing the tail)

Loom knit­ting pick

Super chunky weight yarn about 200 m / 150 g (I sug­gest using the chunki­est fluffi­est yarn you can find so less stuff­ing show through)

Poly­ester stuffing

Tapes­try needle

Black yarn (I used worsted weight dou­bled up)

Body:

With draw­string cast-on (instruc­tion video here), cast on all the pegs of the 41-peg loom using the super chunky yarn.

Knit one row (knit stitch instruc­tion video here, ignore the cast-on part in the beginning).

Purl one row (purl stitch instruc­tion video here, again ignore the cast-on part).

Repeat the pre­vi­ous two rows (thus work­ing the garter stitch) until the piece is about 14 inch­es in length.

Bind off (bind off instruc­tion video here).

Tail:

Cast on 7 pegs on the small­er loom or the same loom. 

Knit one row and purl one row. Repeat these two rows until the piece is 12 inch­es long. 

Leav­ing a very long yarn tail, weave the tail through the stitch­es on the pegs, then remove the stitch­es from the pegs and cinch to gath­er the stitch­es. Fold the tail in half length-wise and sew togeth­er using mat­tress stitch. Stop sewing and tie off 2 inch­es away from the end.

New we sew it togeth­er and make a cat shape!

With the draw­string cast-on on the body, pull on the yarn tail and cinch it close, but not too tight­ly. It will form a sort of curve. Tie off, then sew the open­ing close by sewing through both lay­ers of fab­ric using whip stitch. (pic­ture below)

With the oth­er end of the tube (the ears and head), using whip stitch again, and sewing both lay­ers of fab­ric togeth­er, sew from the edge in about 2 inch­es toward the cen­tre. Repeat from the oth­er edge. It will leave an open­ing in the cen­tre of the head. 

Stuff with stuff­ing, but not too firmly.

Weave a piece of yarn around each stitch in the cen­tre open­ing, cinch it tight­ly closed, and tie off secure­ly. (pic­ture below shows what the top of the head looks like after it’s all sewn together.)

With the tail, spread open the end of the tail and sew around its edges while attach­ing it to the body using whip stitch. It will look like this:

Final­ly, sew on eyes, nose/mouth and whiskers with the black yarn. 

A new friend to watch TV and hang out with! :D

Have a good week everyone!

lately

What I’ve been work­ing on after the holidays…

This was some­thing that I start­ed on my trip to Hong Kong. Work­ing on this got me through excru­ci­at­ing­ly long flights and some moments of sad­ness as well as a cold. I actu­al­ly man­aged fin­ish­ing most of the body dur­ing the trip and fin­ished the sleeves after I came back. 

I made up the pat­tern entire­ly and jot­ted down some notes with the hope of shar­ing it some­times in the future… it might not hap­pen till May when the win­ter semes­ter is over, so hope­ful­ly I will still remem­ber what I did…

I used the Red Heart It’s a Wrap that was sent to me from Yarn Cana­da to review. Remem­ber the ghost­ly doily? So I fin­ished the doily AND made this sweater AND still have yarn left for prob­a­bly anoth­er doily. The yardage is incredible!

After school start­ed back again I did­n’t have as much time but I did knit a hat! I’ve loom knit­ted a hat with with this Caron Chunky Cake before but the wide gaps between stitch­es (part of loom knit­ting but I think it’s fix­able, I just don’t know how) make the hat not very warm… so I fig­ure I’ll unrav­el and knit a 2x2 rib one. 

And then I thought it’s a bit too short and the brim not wide enough, so I unrav­eled again and added stripes with the left­over grey sec­tion of the yarn cake.

I think this one is stay­ing knit­ted :D

Have a great week, everyone!

this week’s awesome sweaters

Cozy win­ter projects :)

Real­ly like the garter pan­el on the side of the sleeves and looks like a begin­ner’s make I can han­dle :) By Tin Can Knits.

Weeee! An alpaca hol­i­day sweater! *heart-eyes x1000* By Joy of Motion.

I think this would be a per­fect project to learn round yoke colour-work sweaters. By Sewrel­la.

I love every­thing about this sweater — the raglan detail, the sim­ple design, and the fun­nel neck. By Eleven Hand­made in issue 108 of Inside Cro­chet (fol­low link on Rav­el­ry).

Love espe­cial­ly the pops of teal around the edges! And the tri­an­gles of course. By Amy Gun­der­son in the lat­est issue of Knit­ty!

Hap­py win­ter stitch­ing! :D

yarn elfing

If you have been jour­ney­ing with me on this blog, you might recall that I like to call hol­i­day gift-mak­ing “elf­ing”. It is that time of the year again for us busy elves! Although I’m not a very pro­duc­tive elf this year… Not much yarn-craft­ing hap­pen­ing, just paper-writ­ing… sup­pose those count as gifts for my professors…

It is also the time of year when we think about mak­ing for those beyond our own cir­cles of fam­i­lies and friends who can real­ly use our gifts of crafti­ness with yarn. The nice folks at Yarn Cana­da are part­ner­ing with Bernat Yarn to give away yarn for indi­vid­u­als and groups who craft for a good cause! Do you and your friends make scarves and hats for peo­ple to find? Or win­ter gears for shel­ters? Or soft pros­thet­ics for breast can­cer sur­vivors? Or prac­tice oth­er kinds of yarn-kind­ness? Check out this page on Yarn Canada’s web­site for more details on how to enter this give-away for a good cause! 

In the mean­while, here are some awe­some ideas I found for the yarn-craft­ing elves…

These very cute cup cozies are loom knit­ted on a 24-peg loom. It’s a paid pat­tern on Rav­el­ry but the how-to video is free on Tuteate’s Youtube chan­nel (which have excel­lent and real­ly well-made loom knit projects!). By Mireia Marcet on Rav­el­ry.

 

Absolute­ly stun­ning granny square by Kirsten Hol­loway Designs.

 

A free pat­tern on We Are Knit­ters and it’s an amigu­ru­mi alpaca! :D

 

An ins­ta-grat­i­fi­ca­tion wool-craft, all you need is some tufts of wool, some pipe clean­ers, some poms, and some love. Bril­liant. From Hand­made Char­lotte.

 

Hap­py craft­ing, everyone!

 

 

lately

It is granny square day today! So I thought I’d take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly take a pic­ture of my fin­ished mitered square blan­ket :D it’s loom-knitted!

150 squares! It took about 2 months to make, it’s the biggest blan­ket I’ve ever made, 42″ by 63″!

I made a series of tuto­ri­als if you’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing your own! (a dish cloth / pothold­er with four squares is a fun make too if you don’t want to com­mit to an entire blanket)

After the blan­ket and the c2c top in my last post, I found a pat­tern that would be per­fect for the yarn I won at the Yarn Hop raf­fle, from Yarns Untan­gled, in “untan­gled” colourway :)

The pat­tern is Retro Sol­stice Eclipse by JL on Rav­el­ry. And look! I’m knit­ting in the round! (I’m always kind of afraid of pat­terns that knit in the round, but once I get start­ed I find it actu­al­ly eas­i­er than knit­ting flat) I also fig­ured out why my last in-the-round sweater had this weird gap at the joint — my stitch mark­er was too big. That seemed like a real­ly sil­ly mis­take. But now I have these sleek stitch mark­ers that came with the raf­fle prize so it’s all going smoothly :)

Speak­ing of the Yarn Hop, since we’ve had so much fun the day of, we’ve been meet­ing through­out the sum­mer! Here we were enjoy­ing the park…

And here were were at Spin Me a Yarn, who gra­cious­ly host­ed our meet­up last week!

Can you spot Albert the Alpaca shar­ing a chair with me? :D Albert final­ly got to meet Lam­bert, the res­i­dent lamb at the shop, look­ing spiffy with sock in his own “Lam­bert” colourway.

If you live in Toron­to and would like to join us at our mee­tups be sure to fol­low The Great Toron­to Yarn Hop on Face­book!

Hope you’re enjoy­ing sum­mer and much crafting!

 

 

Lately

After a bit of fren­zy gear­ing up for the Yarn Hop, I’ve been qui­et on the blog late­ly, catch­ing up on oth­er things…

My niece and nephews have birth­days rel­a­tive­ly close to each oth­er, so every sum­mer we give them all their gifts at the same time — that way every­one gets to open a gift! :D

One of the gifts was a loom knit­ted dinosaur — when I first stum­bled upon it on the web I thought I had to make this! The pat­tern is by The Loom Muse

(The wood­en dinosaur is a gift from a dear friend :D) I find that with the extra small 12-peg loom the gauge is very loose, and I end­ed up hav­ing to weave a strand of yarn through all the stitch­es in every col­umn of knit­ting to pre­vent the stuff­ing from being vis­i­ble. Per­haps I will have to try using an even heav­ier yarn next time (I used extra bulky for this one). I’m still quite hap­py with how it turned out!

Anoth­er gift was an owl pup­pet, pat­tern also by The Loom Muse but only avail­able as a video. The pat­tern is for a stuffed owl but I ran out of yarn, so I left the bot­tom open and a pup­pet it is!

I love that it also has a tail! :D

And we’ve all met the alpaca! The mas­cot I loom-knit­ted for the Yarn Hop (because we were team alpaca). The pat­tern is also by the Loom Muse (it is a trea­sure trove of stuffed ani­mal pat­terns!). Here’s our fab­u­lous team in front of the won­der­ful Pur­ple Purl! (You can also kind of see the makeshift alpaca car­ri­er on my tote.)

Through­out the day alpaca got named Albert, inspired by Lam­bert at Spin Me a Yarn, anoth­er local yarn shop :D (you’ll find Lam­bert and his yarn adven­tures on this Ins­ta feed)

Here’s Albert at Yarn­som­ni­acs enjoy­ing the very soft yarn made by his friends.

As you can see we also made an alpaca sign to keep us humans from wan­der­ing off. The super cute tem­plate is from Picot Pals. Here he is at Knit-O-Mat­ic with every­one busy look­ing and crafting! 

And here we are at Pas­sionknit — note the beau­ti­ful wall of Cana­di­an hand dyed yarn on the right!

In oth­er news, I wore my cro­cheted san­dals out­side for the first time since mak­ing them last year (or even the year before?). I don’t know why I haven’t worn them. Wor­ried they’ll break I sup­pose. But it’s been so warm late­ly, I decid­ed to give them a go. It’s real­ly dif­fi­cult for me to find san­dals that don’t hurt my feet, so I haven’t bought or worn san­dals for like the past ten years, and always suf­fered from socks and sneak­ers no mat­ter the heat wave >_< 

So I wore these out on the street, walked around, took the sub­way and street­car, walked on the grass… and they’re real­ly com­fort­able! My sum­mer shoes prob­lem is solved! :D 

In case any­one’s inter­est­ed, they’re made with flip flop soles and worsted weight cot­ton, pat­tern is here.

And final­ly, I’m down to my last row of the mitered square blan­ket!! 

There will be 150 squares in total! And about 4 feet by 5.5 feet! I have been slow­ing down with mak­ing this though because inevitably I have to put it on my lap to knit and it’s been real­ly warm >_< def­i­nite­ly a win­ter project, for next time. But soon I’ll be able to show you the blan­ket with all 150 squares in all its glory! 

Until next time, keep on crafting!