Month: December 2013

holiday crafting :D

Posted on by trish

Despite hav­ing to shop online for many of our presents this year because of lack of time, I man­aged to fin­ish a few hand­made gifts :D 

I’m quite proud of these mit­tens from pat­tern by Lit­tle Things Blogged.

foxgloves

 

Granny sweaters by Bev’s Coun­try Cot­tage for my niece and nephew, they seemed to like them :D

Christmas sweater 1

Christmas sweater 2

 

Owl mitts for a dear friend. They were knit­ted. It was an awe­some pat­tern to work with because it was worked flat then seamed (I have trou­ble knit­ting in the round). Each took me an evening to make, and used an incred­i­bly small amount of yarn (I made both with 1 skein of Pat­ton Clas­sic Wool with a lot of yarn left over).

owl gloves

 

Every year Mike and I col­lab­o­rate to make Christ­mas cards for every­one. This year we made sim­ple snowflake cards by “dye­ing” cof­fee fil­ters with mark­ers and using the dyed papers to make snowflakes with a snowflake/star punch.

card 3

 

The cof­fee fil­ters were too soft to use the snowflake punch with, so we had to sand­wich the cof­fee fil­ter with fly­ers to make it eas­i­er to punch, and we’re left with these real­ly nice fly­er snowflakes, which I’m reluc­tant to throw out…

card 2

 

Wish­ing you much joy for the new year!

card 1

 

 

hope

Posted on by trish

here comes the sun

As Christ­mas approached Ontario encoun­tered a pret­ty severe ice storm. All the trees were all encased in ice overnight. They looked absolute­ly mag­i­cal, but weight of the ice also caused the branch­es to snap and fall, car­ry­ing pow­er lines with them, and thou­sands were left with­out pow­er for days. The pow­er in our build­ing was down, but we were blessed with friends who opened their home (and cup­board full of tea!) to us and fam­i­ly we could stay with. 

Still we stayed a day in the apart­ment with­out light and heat (how I took these lux­u­ries for grant­ed when I had them!). The sky was also very grey that day, and as the day began to grow dark at 3:30 in the after­noon I was start­ing to get this feel­ing that the pow­er out­age sit­u­a­tion was­n’t going to end. When we left our apart­ment to stay with my fam­i­ly and Mike’s fam­i­ly for the hol­i­days our build­ing’s pow­er and water sup­ply was still down. They were stay­ing on the news that the pow­er may not be restored for every­one before Christ­mas. Here’s hop­ing that every­one will be warm and safe over the holidays.

When we arrived at my par­ents’ today the sun shone through the clouds as it was set­ting. The ice on the tree branch­es start­ed to melt and was sparkling like jew­els. It remind­ed me of the words from this song by Relient K, which was also the theme song for the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

It’s always win­ter but nev­er Christ­mas
It seems this curse just can’t be lift­ed
Yet in the midst of all this ice and snow
Our hearts stay warm cause they are filled with hope

…

And every­thing it changed overnight
This dying world you brought it back to life
And deep inside I felt things
Shift­ing every­thing was melt­ing
Away oh away
And you gave us the most beau­ti­ful of days

Cause when it’s always win­ter but nev­er Christ­mas
Some­times it feels like you’re not with us
But deep inside our hearts we know
That you are here and we will not lose hope

 

Wish­ing every­one a mer­ry Christ­mas and a new year filled with joy, peace, love, and hope.

 

 

levitating into the holidays

Posted on by trish

winter levitate

It’s hard­er to take lev­i­tat­ing pho­tos these days now that it’s so cold out. It’s not so big a prob­lem for the per­son jump­ing because jump­ing repet­i­tive­ly helps one keep warm, but it’s prob­a­bly tor­tur­ous for the per­son tak­ing pho­tos, to be stand­ing still, hands exposed in the freez­ing air, tak­ing shot after shot. For­tu­nate­ly for us it was warm­ing up a bit last week, and the snow makes for a nice pic­ture. This pic­ture only took five jumps or so.

Have a hap­py Sunday!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Posted on by trish

 Bril­liant! I imag­ine there’s shred­ded coconut in the jar too so one could shake it and make it snow :D Snow globe cook­ie jar spot­ted on The Crafty Crow.

 

Last year we made a gra­nola nut mix for our fam­i­lies (we called it the “hap­py health squir­rel mix” :D I can’t remem­ber what recipe we used though). We did­n’t have time to do that again this year, but this looks deli­cious! Def­i­nite­ly sav­ing it for next year. From Make and Takes.

 

A pom pom wreath! Awe­some way to use up small bits of yarn and so very fes­tive. Spot­ted on Do Stuff.

 

Mag­i­cal acorn orna­ments from Lil Fish Stu­dios. They make great pen­dants too I think!

 

Tem­plates for paper stars on Minieco. I love that they can be put over string lights.

 

 Love how quaint these tiny San­tas are. Fol­low the link on How About Orange for the origa­mi diagram.

 

They made a brief appear­ance in my friend Nan­cy’s blog post on The Pick­led Her­ring, pos­ing with the beau­ti­ful and deli­cious Krumkake (check out the post if you want to learn to make krumkake!). And then Nan­cy point­ed out to me that they’re called Korknisse and there’s a pat­tern for them on Rav­el­ry by Manne!

 

Hap­py Christ­mas craft­ing! :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

thomas takes san francisco

Posted on by trish

I usu­al­ly don’t like mak­ing imi­ta­tions of well-known car­toon char­ac­ters for fears of infring­ing copy­right laws, but this young friend of mine absolute­ly LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine and I want­ed to make him a present for his 3rd birthday. I don’t think he would be at all impressed if I made him any­thing else.

So I made these Thomas mit­tens, using the mit­ten pat­tern from Lion Brand Yarn. He’s pos­ing here in front of this pho­to we have of San Francisco.

IMG_1399

 

He’s got sort of a crazed look on its face but I’m actu­al­ly quite proud of it. I man­aged to incor­po­rate a pop­corn stitch for the nose rather than mak­ing it sep­a­rate­ly and sewing it on.

IMG_1403

The face took a lot of work, so for the sec­ond mit­ten instead of mak­ing anoth­er face I decid­ed to sew on the num­ber 1 instead, which is Thomas’ train number.

After open­ing the gift and exclaim­ing “It’s Thomas!” my young friend ran around the room while hug­ging the mit­tens. I think he likes them :)

 

Have a splen­did day, every­one! :D

 

 

 

holiday cheers

Posted on by trish

IMG_1396

 

Tak­ing in the fes­tive sights and sounds around the city :D

Last week a friend and I made it to the Christ­mas mar­ket at the Dis­tillery, but it was real­ly cold! I think it was ‑20℃ with wind­chill. But every­thing was so pret­ty and mag­i­cal. I man­aged to take a few blur­ry pictures.

And there was a giant Christ­mas tree!

IMG_1390

 

This past week­end I went to the City of Craft show. The orga­niz­ers are the best at fes­tive dec­o­rat­ing! I can only imag­ine how much work (and love) went into cut­ting out these paper rabbits.

IMG_1409

 

And they make love­ly shadows…

IMG_1411

 

All the ven­dors were amaz­ing, my friend and I were ooh-ing and ahh-ing at every booth. And the won­der­ful thing about the inter­net is that you, too, can vis­it these shops even if you could­n’t come to the show! :D I espe­cial­ly love the absolute­ly adorable minia­ture ani­mals by Jen­ny Wren, I won­der if she would sell the love­ly neck­laces dis­played at the show when her shop reopens, there was this fuzzy squir­rel with a mush­room sit­ting in a tiny bell jar pendant!! And the super cute nee­dle-felt­ed ani­mals by Les­ley-Ann Green! Her busi­ness card has a real­ly cute and kind-look­ing fox on the back, I propped it up on my desk and it makes me smile every time I look at it. It’s going to help me get through all the papers in the win­ter term I think. 

 

Hope you have a cheer­ful day!

 

spontaneity

Posted on by trish

headband

 

Look­ing for a very last minute gift? This head­band took me just one hour to make, and I don’t even knit very much. Per­fect for this snowy weath­er we have going on these days! It’d prob­a­bly look bet­ter on some­one with longer hair, but it’s real­ly quite cozy.

It is based on this sim­ple head­band pat­tern from The Knit Cafe. I think the orig­i­nal looks very cute but the garter stitch kind of obscures the twist design a bit, so I thought I’d sub­sti­tute with stock­inette stitch. Spon­ta­neous­ly decid­ed to write a post about my mod­i­fi­ca­tions and did­n’t wait for day­light to take pho­tos, so I thought I’d try to be styl­ish and make it black and white :P The yarn I used is grey any­way :) 

Here’s what I did:

I used 10 mm straight nee­dles, 1 strand shet­land chunky and 1 strand worsted weight yarn held togeth­er, a cable nee­dle, and tapes­try needle.

Cast on 12 stitches.

Row 1: knit 

Row 2: knit first stitch, purl until last stitch, knit last stitch

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until piece is 8.5 or 9 inch­es long, end with row 2.

Cable row: knit first stitch, place next 5 stitch­es on cable nee­dle, knit the fol­low­ing 5 stitch­es, knit the five stitch­es on the cable nee­dle, knit last stitch.

Repeat row 2, then row 1 and 2 until entire piece is 17 or 18 inch­es long, bind off. 

Sew the ends togeth­er. The post on The Knit Cafe has a nice pho­to tuto­r­i­al for seam­less join (scroll down for the seam­ing tutorial).

 

Hap­py craft­ing! :D

 

 

order of the year

Posted on by trish

Because I only get about one order a year. And that’s per­fect­ly ok, because I’ve been real­ly busy with school and work. But I do real­ly enjoy work­ing on these. Makes me real­ly miss hav­ing a shop. I hope that one day I’ll be able to get back to it. 

But here it is, nigiri and their wasabi friends :D

team sushi

 

Close up of the tuna…

nigiri and wasabi friend 2

 

Close up of the salmon… I found this nice var­ie­gat­ed orange yarn with white/peach, I think it mim­ics the mar­bling of the salmon nicely.

nigiri and wasabi friendsalmon

Plus a car­rot and cri­m­i­ni duo.

team veg

They’re on their way to the east coast (my favourite part of the coun­try!) as I write! Safe trav­els, tiny plush friends! 

Now that I’m on break, will be back with more fes­tive post­ings soon! Cheers!