winding down

Had a very busy cou­ple of weeks as I was prepar­ing to go on hol­i­days for sev­er­al weeks. And final­ly, all the emails that could be sent are sent, vaca­tion mes­sages are set on voice­mail and email, I’m final­ly feel­ing like I’m wind­ing down.

And time to wind up more balls of yarn! :D

Photo 2016-03-17, 10 03 36 AM

We’re tak­ing a fair­ly long plane ride, dur­ing which I will sure­ly be able to fin­ish a project :D I decid­ed to make this pineap­ple lace top, which has been on my to-make list for a while now. It’s a small enough project that does­n’t require bring­ing a lot of yarn. The goal is to trav­el light!

(Rav­el­ry)

The oth­er week­end I went to Rom­ni Wools and found enough of this mus­tard colour Mira­sol Illaris yarn in the dis­count­ed sec­tion in the base­ment :D I don’t have a ball-winder or a swift, but back of the chairs would do for now.

And I dou­ble-check on the TSA site that I can bring cro­chet hooks on the plane. Not sure about scis­sors. The TSA site says any­thing short­er than 4″ should be fine, but maybe I’ll just bring a nail clip­per. We’ll need a nail clip­per anyway.

Hop­ing I will be able to wear the fin­ished top on the trip! :D Will keep you posted!

Wish­ing you a blessed East­er long week­end, friends!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Love per­ler beads, and the remov­able rib­bon bows — dif­fer­ent colours for dif­fer­ent sea­son! From Frk Hansen.

A back­drop that does­n’t seem to take a ton of work to set up but adds a ton of sprin­kles fun :D From Let’s Min­gle.

A super handy cro­chet hook roll. From Bugs and Fish­es.

Sewrel­la has a series of free bakeshop granny square pat­terns. The donut one is my favourite. Check out the rest on Rav­el­ry!

An adorable bird, clev­er­ly made of yarn. From the Crafta­holic Witch.

This is bril­liant! :D Lemon stress ball by Twinkie Chan.

Also by Twinkie Chan — this awe­some piz­za garland!

Don’t cro­chet? Here’s a print­able piz­za gar­land from Kit­ten­hood :D

Its cape is too adorable. Super chick made from egg car­tons, from Michele Made Me.

Have a good week­end, every­one! :D

close encounter with tumbled rocks

More pho­tos with the macro lens band.

I’ve always found agates fas­ci­nat­ing. Espe­cial­ly those translu­cent or part­ly trans­par­ent stones with dif­fer­ent lay­ers and bits of dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als in them — like a world with­in itself.

I inher­it­ed a bag of tumbled/polished rocks that Mike’s grand­fa­ther had col­lect­ed. They’re most­ly small stones or stone chips that are about the size of my fin­ger­nail. So I thought it would be fun to try tak­ing some macro pic­tures of them, to try and cap­ture the intri­cate lay­ers and inclu­sions and colour vari­a­tions with­in each stone.

Photo 2016-03-05, 2 24 32 PM

Here’s one with my fin­ger in the pic­ture for scale.

Photo 2016-03-05, 2 22 57 PM

I think these are amethysts.

Photo 2016-03-05, 2 27 00 PM

Photo 2016-03-05, 2 29 44 PM

And this might be a moss agate? Looks like sea­weed in the ocean.

Photo 2016-03-05, 2 31 14 PM

Photo 2016-03-05, 2 28 48 PM

Aren’t these beau­ti­ful? I hope to make them into pen­dants one day.

On a sep­a­rate note, have you seem the comics by Sarah Ander­sen? They’re the BEST!! Prob­a­bly because I iden­ti­fy so much with the main char­ac­ter. But check it out on Insta­gram and oth­er places if you haven’t read them!

So I recent­ly bought her new book, Adult­hood is a Myth, which is so won­der­ful­ly hilar­i­ous and cute and I’ve read it cov­er to cov­er 3 times already. And look, it’s got a fuzzy sweater on the cover!

Photo 2016-03-06, 10 08 07 AM

 

Wish­ing every­one a great start to the week!

 

nova scotia

Photo 2016-03-05, 4 29 42 PM

Recent­ly bought a new cro­chet book, Learn to Cro­chet Love to Cro­chet. I loved the sim­ple style of the pat­terns so much I just had to buy it. In the book there is this love­ly fan lace cardi­gan that I espe­cial­ly want­ed to make. It seems to go well with every­thing, and of course one can nev­er have too many cardi­gans. Espe­cial­ly cardi­gans with pock­ets. So handy. Yup. Must make the cardigan.

But I felt bad about buy­ing more yarn when I’ve already got so much of it. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, I have been want­i­ng to use the skein of wool I bought from Lis­more Sheep Farm when we were in Hal­i­fax. It’s a real­ly love­ly dark green mixed with specks of grey and red. I also have a skein of Cas­cade Eco Wool in green/teal that’s been sit­ting on the shelf for months wait­ing to be made into some­thing. Prob­lem is, I’ve only got 200 yards of the Lis­more wool and about 450 yards of the Cas­cade wool. Nei­ther is enough to make the fan lace cardigan.

So I thought I’d use both :D

Photo 2016-03-05, 4 28 44 PM

The colours end­ed up going quite well togeth­er, I thought. They remind me of algae and the sea. I did have to make the cardi­gan a bit short­er because even with both skeins com­bined I did­n’t have enough yarn (good thing I’m short). I used every last bit of the Lis­more yarn. I was able to add a row of sin­gle cro­chet to the bot­tom edge of the cardi­gan, sleeve cuffs and top edge of the pock­ets, with enough left for sewing. Also mod­i­fied the front trims a bit (3 rows of sc), so they’re nar­row­er than what the pat­tern instructed.

For the but­tons, I found enough but­tons of the same size in my col­lec­tion that also remind me of the sea­side. It’s hard to show you with my phone pho­tos, but one reminds me of the full moon, one is iri­des­cent like the inside of an oys­ter shell, oth­ers are colours of drift­wood and seashells.

Photo 2016-03-04, 1 43 41 PM

I don’t have enough space in our apart­ment to block the cardi­gan, so I gen­tly pressed it with an iron under a wet tow­el to open up and straight­en the lace pat­tern a bit.

I think it turned out quite well! I’m glad I used the yarn for this project, to com­mem­o­rate the trip we took to the far­away province that I so love and will be sure to vis­it again one day.

Have a won­der­ful week­end, friends! :D

 

this week’s awesome finds

 

Oh my good­ness this giant pom pom rab­bit!!! *squeal* the cot­ton­tail! The pink nose and whiskers! *squeal* Tuto­r­i­al on ikat­bag. (make a fluffle!!)

A shawlette, by the same design­er who cre­at­ed the pat­tern I used to make those triv­ets! I like cowls bet­ter than scarves but have real­ly come to admire the drape and shape of tri­an­gu­lar shawlettes. Free pat­tern from Lil­la Bjorn’s Cro­chet World.

A nice spring/summer make by Drops Design and look­ing for­ward to warmer weather…

A cozy, sim­ple, per­fect­ly squishy, cloud-like cowl. From Espace Tri­cot.

Bob­ble sheep! Espe­cial­ly love that bub­ble gum pink :D Free Rav­el­ry down­load by Just Add Cro­chet.

And a big­ger, more hug-able ver­sion of the bob­ble sheep :) Knit­ted pil­low pat­tern by Purl Soho.

All made of yarn this week! :D Hap­py crafting!

macro fun

Photo 2016-02-25, 9 02 26 PM

There was an awe­some sale at Pho­to­jo­jo after the hol­i­days, so I bought this handy macro band for my phone! I’ve had it for a while, but just start­ed tak­ing pic­tures with it this week.

I bought a cou­ple of pairs of love­ly lucite ear­rings from Leeti Loven­dale on Etsy. The ear­rings in the pic­ture above are 5mm across. (there also appears to be a hair on my lens :S) (also, check out the shop! The lucite pieces used in their jew­el­ry-mak­ing have an inter­est­ing sto­ry :D)

We’ve got a bit of a snow storm here a cou­ple of days ago, and our win­dows were all frost­ed in the morning.

Photo 2016-03-02, 7 23 56 AM

Photo 2016-03-02, 7 24 15 AM

Photo 2016-03-02, 7 24 46 AM

I’m quite impressed with this sim­ple (and some­what sil­ly-look­ing) macro lens. Stay tuned for more macro pic­tures to come :D

Wish­ing every­one a hap­py weekend!