Month: April 2017

spring knitting

Posted on by trish

There was this buy one get one free deal for Caron Sim­ply Soft yarn one day at Michaels. I was work­ing on a project that need­ed dark blue at the time and thought I only need­ed one skein. So I picked up this fun self-strip­ing fies­ta colour for the free skein because I love the neon yel­low in it. One of my nieces birth­day was com­ing up soon, so I thought I’d make her a fun vest with it :D (pic­tured above) The pat­tern is from issue 88 of Inside Cro­chet, the Imo­gen cardi­gan. I added the arcade stitch to the bot­tom third of it for more fun :)

And then I end­ed up need­ing more of this blue yarn, so I had to get anoth­er skein, and had the chance to pick up yet anoth­er free skein of fun self-strip­ing yarn!

(One might even sus­pect that I did this on pur­pose so I could get more free skeins to grow my stash rather than just get­ting the 2 skeins of blue that I need­ed in my first round of shop­ping. But I promise I real­ly thought I only need­ed one skein of that blue. Who would want to grow their stash? That’s ridiculous.) 

What do I do with this deli­cious mixed berry colour? Turned out that one of my best friends was vis­it­ing from out of town with her most adorable daugh­ter. So I made anoth­er vest, plus a match­ing bias scarf for mum! :D

I used the Chas­ing Bliz­zard pat­tern for the scarf, but only fol­lowed it loose­ly, because my gauge is dif­fer­ent. It was a lot of fun to knit. Here I am kind of mod­el­ling it so you can see the stitch pat­terns a bit better.

And the bun­ny rock­ing the vest :D It was part of a cardi­gan pat­tern from a very old issue of Cro­chet Today magazine. 

She insist­ed on play­ing with the rice cook­er mea­sur­ing cups at the junc­ture of kitchen and din­ing room. (that was how her mum was able to get a pic­ture of the front of the cardigan)

And spring is the per­fect time to go on a knitting/crocheting/yarn craft­ing adven­ture! Two years ago I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the TTC kni­ta­long, it was a great deal of fun vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent local yarn shops, meet­ing oth­er yarn crafters and knit­ting in pub­lic! (you can see my pic­tures here!). I even got a few exclu­sive pat­terns and won a sweater-quan­ti­ty of hand­spun from one of the shops!

This year the kni­ta­long is going to be on Sat­ur­day July 15! It’s been a huge­ly pop­u­lar event that’s entire­ly run by vol­un­teers, so this year I’m help­ing to orga­nize the event and we need a few more yarn-lov­ing folks to help out! So if Toron­to is your neigh­bour­hood and if you love yarn I think you should absolute­ly join me :D

It’s real­ly a fan­tas­tic event that brings peo­ple togeth­er, draws busi­ness to inde­pen­dent yarn shops and ben­e­fits Sis­ter­ing, a local drop-in and sup­port cen­tre for women. So! The next plan­ning meet­ing is Sat­ur­day May 20 at 1pm, and we can even get ice cream after­wards! :D For more infor­ma­tion and updates, check out the even­t’s Face­book page here.

Hope every­one’s enjoy­ing the sun!

 

wip friday

Posted on by trish

A cou­ple of weeks ago I com­plete­ly ran out of knit­ting and cro­chet­ing projects (GASP!) and was feel­ing antsy watch­ing Net­flix with­out yarn and needles/hook in my hands. I’ve been knit­ting and cro­chet­ing for a while now, (that’s an under­state­ment. It’s been decades.) and while I like sim­ple designs, it may be time to stretch and chal­lenge myself a bit. Also, it might be good to work on a project that takes longer because I’m kind of run­ning out of stor­age space for new sweaters and cardigans… 

So! I’ve been eye­ing the Enchant­ed Mesa sweater for a long time but always thought it’s wayyyy beyond my skill lev­el main­ly because it’s knit­ted in the round. I usu­al­ly stay away from projects that are knit­ted in the round. But then Mike point­ed out how he does­n’t under­stand why I say I can’t knit in the round when I can knit almost every­thing else. It was a ques­tion I could­n’t answer. So I thought I must give it a try!

I real­ly like the asym­met­ri­cal-ness of the sweater, and that it’s meant to be knit­ted with odd balls of stash yarn. I have many many many odd balls of stash yarn. And I real­ly like the patch­work look.

So first, the pat­tern says to do a pro­vi­sion­al cast-on. In the round. O_O

So I looked up pro­vi­sion­al cast-on, and mag­ic loop, because the cir­cu­lar nee­dle I have is longer than the cir­cum­fer­ence of the col­lar. (linked the tuto­ri­als I used above in case it’s use­ful to you too!)

Here we have it, knit­ting in the round, pro­vi­sion­al cast-on, mag­ic loop. Nee­dles crossed, eyes crossed, fid­dled for a while, sev­er­al false starts, but I even­tu­al­ly got the hang of knit­ting in the round with a mag­ic loop! :D

But then the next part of the pat­tern is knit­ting short rows back and forth (thank good­ness!), and I could­n’t wrap my head around how I could go from mag­ic loop to knit­ting back and forth. So I decid­ed that I was going to get a short­er cir­cu­lar nee­dle (16″) so I don’t have to do the mag­ic loop. A bit sad that I won’t be using my new skills in this project but at lease I know I can do it!

I should also point out that when I bought the Enchant­ed Mesa pat­tern on Rav­el­ry it comes with the Out­er Space pat­tern also, which is a chunky ver­sion of Enchant­ed Mesa. So I’m com­bin­ing the two pat­terns a bit, using 1x1 rib for the col­lar, because I’m using a stiff acrylic (what a lot of my stash yarn con­sists of, and I was­n’t going to use a nice wool for some­thing I don’t have a lot of con­fi­dence mak­ing in case I mess up :P) and it just won’t drape nice­ly if I try to make a cowl col­lar. I also decid­ed to for­go the pro­vi­sion­al cast-on to make every­thing eas­i­er for myself. I made the ribbed col­lar extra tall so it can be fold­ed down or left up, for an avant garde look, I guess. 

I also had to mod­i­fied the num­ber of cast-on stitch­es and rows in each sec­tion because of the heav­ier yarn I’m using and I want­ed a more fit­ted sweater than what is shown. The many project pages on Rav­el­ry helped a lot.

Slow­ly tak­ing shape! So excit­ed about the asym­met­ri­cal sections! 

Here’s where I’m at cur­rent­ly. Divid­ed for sleeve and placed stitch­es on waste yarn (anoth­er achieve­ment unlocked!) and work­ing on the body. It’s a lot of fun decid­ing on the next colours as I go. It’s my favourite way to knit I think :)

Will keep you post­ed on this knit­ting adventure! 

Have a great week­end, every­one! :D

 

this week’s awesome finds

Posted on by trish

This fab­u­lous phas­es of the moon shirt, on Rae­gun Ram­blings.

 

Look at this toasty piz­za blan­ket! From By Jen­ni Designs.

 

I love the choco­late bun­ny one. Sweet cup­cakes by Can­dy van Sweet on Rav­el­ry, free patterns!

 

A cool friend point­ed me to these love­ly clouds ^_^ by Gate­and Hand­made Cro­chet.

 

Anoth­er love­ly design by Crafty Queen. The granny cardi­gan just looks so com­fy <3

 

I love neg­a­tive spaces filled with strings. The tuto­r­i­al is in French but it’s got won­der­ful self-explana­to­ry pic­tures. From Jesus Sauvage.

 

I was tempt­ed to buy the faux suc­cu­lents while wan­der­ing in Michaels one day but did­n’t know what to use it for, and now I know! I love that it’s made with an embroi­dery hoop! Check out the min­i­mal­ist air plant ver­sions too. I might just make that and will nev­er kill anoth­er air plant again. From Delia Cre­ates. 

 

These are the most fab­u­lous! Looks like I have to get myself to Old Navy again for more flip flops! Yes I already have an open-toe pair that I have not yet have the chance to wear, but one always needs more than one pair of sum­mer shoes. From Make & Do Crew.

So grate­ful for the warm spring weath­er today (final­ly!), hope every­one’s enjoy­ing spring!