Month: February 2018

winter solace

Posted on by trish

Have been hear­ing about the Win­ter Sta­tions project for a cou­ple of years now, but haven’t had a chance to go. I had a week day off last week, and it was rel­a­tive­ly warm, so I head­ed down to the beach to vis­it this year’s installations.

Win­ter Sta­tions are instal­la­tions that go over life guard posts on the beach. This year it’s nice and close to the bus route on Kew Beach. 

I spot­ted the Pussy Hut from far away.

I love this pic­ture of bright magen­ta knit against a cold, fog­gy lake.

A gem on a des­o­lat­ed win­ter beach.

Inside the struc­ture one could see a piece of the sky, and the sound of the waves crash­ing to shore is actu­al­ly amplified.

This makes me think of a for­est of strange trees. Designed by OCAD stu­dents! :D

A lace tow­er in the fog.

A clos­er look brings rows upon rows of pin­wheels. It was­n’t very windy that day, but I imag­ine that if it were and if all the pin­wheels were spin­ning it would have looked epic.

This piece was called “Obsta­cle”. The struc­ture seems impass­able until one actu­al­ly tries to walk through it — the pieces spin to make way. There’s always a way out. Prob­a­bly my favourite inter­ac­tive piece.

Win­ter Sta­tions is up until April! Check it out when the weath­er is clear :)

Hap­py March, everyone!

 

Lately

Posted on by trish

Lots of loom knit­ting projects late­ly. I even made myself a garter stitch sweater.

Real­ly hop­ing to write up a pat­tern soon, but I think I have to give it anoth­er try in order to get some process pho­to to explain the col­lar part. It’s quite thick and warm, and real­ly hap­py to have used up much of my blue yarn stash :D

Made a garter stitch hat as well, for my mom. I think I like this look bet­ter than the ewrap stitch ver­sion. And it would look quite nice with a pompom.

Also learned how to make slip­per socks! I watched this YouTube video to under­stand how to make the toes and heels (which are actu­al­ly made the same way), and then read this blog post to learn the top-up method.

They look cozy don’t they? Kind of like the read­ing socks they sell at book­stores these days.

It was Chi­nese New Year a cou­ple of weeks ago, so I made some new year cake to bring to my par­ents’. I fol­lowed the recipe on All About Ami, it was real­ly good, and very, very sim­ple, per­fect for some­one who does­n’t usu­al­ly bake, like me :D

Also on the cook­ing front, my co-work­ers have been rec­om­mend­ing turmer­ic tea for a long time. Mike came across some turmer­ic paste in the gro­cery store, so we gave it a try. I found numer­ous recipes and they’re all very sim­i­lar. I end­ed up just mak­ing this with 1/2 tsp per cup of milk, pinch of black pep­per, pinch of cin­na­mon, pinch of gin­ger pow­der, a few squeezes of hon­ey, and boil­ing all togeth­er. I enjoyed the taste, and hope to reap the health ben­e­fits of it soon!

And if your in the down­town Toron­to neigh­bour­hood tomor­row, it’s the annu­al Warm­ing Toron­to Knit­ting Day, ben­e­fit­ing Street Knit, which brings hand­made mit­tens, hats and scarves to folks who are street-involved. Swing by for some snacks, min­gling and yarn-craft­ing fun! 

Hap­py weekend!

 

this week’s awesome finds

Posted on by trish

Deep win­ter, indoor mode with busy hands and many projects :)

 

A cocoon shrug with a gor­geous stitch, paid pat­tern by Eleven Hand­made on Rav­el­ry. (there’s also a sweater version!)

 

Make one for every door. From Make and Takes.

 

I’m par­tial to sweaters with side­ways con­struc­tion. This one’s from Lion Brand Yarn (fol­low link from Rav­el­ry). 

 

An asym­met­ri­cal cro­chet scarf that looks very med­i­ta­tive to make. From Lit­tle Things Blogged.

 

Dream of sum­mer weath­er with this sum­mery back­pack. From Paint Box Yarns.

 

This pat­tern is called “Diary”, which makes me think of pat­terns that involve mind­ful­ly mak­ing one sec­tion a day, and I always liked patch­work designs. From Wollinger on Rav­el­ry.

 

Anoth­er side­ways sweater, this one is a cardi­gan and has pock­ets! From Amy Christof­fers on Knit­ty.

 

So fluffy! I’m intrigued by how to make cro­chet look so fur­ry… And Feb­ru­ary 16 is the first day of the year of the dog! :D Make your own fluffy pups to cel­e­brate! From All About Ami.

 

And last but not least, this incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful pat­tern from My Cro­cheto­ry.

 

Stay warm and keep craft­ing! :D

 

 

knitting is caring

Posted on by trish

knit knit knit…

I made a pair of Totoro baby mitts for a friend who just had a baby :) Fol­low­ing the charts from this Rav­el­ry pat­tern. For the small Totoro, I used this Totoro hex­ipuff chart. 

Over Jan­u­ary I was busy get­ting as much knit­ting done as pos­si­ble for the Hand Knit Hope ini­tia­tive for eat­ing dis­or­der aware­ness. This project deliv­ers hand­made scarves, hats, head­bands, etc. to treat­ment cen­tres across Cana­da as gifts of encour­age­ment, and the hand­made goods are also used to raise funds for oth­er ini­tia­tives aimed to increase sup­port for peo­ple liv­ing with eating/body image issues or eat­ing dis­or­ders. (you can read more about the project, and how you can help out too, on their Face­book page. If you scroll down a bit you’ll also see a brochure I made, and you might rec­og­nize a cou­ple of pat­terns on it :D)

So I made 3 head­bands, all on the knit­ting loom, with either two strands of worsted held togeth­er or one strand of super bulky weight yarn.

They were all made on the 36-peg round loom. The far left one is just a long tube of e‑wrap stitch­es until it was about 8 inch­es long, then the top and bot­tom edges are sewn togeth­er so it’s dou­ble thick.

For the mid­dle one, I fol­lowed this video tuto­r­i­al. 

The one on the right is made with garter stitch, which is basi­cal­ly alter­nat­ing one round of e‑wraps and one round of purl stitch.

I also made a cowl, which was inspired by the Purl Soho Garter Gaiter cowl, using alter­nat­ing colours for the e‑wrap and purl stitch rounds. It was made on the 41-peg loom.

On the top­ic of knit­ting for a good cause, the Warm­ing Toron­to Knit­ting Day is back again at the end of Feb­ru­ary! Mike and I are plan­ning to be there :D If you’re in the neigh­bour­hood we’d love for you to pop by! You can find all the details here on Face­book.

Hap­py Feb­ru­ary everyone!