Month: July 2018

Lately

Posted on by trish

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!

 

today is the day! =(^・x・^)=

Posted on by trish

Today IS the day! The annu­al Toron­to Yarn Hop! Catur­day the cup cozy is chill­ing out at my neigh­bour­hood LYS Yarn­som­ni­acs, one of the many excit­ing stops on our grand tour of Toron­to LYS’s today!

A bunch of us (over 120 peo­ple, to be more pre­cise! :D) are yarn-craft­ing in pub­lic tran­sit and going around to dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent yarn shops today while rais­ing funds for Sis­ter­ing, a 24/7 drop-in/­sup­port cen­tre for women who are home­less or pre­car­i­ous­ly housed. Last year we raised around $2700, which went toward much need­ed ser­vices such as pri­ma­ry health­care, coun­selling, sup­port groups and meal pro­gram (learn more about the event by read­ing my pre­vi­ous post here).

If you’re not able to phys­i­cal­ly come to the yarn hop this year, you can still join us (and help us reach our fundrais­ing goal of $3000!) by donat­ing to Sis­ter­ing through this link here, and in return I will send you the pat­tern for the Catur­day cup cozy (more pho­tos here), which is a pat­tern that I wrote for yarn hop par­tic­i­pants to cro­chet along. You can donate any amount and you don’t have to tell me how much or send me proof, just sim­ply make a dona­tion then email me at genuinemudpie@gmail.com to let me know, and I will send you the pat­tern in appreciation :)

Hap­py weekend!

 

 

Caturday… and count down to YARN HOP!

Posted on by trish

 

The Great Toron­to Yarn Hop is com­ing up in exact­ly a week, on July 14! :D

All of us vol­un­teers are get­ting super excit­ed and busy orga­niz­ing for a fun day knit­ting/cro­chet­ing/­yarn-craft­ing in pub­lic with oth­er yarn enthu­si­asts. It’s a great event for peo­ple to get to know each oth­er, make a state­ment about the impor­tance of craft and cre­ativ­i­ty by craft­ing in pub­lic, and sup­port inde­pen­dent yarn-craft businesses.

So how does it work, you ask? Yarn-hop­pers buy tick­ets and get orga­nized into teams that take dif­fer­ent pub­lic tran­sit routes through­out the city to vis­it dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent yarn shops. At the end of the day we recon­vene at a resto-pub for food, drinks and raf­fles. Pro­ceeds from tick­ets and raf­fles go to Sis­ter­ing, a 24/7 wom­en’s sup­port and drop-in cen­tre that offers much need­ed ser­vices like pri­ma­ry health­care, sup­port groups, coun­selling and meal pro­gram to women who are expe­ri­enc­ing homelessness/precarious hous­ing, social mar­gin­al­iza­tion and oth­er chal­leng­ing circumstances.

Sis­ter­ing has a spe­cial place in my heart because that was where I trained as a social work­er. The par­tic­i­pants, vol­un­teers and staff were the most valu­able, knowl­edge­able teach­ers and I would­n’t know what I know now and be where I am today with­out them.

There are still tick­ets left on a few of the routes, you can find out more details and buy tick­ets here! 

If you can’t phys­i­cal­ly come to the Yarn Hop, you can still join us! I wrote a cro­chet cup cozy pat­tern as part of the gifts for the Yarn Hop par­tic­i­pants, called Catur­day (because, you know, the Yarn Hop is on a Sat­ur­day). You can donate to Sis­ter­ing through this Yarn Hop link, and I will send you the pattern! 

You can donate any amount, and you don’t have to let me know how much you donat­ed or send me any proof, I trust that we all want to make a dif­fer­ence in some­one’s life when we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to. Sim­ply send me an email at genuinemudpie@gmail.com let­ting me know that you have donat­ed, and I will send you a pdf file of the pat­tern in reply :)

The cup cozy uses a small amount of DK yarn and 4 mm hook. It has a dense, tex­tured fab­ric that will keep your fin­gers safe from hot bev­er­ages. If you’re not into cats, sim­ply omit the last row and the embroi­dery, and you’ll have a sim­ple yet not-so-plain cup cozy to show off a beau­ti­ful yarn. Great for using up scraps!

Want to know more about how your dona­tions will make a dif­fer­ence? Vis­it Sis­ter­ing’s web­site for infor­ma­tion and inspir­ing sto­ries from the most resilient women. 

In the mean­while, I was also busy loom knit­ting a mas­cot for the team that Mike and I are co-lead­ing — Team Alpaca! Look how cuu­uute… (if I do say so myself, haha)

I’ve named him Cousin Alpaca, because I have a plush lla­ma, who is per­haps like a cousin to alpaca…? Any­way, I thought Cousin Alpaca is a good name :D

If you loom knit and want to make your own alpaca, the pat­tern is by the Loom Muse and can be found here. 

If you’re in or near Toron­to, come hang out with us and Cousin Alpaca next Sat­ur­day! :D Hope your week­end is full of crafty goodness!

 

 

loom-knit-along: join-as-you-go mitered square blanket – part 5

Posted on by trish

Now that we’ve got­ten the hang of mak­ing mitered square, you might get a bit bored of mak­ing sol­id colour squares. You can make striped ones! And use up small­er balls of scraps! Here’s what I do…

After cast­ing on, purl­ing one row, decreas­ing one stitch on either side of the cen­tre peg, and mov­ing each stitch over, intro­duce the new colour by mak­ing a slip knot with the new yarn and plac­ing it on the peg with the first stitch of the row.

Knit over the old yarn (pink), then con­tin­ue e‑wrapping with the new yarn (blue). Purl one row with the new yarn. Then switch back to the pink yarn.

Lay the work­ing yarn of the pre­vi­ous row on top of the new yarn before mak­ing the first e‑wrap to car­ry the yarn with you as you go. (in this case we’re bring­ing back the pink yarn and about to make an e‑wrap on the first peg, notice the blue yarn is on top of the pink so it gets wrapped into the stitch.)

When you have 5 stitch­es left after a purl row, cut the cur­rent yarn, and tie off.

Do the decrease around the cen­tre peg and move the stitch­es over as usu­al, and com­plete the square.

Here’s the stripy square!

You can also make scrap­py squares that use up every last bits of yarn. I knit till I have about 2 inch­es left, and tie on a new yarn very close to the peg (I learned this from watch­ing videos of loom knit­ting plush toys by the Loom Muse — more on that in anoth­er post!)

In the pho­to below the new yarn is the grey one and the one that ran out is green.

The result­ing scrap­py square looks like this :)

Yes, lots of ends to weave in on these squares but I like the look of them :)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of how-to for mak­ing a mitered square blan­ket! Hap­py knitting!

 

Posts in this series:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make striped squares

 

loom-knit-along: join-as-you-go mitered square blanket – part 4

Posted on by trish

Hel­lo! We’re back with the last step in loom knit­ting the mitered square blan­ket, which is to join all the oth­er squares in the blan­ket after the first row and after the first square of any row. This is how the major­i­ty of the squares will be joined!

As always, we ori­ent the loom to the blan­ket (or in the case of this demon­stra­tion, a dish cloth). The square we joined in the last post is the blue square.

The loops marked with the blue dots on the blue square will go on the pegs parked with the blue dots, and the loops marked with the red dots on the yel­low square will go on the pegs with the red dots. 

We would begin with plac­ing the loops on the yel­low square on the pegs, start­ing from the edge towards the cen­tre, and start­ing the first peg that is right beside the side knob. We place the last loop on the yel­low square on the peg before the marked cen­tre peg, then place the first loop of the blue square on the marked peg, and the rest of the loops of the blue square onto the pegs until the sec­ond last peg of the loom — 23 stitch­es altogether. 

Here’s a clos­er look at the loops that are placed on the pegs. Note that the loops that are picked up are the hor­i­zon­tal strands in between purl bumps.

And here’s how it looks on the loom when both yel­low and blue squares are attached, with the right side of the square touch­ing the inside of the loom.

When you’re actu­al­ly knit­ting with the blan­ket on your lap, it would be ori­ent­ed like this. I would start putting on the loops from the black/grey/beige square, which is the square from the pre­vi­ous row, and then put on the loops from the purple/mixed colour square, which is the square made just before the cur­rent one.

Now we’re ready to knit the new square as we usu­al­ly do. We start with adjust­ing a slip knot on the first peg (the one right beside the side knob), knit off the loop below, then e‑wrap and knit off each stitch.

Instruc­tion for the rest of the square is past­ed below, but if you need more help there are pho­tos in the first post.

Row 1: Purl (here’s a video of purl­ing) to the marked peg, e‑wrap knit the marked peg, purl to end. (Note in the pic­ture that the last peg of the loom is emp­ty — we only use 23 pegs of the loom.) Beware not to make the stitch­es too tight.

Row 2: Move the loop on the peg to the left of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Now the marked peg has 3 loops on it. (Always move the loop on the left first, then the one on the right, so it looks consistent.) 

Move the loop on the peg to the left of the now emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg. Keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the right until you reach the begin­ning of the row.

E‑wrap and knit off each peg until you reach the marked peg. E‑wrap the marked peg, knit off all three bot­tom loops on the peg (I pre­fer knit­ting them off one at a time, it’s easier).

You will now have an emp­ty peg to the right of the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg, e‑wrap the peg and knit off. Then keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the left and e‑wrap and knit off until you reach the end of row. I find it eas­i­er to do this with the loom sit­ting flat on a surface.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until you have 3 stitch­es left. Purl the 3 stitch­es. Place the stitch on the left and stitch on the right onto the mid­dle peg, e‑wrap, then knit off all 3 bot­tom loops. Fas­ten off.

Here’s how my mitered square dish cloth looks like! :D I cro­cheted a bor­der and loop at the top with a 6.5mm hook, basi­cal­ly 1 sin­gle cro­chet in each stitch around, and 3 sc in each corner.

Next time we’ll have our last post of the series on how to make striped squares, or essen­tial­ly how I change colours to use up every last bit of those scraps.

You might ask, isn’t there a mil­lion ends to weave in at the end? Yes, so I don’t wait till the end. Usu­al­ly I weave in the ends after mak­ing one or two squares. Leav­ing ALL the ends to weave in after 10x15 squares would dri­ve me mad :S (I plan on mak­ing the blan­ket 10 squares wide and 15 squares tall)

Till next time, hap­py knitting! 

 

Posts in this series:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make striped squares