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

loom-knit-along: join-as-you-go mitered square blanket – part 3

Posted on by trish

Hel­lo friends! We’re back again with our mitered square blan­ket! Today we’re going to join the first square on the sec­ond row, and the method for join­ing is the same for the first square in every row. 

Let’s first ori­ent our­selves. For the first square in every row, we will always be join­ing under the first square in the pre­vi­ous row. In our case, it’s the pur­ple square (in the last post we joined the yel­low square). 

We will place the loops on the bot­tom edge of the pur­ple square (as indi­cat­ed by the red dots) onto the pegs on the loom that are marked by the red dot, start­ing at the first peg (the one that’s beside the side knob) and end­ing at the peg marked with a stitch mark­er, or the one just before it. So you will put on 11 or 12 loops, it does­n’t make a difference.

To place the loops on the square onto the pegs, find the hor­i­zon­tal strands between the purl bumps, and place the strands onto the pegs.

When actu­al­ly joining/knitting the square, you would posi­tion it like this, with the right side of the square you’re join­ing to fac­ing the inside of the loop, and pick­ing up the loops on the side this way. (And yes that was a won­der­ful day knit­ting in the sun sit­ting on the grass in a park! :D)

Once the loops are placed onto the peg, make a slip knot with the new yarn (in this demon­stra­tion it’s the blue yarn), place it on the first peg, and knit over with the loop on the peg.

E‑wrap the next peg, then knit over. Repeat until there are no loops on the next pegs. Then, e‑wrap the next loop twice and knit off the bot­tom loop (in this demon­stra­tion it is the marked peg, but it can also be the peg after the marked peg if you have placed a loop from the pre­vi­ous square on the marked peg, it does­n’t real­ly make a dif­fer­ence), there­by cast­ing on a stitch.

Con­tin­ue cast­ing on until the sec­ond last peg on the loom — that will be the last stitch, 23 stitch­es altogether.

You’re now ready to con­tin­ue mak­ing the square as usu­al. Instruc­tions are past­ed below for con­ve­nience’s sake 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.

Now we have the first square of the row joined! Next time we’ll join the next square, which is how we make the major­i­ty of the squares in the blanket.

Be sure to leave a com­ment on the post if you have any ques­tion! You can send me an email too but oth­er read­ers may also find your ques­tions help­ful so don’t be shy :)

Hap­py weekend!

 

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 2

Posted on by trish

Wel­come back to the loom-knit-along mitered square blan­ket project! :D

In this post we knit a sec­ond square while join­ing it to the pre­vi­ous one. Every square on the very first row of the blan­ket will be made this way. You can make the row as long as you want. My blan­ket is 10 squares wide, and it’s 39″. 

First, let’s ori­ent our­selves. We will put the loops on one side of the first square onto 12 pegs of the loom, as illus­trat­ed in the pic­ture below. The red-dot­ted stitch­es will go on the red-dot­ted pegs.

With the right side of the square fac­ing the inside of the loom, start by putting the first stitch at the top of the square onto the marked peg. For the fol­low­ing stitch­es, use the loom pick to pick up the hor­i­zon­tal strand of yarn between the purl bumps and place it onto the peg, like so…

Con­tin­ue putting a loop on each peg until you reach the oth­er cor­ner of the square and each of the 12 pegs have a loop on it. It will look like this.

Then, go to the first peg of the loom, and cast on the 11 pegs that don’t have loops on them with a new colour for your new square (my sec­ond square is yellow).

When you get to the first peg with a loop of the pre­vi­ous square on it (the marked peg), e‑wrap, then knit off the loop from the pre­vi­ous square.

Con­tin­ue until the end of row. And that’s it! You’ve cast on a con­join­ing square! :D

Knit the rest of the square the same way as the first square. For con­ve­nience, I’ll paste the pat­tern below but there are pho­tos in the blog post that might help if you’re hav­ing trouble.

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.

Now we have two squares joined togeth­er! Next time we’ll join a square to the row below. Here’s a first look at how we’ll do that.

In the mean­while, join as many square as you’d like for the first row, by plac­ing the loops from the pre­vi­ous square on the loom (i.e. if I were to join a third square to the first row, I’d place loops from the yel­low square on the loom). Then come back and join us for the sec­ond row!

Hap­py knit­ting! :D Feel free to leave a com­ment if you have any questions!

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 1

Posted on by trish

I’ve been look­ing for a good yarn scrap project because I love the patch­work look and my yarn col­lec­tion is grow­ing at an uncon­trol­lable rate.

I came across a mitered square baby jack­et one day so I fol­lowed the link to the free pat­tern, but it involves sewing all the squares togeth­er… doable maybe for a baby jack­et but I was­n’t into sewing hun­dreds of squares togeth­er to make up a blan­ket. So I tried look­ing for visu­al tuto­ri­als for a join-as-you-go ver­sion but did­n’t come across any. After mak­ing the Ten-Stitch Blan­ket I was pret­ty sure it’s pos­si­ble to join as you go, so I tin­kered around a bit and fig­ured out a system!

Inter­est­ed in knit­ting along? :D I fig­ure if we start now, and knit one or two squares a day, we’ll have a blan­ket by Christ­mas to give away as gift! (or keep for your­self!) You can also use the idea of tem­per­a­ture blan­ket, mood blan­ket, or sky blan­ket. They’re real­ly great ideas to be mind­ful of our sur­round­ings or our feel­ings so we don’t take them for grant­ed or be unaware of how things affect us. 

Each square does­n’t take very long to make, only 23 stitch­es at its widest part, and it keeps decreas­ing as you go so it feels like it’s knit­ting up even faster. There WILL be a mil­lion ends to weave in, but I weave them in as I com­plete each square so I don’t leave them all till the end.

So! In this post we’ll show you the mate­ri­als I used, and how I made the first square. In the next few posts I will share:

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 stripes!

First, we need:

24-peg loom (I got mine from this kit, it’s the small­est in the kit)

Loom pick

Bulky weight yarn or two strands of worsted held together

Stitch mark­er

Tea! (option­al but high­ly recommended)

(For the demon­stra­tion I’m going to make a hand tow­el with some worsted weight cot­ton, and for clar­i­ty pur­pose, I’m just going to use a sin­gle strand. But for the blan­ket, if you’re using worsted weight, it’s best to use 2 strands held togeth­er for the gauge of this loom.)

Before knit­ting we need to mark the mid­dle stitch. Count­ing from the first peg, which is the first peg to the right of the side knob, put the stitch mark­er on the 12th peg on the loom, like so…

Then we’re ready to cast on!

Cast on row: Make a slip knot with the yarn, adjust it to the first peg. E wrap (wrap the work­ing yarn around the peg from right to left) the first peg and knit off. Cast on the next 22 pegs by e‑wrapping each peg twice and knit the bot­tom loop over the top loop. Beware not to cast on too tightly.

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.

And that’s it! Just repeat rows 1 and 2 until you have 3 pegs left with loops on them. (mov­ing the stitch­es is kind of tedious, appar­ent­ly there are looms with mov­ing inserts to help with this…? But I don’t have one of those looms, so this is why we only make one or two squares a day! It’s not so bad.)

Purl the last 3 loops, then move the loops to the left and right of the marked peg to the marked peg. E‑wrap and knit off the bot­tom 3 loops. Take the last loop off the peg, cut yarn, and tie off by bring­ing the yarn tail around the loop to the front, then through the loop from back to front, as pictured.

And here we have our first square! Now by always e‑wrap knit­ting the marked/middle peg, you’ll get a raised line of knit stitch­es or braid run­ning diag­o­nal­ly through the square. For my blan­ket I just purl all the pegs on the purl rows, because I can’t trust my atten­tion to always knit that one stitch on purl row and not make mis­takes. But it’s up to you!

Here’s a sneak peek of how we will join the next square, so you can see the fin­ished square. (and see? I already make a mis­take by purl­ing the marked stitch on a purl row!)

Hap­py knit­ting! I’ll be back in a few days with the next episode of join-as-you-go mitered square blan­ket! :D

 

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

 

 

this week’s awesome finds… and YARN HOP!

Posted on by trish

Adorable lla­mas to hold your yarn/embroidery scraps and it’s a free print­able! :D From Picot Pals.

 

These would make cheer­ful buntings and adorable blan­ket squares. Lla­ma granny squares from Mari­a’s Blue Cray­on.

 

Look at these par­ty lla­mas made of par­ty plates! From Hand­made Char­lotte.

 

For the more adven­tur­ous, this no-dra­ma-lla­ma is very cud­dly. Free pat­tern from Red Heart <3

Why so many lla­mas, you ask?

Well, this year I’m going to be team cap­tain again for The Great Toron­to Yarn Hop on Sat­ur­day July 14, and I’m with Team Alpaca! (for­mer­ly TTC Knit-Along — but we want to expand the name to include all forms of yarn-craft­ing and we actu­al­ly have no offi­cial affil­i­a­tion with the Toron­to Tran­sit Com­mis­sion, hence the name change)

Alpacas are kind of cousins of lla­mas (I think), hence all the lla­ma crafts :)

What’s so great about The Great Toron­to Yarn Hop? It is an event where yarn-crafters get into teams and vis­it var­i­ous local yarn shops in Toron­to, shop for high qual­i­ty yarn and enjoy spe­cial dis­counts, knit/cro­chet/­yarn-craft in pub­lic on buses/streetcars/trains, meet oth­er yarn enthu­si­asts and share projects/tips/jokes, sup­port inde­pen­dent LYS’s, AND raise funds for Sis­ter­ing, a local, 24/7 drop-in and sup­port cen­tre for women that offers ser­vices like coun­selling, hous­ing help, meal pro­gram, pri­ma­ry health­care, and a safe place to be. At the end of the day we all gath­er at a pub for food and drinks and raf­fle draws! I’ve only been involved for the past cou­ple of years but this event is in its 12th year! What can be more great? 

If you’re in Toron­to or close to it, we would love for you to join us! Tick­ets can be bought here for just $20. Each team fol­lows a dif­fer­ent route that vis­its dif­fer­ent stores, and you can check out all the dif­fer­ent avail­able teams/routes and how the whole thing works here. And be quick because quite a few teams have sold out already! 

Need ideas for what projects to shop for or what to make dur­ing the Yarn Hop?

This cardi­gan is made with two hexa­gons sewn togeth­er! Very clever. Make it with a breeze cotton/linen for sum­mer or wool for cozy fall/winter lay­er­ing! Imag­ine using yarn with long tran­si­tion colour changes! From Make & Do Crew.

 

What about a portable project per­fect for knit­ting on the pub­lic tran­sit, like these fluffy clouds? From Bernat Yarn.

 

Mak­ing granny squares is anoth­er excel­lent portable idea. This com­fy sum­mer sweater pat­tern is free this week only on Love Cro­chet!

 

Hap­py mak­ing, every­one! :D

 

adventures in paper marbling

Posted on by trish

I vol­un­teered to make some book­marks for my sis­ter’s church fundrais­er. And as I was look­ing for ideas to cre­ate cool effects on paper, a friend asked me to sign a birth­day card she’s made for anoth­er friend, using a piece of paper that she mar­bled with shav­ing cream. I’ve seen this before but nev­er thought of try­ing it. Until now! 

So I dashed to the dol­lar store for the shav­ing cream and the gro­cery store for food colour­ing, and pulled out the largest bak­ing pan I had. I used a 140 lb. water­colour paper that I had on hand (cold press/smooth, as I read that toothy/textured paper does­n’t work well), and cut them into book­mark-size. I want­ed to stamps some words on it, so I used mask­ing tape as a resist, to tape off a sec­tion in the cen­tre. I had no idea whether the dye will bleed through. We’ll see.

The first dip was MAGICAL!

When I saw this on oth­er tuto­ri­als I used to think, how does the mar­bling not smear when you peel it off the shav­ing cream? But it does­n’t! I used a spat­u­la to scrape off the excess cream.

Here’s a bunch of them I made! :D

 

This was so much fun, and clean up was a breeze. Also, it smells refresh­ing. Per­fect for kids. Or adults who don’t like clean­ing up. Who likes clean­ing up any­way? So per­fect for every­one, most like­ly :D I fore­see mak­ing many more of these for oth­er projects!

Hap­py weekend!

   

sneak peeks!

Posted on by trish

It’s been qui­et on the blog for a while, and that’s because I’ve been busy work­ing on a mul­ti-pat­tern project!

I’m going to put out an e‑book!

Yes!

I thought I’ve been writ­ing up pat­terns for a while, per­haps it’s time to put togeth­er some­thing more “offi­cial”, with dif­fer­ent siz­ing options, etc.

One of the projects does involve the above black cat, and to join in the fun you can down­load the peek­ing cat pic­ture above as a desk­top wall­pa­per! Get the full size pic­ture here and then right-click it to set it as a back­ground, so you too can have those glow­ing eyes peer­ing at you every time you turn on your computer ;)

Here are a few sneak peeks of some of the pat­terns in the book! I’m still work­ing on one oth­er, hop­ing to put this out some­times in July :) 

Yes, this top can be worn with either side in front — it’s like two tops in one! :D

And this one def­i­nite­ly needs a bet­ter pho­to shoot than stripes-on-stripes — but I was feel­ing hap­py that the drape worked out as the way I imagined.

So, stay tuned! :D And hope every­one’s enjoy­ing some sun this week!

 

loftslag: adventures in Iceland!

Posted on by trish

 

Loft­slag means “cli­mate” in Ice­landic. But accord­ing to this web page on an art exhib­it (which I stum­bled upon while look­ing up the word), the lit­er­al trans­la­tion of loft­slag is “air song” :) which is a love­ly way to think about weather.

If weath­er were a song, then it was def­i­nite­ly on the rather expres­sive side while we were in Ice­land ear­li­er this month. Was it worth the ner­vous dri­ving through nar­row moun­tain pas­sages and one-lane bridges and white-out con­di­tions in snowstorms?

It would be a def­i­nite yes :) 

It’s a place with so much diver­si­ty, not only of weath­er but also land­scapes and geo­log­i­cal fea­tures. One moment there’re ice­bergs and the next moment there are bub­bling hot springs emerg­ing from the earth. Seem­ing­ly bar­ren lava rocks with lush green moss thriv­ing on them. It’s quite surreal.

Appar­ent­ly, how­ev­er, there’s not usu­al­ly blizzard/hail/50+ km/hr wind com­bo in May. So if you’re think­ing about going in spring, don’t be dis­cour­aged! Some folks we com­mis­er­at­ed with at a hos­tel (after every­one’s dri­ven through a white-out snow­storm) said they went in Feb­ru­ary last year and the roads were beau­ti­ful. But cer­tain­ly, if you go in July, there would be no chance of snow. But then it would be more cost­ly, which was why we went in ear­ly May.

But any­way, here are some pic­tures I took on film with Diana, and some faux film pho­tos with the mobile app Huji (which imi­tates 90s dis­pos­able cam­era, and appar­ent­ly all the rage, because the 90s is cool again…? Any­way, I’m quite impressed with the faux light leaks and dust effects!), and some reg­u­lar phone pho­tos too when the light­ing was­n’t good for nei­ther the real or faux film cam­eras. I fig­ure if peo­ple are inter­est­ed in going to Ice­land, they would be see­ing pho­tos of all the must-see loca­tions on tourism sites any­way, so I don’t need to show you my ver­sions of all the same sights. But I can share some of my favourite pic­tures and moments :)

We start­ed in Reyk­javik, the cap­i­tal city, as most trav­ellers do. It was a snowy, windy day, as you can see by the the water in this pic­ture, but with some sun­ny peri­ods every half hour or so, as shown in the fol­low­ing pic­ture. The city has the cutest, most colour­ful hous­es lin­ing every street.

Com­plete­ly jet-lagged, dis­ori­ent­ed and starv­ing, we ate at a cafe that boasts tra­di­tion­al Ice­landic food. It turned out to be a great choice, with our herring/egg and mashed fish on toasts, rye bread ice cream (it was­n’t doughy at all), and skyr with pan­cakes. There was also a “Brave Heart” menu option with most of the things pic­tured as well as “fer­ment­ed shark”. I was tempt­ed to get it but that was quite a lot of food which I did­n’t think I could fin­ish. I lat­er read in a muse­um brochure that fer­ment­ed shark smelled like ammo­nia. So I’m hap­py with our menu choice. The mashed fish and rye ice cream were par­tic­u­lar­ly delicious. 

This would be one of the three times that we ate out in total out of the 9 days we were there. Things are quite a bit more expen­sive than back home, and us thrifty trav­ellers relied a lot on gro­cery stores, gas sta­tions and snacks we packed from home. Not the most nutri­tious, but I fig­ure it’s 9 days out of my life, I can eat as much kale as I can bear when I get home.

Then we drove north towards Ice­land’s sec­ond largest city, Akureyri. But before that we stopped to see the Grabrok Crater, which was where the very first pic­ture of the post was tak­en. The weath­er was dete­ri­o­rat­ing as the day pro­gressed :S 

After some challenging/terrifying dri­ving we final­ly made it to Akureyri. Fel­low (Cana­di­an!) trav­ellers at the hos­tel high­ly rec­om­mend­ed vis­it­ing the Christ­mas House, so we went! And it was fantastic!

So Ice­landic folk­lore about Christ­mas does­n’t involve San­ta. Instead, there are the troll moth­er Grýla (there is a father as well but I for­get his name) and her 13 troll chil­dren called the yule lads, all with their own great names. They come into town before Christ­mas and leave small gifts in chil­dren’s shoes if the chil­dren have behaved well through­out the year, but if they had­n’t they’d get an old pota­to instead of a gift, and the giant feline pet of Grýla, the yule cat, might also eat the chil­dren :S 

Empathiz­ing (but not endors­ing the actions of) the hun­gry yule cat, we went to the Net­to (gro­cery store) in town. And look! It has yarn!!! Not one but mul­ti­ple isles of yarn!!!

It is utter­ly delight­ful and at the same time a bit bizarre to see yarn (like seri­ous, made in Ice­land, 100% nat­ur­al fibre) being sold along­side sauces, tins and bread. And with­out fail every Net­to we shopped at along the way car­ried yarn (this pic­ture was tak­en a bit lat­er in anoth­er town). I wish yarn-craft­ing is as much inter­wo­ven into the fab­ric of our Cana­di­an soci­ety as it is in Ice­land. (puns intended)

We then made it to Mý­vatn, a pop­u­lar place with much to see due to it being in an area with active vol­canic activ­i­ties. Like these bub­bling pools of blue (real­ly, robin’s egg blue) mud!

Just as fas­ci­nat­ing is Dim­mubor­gir or “dark cas­tle”, a lava field with large rock for­ma­tions and caves. The pic­ture real­ly does­n’t do the place jus­tice as to how vast the lava field is and how large the rock for­ma­tions are. We took the “small cir­cle / fam­i­ly” trail because we did­n’t want to get lost. When I look at this pic­ture I always think of Mike the brave hob­bit (or elf? he’s kind of too tall for a hob­bit) walk­ing into Mor­dor. And leg­end has it that it is where the yule lads live! :D

Much of what we drove through in north Ice­land was fields upon fields cov­ered in this red veg­e­ta­tion in con­trast with the green moss, which is quite inter­est­ing for some­one who is used to see­ing grass all the time.

Now dri­ving south along the east fjords, we came upon a few old­er vil­lages, includ­ing the very pic­turesque Seyðisfjörður. We were hop­ing to vis­it the muse­um, which has a print­ing press, and some out­door art instal­la­tions, but the muse­um was closed and we could­n’t find the instal­la­tion :S The view was beau­ti­ful nonetheless!

We con­tin­ued south to Fáskrúðsfjörður, which once served as the base for French fish­er­men, so Mike was final­ly able to read some of the words in the local muse­um :D (the muse­um actu­al­ly was­n’t open for the sea­son yet, but we went in to ask about where we could find a wash­room near­by, and the kind peo­ple at the muse­um let us walk through the exhib­it to reach the washrooms).

Many of the hous­es are from the 1800s and have beau­ti­ful­ly carved name plates.

The gem of the east fjords for me was Petra’s Stone Col­lec­tion! This is just one small frac­tion of the col­lec­tion, it just goes on and on all around the gar­dens. And they’re all rocks that Petra col­lect­ed over her life time in the moun­tains of east Ice­land. She also col­lect­ed oth­er things, like ball point pens, key chains, sea shells… one could lose an entire after­noon in the small house museum.

Here Porg is at Jökulsárlón, which is a glacial lagoon in south Ice­land. I’ve nev­er seen an ice­berg before and it’s absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing how blue the ice is. This is the only pic­ture we took of Porg actu­al­ly, even though we took him on the trip think­ing he would look right at home… but it’s been too windy to take a reg­u­lar pho­to, let alone him sit­ting him on a rock or some­thing to take one… but I think this one’s a good one :D

While dri­ving across south Ice­land we drove through Eldhraun, a lava field cov­ered in moss. 

It looks so lush and squishy (not so in my pho­to, which was kind of far away from the side of the road, but you’d find tons of pics on the web), I total­ly under­stand the urge to roll in it, but please don’t! It takes decades for moss to grow and once tram­pled upon it may not even grow back. So hug with our eyes only. 

Equal­ly hug-able (if one could hug hous­es) are these turf hous­es, which make me think of hob­bit hous­es, at the Skog­ar muse­um, where we learned that Ice­landers are an immense­ly resource­ful peo­ple, build­ing dwellings and homes not only with very lim­it­ed resources (the earth and rocks under their feet and the drift­wood that washed up by chance), but also to with­stand very harsh weath­er. There was an entire house that was built from driftwood!

On our sec­ond last day we vis­it­ed part of what is called the “gold­en cir­cle”, which I think is the busiest tourist area in Ice­land judg­ing by the traf­fic. We saw the Geysir in the active hot spring area, and Ker­ið crater, where Bjork had a con­cert! It has dif­fer­ent colours of earth and veg­e­ta­tion at dif­fer­ent sides, with a way to talk to the bot­tom, and the lake a the bot­tom is very blue. 

We took a bit of a detour to Hveragerði, a town in an active vol­canic area with many hot springs, orig­i­nal­ly to vis­it the geot­her­mal park, but it was closed due to pub­lic hol­i­day, so we had lunch in the geot­her­mal restau­rant instead, and had the best mush­room soup and breads at the soup buf­fet (it seems many restau­rants that serve soup and bread serve them in buf­fet style, which is awesome!).

We stayed in a small cab­in with a res­i­dent cat :)

And we even found risot­to in a cup! Not bad for camp­ing food huh :) 

On the last day we had an evening flight, so we stopped by Fjölskyldu- og Húsdýragarðurinn (ani­mal park) in Reyk­javik before head­ing to the airport. 

We have seen many Ice­landic hors­es (and sheep, goats and even rein­deer) through the car win­dow while dri­ving by but nev­er this close. So here they are :D Accord­ing to the park brochure the sheep and the hors­es are sent on hol­i­day to pas­tures dur­ing the summer :)

And that was our trip! Nev­er long enough. But at the same time by the end of it I do feel I’ve had enough of the ner­vous dri­ving. Kind of miss the pub­lic tran­sit here in the city if you can believe it. We def­i­nite­ly would like to vis­it this beau­ti­ful land again one day, not soon, maybe when we retire, and prob­a­bly on a bus tour :)

Thank you always for read­ing my sto­ries! Wish­ing you great adven­tures and new inspi­ra­tions in your own far­away or local trav­els too!