Hello April- look at my sweater!

I wish I had shared this earlier, but better late than never!

November10 by fallmasche
Quince and Co. Lark in "Peacoat"
Made for me!

I offered to test-knit this in November, ordered some delicious worsted-weight yarn from Quince&Co, and cast on in mid-December. This was a straightforward knit, but I had some challenges along the way. I misread the pattern at the start, and had 8 raglan increase stitches (instead of 4). Then, I was almost done the body when I realised I forgot to do the increases at the pockets, and had to frog and re-knit the bottom half. Finally, as I was knitting the hood, I noticed that I was on my last skein of yarn and started to panic that I was going to run out of yarn! I managed to finish the sweater, using approx 900 yds.


I finished this in January, and I wore it a lot when it was cold out (it's a really warm sweater, especially if I wear a long sleeve shirt underneath. My favourite part is probably the pockets. I used some extra yarn I had in my stash (sportweight) and alternated colours every other row. I love how they add a little bit of surprise to a simple-looking sweater.


Now that it's April (and finally starting to warm up) I probably won't be wearing this as often-- I'll just have to knit something else to wear! Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! And to start the new year, I decided to change the template on my blog! The old one was used by a lot of people, and I wanted to have something different. Hope you like it!

I barely blogged last year, and I wish I could have shared more projects that I made. Of course, there is no way to go back and talk about everything I crafted, but I thought I'd share some of best Christmas gifts that I've given in a while!

I made my niece a beautiful dress:

b13-17 Dress, bonnet, socks and duck by DROPS design
Estelle Arequipa in colour 208
Made for my niece!

I also made her a baby blanket- and it's my first quilt! I love the fabric and colours that I chose. My local quilting store had an excellent selection of fabrics, and they were very helpful in showing me how to sew squares together and which way to press. I love the fact that these colours are feminine, but not over-the-top girly pink. I can't wait to make another one! I can't remember what the pattern was called, I think it's something like sweethearts, and it was pretty easy to make.

(Sorry for the crummy pictures, the lighting was not very nice to work with)

After my first quilting success, I decided to make a couple of table runners. The pattern is by Lynette Anderson Designs, and it's called "Santa's On His Way". I searched online to try and find others that have made this pattern, but I didn't find any! Again, I went to the quilting store to buy some very Christmas-y fabrics:

There was a handy iron-on transfer with the pattern, which transferred quite well (I made two of these runners, each with two panels to sew). I had to fumble my way through the embroidery, I don't have the patience for this and my fingers hurt the next day! I'm sure my technique is all wrong, but here is the resulting Santa and reindeer on their way...


Here is a picture of the finished project, approximately 65cm x 25 cm wide:

What did I get for Christmas? Sadly, nothing handmade... but my mom bought me a gift certificate to my new favourite quilting store (so I can feed my new-found quilting craze). One of the best gifts (to myself) were these amazing custom-made sewing tags, from Remember Wynn, which arrived on Christmas Eve... and just in time to sew on some gifts!

Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll be posting more in 2011!