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!

Knitting all summer...

I said I would post more often, and I suppose I lied. It turns out I hate blogging when I'd rather be outside enjoying the summer. Since today is freezing and cold and a true taste of Winter, I thought I'd update with some pictures of what I've been up to!

I am especially proud of my Ishbel scarf that I knit up while on holidays in Nova Scotia. I went out there for a wedding but we made a vacation out of it by renting a car and driving all over the island. We put on 3500km on our rental car (Yay for unlimited mileage contracts!) over 9 days. My boyfriend did 95% of the driving, which gave me time to work on this beauty:

Ishbel by Ysolda Teague

Diamond Yarn Foot Loose Superwash
Made for Me!

I'd never been that far east (within Canada) before and it was fun to do all the touristy things like Peggy's Cove and eating fresh seafood everywhere we went. I also had a chance to visit Gaspereau Valley Fibres, where I picked up some Fleece Artist yarns and a beautiful woolen blanket. I haven't made anything with the yarn yet, but I will very soon for Christmas gifts.

As I mentioned in my previous post, baby knitted goods are so much fun to knit. The patterns are generally easy-t0-follow, and it only takes a couple of hours (or couple of days) to finish a project. Here are two cute sweaters that I made earlier in the year:

Maile Sweater by Nikki Van De Car
Araucania Ranco Multy
Made for a friend's baby

This pattern is free and very rewarding, although the sleeves were a bit of a pain. I absolutely love this sweater, and the only thing that I would do differently would be to use a slightly thicker yarn in a superwash (this particular yarn needs to be handwashed!). I made the next sweater out of cotton, which turned out to be a great idea because my niece wore it all summer long:

Autumn Leaves by Nikki Van De Car
Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton
Made for my niece Talia

Again, this was a great pattern, and since it was top-down, the sleeves were very easy. I enjoyed knitting with Debbie Bliss cotton, it felt soft and buttery, but I'm not sure how it's holding up to baby wear. The last time I saw this sweater on my niece it was looking a little malformed and stretching in some areas. Since this only took me a couple of days to make, I could easily whip up another one using a more baby-friendly cotton (maybe Lion Brand!). Also, I have a huge bin of mismatched buttons and I think mixing them up on the sweater was a cute, playful idea. And what baby would refuse such a cute sweater!?

I'm in the process of making Christmas gifts, stay tuned for how they turn out!

Babies are the sweetest...

My Sister-in-law and my brother just had their first baby, and I am a new proud auntie... But honestly, when people told me that they were an aunt/uncle and had nephews and nieces, I was always happy for them, but not *excited*. I am sorry for not showing the proper emotions! Two days in and I'm already jumping out of my shoes, showing coworkers and friends pictures of my adorable niece, and I'm overwhelmed with a sense of pride for having such a beautiful baby in the family!

I didn't know it was going to be a girl, but my gut told me it would be. I started making a unisex baby blanket before she was born; I thought I was being proactive in knitting it early, but she thought she would come out a week early! I was frantically knitting this up in the 24 hours following her birth. I love the unisex colours that I chose, but ultimately I'm excited that they had a girl, and I'm excited for all the girly things I will knit her.

Hoodie Baby Blanket by Nikol Lohr

Lion Brand Cotton-Ease (50% cotton, 50% acrylic, the best baby cotton to knit with!!)

Made for my beautiful niece Talia

Ravelry Link

Surprisingly, I've never tried the 'broken garter stitch' before (which I used on the outside of the blanket, in Grey). This is one of my new favorite stitches, and I'm going to try it on some dishcloths. I love the simplicity of it, and the stitches look like little cobblestone roads. And I'd also like to mention thatI'm so proud of my sister-in-law because she was calm and collected when she went into labour, and incredibly strong throughout the entire childbirth; she didn't need any drugs at all. Truly inspiring.

Ravelympics was a failure... sort of.

So, I participated in Ravelympics this year. Part of me wanted an insane knitting challenge, and part of me obviously didn't know what I was getting myself into. If you've never heard of it, it's a challenge to knit a project (or two, three, four...) over the course of the Olympics. If you've heard of it (and participated), you probably felt the same way I did. I'm not quite sure why I chose so many events to participate in, and I didn't complete half of them. My crowning achievement was completing a sweater within the 17 days.

I had hopes to:
-knit a sweater (pictures below!)... PASS
-knit a hat (Which I did, but it was an impromptu hat and now I'm not sure what to do with it, probably not a hat I should have made)... PASS
-write up two patterns (cowl, mentioned in an earlier post, and an apple cozie), FAIL
-finish some mittens I promised I would make for my BF over a year ago...FAIL
-create a small rug from a previous sweater that I knit and now hate... FAIL

I love this sweater, although my gauge was off by a lot on the neck part. I ended up placing buttons on a diagonal to try and take care of the loose garter-stitch neck... and it seems to have worked!

Garter Stitch Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre

Berroco Alpaca and Noro Silk Garden
Made for me
Ravelry Link

My life is a little less hectic, now that the winter holidays are out of the way. I'm hoping to get into some sewing in the next couple of weeks and make a baby blanket (or two) because I'm going to be an aunt!

I fail at blogging...

...Turns out, I don't have nearly as much time as I thought I did to keep a blog active. I'm so sorry!

To make up for this, I'm posting some of my finished knitted items, and hopefully by Christmas I will have a pattern up for this:

Rosette Cowl by Corina Irvine
Lion Brand Thick and Quick

I don't want to say too much about this cowl right now (saving it for next post), but I will say that it was a fairly fast knit and would make a great last-minute gift for someone. I've also finished a couple other items, like these really cute kitten mittens:

"Kitten Mittens" by Noelle Dempsey
Shepherds Shades in Cream, and scraps
of sock yarn for the details
For a friend's niece
Ravelry link

Aren't they the cutest little things? I suppose the scale is hard to judge, but they're just itty-bitty (6cm wide, 12cm long). They were really easy to make, the pattern was well-written, and they only took a couple of nights to make. The hardest part was finding the 'perfect' yarn to make the eyes and nose. I ended up splitting some black Cascade220 into two strands to make the mouth and eye pupils. Stay tuned, I'll post more pictures and projects, a new pattern (and hopefully a more interesting post!) when I have a few days off.

8 months later...

... I *finally* finished the '3 hour sweater' that I started in May! I knit it too small, had to rip stitches out backwards, and overall, it was a messy project. But now that it's done, doesn't it look nice?

3 Hour Sweater by Vintage
Berroco Ultra Alpaca

I think it's safe to say that I will never knit this pattern again from the bottom up. The original was ridiculously short and looked like a 10 year old's sweater. I had to extend the bottom by about 4 inches. There was a lot of seaming involved, and it just made me dislike this project (which is why it sat around for a long time). Maybe I'll start finishing my other WIPS... but that's probably just wishful thinking.