until next year, Christmas knitting projects....

Whew, I am glad that is over! Not that I don't absolutely love the holidays, but now I can return to knitting for knittings sake and not for gifting sake! The holidays flew by in a blur of glitter and tissue paper and way too many cookies, and now it's time to get back down to business. My goal for the next year is to be more successful with my Etsy page, and start selling instead of knitting and squirreling away my projects until the next birthday, baby shower, or gifting opportunity.

As for all those projects I knitted up for holiday gifts, they were well received and much loved, immediately. On Christmas Day I had to pass out all the gift boxes to my nieces and nephews at the same time, and then let them open them up together so that no one saw what they were getting before they managed to get their gift. The little ones were of course the cutest, yanking on their cat hats and wearing them the remainder of the morning, and the older girls looked so much older in their berets. The boys were absolutely certain that I had used lots of green yarn in their hats, but explaining self striping yarn to an 8 year old and a 10 year old is nearly impossible. On Christmas Eve I whipped out a quick beanie in blue Sprout cotton yarn and silver Vannas Choice, because my brother informed me that his girlfriend and her 5 year old daughter would be celebrating Christmas with us, and I didn't want Trinity left out of the little kids Christmas hat frenzy.

My sister Jenni gave me my own yarn swift for Christmas, and some yarn (easily the best gift of all), so now I need to find a table clamp and take the swift out for a spin. She also crocheted up the Convertible Cowl for our youngest sister, which I absolutely loved, and just last night I braved the day-after-Christmas crowds and bought myself a crochet hook so that I can give this project a try.

Once I have had the time to go through Christmas pictures and find ones of the kids modeling their new hats, I will get them posted.

baby duck and others....

One of my co-workers is awaiting the arrival of her first granddaughter, and had asked me to create a baby hat using Oregon Ducks colors. Of course, I was just so inspired by the hat that I had to make booties to match! They turned out adorable, and of course using Fancy Image Yarn mixed with a little bit of sparkly silver Vanna yarn. The ducks uniform is green and yellow with silver wings on the shoulders, so I think the combination was perfect.


Now I am working on a special Christmas set for another co-worker, who will be gifting it onto her daughter. No pictures yet, because it is a surprise!

It's Official!

I will be at the Hawks Holiday Happening this Saturday, along with my sister Jenni and whatever she decides to bring to sell! If you are in the Olympia area, come by and see me!!!

things I made over the weekend...

no, there is no energy drinks or sleepless nights involved. I was oncall for work in Port Townsend, so I WISELY used my time to sew like a mad woman and make some more fun stuff to sell at the Hawks Holiday Happening. Marissa and I did some undercover idea shopping in downtown PT on Saturday, looking for cool things that we could attempt to recreate while sneaking snacks from all the Holiday Open House businesses. My knits are coming along too, but you can't really tell because I am such a procrastinator that I wait until the last minute to do the finish work. That will cause sleepless nights.
However, it must be said that no matter how inexpensive the fabric, I will NEVER NEVER NUNCA MAS shop at JoAnns on Black Friday. Kayla and I thought it would be easy peasy, in and out, quickest stop of the night-into-morning that we were slogging through, but NO! we were forced to wait 3 hours just to get 5 yards of fabric for me and a new table easel for her. 3 hours. In JoAnns. After we had already wasted hours of our morning both indoors and outdoors standing in lines. It was rough. And who really needs 85 yards of flannel anyways? Are you planning on making 15 king-size quilts by Christmas?
10 yards or less line. That would have been nice. Maybe I will fill out a comment card.
As you can see, I finished the leaf cowl. Haven't yet decided if I will sell it or gift it, but I do love the colors of this yarn.

oh, the holidays!

Holy Moley it's been awhile! I can only blame the long workweeks and the numerous weekend trips to frigid chilly Jefferson County football fields to support my nephews team, PT Braves(B Squad, #1)Those little darlings won the championship this past weekend, and tomorrow will play the Battle of the Bridge against the reigning Kitsap County team. I have been attempting to knit while at the games, but it is either too cold to have my fingers out or I have some small niece or nephew sitting on my lap attempting to tangle themselves in my yarn...
IN any case, before last weeks game Rhapsody and I walked over to A Dropped Stitch where I stocked up on some Universal yarns-Classic Shades and Dolce Merino. The lady was so patient with Rhapsody wandering around and touching everything, the knitted toys and samples, etc.
The most recent knit is a new Odessa hat using more Fancy Image, and a couple more hats in various colors using up leftover skeins.

I have also been doing a lot of sewing, with mom showing her newest flax seed bag to everyone at work, I have made three more for her co-workers. I am still considering renting booth space at the Hawks Prairie Holiday Happening to sell some gift-ish items on December 4th, possibly make some extra holiday money?

here's some new pictures!

I finished the crochet hat, it's luv-erly! And once I had realized that there was no way I had enough of the green and gray and black yarns to knit a third hat, I cast on using some old Mountain Colors sock weight (still in green) to make the hat for Levi. I also used the leftover Fancy Image Yarn in blue to make a random hat-still need to decide who it's for! Take a peek:

I have also been playing with my sewing machine again, this time I made a sleeve for my laptop using some recently scored navy blue kimono-style fabric from Goodwill-eleven yards for 3.99!

how about just a picture....or three?

I just recently had my SLR camera cleaned and replaced the batteries. It's been awhile for me, so I played with some things around my house, snapping shots of silliness like a yarn bouquet and one of my hats stretched over a lamp...

I think I can crochet now!

this past weekend my sister Jenni came down to Olympia for some much needed coffee and yarn time. as we were kicking back on our respective couches, surrounded by our baskets and bags of yarn, I noticed the hat she was making.
hmm.
that looks like something I could do. minus the whole 'crochet' part, right? as you should know by now, my favorite knit lace pattern is feather and fan. practically burned into my memory now, and you are probably sick of seeing it on half the things I make. in any case, did you know that they have a crochet pattern called shell stitch that looks like feather and fan too? well, they do.
because my big sister understands my attention span issues, she stopped what she was doing and started a new hat, just so she could explain it to me as she was doing it and I was stumble stitching along.
long story short, I picked it up rather quickly, and now only fear running out of the lovely Noro (stolen from my sisters' stash) before it is big enough to fit an average sized human.
heres the pattern
pictures as soon as I figure out how to finish the hat!

enough with the hats already

By the way, I finished all the berets the other day. Three total, all in the same Grace Lace pattern using different colors of Fancy Image Yarn. The color in the picture is a bit off, thanks to my camera phone, but you can see the actual colors below in the previous post.

I started on the boys hats, using the Turn a Square pattern from Brooklyn Tweed/Jared Flood. The first of the hats is done, striping the left over gray Fancy Image yarn with 'Leaves and Sprouts' (green) Mochi Plus from Crystal Palace Yarns.

the longest, most rambling post this month

its been a busy few days.

First of all, I finished the first of the older nieces' Grace Lace berets. Then I accidentally told her about it, because I sent the picture to her mothers cellphone (during church) and she informed me that she had the cellphone in the nursery with her younger sisters. She promised to pretend to be surprised on Christmas.

Then I got ridiculously sick with fever and coughing and general delirium before I finally agreed to go to the clinic for a checkup on Tuesday-"for an adult body to be at 103 degrees, you are seriously sick and have been ineffectively managing your symptoms" Honestly, that's what the doctor said to me before prescribing various antibiotics and reminding me to eat (I've lost 4 lbs in 4 days). Well, since I have antibiotics I must now be well enough to go shopping, right? So I immediately headed to Fancy Image Yarn in Shelton, because I needed two things: yarn,





and some assistance with writing my own pattern. While picking up my prescriptions at Target, I saw this sweater:

It's not much to look at, and the picture is not in the best light, but I saw its potential. Shaping-good, Design-challenging, Yarn-horrible, Color-uninspiring, Construction-pitiful. I saw this as an excellent challenge for my sweater knitting skills, so I took a million pictures, drew a childish design template,and will work on this using the rest of my red sportweight alpaca from that first trip to Peru, after I finish with Chritmas knitting.





But, as you should know by now, I can't work on just one thing at a time. Remember that fish bracelet I mentioned awhile back? Well, sick time afforded me the chance to get this done:





And right after I finished that, I flipped through my newest book, just arrived from the not-local-online-bargain-book-site:

chose a pattern, and then ran by JoAnn Fabric just before I went to the gym last night to choose some fabrics.

What do you think?

a few more hats

here they are, the fourth and final cat hat {striped to make use of every last yard of available yarn in those two skeins} and that lovely GRANDE sideways grande hat. The hat really really REALLY lives up to its name, or I was completely off on my gauge-it is enormous! but still wearable if you pull it back slouch style and let the top drop. I cast on this morning for one of the Grace Lace berets, this is the style I have chosen for the older nieces. Thank goodness for rainy days and my slightly stuffy nose, because it gave me a reason to stay inside watching ridiculous old movies and knitting all day!

10 nieces & nephews, 1 hat done

okay, okay, so I didn't even bother to sew in the ends before I popped this little number on Rhapsody's head. One down, three to go because this particular hat belongs to the younger set of nieces (Rhapsody, Isabella, Hannah, Olivia), and I still have the older set of nieces (Mariah, Marissa, Rachell) and the set of nephews (Jeremiah, Josiah, Levi) to knit hats for. Also, as I am looking at this picture of the back of the hat, it appears that I contracted Cousin It to shoot the photo, but that is actually how long her hair is now! By the way-quite a few people, upon first glance, that the hat was covered in owls, not cats. Maybe the colors are too similiar for the kittyness to show?

Hat Heaven

The Sakura Hat was finished over the Labor Day weekend camping trip, and the Avalon hat was finished this past weekend. Jenni and I went on a little fieldtrip on Sunday, over to Churchmouse in downtown Bainbridge Island to take advantage of their 10th anniversary sale deals-I was looking for some of the heavyweight Socks that Rock yarn for a new project (top secret), but they didn't have any in a colorway that I wanted so I instead picked out the yarn to knit the Temple Cats hat pattern. All the little princesses belonging to my sisters will be getting their own cat hat at Christmas, and if I figured the yardage correctly I should be able to make two blue hats with gray cats, and two gray hats with blue cats! This yarn is the Berrocco Vintage, and word-of-mouth from another Churchmouse customer is that the yarn is fantastic to work with, and washable to boot. I also traded five pounds of leftover or unused yarn for a five dollar off coupon, and the yarn will be used by the local charity knitters guild!

Also, after doing some all-important Christmas knitting related math, I realized that unless I finish one hat every week, I will not finish making hats for everyone in my family in the next 14 weeks!

another pictureless post

I don't have time to upload the pictures right now, but if you are on ravelry you can check out the Sakura hat that I just finished over the holiday weekend. By the light of the fire, and sometimes my headlamp, I decided that I love the colors in this yarn even if the striping slightly obscures the flower pattern at the top. I couldn't finish it completely while camped out in the woods with the family because I had forgotten my darning needle, but it is done now and I only have to wait until October to gift it to my darling princess niece the third for her birthday. I may even run out and buy another skein to make her some matching mittens, but I am not yet sure about that! She asked specifically for a hat and a bag, but the bag requires the sewing machine that is currently buried underneath the pants project I just started.....
In other crafty endeavors, I went by Shipwreck Beads on my way to visit some friends and bought some fantastic blue glass beads and sterling silver fish in order to make the "river" bracelet idea that I have had swimming around my head for awhile-I'll show you how that one turns out!

Retro Redux Shrug!

I must say I love this nifty little jacket! Two skeins of Bernat Mosaic yarn, a few meetings, and ta-da! Even the not-always-so-darling kids at work complimented the shrug in their "it doesn't even look like those old lady sweaters" sort of way....

meetings+yarn=knitting!

I had to attend a staff meeting yesterday, and then an all day training again today. In the world of me, that translates into the coveted minutes necessary to complete my knitting projects, have my knit-ego petted, and inspire others to want to knit. This is what I have so far on the Retro Redux shrug:
It would probably be done, except I left my size 8 needles for completing the second cuff and neck ribbing in the parking garage, and dashing across the rainy UW campus during a 15 minute break didn't sound pleasant. I haven't yet decided how I feel about this Mosaic yarn, because the transitions between colors aren't as smooth as classic (but expensive) Noro, but I do like the idea of a reasonably quick, well priced, easy knit shrug!
This is a little late in delivery, but here's a picture of my adorable nephew Jeremiah, wearing his Oregon Ducks hat that I made a few months ago!

for the baby shower....

Finally, finished! I just seamed the shoulders of the Baby Surpise Jacket, and now I need to find something other than a darning needle to sew on the little buttons I bought. I am still working on a little softy blanket for the baby as well, and the shower will be on Sunday (three days left to finish this all!)
I am also desperately searching for another skein of the Bernat Roving yarn in Cobalt blue to finish my Sideways hat from the Boutique Knits book....as of yet this is all I have:


I finally found a pattern to use up the three skeins of Mosaic yarn that I picked up on sale at JoAnn, the Retro Redux Shrug from Interweave- I think the pattern will be an interesting way to show off the colors! As soon as things are underway I will post a picture for you all...

ooh, so busy

its been awhile (again) and I don't even have a super spectacularly awesome project to share with you.....

...other than I knit my own crown, to prove that I am and will forever be the queen of procrastaknitting!
I actually made that as a birthday joke gift for a coworker and snapped a picture of myself wearing it before I passed it along- but she did wear it all day!
more to come, sooner rather than later. there are still at least 9 unfinished projects in various stash spots throughout the house and car, but nothing close enough to finished.

so many plans...

in the midst of all my sporadic cleaning and organizing over the past week, I started noticing how many printouts of knitting patterns I was coming across. Not just a few, but A LOT. I already have two 2-inch binders and one 1-inch binder full of organized patterns, but as I collected the ones that were folded up inside project bags, or under the couch, or in my magazine basket, I realized I may have a bit more than I originally thought. I ran out yesterday afternoon and bought a package of 25 sheet protectors, assuming that would be enough to continue my careful pattern of organization in the binders.
WRONG.
This is how many patterns I have:

That is THREE 2-inch binders, one 1-inch binder, and a flexible binder full of patterns not even in the shiny sheet protector.
Do you see what I mean by by so much yarn, so many ideas, so little knitting?
I mean, what was I thinking? that I would actually have time to make all of these? or that I would remember why it was that I printed off a certain pattern anyways?
So again, today, armed with another package of sheet protectors, I will finish this project.
and maybe do some knitting.
maybe.

My first Baby Suprise Jacket!

Just last night, while sipping Mojitos at the Brotherhood in downtown Olympia during this fantastically sweaty weather we are having, I finished my first BSJ! I am not quite as ecstatic as some previous BSJ knitters have been, but it is pretty awesome that all that garter stitch and increase/decrease madness turns into this adorable little sweater. I still have to sew the shoulder seams and then find the perfect buttons, but otherwise DONE! Here, have a looksie:

My mind has already begun imagining other possibilities and yarns and gauges (can this be knit in stockinette stitch?), but for now I will be happy that this one is done and move onto more exciting knitting-like birthday crowns for coworkers!

Here's the shyly smiling Hannah wearing her new sweater last night: she really does have a fantastic personality but the camera makes her freeze! The BSJ is coming along nicely, just getting ready to do the bind off for the collar, and I am sort of working on knitting a tie for my stepdad for his birthday (using the yarn leftover from socks I knit him three years ago!) I finished the Ducks Hat and a hat for my darling friend Matt, using Lion Brand "Amazing" yarn in the Olympia colorway in honor of my current hometown....