knitting
I received some wonderful gifts over the holiday season. As my birthday is three days before Christmas I received a double dose of knitterly gifts from my loved ones. The Jewellery My husband gave me this beautiful sterling silver shawl pin by Plover Designs. The husband and wife team have a great little Etsy shop where they sell their designs in copper and recycled aluminum as well as sterling silver. Shawl pins, stitch markers and Portuguese knitting pins are the read more
Freelance deadlines were my priority well into December so I got quite a late start on my Christmas knitting. First to be finished will be Kabouter by Woolly Wormhead for Devan. I want him to have a chance to wear it before the big day.
A while ago I started cleaning out the studio. I had piles of paper, swatches and UFOs everywhere. Unfortunately as I look around the studio today, I see that it’s in need of another clean up. But that’s a project for another day. I was between book and magazine submissions and I usually experience a cooling off period before the next wave of creativity hits. I needed a mindless knitting project while waiting for my creativity to come back and some of those UFOs looked appealing. In light of the fact that I don’t really consider myself a sock knitter, read more
I’m slogging away on my Rockin’ Sock Club stranded socks. I say “slogging” only because I’m finding the knitting awkward and I really need to do something about my technique. My hands cramp up and I’m having a hard time tensioning the yarn with my left hand. But … woohoo! … I just got the last spot in a workshop with Margaret Radcliffe. Margaret wrote The Essential Guide to Color Knitting Techniques and she’ll be at my LYS, Urban Yarns later this month. read more
Up until now I’ve never joined a sock club or participated in a knit along. Am I missing out? So this year I decided to join the Rockin’ Sock Club by Blue Moon Fiber Arts—of course you know that they dye the fabulous Socks That Rocks yarn. To date I’ve received two packets of yarn and patterns in the mail … then I realised that unless I want to accumulate more stash, I need to start knitting. By the way, I LOVE Tina’s colourways so read more
A couple of weeks ago Devan lost his (my) Newfoundland trigger mitten at school. We’ve scoured the school top to bottom and checked the lost and found repeatedly. No mitten. I wore these mittens when I was his age, living in Newfoundland. I needed a knitting project for a weekend trip to Whistler so … new mittens. When I was researching the trigger mitten blog post I came across Newfoundland bubble mittens. I don’t remember them from my childhood but they looked fun to knit. I read through a couple brief read more
Devan has new socks in yellows and golds–his favourite colours. I test knit Shozo, a pattern written by Nigel, my step-father. It’s toe up with a great method for working the gusset, heel turn and even the heel “flap” looks like a conventional top-down sock. He introduced me to a new stretchy bind-off which is by far an improvement over what I had been using. Nigel is currently galavanting around the world (he’s in Panama right now), but when he returns I’ll have to encourage him to give his pattern the final polish so read more
Another crop of crafters are well on their way to finding their true passion. Noon-hour classes at my son’s elementary school have been keeping me busy. My 7 and 8-yr-old knitters just love the sparkly knitting needles I made for them out of double-pointed needles. A couple of beads hot-glued onto one end and voila, the perfect length needles for little hands. It never ceases to amaze me the way my crochet students have adapted their crocheting technique to something they can understand. It looks bizarre the way they create the stitches but the results are the same and they read more
My little Harry Potter fan was thrilled with his very own “Weasley Jersey” as he insists on calling it. That is, after he actually looked at the “clothes” in the gift box. He initially threw the sweater out on the floor to get at the other gifts. Granted, they included some Harry Potter lego, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVD, and Quidditch Through the Ages. Once he realized what the sweater was he was pretty pleased. I wasn’t so pleased when he wore it though. The rolled edge is out of control and needs to be fixed. The arms read more
When I’m quiet it usually means I’m busy, especially at this time of year … busy working on Christmas preparations and gifts. We have a Harry Potter fan in our household and when I innocently sounded him out he seemed quite smitten with the idea of having his very own Weasley sweater. Of course, I didn’t think to ask until the beginning of December. That seems to be how I operate when it comes to Christmas presents. A quick order placed with Elann read more