Good news & Updates

Good news: My friend finally received her wristwarmers that I had mailed a couple of weeks ago! and she loves them! :) I'm so happy that they made it. I was getting worried that Canada Post had lost them on the way.

I'm swatching for the summer shawlette I spoke of in this post. I'm not sure what to think of the swatch at this point. I will have to wash it, block it and see how the fabric holds up under use. I'm a little unsure of the fuzziness of the yarn. It's a 2-ply and I'm holding it double to give the fabric some consistency as well as drape and lightness since it is supposed to be a summer shawl. I may have to use a different yarn if the one I'm experimenting with doesn't perform as expected.

I've got one mitt completed for the test knit I'm doing on a pattern for a fellow raveler. I'm not entirely happy with the yarn I chose to use and will likely reknit with a different yarn this weekend to see if it will look better to me.

I have discovered the joys of our local library. They have an online catalogue and it feels like I'm Christmas shopping every time I use it to find knitting books and place them on my order list for pickup. I love this system. It's so much easier than trying to find a specific book amongst 1000's shelved row upon row. It's a huge library (4 floors) so there are tons of books. What's fun with the online catalogue is that it expands the selection by including all the area libraries and not just the one nearest me. What a joy to just sit at my computer, search for specific titles, put them on order and a few days later pick them up. No fuss, no muss.

I picked up Minnowknits Too from the library last week. What a wonderful little book of children's knits. I especially love the skating cardi and plan on knitting it for my nieces. I've also been looking at other books from the library,">Lace style : traditional to innovative, 21 inspired designs to knit which has a lovely feather & fan cardigan in it that I like.

Weekends, snow & chores... have to find room to knit!!!

It's Sunday afternoon and between getting dishes done, kitchen cleaned up, general pick up and put away in the rest of the apartment and working on knitting, I'm trying to figure out where the weekend went?!!!

Not really complaining since with all the snow we've been getting dumped on us over the past couple of days, I really don't want to go out there. I have enough of walking to work 5 days a week in it! Mind you, it's pretty to look at just not so much fun to brave -30C temperatures in the morning. Friday morning, my face was numb by the time I walked the km to work. The rest of me was warm enough, bundled up into fleece pants, wool sweater and 2 fleece jackets along with a wool hood and my scarf. I was beginning to feel like a snowman, could hardly see out LOL That's me walking up the street by the railroad tracks. Darling hubby thought it would make a good picture.

The wristwarmers are just about done. Just finishing up the crochet hem. They came out really pretty. Here are pictures showing a finished one versus unfinished. It's amazing what adding a nice hem does for these.

Now I've got fingerless mitts to make and I'll use my own pattern for those since she wants to pay me for them! She also wants to pay me for the scarf/wrap which means I'll be combing stitch patterns and designing my own.


I love this picture taken at night of a nearby park. My husband really did a great job photographing it. The atmosphere is wistful, as of days gone by. Love the amber color of the lights coming through the trees. I could just sit there and look at it forever.

Commissions!

I got my first commission today! A co-worker was complaining that her hands were freezing while typing and I loaned her my wrist warmers. She wore them and was so happy that her wrists and fingers weren't freezing she asked me to make her a pair. Then she saw my ratty scarf that's 7 feet long and asked me to make her one of those as well! LOL

I'm debating whether to go through my stitch dictionary and show her some very pretty stitch patterns that are much much nicer than my original ratty old scarf (the one I knit for myself 4 years ago when I got back into knitting again). See if she'd rather I make one of those for her instead. :) considering she wants to pay me. Depending what she picks out, I'll likely charge her the cost of the yarn tripled since putting an hourly wage/value to the finished scarf is pretty well impossible.

I've already picked out the yarn for the wrist warmers and I'm going with this pattern. She has such tiny dainty wrists that anything worsted would make them look odd. Since I have a nice, slightly thicker than fingering, yarn and I'm using 3.75 mm needles, I figured that the Knit Cuffs with a Cable Twist by Deborah Pulliam would be perfect for her dainty wrists, not too chunky or thick for the office. The yarn is Patons Canadiana in royal blue, her favorite colour even! And since I can't "sell" the wrist warmers, I'll knit them for her for the cost of the yarn.

I'll update with my own photo of the finished mitts once they are finished.

Wrsitwarmers

I must admit the design aspects are coming along quite nicely. Reconfigured the number of stitches to cast on and the cables are nice and snug fitting between rows of knit/purl stitches. Just have to figure out how to finish the ends. Somehow the raw edges of the cast on and bind off don't quite cut it for feminine wristwarmers. As is though, they would work very well for men. Will have to experiment with different edgings to find the one that suits the cables best.

Once I have it figured out, the pattern will take care of several presents all at once. Just have to use different colors for each family member.

The weather yesterday was really mild in the afternoon. The light breeze wasn't freezing your face and hands off like the previous day. Squirrels were doing the mad dashes across the wires, cheeks stuffed with nuts getting ready for winter. The trees downtown were covered with small song birds and each one was trying to outdo the other which meant an incredible cacophony of thousands of voices. Then a car backfired and the sky filled with silent birds all trying to find a new branch to perch on. Felt like a remake of the movie The Birds. As soon as they settled down again, they were back at it, full throated songs blasting across the park drowning out the sounds of traffic going by. I love this season, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the song birds packing it up for the long trek south leaving us with their last songs for the year before taking wing. I love the smell of burning wood as people get their fireplaces up and running. Not looking forward to winter mind you. If I could hibernate, I would!

Christmas Scarves & Hats

Christmas is coming, only ahhh umm... 42, Days. 13, Hours. 29, Minutes ...But who's counting.... What???!!! Oh geez, I'd better get busy.

So far I have a hat and scarf done for my 4 yr old nephew.

I still need:

• a tam and scarf for my 7 year old niece - pink please
  
• a scarf and hat for my 5 year old niece - no clue on color
  
• a scarf and beanie for my 10 year old nephew - black and....
  
• wristwarmers for my 15 year old niece - steel gray and blue
  
• beanie and scarf for my 15 year old nephew - black?
  
• wristwarmers for my sister -
  
• wristwarmers for 2 sisters in law -
  
• wristwarmer and neckscarf for Mom - beige
  
• scarf and beanie for both my brothers - black
  
• hairbands for assorted nieces - pink, blue, red, green, etc
  
• something cute for my husband's half sister who is 5 and thinks her big brother is awesome :)
  
• something cute for my daughter - still working on that one
  
• something cool for my son - skull beanie
  
• something equally cool for my darling husband
  

Time Flies!

Good grief, where did the week go!!!

Between work and not having internet access whenever I want it is hard on the blog. I have to apologise for that. Soon we will get a new router and I will be back online as often as I want.

In the meantime, absence from the blog doesn't mean I've been sitting idle. I can't seem to just sit and watch TV anymore. Even if the show is really good, my fingers itch to be doing something... like knitting!

So I have been busy frogging a bunch of old projects that have been sitting in a box with me always thinking I'd get back to them. At the beginning of this week, I happened to need a certain type of yarn and knew I had some that I'd started using up in a pillow cover. This was meant to be a cat pillow cover adapted from a dishcloth pattern I'd seen. But that was a long time ago, when my knitting hadn't been very good yet and it showed. So I frogged the whole thing, and am now reusing the yarn to make a kitty cat hairband for my lovely daughter who requested one. It still needs ears, but it's soft and feels like you're petting a cat.

Still on my quest for the cool looking office wrist warmers I came upon this pattern from Deborah Pulliam, Knit cuffs with a Cable Twist. I thought I'd give them a go but once I'd spent 2hours and only had 3 repeats on a size 3 circular using fingering yarn I had to concede defeat. The pattern is not difficult. What was difficult for me was the size of the yarn, I couldn't feel it and the size of the needles I couldn't control them well enough. So yes, this one will head for the big ole frog pond in the sky, weighted down with a rock so it never resurfaces!

I still liked the pattern and wanted to retain some of it. I figured out how to do something similar using a larger gauge circular needle and thicker yarn. This is the first one partially finished. I still want to do something to finish the edges better. It looks a bit naked right now but I do love how the cables turned out though. I may end up knitting a completely new one since I want to make some changes to the number of CO stitches. I don't know if the yarn color shows up well enough, it's not exactly brown. It has reds and blues coursing throughout the yarn which gives it a bronze look instead of just plain old brown. The tag says Rustic Heather and is from Bernat Ombre yarns. I walked into the store and my eyes were immediately drawn to it. I figured if it looks good under the fluorescent lighting, it should look yummy in sunlight.

It's definitely a work in progress and I may change a few things on it yet that I'm not quite happy with. Blame the perfectionist lurking in my head! It won't let me do things halfway or just ok. Has to be just so or it won't leave me alone.

Wristwarmers

As you all know, I started a temp job this week. I only worked Thursday and Friday but by Friday lunch I had made the decision I desperately needed wristwarmers in the office. My hands were so cold it was difficult to type. Considering I'm doing data entry for 7 hours, I can't afford to have fingers so stiff I start making typos.

So today, I looked through my stash and found some Merit Ombre Misty Blue yarn that I had left over from making my daughter's wristwarmers a couple of years ago. I didn't want to use a super plain pattern but I also didn't want to go super fancy with frills. I needed something that would keep my wrists warm and not get in the way of typing, turning pages and using the mouse. I also wanted a yarn that I could just toss in the washing machine and not have to worry about. And for a pattern, I finally settled on this cute pattern with a bit of cabling so it's not plain looking.

The pattern called for DPNs but I decided to give it a go using magic loop. I used size 6 circular needle and the knitting went rather well if I do say so myself. I had both wristwarmers completed within a few hours.

I suffer from neuropathy in both feet and hands. While I was knitting the first wristwarmer, my left hand kept going numb and it made it hard to knit but I kept on going by taking small breaks to let my hand relax. When I was finally done knitting the first wristwarmer I slipped it on my left wrist and started knitting the 2nd wristwarmer. I realised that my left hand wasn't going numb while I knit the 2nd one which is quite amazing. I'm guessing that by keeping the blood warmer around my wrist that it also keeps the circulation going a lot better which means my fingers don't go numb!

These wristwarmers are very comfortable. That was another point I was a bit worried about. But as Otter's pattern explains, cables are forgiving! and so is ribbing. Means my wrists aren't squeezed to death but are gently kept warm. Thank you Diana for the really cool pattern.

I'll be knitting several more pairs to match my clothes and for variety.