Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

I had the whole day planned out.  I wanted to sit around the house and knit and work on patterns and blog and eat my wonderful smelling pot roast (that is currently making the house smell amazing!) and watch/listen to some TV and clean the house (well I didn't really want to do that but . . .) and do laundry . . .etc. (best run on sentence ever, but also very accurate in how I felt the day should go). Scratch that. Washing machine died. Thus I found myself hauling a bunch of laundry to the laundry mat - a scenario that I hate having to participate in. Not that laundry mats are a bad thing, just that I don't want to leave my house on my only day off! While I was there I started to play on David's new iTouch that I bought him for his birthday. Felt the only way to make the day a bit better is to take a photo of the amazingly old school game right beside the seating area with my knitting as a fun, yarnie juxtaposition. I'm making two pairs of the Ohh La La Fingerless Mittens as a custom order. I'll post more about these later . . .

Complete!

There has been a lot of custom knitting this fall as two of the stores' knitters are moving and no longer knitting for us. One day we recieved a phone call from a lady asking about custom knitting and I told her to bring it all in and we would give her a quote. She came in later that day and the result was 3 baby blankets and a baby sweater. Two of them were knit with Debbie Bliss Bella & Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK and the sweater/blanket set was done with Bernat.

I knit the baby sweater first as it was very cute and easy to knit. The pattern is Infant Set 1 - Ann Norling #36 by Heather Finch. The blanket was quite a bit more tidious. It did start to feel that I had 5 inches left every time I measured! The upside to all this knitting is that Connie (the lady interested in the custom knitting) decided to retire and start to knit again!

Flowers, Flowers and more Flowers!

This is by far the busiest time of the year for me. I am always doing something, whether it's working full time and teaching every night or working on patterns and custom orders etc. Let's just put it this way I either have a distorted view of how much it's actually possible to get done in a day or I'm a sucker for punishment :) or perhaps a bit of both!

One of the ladies I know is doing a craft fair this weekend and needed a whole bunch of flowers and corkscrews for the tops of some of the cutest little hats! So I made quite a few flowers and over 20 corkscrews. They were so fun to make but it just reminds me that I need to get organized and publish my flowered baby headband pattern for crochet. Every since I did the knitted version, I've wanted to do a crochet one. These flowers were neat and easy to make. They were crochet with Sandnesgarn Alfa and a 9mm crochet hook.

The ones I will do for the Flowered Baby Headbands in Crochet will be using double knit yarn and a 4mm crochet hook for a wee bit of a more delicate look to them. They are so cute!

Berroco is 'Crazy for Cowls!'

I recently got a Ravelry message from Amanda at Berroco asking if they could have permission to use my photos in one of their blog posts talking about independant designers who are designing with Berroco's yarns. You can check out Berroco's Blog here. They have interesting posts about all things Berroco - new yarns and patterns etc! As you can probably imagine - I was pretty excited!!

My latest cowl pattern, The Potentilla Cowl, is crochet out of Berroco Vintage. It is available for purchase here. I also made a sample in Berroco Ultra Alpaca to test my pattern - the green version in the photo above. I love Berroco's yarns. They are very affordable and have a lovely hand to work with. The colors are by far the best part - everything from solids to heather etc. Yum!

Socks 101

This October I am teaching the Monday Night Sock Club's Socks 101 class. I'm so excited to teach this class again - it's one of my favorites. For the last few classes I have been handing out many handouts that I have written about knitting socks and I've decided to just put it all together in a perfectly easy Socks 101 Pattern. It's using worsted weight yarn - quicker to knit for a class sample as there is less homework between classes. My sample was knit in Berroco Vintage. I love Berroco Vintage. It's perfect for socks as it is a blend of wool, acrylic and nylon.

The great part about knitting socks in thicker yarn for the first pair is that you learn all of the necessary skills but you can progress quickly and feel like you are accomplishing something! The pattern will be available at the end of the class - I'll post when it's up!

Beginner Crochet - Part 2

I've been preparing for the second class of my Beginner Crochet class and I wanted to do something fun. They were very quick at catching on so I thought I would up the ante by designing a slouchy hat for them to make. It will be available as a pattern pretty quickly but I thought I would give you a preview! The pattern is worked from the crown to the brim. I quite like the detail on the brim - you could leave it plain or put a nice ribbon through it! Within the next few weeks I will be finalizing this pattern and will release it for purchase on Ravelry and here. Well off to teach my beginners! What fun :)

Freiburg Fingerless Mittens

Yay! Another new pattern all finished up. I introduce to you: Freiburg - Fingerless Mittens which is  available HERE and through stockists of Done Roving Yarns. They were knit with Done Roving's Fancy Footwork - a luscious blend of 80% SW Merino, 10% Cashmere and 10% Nylon. So soft and yummy! The color is Purple Magic.

I love the detail of the lacey pattern. It's created using a fairly simple form of ribbing with a few yarn overs added! They were inspired by the openwork spires in the Freiburg Minster.

This cathedral is in Freiburg, Germany. I love the architecture of openwork spires and totally make me think of lace! David and I went to a Ukrainian Church to take the photos and there was a million little lady bugs than were swarming the church! The green version of the mittens was knit from Diamond Luxury Collection Footloose. I always do an extra sample just to test my work a bit more thoughly. I think this pair is going to be my car mittens.

David was having fun creating "arty" shots!

There was even an audience to our little photo shoot! He was pretty interested at first, but once he realized we weren't going to eat him, he fell asleep.