YOP Update - Mittens, Pokemon and Corn

This week has me getting no where fast on my Year Of Projects list, but my knitting inspiration is running at high speeds!  Yup, that's right, nothing has been started, knitted on or finished from my planned year list of knitting projects.  Instead, I am being inspired by Kate Davies Seven Skeins club yet again this week.  My friend's "Baffie" slipper socks are now completely done (blocked too!) and all ready for their trip to Washington DC. 

While they were drying on the blocking mat, I launched right into another of the club's patterns (they are available to everyone come January 1st on Ravelry) called Kokkeluri - a stranded pair of mittens with a flower design on the back and a twill pattern on the palm side.  The flower reminded me so much of sunflowers that I had to knit them in yellow.  Kate's 7 skeins of Buachaille yarn does not include a yellow so I used her natural grey called "Haar" for the background and purchased some Jamieson's Double Knitting in the Scotch Broom colorway for the flower line drawing.  My goal is for the mittens to match my Michele hat that I knit a while back whose matching double knitted mittens are languishing in my WIP basket.  The double knitting was just getting too tedious and boring to knit, but these Kokkeluri mittens - they just beckon you to keep going.  The only sad thing about these lovely mittens is they are a little short for my long fingers.  The pattern talks about blocking them "vigorously"by pulling them down over the tall end of a sock blocker, so I am putting my trust in those directions that in the end the mittens will emerge the right size for me.

Even though I'm getting better at stranded knitting through these projects, it still is a bit tiring for me.  Thus, for something completely different, I started on a project for my son.  He is back into loving Pokemon again and requested some Pokemon mittens.  Here is what I came up with using this hat pattern as a jumping off point.  They are pretty straightforward with changing colored yarn and a bit of duplicate stitching being the only oddities.  The mitten came out a bit long and slim looking, but it fit my son just fine (me too actually.  He's only 9 and our hands are almost the same size! Sigh.)  Now, I just need to make the second one, which I think will be pretty quick, so I can get back to finishing my own mittens.  Although, I do think I may surprise him with a matching hat as I have plenty of yarn left over.  We'll see...

This week I am leaving you with a photo from today of my husband and son who attended the Sever's Annual Corn Maze.  It is a humongous maze cut out of a corn field with a different design each year.  This year it was a firefighting truck.  It was their first time going and boy did they have fun!  Pig races, a large bouncy play area (think bouncy castle without the top and make it the size of a baseball field), zip lines, giant slide, petting zoo, you name it. They also have a corn pit you can dig, play or in my son's case bury yourself in.  Yup, my guess is this is on the Fall "to do" list for next year.

If you want to visit the other Year of Projects, or YOP for short, participants you can head on over to Ravelry and find them here.  Have a great week everyone!

YOP Update - Inspiration Strikes!

 

In last week's post I was rather down and out and had been for quite a while, but oddly enough soon there after a turn around occurred.  I cast on for yet another project (I think my current WIP count is 14 - yikes!) trying to bring back a spark of excitement to my knitting.  This has been my tactic all month, but this particular time it actually worked! Yes, inspiration has struck!  I started on the ever popular Baa-ble hat pattern which Donna Smith wrote for Shetland Wool Week 2015.  I loved it the moment I saw it, but I didn't really need another hat thus I let the pattern languish in my favorites section on Ravelry.  Then, early this Autumn I realized I had two of the four colors of Jamieson's Shetland Heather Aran I needed and on a quick search through Ravelry stashes I found the other two colors.  I purchased them thinking it will be a fun project to start someday, maybe after Christmas. 

Now, I'm not sure why I pulled out this pattern and started, but I am so glad that I did.  It was as if the hat knit itself it went by so fast.  After finishing the hat I really wanted mittens (I love matchy matchy sets of things) and upon weighing out my leftover yarn I thought I'd have enough.  So, I plunged right into to knitting mittens following Donna's chart and making up the general pattern as I went along.  The coolest thing happened - I had just, and I mean just enough yarn to finish with a scant 3 grams of blue Highland Mist leftover.  I simply love it when that happens!

I now have this lovely new hat and mitten set and all that is lacking is a scarf or cowl.  Well, I was pulling out the yarn I purchased from Kate Davies Seven Skeins Club (another attempt at bringing on some inspiration as the yarn come with 7 corresponding patterns) and what do you know?  The green and cream skeins match the green and cream colored yarn used in my hat and mittens.   Can we say new project?  Yes, we can!  I started Kate Davies Cochal honeycombed cowl pattern yesterday and am hoping to finish today.  We'll have to see though, as the house and laundry are in a bit of a state since my knitting has taken over again.  Maybe I'll achieve balance one day ;)

My Year of Projects list is growing instead of getting smaller, but I am just too pleased to be inspired again to mind much.  If you want to see the other YOP participants you can find them here.  Have a great, and hopefully, inspiring week everyone!

YOP Update - More Gift Knitting

 

It was a good week for me in the knitting realm.  My baby gifts were finished and given to the recipient to much fanfare and applause.  The last minute knitted stuffed Elephant was the biggest hit as apparently there was an elephant in the movie Inside Out that her kids adored.  I may have to make a couple more for them or at least pass on the pattern to their mom who is a fellow knitter.  

With those projects being crossed off the list (and yes I added the elephant to the list just so I could cross it off as I'm like that) I moved on to finishing more of my Christmas gifts.  In the toy making yarn stash I had a lot of pink colored yarn.  Now, I personally am not one for pink being of a ruddy complexion it only makes me look redder in the face, but I have one friend who is a pink color fan.  I decided to try and make her some felted mittens from this pattern that I've had for some years now.  As you can see they start out huge, but after 40 minutes of felting they are more like actual mittens.  Have you noticed the color change?  The yarn I used for knitting toys was all plant dyed and my guess is that the laundry soap I used to help felt the mittens must of had enzymes in it which changed the color.  Some plant dyed colors are really stable like weld yellow and indigo blue, but others not so much.  I don't care for the resulting shade as much as I did the previous color so I'm going to show them to some friends tonight at my monthly scrapbooking meeting to get their opinions.  What do you think?  

The mittens are also a bit more stiff and clumsy than a traditional knitted pair, but they should be killer warm in the subzero temps we get here in Minnesota.  The inside cuff is knitted in an angora/wool yarn that will keep out the drafts while keeping the mittens from falling off the hand.  I want to knit a pair for my mother, but I'm not sure if I should adjust the pattern and narrow down the wrists some as they bell out a bit. 

In the midst of all this I was breathlessly waiting for the mail to deliver the yarn I ordered from Knit Picks.  It finally arrived on Friday and I wound up a ball and started swatching right away.  After I finish my mom's mittens I believe I will cast on and get chugging away on this sweater.  Who knows maybe I can finish it just in time to use it when Fall hits.

Check out the other Year of Projects participants here.  Have a great week everyone!

Shepard's Harvest and Mittens

- The Festival -

 

 

 

- The Goodies -

 

- The Results -

Ok, you made it through the pictures; now onto the text!  This past weekend was Minnesota's largest fiber festival Shepard's Harvest and needless to say I was very excited to go.  It was my first time attending and boy was it a wonderful experience.  It will definitely be an annual pilgrimage for me and my family.  There were beautiful alpacas, goats, sheep and of so soft bunnies (I could just kick myself for forgetting to take some pics of the angora rabbits they were so beautiful.  Sam held one too.)  There were hand knitters, machine knitters, spinners with drop spindles, spinners with spinning wheels (there was even one of these great wheels being demoed) basket makers, tons of vendors, lovely musicians and yummy not so good for you Fair food.  Lots of demos were happening all weekend: spinning, sheep dog herding, sheep and alpaca shearing and machine knitting to name a few.  Crafts were available too for those families so inclined as well as many, many classes (which you need to sign up for months in advance - note to self for next year.)   Ah, it was lovely.

My new friend Mary Lou of Angora Gardens even displayed some of my knitted bunny and cat children's toys (for which I use her yarns) with her fabulous angora products at the festival.  She did a little post about me too on her blog.  Here is a picture she took with one her baby angoras.  She titled it "Real or Imposter?"

She had bigger bunnies ready for adoption at the Fair and my son Sam was itching to take one of the black ones home.  We're considering it and may be making a farm visit to adopt one.

After perusing all the the many vendors I made a few purchases.  From Golden Meadow Alpacas from Lewis Minnesota I bought 5 sport weight skeins of natural colored alpaca yarn.  My original intent was to find Shetland yarn to make this Kate Davies hat which requires 9 different shades, but alas no Shetland was to be found.  So, I "made do", if you can call this beautiful alpaca yarn making do, with only 5 shades of 100% alpaca yarn (I wanted more colors but the price of full skeins multiplied by 9 was a bit too cost prohibitive for me.)  Then to satisfy my spinning urge I purchased 2 buttery soft balls of angora and alpaca roving from Three Sisters Farm and Fiber from Winona Minnesota.  There was quite a lot of alpaca at the festival, which makes me think they must be well suited to our crazy climate of freezing winters and hot humid summers.

Of course upon arriving home I quickly abandoned my current knitting project to knit with these new yarns.  Such a fickle woman am I.  I tried stranded mittens for the first time using this Knitting Traditions pattern.  It calls for eight colors so I had to modify it a bit, but I don't think using only 5 colors detracted one bit from the outcome.  I'm very pleased with the results to say the least.  Although I did pull my strands a bit tight in places, even with knitting them inside out to keep them loose, the blocking seems to have eased the yarn tension sufficiently.  The only bummer is the thumb is a tad bit short, but still wearable.  I was suspicious it would be (I have long thumbs), but then it seemed like it was going to be ok, but then it wasn't.  Trust your intuition Ann!  I'm hopeful that the yarn will stretch a bit with use.  I know I could always undo the thumb and add more rounds, but that sounds too daunting to do with stranded knitting so I'm just going to leave it as is.  Now to get going on the second mitten, then maybe a matching Scottish tam and cowl?  Hmm...so much for summer tops.

Joining in with Nicole for Keep Calm and Craft On and Ginny for Yarn Along.

Double Knit Mittens

 

First attempt.

 

Second attempt.

 Here you can see the inner and outer layers of the mitten.

I was flailing around a bit this weekend trying to figure out where to put my knitting energy when, while cleaning up, I found the above lone failed mitten.  Perfect small project to crank out to completion, or so I thought.  The first attempt was a fail because I made them too big and my brilliant idea for making them double layered with an angora liner (ooo bunny warmth!) was poorly thought out.  I started with a provisional cast on thinking I would simply undo those stitches and begin a second mitten that would mirror the first.  This is the same method I used when I sewed a pair of double layer mittens out of felted sweaters a few years back.  But, after trying the idea out the cuff got too bulky and stretched out funny on the folded edge where the two layers met.  So, I frogged back and did a stretchy cast off on the cuff with a new plan of picking up stitches on the inside above the cuff to knit the second layer.  Well, that idea also crashed and burned leaving me with a too big single layer mitten - exactly what I didn't want.

In come Ravelry to the rescue!  I knit double knit coasters a while back and the thought occurred that I could use the same construction method to make the mittens.  I love that Raverly has such great search options and I could choose to search this specific construction method, as well as what I wanted to knit.  Most of the patterns that appeared in my search had two color patterns which looked awesome (I love this one), but weren't a good fit for the handspun yarn I was using (You may recognize it as leftovers from that yellow hat.  That's right I'm making a matchy-matchy set - yay!)  Then I ran across this pattern, which was a simple single color on the outer layer with a liner - perfect!  It's more of a recipe than a pattern per se, but still really easy to follow.  Now I'm finally on the right track, a slooowww track, but the right one.  You see you knit the one row in the outer color and then work back around in the opposite direction in the liner color.  It has no formal gusset for the thumb.  Instead you knit in a scrap piece of yarn which you will undo after you complete the body of the mitten, picking up the now "live" stitches to knit the thumb in the round just as you did before.  The only tricky thing is to remember to make a right AND left mitten as this style makes the mittens hand specific. 

I wish you could feel through the internet how squishy soft these are, but alas you'll just have to trust me the resulting fabric is fabulous!  The only downside to this project is that I cannot just crank them out like I was hoping for, but the end product will be just what I want and that's what matters most. 

Joining in with Rachel for Yarn Fanatic Party, Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On and Ginny for Yarn Along.

From Beginning to End - A Hat and Mitten Story

 

I thought I'd show you a picture story of taking fiber to yarn to finished knitted project today.  The beginning starts with some luscious fiber I purchased from Jakira Farms on Etsy.  The vibrant orange/red roving is a blend of Alpaca, Merino Wool and Silk and the soft tan roving is Alpaca mixed with Romney Wool.  I spun singles of each on my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel and plied them together; which is my way of stretching the more expensive dyed fiber to more yardage.  I can't find my note where I wrote down my yardage, but I made enough DK weighted yarn to knit a Rikke Hat by Sarah Young, a pair of Classic DK Mittens in Six Sizes by Joan Janes with enough left over for a small project I'll show you in another post.

The exciting accident the occurred was that this yarn matched a scarf I purchased in Italy about 10 years ago.  I never wear the scarf as had no hat or mittens to match, and I am that kind of matchy matchy person that needs a coordinated set to feel comfortable, but I loved the scarf too much to give it away.  So now it has been pulled from the closet in the bedroom where it languished for a decade to the front closet cubbies where we keep our hats, scarves, mittens and gloves.  I couldn't be happier with the results of this hat and mitten set and getting to finally use a much loved scarf

Joining in with Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On. 

Yarn Along - Homeschool Reading and Cold Weather Wear

 

I seem to start too many blog posts with "Well, it's been a while since I've written..." I just don't seem to be able to push through and post when life gets busy.  And living by all of my family as I do, life gets super busy around Christmas time.  We are now into the lull and deep freeze of January here in Minnesota a great time for reading and knitting as far as I'm concerned.  January is also my month "off" from knitting for my Etsy shop Simply Playing.  So, I am knitting things for myself after all the gift knitting of December.  A new hat and mittens seemed the perfect project with the ultra cold temps we've had here as of late.  I used some bulky Icelandic Yarn from Lopi called Alafosslopi in teal heather.  It is a bit scratchy but very hard wearing which is a good quality when knitting a pair of mittens.  I used the pattern Spruce Tree Mittens.  It was very easy to follow and was knit at a dense gauge for the yarn I used making the fabric nice and thick and warm.  For the hat (please excuse the pic as it is my first "selfie") I picked this pattern modifying it only slightly by jumping up two needle sizes after the ribbing to make it more slouchy. 

As for my current book,  I am reading Leadership Education - The Phases of Learning by Oliver and Rachel DeMille.  It's about the phases of learning in the Thomas Jefferson Leadership model of education.  A good read, but I'm not totally sold on the theory.  Coming from a Waldorf beginning, which focuses on educating the whole child, head, heart, hands as they say, it comes across as too 'head" for my kinesthetic learning son.  I think there are very valuable elements to the philosophy which we will integrate into Sams' homeschooling, especially reading aloud classic literature, but it will be just that an "element" and not a "foundation" for his schooling.  Do any of you have thoughts on TJed or are using it with your children?

Joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along.