Love to Knit... Love that Book

I may have mentioned a scarf I knit for my sister (which I still don't have a picture of by the way) a few posts ago. I may also have mentioned a matching beret from Bronwyn Lowenthal's Love to Knit book. Well, I liked the beret I made for my sister so much that I made one for myself. They're so much fun and living in a place like this having cute / fun winter hats... not necessarily all toques... is a must.

Back to Babies!

So, my cousin is having a baby, as is a girlfriend of mine. My friend, is having a little girl, but I just can't see her dressing her baby in frilly pink frou frou... and my cousin, is having a little boy. Sadly, I didn't know my cousin was having a boy when I started this frilly pink frou frou blast from the past dress. I can't link this pattern as it's from a book my mom had when she was a knitter (ie. when she was pregnant with me, she knit a baby sweater. Once.)
I wanted to make this dress in just a solid lavendar or replace the pink parts with lavendar, but I just couldn't find the yarn in the right colour (and was too lazy to go buy it online) so it ended up frilly and pink! Which is awesome... now to find the right person to give it to... someone has to be having a little girl who likes pink, right?

Too long!

Wow. That was quite the hiatus. I should really be more on top of this. My bad! Anyhow, what have I been up to you ask? Many things, but mostly this:This afghan has been an absolute ton of work, but it's so pretty, ahem, in a manly sort of way. I'm actually really excited to see what it looks like when all the ends are tucked in and the granny squares are all put together. I absolutely love this pattern, but be wary, there's lots of colour changes and lots of sewing to do!

Babies gallore

So, it would seem that a large number of the people I know are having babies. That being said, recent times have seen an increase in the number of baby related projects I'm working on at the moment (up from 0). After the socks, knitting in the round on double pointed needles seemed like a piece of cake! So, I took on a baby hat! I found the most adorable pattern when I was out shopping for yarn and I couldn't resist, so I bought the yarn and VOILA! Adorable Baby Bear!Sadly, you have to log in to the Bernat site to see the pattern, but it's the "softee baby - knit hats with ears" pattern.

Sockies!!!

So, after the scarf was finished, I decided to move onto something completely different. A friend of mine had got a ball of sock yarn and a pattern (from Make One Yarn Studio here in Calgary) to go with it for me for Christmas, now seeing as I had never used double pointed needles before, I was a teensy bit wary, but no pain, no gain, right? So, I consulted almighty youtube for some advice on how to work in the round on double pointed needles. The going was slow and after half of the first sock I was wondering how on earth people did this to make their clothing (especially because the pattern was not as easy as it could have been and I was contemplating making only one sock)! But, lo and behold! Once you get the hang of double pointed needles - sock two goes much faster!
So, for me, this was something entirely new and I'm still not sure if I liked doing it, by my socks are SUPER COMFY!!! <3

All the things I love

Well, I've been away from blogging for some time now... sorry. This is mostly because I have not been taking pictures of anything I've been working on lately. Ooops... I really really hate it when I do that.

Anyhow, so let me start where I left off...

Before Christmas my sister asked me to make her a scarf... for no reason... just a scarf would be nice. And I said... SURE! Now, I think I may be insane for agreeing to a scarf so readily (I kind of hate making scarves, they're repetitive, inane and take forever for what you get) however, here's a note to non-knitters everywhere: Your knitter friends are much more likely to make you things anytime you want / need something if you constantly tell them how awesome the last thing you made them was. My sister has mastered this technique. I made her a scarf last christmas (and a super cute toque to go with it) and since then she hasn't shut up about how much she loves the scarf. She almost left it at a restaurant one night and had to call her friends that had stayed to rescue it for her, she gets compliments from random strangers while she's at school, and (best of all) she wears it ALL the time!

So, yes, I made her a scarf. I was awfully excited about this project as I was hoping she would love it as much as she loved the last one (that remains to be seen because our winter has been so ridiculously mild since Christmas). I set about searching for a pattern and somehow got it in my head that I should make a cabled scarf. Cables are tedious and a ton of work, but they make beautiful finished products... (see where I'm going, this whole project seems to be things I'm not overly fond of) so, not only did I find a cabled scarf pattern, but I found a REVERSIBLE cabled scarf pattern! Score!

So, it's finished and my sister has it, and I don't have a picture. I even made her a beret (from my favourite book, Bronwyn Lowenthal's Love to Knit) to go with it! I really need to snag a picture so I can post it... and I will, just give it time.

Snowmen!

Well, Christmas is just about upon us now and I have one final Christmas tree ornament that I've been working on. Adorable snowmen! It took me a really long time to get started on these because I didn't have any fabric paint. But... I really can't pass up an opportunity to go get myself more crafting supplies, so now I have lots of fabric paint.
Also, I had this hideous green yarn that my sister bought me a TON of at a garage sale... somehow that yarn seems to work perfectly for this pattern!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Brrr.... it's chilly outside!

We got one heck of a snowstorm on Friday... brrr... so I've spent the weekend holed up at home not daring to go out unless, god forbid, we run out of baking supplies. :)
Anyhow... so since we're stuck inside and it's December I started making snowflakes! YAY!
I also continued to work on the Christmas stockings, so I've got 4 done now.
The plan for these is to string them up as Christmas tree ornaments, steal my favourites for my tree, and then attach the rest (and make some new ones to replace the ones I snagged, of course) to everyone's Christmas presents. This is SO much more reasonable than what I did last year. That was insane... I made a point of knitting everyone something... bad idea... not so bad when you decide to do that early in the year... it's just a bad idea when you decide in oh... November... That was a lot of knitting.
Anyhow... patterns for the snowflakes are located here.

Stay warm!

oh directions... how overrated you are

I finally finished my monstrous crocheted blanket!
Note to others: when a pattern says that you should CHx, you probably should and you probably shouldn't double the number. Just saying...
Anyhow... my "afghan" turned into a blanket for a queen-sized bed, which I certainly do enjoy, but it took a long time and a lot of yarn which made it rather pricey.
Here are the pics of the finished product!

More Christmas Stuff

Just for fun, I'm going to put up some pics of old Christmas projects I've done. They're all Cross-stitch. Enjoy!

Christmas project!!

I love Christmas. I also love making things for Christmas! This has led to me doing insane things like making my own garland for my Christmas tree out of apples, oranges and cranberries.

Anyhow... This is less insane! It's a baby project. Mini-stockings to hang on your tree!
So, I've been working away and now have 3 mostly finished. I just have to sew them up. (Least favourite part) :P
They look so cute! :)

A little background

Hi! Well, I thought it would be fun to make a blog to keep track of my multitude of needle projects. When I was maybe 10 years old, my mom taught me how to cross-stitch. Until recently, this had been the extent of my needle prowess. I've been cross-stitching forever and am pretty good at it (if I do say so myself), but I was finding that the time and energy you put into a project was getting tiresome. I think it was the one cross-stitch that I worked on ad nauseum for two years that was the final straw. So, I decided it was time to branch out. I've always been interested in knitting and have had a couple people try to teach me along the way. Sadly, I'd never had the attention span to bother actually figuring it out, so any knitting I'd done was always just barely started, terrible, and thrown in a pile somewhere until I had forgotten any semblance of knowledge I had.
A couple years ago now at Christmas a friend of mine got a couple knitting needles out and, to my amazement, I found that I still remembered some basic knitting skills... actually, I remembered how to knit, but not purl. But that's a start. At this point I no longer had any knitting teachers, so I youtube-d my way back into knitting.
Then the same friend decided she was better at crocheting, so I figured we'd do a skill swap. I'd teach her to knit and she'd teach me to crochet. So, I'm bumbling through learning the basics of crochet at the moment.
I now have a multitude of projects on the go and I thought it would be fun to track them via a blog. I don't have any pictures of what I'm working on right now (yet), so I'll leave you with a couple pics of my favourite pieces to date.
This is the last cross-stitch that I completed. I have a couple others on the go, but this one took FOREVER and I'm currently taking a cross-stitch break.
My most beautiful and most daunting knitted piece to date. I love the colour! I love the pattern. (I need to get someone to model it for a picture because it doesn't look all that exciting laid out flat). The pattern for this cardigan came from Bronwyn Lowenthal's Love to Knit book. I have found the book to have really cute, trendy patterns that are relatively easy to make.