A Little Stitched Heart

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Heather

February is my least favourite month. The days may be getting longer, but the cold and the dark nights just weight on me so much. In an attempt to brighten up the month, I signed up for a Valentine card exchange through the KYS group on Ravelry. And, since I was feeling a wee bit crafty, I decided to make my own cards.

Valentine Cards

The pattern is Mini Heart A from About.com, stitched using Carrie’s Creations thread in colour Pink Taffy. The fabric is a random piece of 28 count something or other. And the wee bit of red you see peeking out is a heart with a face (made with stickers) that Little Man helped me decorate. He also coloured on the back of the heart.

Do you have any plans to make Valentine cards? I’d love to see them.

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Gong Hei Fat Choi! (And February TUSAL)

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Heather

Gong Hei Fat Choi! Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is also TUSAL day! I think my jar is looking pretty good this month. There are lots of yarn bits from all the dishcloths I made (which I didn’t bother to share since they aren’t very exciting), and floss bits from 12 Days of Christmas, etc.

TUSAL - February 2011

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15-Sided Biscornu – Part 4 and Goal Review

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Heather

I’m really enjoying working on the 15-sided biscornu being offered for free by my sorta-LNS. I’m a little bit out of my comfort zone for a lot of reasons, including using a non-standard fabric colour that I picked without input from anyone.

15-Sided Biscornu - Part4

Again, I wasn’t able to get a true colour picture of it. For some reason this fabric is very hard to photograph. Notice I still haven’t added any beads. I’ve decided that I want to see what silver will look like. If I like them, I will buy a package. I’m justifying it by saying it isn’t stash if I use them right away. And, I would rather spend a few dollars on beads and have the colour I like, rather than use the beads I have in hand and ruin my project.

And that brings me to my goal review. You may remember that I’ve decided not to set monthly goals this year. Instead, I’ve set goals for the entire year, which I will work on every month. I have not bought any knitting or stitching stash, which is great. I have done a bit of swapping, but keeping to my rule, the number of grams out is equal or exceeds the number of grams in. (I did have some yarn RAK’ed to me, and I believe that is a happy exception.) As of this morning, my yarn stash sits at 253 balls of yarn, with an expected five balls in the mail on their way to me (three of which are from RAKs).

I managed to complete both my January ornament and my January socks. I also did a little bit of stitching on Kitchen Blessings, and on Saturday I finally got started on Joan Elliot’s 12 Days of Christmas. (More about that last design in a few days.) I also completed the H Sampler from Victoria Sampler. Not a bad start to the year, I think. I hope you are doing just as well complete your goals.

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January Socks

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Heather

One pair down, and eleven more to go!

Flamewave Socks

These are Flame Wave Socks by Ann Budd from Favorite Socks: 25 Timeless Designs from Interweave. They are knit using Cascade Fixation in colour Orchid, which, unfortunately, is a bit too busy for the pattern to show up nicely.

I’m thinking of using two circular needles to knit any further socks with Cascade Fixation, because I have an awful time with laddering between needles when I use dpns. Some serious poking and pulling after the fact helped me to tidy up these socks.

Even though it is a day and a half early, I’ve already picked February’s socks. (I have an eye appointment on February 1st, and I want to make sure I’ve got something ready to knit, which means casting on ahead of time). Thanks to the handy random number generator at Random.org, February’s socks are Pirate Danger by Jeannie Cartmel using a hand-dyed yarn from the Painted Fleece, a Toronto-based indie dyer.

And, I’ve been meaning to share these for ages:

Needleminders

I made a pile of needle minders using Missy Ann’s tutorial. The cameos came from CathysJewels on etsy (she is closed right now because she just became a grandma). If you’ve been thinking of making some of these for yourself, give it a try! Make yourself a needle minder suited to your style.

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Scarf Fail

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Heather

Sometimes, things look better in the store than they do at home. One of my recent knitting finishes is a good example of that:

"Ruby" garter stitch scarf

This weird mass of black and purple is actually a very nice garter stitch scarf. Knit, knit, knit until there is no more yarn using big needles. And it is nice, but it isn’t my style. But, when I saw it on display in the Black Sheep and Ewe booth at the CreativFestival, I totally thought I could pull it off.  It helps that they had it stretched out so it was more like a wrap. (Check it out.) Mine stretches out, but not quite that far.

Sadly, this is a big fail. It is well knit and looks good, but it isn’t right for me. The husband refers to it as “the feather boa”, and if you know me, you know that isn’t my style at all. So, it will live unloved in a corner until I figure out what to do with it. Hopefully my third kit from Black Sheep and Ewe will turn out better.

There is one great thing about finishing this scarf: two more balls of yarn are out of my stash! If you look over on the right sidebar of my blog, you’ll see a little section named “2011 Yarn Stash-Down”. Take a look at the totals. I’ve gone from 271 balls of yarn at the start of the year to 255. Yay! The number will bump up again a little bit since I have two skeins of yarn on their way to me (one was a RAK), as well as two exchanges. But, when I do an exchange or a swap, I am following the one-in-one out rule. The number fluctuates because I remove the yarn from my total when I send it out, and add again when I receive something. Nonetheless, I’ve made excellent progress.

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A Knitting Hippie

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Heather

I love Ravelry. It is a great place for knitters and crocheters to hang out. I’ve discovered some great patterns, learned lots of fabulous techniques, and even made a few friends. And, it was for one of those friends that I test crocheted a pattern for this month.

Those Crazy Hippies by Stephanie Horn

Isn’t she cute? And, yes, I’ve made my crocheted hippie into a sedate knitter. I’m going to wind up a wee ball of yarn to put in her other hand. She is made from Bernat Satin and Mary Maxim Starlette yarn. Her eyes and knitting needles are made from Sculpty III.

This is a very cute and easy pattern, and very, very customize-able. I know I’m going to make more of these. If you are interested in the pattern, check out the pattern page on Raverly: Those Crazy Hippies. Seriously, check out that page and take a look at all the cool variations. I wish I was half so creative.

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Ornament of the Month – January

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Heather

This month’s ornament is Peace Tree by M Designs, from the 2004 JCS ornament issue.

Peace Tree from M Designs

It is stitched on 28 count white evenweave (Lugana, I think?), using Threadworx in colour 1089 Bleeding Hearts (which I believe was a gift from Erica). The beads are leftovers from a Dimensions kit, but I’m not sure which one.

I cheated a little bit with this design. Generally speaking, I’m not overly thrilled with how a full cross stitch looks over one. In some fibres and colours it looks okay, but, to me, it can look crowded. So, for this design, I only did half stitches. But, because of how the letters curled around, I knew I could end up with weird looking lines if I wasn’t careful. So, for one half of the design, I did my half stitches like this / and for the other half I did them like this \. I think the results are wonderful. The tree looks graceful and light. I’m really looking forward to finishing it into an ornament.

That’s now three of my fourteen ornaments done. So far, so good! With February being short month, I’m tempted to do another easy ornament. But at this rate, I’ll have used up all the easy ones, and will have a problem if I ever have a busy month. So, I’m thinking I will pick something somewhere in the middle. Maybe Dragon Dreams’ You Are My Gift (2010) or Julia Lucas’ Home for the Holidays.

And, guess what? Still no new stash! Yay! Okay, I haven’t been to LNS this year, but there is always the Internet. 😉

How are your stitchy New Years’ resolutions coming along?

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