Spinzilla

Another Spinzilla complete! Can't wait for next year!

Kids Projects

I have been finding myself knitting a lot for my kids these days. It's fun and projects seem to fly off the needles.

First up is a pair of socks (rav link) for my son from some Lorna's Laces yarn from my stash. These took less than 50 grams of yarn. I had a little trouble getting the size just right. They are a little extra long, but I figured they give him room to grow. He loves them a lot and is putting them away until fall.

Next, I knit up another skirt (rav link) for my daughter. A girl just can't have too many twirly skirts! This is the Lollipop Skirt by Bekah Knits. This is the second time I have knit this skirt and I love it! It is knit out of Sirdar Baby Bamboo. I think this is the last time I'm going to knit it out of this yarn, because the yarn gets quite heavy. I'm worried that if I knit a bigger size with it (This one is 3T) that it'll be too heavy to be practical. I have thought about knitting it out of a lighter weight wool, instead. I do love the 3 tier design, so I'm thinking about it some more!

Honeysuckle

The honeysuckle in my front yard is going a little bit crazy this year. My husband has the week off, so we have decided to spend it knocking out some garden chores. I've been too exhausted to do much else. Hopefully I'll be back soon with lots of new things to talk about!

Make Do & Mend

First off, kids go through clothing like crazy. I feel like I'm buying them new clothes all the time. Now with 2, I thought it would be easy to have hand-me-downs. After all, boy clothes work just fine for girls, especially shorts and pants. However, that is not quite the case with my kids. My daughter, who is almost 3, will argue with me that she has nothing to wear if the items in her drawer aren't pink or purple or have hearts or flowers on them. We will go round and round until I finally dress her and dramatic sighing ensues. When any piece of clothing isn't to her liking she will say it is her brothers or that it is too small. This even includes black leggings bought specifically for her, which she picked out. (I explained to her that neutrals, like black, make other colors prettier, so she has resigned herself to wearing them if she absolutely has to).

So, I have been saving 6 pairs of shorts sizes 2T-3T, which were my sons that I felt were pretty gender neutral. I know from experience that these just won't fly with my daughter, so I came up with the brilliant idea of embellishing them to make them more "girly". A little trip to Fabric Depot and we were in business!

My goal with each pair of shorts was that the embellishment would cost less than a new pair of shorts. So everything I did was around $1-2 or under. The first 3 I just added buttons. Off with the plain buttons and on with red heart buttons. You can't see it, but the upper left pair have strawberry buttons. These met the approval of my daughter and took under 10 minutes to do each set of shorts. 

The next pair I took polka-dot ribbon and ran it through the belt loops. I sewed it at each of the belt loops, stretching it at each one slightly, so it would stretch with the elastic. My daughter is very skinny, so I'm not too worried about them being too tight. Then I added a purple button from my button stash and called it good. She loves them!

Next pair I added a little ribbon to the pocket, I didn't think it was enough, so I added lace around the inside of the cuffs. 

The last pair, I added ribbon just under the elastic waistband and then added it around the cuffs of the shorts. I did it below the elastic, just so it wouldn't interfere with the stretch. 

It took me one afternoon and a bit of the next morning to do them all. I'm really happy with how they turned out. More importantly my daughter loves them all and thinks they are the best thing ever. So, hopefully this will mean a few less arguments in the morning and a little quicker time getting dressed!

X Hoody

I finished a hoody (rav link) for my son back in April. Of course, it's been so warm he won't really get to wear it until next fall. Good thing I made it extra long!

His sister is wearing the one that I made for him a couple of years ago out of Tosh DK. I really love this pattern from Debbie Bliss's Design It! Knit It!: Babies. It's really easy to modify, which I definitely had to do both times I knit it. The first time I made it longer. This time I used handspun I spun during Spinzilla, so the gauge was a bit different. I used Naturspun Worsted as the accent grey. Now, I can't wait for cold rainy days so they both can get use out of their sweaters!

Tonight I am speaking at the Tigard Knitting Guild at the Tigard Senior Center. If you are a member, I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight!

Mother Daughter Socks

I can't believe how busy I have been lately. It just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day. However, I have been able to eek out a new knitting time during the children's bed time. My husband reads them stories every evening. So I have started taking advantage of it, by knitting something for the kids. First off the needles is a pair of socks for my daughter (rav link). These went so fast with her tiny feet. Look the pair I made myself back in August of 2006! I just had to get a photo of them both together! She loves them! Now to knit a pair for my son!

Edited to add: I realized going back through Ravelry that I never added these socks on there. So I just did and there is now a rav link. 

Keurig

Wow! A big thank you to everyone who visited my last post about Ravelry In-Store Sales! I'm so excited to look through all these patterns I now have available to knit up in my yarn! I hope that this gets out to as many Indie Designers and Dyers as possible, so that we all have the opportunity to use this great service.

On a completely different topic, we purchased a Keurig, just in time for the Open Studio Day! Now we can serve coffee, tea, and hot chocolate!

Do you have a favorite K-Cup? We are still trying things out to see which is best and would love recommendations!

Photo Friday: Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

 

Yarn Crawl

For the Rose City Yarn Crawl, I was able to go on Friday to For Yarn Sake and hang out there all day with my trunk show. It was wonderful! The not so wonderful part was that my husband texted me that my daughter had a temperature. So, by Sunday, when I had planned to go do the shopping part of the yarn crawl, my family were all very sick. Mama to the rescue! So to make up for it, my husband said I could find a free Sunday and go that day instead. The best one was this last Sunday.

I went with my wonderful friend Janeann, and we visited 4 yarn shops: Twisted, Dublin Bay, Knitting Bee, and For Yarn's Sake. I got 2 skeins of Blue Moon Heavy Weight (in the back) to make socks for my husband. The red is Madelinetosh Vintage Worsted to make my son a sweater. The front is a couple of balls of Sirdar Baby Bamboo to go with some yarn I have for a skirt for my daughter. I think that covers everyone! I also scored some pretty nice yarn from Knot Another Hat's March Madness sale. It has been a busy yarn filled month! The pattern and the pen on the side were swag from a couple of the shops that felt that we needed a little something extra since we are yarn crawling. =) It was a wonderful trip and something I would definitely like to do again!

Blair Socks

I finished a pair of socks for Blair, my husband. 

I always keep a pair of DK weight socks (rav link) on the needles at all times in case I need a mindless project to take somewhere. They usually take me about a year to make, but then he has another pair of lovely socks to wear. These were out of Tosh DK, which is turning out to be one of my favorite yarns for his socks. I love the colorway Plaid Blanket mixed with the golden Harvest Wheat color. I think for my next pair I am going to try out Cat Bordhi's new Sweet Tomato Heel! I'm really looking forward to it!

Flax Sweater

I just finished a sweater for my daughter and I am so in love with this pattern!

The pattern is Flax (rav link) by Tin Can Knits. It's a simple top down raglan sweater design all knit in one piece. The bonus is the pattern is free with lots of diagrams and details to knit it on your own. It knit up so fast! I love it! The yarn is something I got from Knot Another Hat during their March Madness sale a couple years ago. It's Mochi Plus, which means machine washable single plied yarn. I loved working with it. It was super soft. My daughter loves it, which is the most important part.

Also, the sizes for this sweater run from newborn to Men's 4X, so you can knit it for anybody! If you don't want to do it on your own, my amazing friend Destiny is doing a class on it starting this Saturday, February 21st at Knot Another Hat.

Photo Friday: Photo Help

Photo Friday: Shoes

Christmas Round Up

A new toy I got for Christmas is a new light booth! So I've been having fun with it! I put it to good use photographing these Christmas gifts, which were too last minute to get photos before wrapping them and putting them under the tree. 

First up is a dolly (rav link) for my girl. She really loved the one that I made for her cousin, so I knew that I had to make one up for her too. I did pretty much the same things as the first. I doubled Dale of Norway Baby Ull. It was a lot of fun to make. I think it will be fun to make additional little outfits for her too!

Next up is a pair of felted clogs (rav link) for my husband. He mentioned twice that he would like some slippers, but not to bother if I was too busy. So, I set about to surprise him. I knit on these in secret, finishing them on Christmas Eve while he was napping with the kids. I'm so glad I got to surprise him! He loves them and says they keep his feet toasty warm.

My son really loves Toad from Mario Kart. so I set about designing a Toad Hat (rav link) for him. This is out of Cascade 128, which is superwash and bulky. He loves it and it keeps his head warm when he's playing outside.

That's the wrap up for 2014! If you want to see all of my 2014 projects check out this page I made: http://lavendersheep.blogspot.com/p/2014-projects.html

I can't wait to see what I make in 2015!

Baby Shower

My cousin is going to have a baby in another month or so. It's a second baby, so no official baby shower. Instead I made her a few things, so the new baby will feel special too.

First up, a nice pair of felted clogs (rav link) to keep her feet nice and toasty during her hospital stay.

For the bottoms I used puff paint to create some traction patterns. No slipping on those hospital floors!

Then for the baby I knit Helena (rav link) and a baby bonnet (rav link) out of Tosh DK in color Posy. I love this yarn so much! My daughter does too. I might just have to get some more and whip out some super cute girly things. For Helena, I ended up adding one extra repeat. I thought the chest measurement of 19.25" was a bit much, especially since my 2 year old has a 20" chest! This way it will get a lot more use! I also added buttons instead of doing the ties, because I like them better. 

For the bonnet, I pretty much followed the pattern. Other than for the ties I CO 50 sts, picked up around the hat as specified by the pattern, then CO another 50 sts. Then I loosely BO all the stitches. It saves sewing in 2 ends, which makes it worthwhile to me!

I finished Helena before the new year and the bonnet on New Year's day, making this my last project of last year and the first project for the new year! Now I just need to share with you all of the Christmas knitting and we will wrap up 2014!

BFL Hoody

I knit this hoody based off the one I knit for my son ages ago for a friend of mine.

I love this pattern so much, I think I'm going to have to knit another one for my son in a bigger size. My kids are so skinny I can often knit them patterns in smaller sizes and just add length. This one comes from Debbie Bliss's book Design It, Knit It: Babies and is called simply the Hooded Pullover (rav link). The yarn is Debbie Bliss Blue Faced Leicester Aran. When I first picked it up I wasn't sure if it would be soft enough, but knitting with it was really nice. Then when I blocked it, the yarn became extra soft. It's also machine washable, which I know from experience, is very important when knitting for little boys.

Photo Friday: Bike

Photo Friday: Mossy Stones

Happy December!

Welcome to December! Can you believe it's only 3 more weeks to Christmas? I can't! So here is what I have done to help you out!

I have created a Holiday Gift Guide that fits just about everyone on your list! You are sure to find some great inspirations there! Now I am off to knit like the wind, Christmas is coming!

Dolly

Quite a few years ago I bought a copy of Jess Hutchison's Unusual Toys for you to Knit and Enjoy. The book has since gone out of print. I have held onto it, knowing I would knit something from it someday. 

Today is the day! I knit this little dolly (rav link) for my cousin's daughter. It was a lot of fun and knit up quickly. I think I might need to make a couple more of these. The only thing I added was the hair. I doubled Dale of Norway Baby Ull for the yarn and went down to a size #6US needle for the slightly finer gauge. The reason I did this was because I had the yarn in my stash and it was flesh colored, which is actually pretty hard to find. I also only used a single strand for the border around the dress, because the ruffle kept coming out too big. Overall, I love this little dolly. It's just the right size for little hands to hold onto.