Ski Toque Available on Ravelry

I just published another pattern on Ravelry yesterday.  It's a very fitted Ski Toque.  I knit the entrelac band flat and then joined it to work the crown in the round.  Please check it out.  I hope you all like it.

You can find it at:  

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ski-toque

Autumn Splendour available on Ravelry

I am very excited!  I published my first pattern for sale on Ravelry on Sunday. It's the Autumn Splendour hat I made a few years ago.

You can find it at:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/autumn-splendour



I hope to get more of my patterns out there in the near future.

I'm Back!

Hello Everyone!  This is strange.  It's been almost 4 years since my last blog post and I haven't even been able to visit Ravelry that often.  I don't know where the time went.  Life got so busy with work, family illnesses and deaths, there seemed little time for anything else.

I have been steadily practicing traditional Okinawan Goju-Ryu karate under the guidance of the IOGKF (International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate-Do Federation) for the last 4 years which has helped me keep my sanity through the extremely stressful times.  I just got my brown belt in December!

As my bio on the side says, I've also gone down to part time work so I could be there more for my family.  I won't bore you with details now; that will come out steadily over time as I post more.  This post is to update you on the three major knitting accomplishments of my last year.

Sushi Socks

My husband loves my hand-knitted socks.  There was a cute kit called Sushi Socks at a local yarn store which has since closed down.  Balls of yarn were died to look like sushi rolls.  My husband chose the Ocean-Toes pattern from Cat Bordhi's, New Pathways for Sock Knitters Book 1.  Of course, the fact that he has size 15, triple E width feet, means I have to adapt everything to fit him.  I think it turned out quite well.

Samurai Kabuto

 
We love funky hats in our family.  My son requested the Samurai Kabuto from Vicki Square's, Folk Hats.I substituted yarn, so once again, adaptations.  I'm very pleased with the results.

Frontière

My little princess chose the Frontière also from Vicki Square's book referenced above.  Once again, I substituted yarn and therefore some re-sizing and some ad-lib knitting so it would fit her head properly.  

The other little variation I did was to not use yarn to make French knots that would look like little pearls.  I sewed on faux pearl beads.  As you can see, she is ecstatic.





That's all for now.  I plan to blog again soon with what I hope will be more interesting knitting for all.

Countdown 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, France!

Where did the last month go? I swear, I meant to blog more frequently.

In five days, we leave for France and there is still so much I have to do before we leave.

On the knitting front, I’ve gotten back to work on our friends’ baby blanket. No new photo to show of the blanket yet though. I have finished my daughter’s matching mittens to go with her hat. We’re happy. In other personal news, I got my tattoo on April 6. It's amazing how much bigger 3" seems when it's actually on your skin! It’s healing quite well and I’m ecstatic that I got it!
I’m sure I’ll have tons of pictures when I get back. I’m quite worried about how long it will take me to sort through it all - eek.

Mega Milestone Year

Sorry I haven’t been blogging or blog reading in a while but there has been so much that has gone on since I last blogged and will be going on this year, I’ll have to give you the more interesting snippets in a nutshell; there’s just too much. I haven’t even been knitting as much as a result; something had to give. My compensation: improved health, reduced stress and ability to handle stressful situations SO MUCH better, an activity we can do as a family (my husband just joined us in family karate a couple of weeks ago), and improved self image. It hasn't been an all up year, I'm just not going to focus on the downs.

Knitting
Friends’ Baby Blanket

Daughter’s Dragon Hat – (mitts to follow)

Personal
My husband and I are both turning 40.

It’s our 15th wedding anniversary on May 6th so we’re going to France the first two weeks in May. I’ll be leaving my children for the first time since they’ve been born. My husband’s father and step-mother have been kind enough to offer to come and stay with the kids. They really are wonderful people.

I got my yellow belt in karate! My grading was on January 29th. I will be getting a yellow dragon tattoo (my first ever). Yellow is for the belt and the dragon symbolizes Goju Ryu karate.

I’ve dropped yoga because of time constraints. Karate takes a decent amount of training time. And I’ve started kobudo; gee, do I love martial arts or what. That will definitely take me a lot longer to make progress in; working with weapons changes a lot. I do miss the benefits of yoga for my back. Karate just can’t do that for me, so I practice certain yoga stretches and home and that seems to work. Like I said, a milestone year.

Karate Cake and Knitting

To answer yarndork’s question on where I got the pattern for my niece’s sweater, it came from a Sirdar pattern book: Gorgeous Babies Knitting Book 264

The pattern for the blanket I’m knitting right is free from the Lion Brand website. I had to register first before they let me download it. It’s called the Heirloom Baby Blanket. I hope to have something to show soon.

Today was the dojo’s Christmas party. I baked a Bundt cake using my Nordic Ware Castle cake pan and it turned out quite well. Then my husband thought of a game he bought last week which had martial arts related pieces in it. It’s called Ghost Stories and he thought it would be cool if we could put the game pieces on the cake; so we did. People loved it!
It’s a brown sugar pound cake which I downloaded from the food network.

Niece’s Snuggly Sweater is Finally Done!

I’m still alive but barely knitting. I’m not ignoring anyone’s blog because of a lack of interest – please don’t take offense. I haven’t even touched mine for 2 months.

I’m LOVING LOVING LOVING karate and am considering dropping yoga because of my huge time commitment to exercise and the lack of knitting. I know the exercise is a healthier option; I’m trying to find balance between my leisure activities and work. I’m also now afraid I won’t finish that huge stack of UFO’s and unstarted projects with pending yarn in my closet before I die (some 60 years from now if I’m lucky). It’s scary. You think I exaggerate but when I look at my UFO’s that are over 10 years old and I haven’t touched them, you’ll understand why a mere 6 decades (if I’m healthy enough to do anything) is a cause for alarm.

I had these grand plans of knitting things for my kids every and am feeling like a bad mother because I haven’t made them special hats, scarves, mitts or sweaters in the past 2 years. Okay, I made them dinosaurs last winter, but it’s a small drop in the bucket of what I would like to do for them.

It took me a little over 5 months to complete my niece’s sweater doing no other knitting projects – that’s gotta be the longest it’s taken me to do a single item. Anyways, I’m happy with the results; I think my sister’s family will be, too.

I’m on to a new project, not my UFO’s. Friends of ours had a baby not too long ago and were promised a blanket. I better get cracking and hope it doesn’t take me another 6 months to finish a project.