Winter Splendour – Linda’s Hat

After seeing my Autumn Glory Hat, my friend Linda asked me to make her one. I said, “Sure, but I could make you any design or colour you want. You don’t have to have something exactly the same as mine.” So Linda picked the yarn colours and concept she wanted and I went from there. The result was quite different and still pleasing. Thank you, Linda, for letting me put your picture on my site.

I was amazed at what I came up with when I raided my yarn stash. For the background colour, I held two strands together: Grignasco Flash, colour 241, and Madil Denim, colour 043. For the fluffy snowflake part, I used Bernat Bling Bling in colour 65122. It was all knit on 4.5 mm needles. I love working on hats – they go so quickly.

It looks like I’ll need another skein of yarn for my husband’s scarf. I’ve checked four local yarn stores and nobody carries the yarn I need so I asked Serenity Knits in Newmarket to mail me a skein (I bought it there when I attended the Brandon Mably workshop on October 10th).

Hip to be Square

While I was visiting Serenity Knits after the Brandon Mably workshop, I picked up a couple of small items. One of them is a luscious skein of Hand Maiden Casbah in the Midnight colour way. It’s 80% merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon. A 115 gram ball has 325 metres on it and would typically knit up at about 26 stitches = 4 inches on 3 mm needles. My gauge is always on the tighter side and is different because of the pattern I’m doing. I thought it would make a great dressy scarf for my hubby. He has a warm winter scarf but it’s kind of ratty because he really only uses it for shovelling and snow blowing. I thought he could use a nicer scarf for dressier occasions. The softness of the merino and cashmere against the skin is heavenly.

I thought the colour way was appropriately masculine and sophisticated. The pattern I’m using is of my own design. I wanted it to look like dimensional blocks. The picture gives you a better idea (that's just a gauge swatch - his scarf will be bigger). It’s all stocking alternating with reverse stocking in an attempt to get the scarf to lie as flat as possible. I could have used garter in places to make it lie flat but garter stitch has a very different gauge and uses more yarn than stocking stitch. That’s me, always thinking practically and frugally.

Divine Twist of Fate – I met Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably!

Boy, where to begin with this one and not sound like I’m babbling incoherently. Okay; here goes.

Main St. Yarns in Milton was hosting a colour work shop conducted Brandon Mably with Kaffe Fassett doing a book signing afterward in Fergus on Monday, October 13; a.k.a. Canadian Thanksgiving. Needless to say, with these two names on the venue, I ended up being third on the waiting list since it filled up in no time. Then my husband got roped into working on Thanksgiving Monday and I thought, “Oh well, I couldn’t have gone anyways”.

On Monday, October 6, my husband and I arranged to take Friday, October 10 off so my hubby could have some semblance of a long week-end after working 4 week-ends straight.

On Tuesday, October 7, Carolyn from Main St. Yarns was a sweetheart and phoned me to let me know that a store in Newmarket, Serenity Knits, was hosting the same Brandon Mably workshop on the Friday I had just arranged to take off and they still had spaces available. They’ve only been in two years and hence I had never heard of them. Great store! Lovely people! Kaffe was doing a presentation Thursday night but there was no way I could make that one without a teleporter. My immediate reaction was, “AAAAAAHHHHH!!!” I made it in! It’s an hour from my home, but then again, so is Fergus.

The next day, my husband finds out our client has cancelled their week-end work so we have a beautiful four day long week-end which gives us enough time to do a trip to Quebec to see my mother-in-law right after Newmarket. Frantic packing on Thursday night because I don’t have a list prepared, my husband takes the kids to the Ontario Science Centre (which is not too far from Newmarket and one of the children’s most favourite places on the planet) for the day to keep them occupied while I knit for 7 hours (heaven), then he picks me up, we go to the book signing at the shop, then the almost 8 hour drive to Quebec (because of rush hour combined with a long week-end).

The workshop was so much fun and it was great to meet and get insight from a great designer like Brandon. He has a great sense of humour and is very down to earth. He tried to get us to think outside our “colour box”, experiment, not be afraid to make mistakes, and combine colours fearlessly. It was really fascinating to see all the colour combinations from the different minds in the group. Mine is second from the right and second from the top. I bought Brandon's book, Knitting Color: Design Inspiration from Around the World, and he signed it for me, too. They were a great group to be with; I have been so fortunate.

My dear husband realizes how important an event like this is in my life that he didn’t want me to miss it even to have extra time with his mother (whom I happen to get along with very well, by the way). So it was a hellishly long driving day for my poor hubby, but hey, how many times in your life do you get to meet Brandon Mably and Kaffe Fassett and have them both sign your books and you get your picture taken with them and I won one of the door prizes! Kaffe’s latest book, Kaffe Knits Again, with yarn to make the Caterpillar Sweater in it!!!!! AAAAAAAAHHH!!!! Was the long driving day worth it? What drive? I was floating on a cloud, babbling to my husband for hours about what Brandon said. I think I owe him a big one. Happy Thanksgiving!

Catching My Breath and Getting Organized

My husband finally had a week-end off and we got to go out with the kids, shop, relax, and enjoy life once again.

IKEA is a dangerous place. You always end up walking out with more stuff than you intended, but at least they’re practical goods. We only went there to get my son a desk for his room so he could have a quiet place to do his homework. We ended up getting him a nice book case to go with that desk and a few other handy knick-knacks for the kitchen as well.

The best part for me was getting some lovely yarn storage units! The stacked cardboard boxes, an example of which you see at the base of the closet, really didn’t cut it (so much for my attempt to be frugal). I was considering giving the hanging storage unit on the side, which used to house the yarn, to the kids but then I thought, “I can use that to store the quilting fabric!”

The hanging storage unit and 6 drawer unit are mirrored in the other half of the closet, except that the other hanging unit has art supplies and a little quilt fabric in it. I even got a couple of magazine storage boxes to handle my book shelf overflow. I will eventually get around to putting those away. It’s so nice to be able to see the floor of my hobby room again.

I will also get to listing more sites I visit on my blog and populating my projects section of Ravelry. If only I didn’t have to sleep, I could get things done in a timely manner.

I Won the Knit Purse Competition! Now I can finish that Quilt

Slight digression from knitting today; we’re going to talk a bit about quilting.

First of all, I won the knit purse competition held by Ruti’s Needlebed; I’m so happy! I’m going to put that $100 gift certificate for Ruti’s Needlebed toward the purchase of a new sewing/quilting machine. I’ll be getting the Brother QC-1000. I went to try it out yesterday. Ni-i-i-i-ce. Some of the wonderful features are that it’s computerized with a big LCD screen, does alphabets, lots of different types of stitches, 22”x16” extra-wide table is a standard accessory, automatic needle threading, bobbin loading’s a breeze, and automatic backstitching and cutting of thread (if you so choose) just to name a few.

When I get it, I can finish that quilt I started 8 years ago when I first learned piecing. I don’t know if you can tell, but the fabric has an Egyptian theme; I love things Egyptian. The course I had taken was a different piecing method a week. I had decided back then that I would hand quilt it being the traditionalist that I am. Well, it’s been 8 years. I did a tiny section of hand quilting (which I wasn’t crazy about appearance-wise). Being the perfectionist that I am, I couldn’t do a half-baked, inconsistent job. It took me quite a while to do that small area, too.

Note that the intense basting is because I was intending to hand quilt and I used polyester batting. Ruthie suggested that I use cotton instead of polyester batting. She said that in her experience, there’s (what she believes to be) a static build up with the polyester that causes the sewing machine to miss stitches. I tried doing a net search on this with not much success. In fact, a lot of sites were still advocating using polyester batting. I don’t know if anyone else has knowledge in this area. She was also disappointed in the way I had folded the backing edge over the front and pinned it down. She said I was not supposed to do that. I said, it depends what book you’re reading, but reassured her that that was not going to be my binding and I just rolled it over and pinned it down to keep it out of my way; that I was going to make a separate binding strip and attach it. That appeased her.

After my short experience with hand quilting, I thought then that maybe machine quilting wasn’t so bad after all. I made a small sample of something else to try it on. It was then that I discovered that the sewing machine I have, my husband’s grand-mother’s 50+ year old sewing machine, is not the best for this task.

It has several mechanical…issues. When I got it, the thread tension knob was already not working properly. I thought that rather than destroy what’s left functional of this precious machine, I should just get a new one; hence, the decision to buy a new machine. Let’s see if I can finish that quilt anytime soon.

Autumn Splendour

Work’s been so CRAZY that I wasn’t able to blog last week. I’ve been holding off posting this for a while because I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I must say, I’m quite happy with the results. It's an original design by yours truly, moi.

I love hats! One day, I noticed that in my varied assortment of hats, I didn’t have one that also covered my ears. I also have a lot of purple present in my other hats and decided I needed to expand my color range to better accommodate my fall wardrobe.

I created this bulbous beret to cover my ears. I found this wonderful variegated ball of yellow/green/gold yarn (Berroco Idol in color: 1548 (Princess Grace)) and immediately thought of leaves in the fall, hence the motif of the hat. The background colour is Mission Falls 1824 wool in color: 010 (raisin). It’s wonderfully warm while still being light and extremely comfortable to wear. I knit it on smaller needles than the ball bands recommended deliberately to get a dense, warm hat. The hat is knit in the round as a Fair Isle pattern which enhances its warmth.

Pyramid Purse Complete

I can’t believe I’m finally done, and none too soon. The deadline for the purse competition is the 31st, but the store isn’t open then so it’s really today.

It feels like it’s been forever since I completed something. I even managed to line the purse with fabric covered cardboard. It really was necessary so the purse could stand up and have a definite shape.

I went a little simpler on the closure than I was originally planning because of time constraints. I made bobbles with buttonholes – nothing fancy. No time to make a purse strap either; oh well, I guess it will have to be a clutch. Overall, I’m pleased with the results.