Bunny-liscious

Jenn was talking about making a bunny the other day, and since I'd bought the pattern from Kate a while ago, I figured I should make one too. Especially, since I have a little niece or nephew coming in the next few weeks. I already have something for him/her, but figured that a cute fuzzy bunny would be a good thing.


The yarn comes from Jenn, who exchanged it with me for some sock blockers that my husband will (eventually) be making for her. He made me some for my birthday last year, and I love them, and he graciously offered to make some for her. It's super soft, and feels like a terry cloth bath robe. Just perfect for a little baby.

The picture above was actually a spontaneous shoot because Erika had placed the bunny on her quilt like that. I couldn't have arranged it better.

Quite a collection of hand-made stuff. The quilt was made by my sister in law (the one who is having the baby). On the left of bunny is Hello Kitty, and on the left is Uniqua (which we got at the Backyardigans live show two weekends ago) - both not hand made. They are all resting on Erika's baby blanket as a pillow, which she still sleeps with every night.

Bunny was a super-fun and SUPER-fast knit. I did it in two nights, but total knitting time was three hours or less, and then a little bit of finishing (maybe half an hour). I decided to not put in eyes/nose/mouth on this bunny, as they would just get lost in the multi colors.

Kindle

I was going call this post I heart Alpaca, but changed it after writing the rest of the post. I do love Alpaca - sooooo soft, soooo luxurious

I cast on for Kindle - from the Fiona Ellis book Inspired Fair Isle Knits two nights ago. No pictures yet because I've only done a little bit, and it doesn't look like anything interesting yet. So far so good though, I'm about 1/2 way up the first pattern section. I am making mine in Blues and Cream. I know that Fiona says that this is a fire scarf, but I felt that the little fires could also be little snowflakes in mine. Also, I look better in blue, and it goes with more of my things.

In the mean time, until I have something picture-worthy of my own scarf, below is me, modeling the original scarf during a workshop I took with Fiona last year. This picture was actually taken on my camera by Fiona herself, with the book in the background. That table was actually filled with her cool (and BIG) swatches but they aren't too visible in this picture. I'll try to post about that workshop soon.


I couldn't take off the scarf, and tried to walk out with it "by mistake" quite a few times.

I had ordered the yarn that was called for in the book as a birthday present just before Christmas, and have been petting/fondling/loving the Alpaca ever since I got it. It was screaming at me to get this project started.

_______________________________

Wow - two posts in less than a week... I guess the fact that the Harlot left a comment on my last post spurred me on a little. I was also honored that Caroline from Destroy My Sweater left me a comment too - I've been reading your blog for a while now, but didn't know that you read mine (go habs!).

All you other lurkers out there, please do post a comment. It makes me happy to know that there are people reading this stuff, and might actually inspire me to post more often.

I was told...

So, I was talking to Jenn today, who (as usual) was bugging me to post to the blog. But, it takes away from my knitting time, says I.

I was told -- "Well, you can just post pictures and not put any text."

After an absence of (just under) a month, I figure that I owe you more than just pictures.

Here's a cute story overheard at my 4 (and a half) year old's daycare.

E. (mine) - walks in with a new Montreal Canadiens pink sweatshirt and proudly shows it to her best friend K.

K. - the Habs won last night, they beat the Panthers
E. - yes, we put 2 goals in their net, and they put 1 goal in our net
K. - and Carey Price was our goaltender, he's my favorite
E. - me too.

4 and a half year old girls!!! Go Habs Go! - we're now tied for first in our division.

On another note, I finished my striped Noro scarf that I was doing a KAL with Jenn. We finished on the same day - how cool is that! Now, to cast on for my next project, the Fiona Ellis scarf from her newest book. More on that in my next post, which will hopefully not be in a month.

And now for what you're all really here for - pictures of knitting.

I finally finished the Voss sweater for my nephew and gave it to him about two weeks ago. Hopefully I'll have photos of him in the sweater soon. It's made for a 4 year old size and he just turned 2, so he'll have plenty of years to wear it.

This was my first time steeking, and (blogless) Norma showed me through all of the steps. She even came over to my place to help me do some of the sewing and make sure that I wasn't messing up too much. Well, it worked!


Here's the back of the sweater that shows the detail on at the top.


One of the things that I'm so proud of is the inside of the sweater and the nice finishing details that are build into the pattern. I didn't go so bold as the Harlot did and put in some funky color for the facings. I was too scared to go too much out of the box for my first steeking project. What if I put a funky orange or green somewhere and it ended up showing!!!


And now for some more artsy-fartsy shots using the macro lens. Here's the insides. Look at how even the floats are. I'm so proud.


The neckline detail where you can also see the snowflake up close.



I found the P.E.R.F.E.C.T buttons for this sweater at my LYS. Of course, I found only 5 of them, and had already knit the buttonhole band with 7 holes, so had to rip that out and re-knit it. But, these buttons were the ones that needed to be on this sweater, and I really had no choice. Now, when I look at it, I couldn't see it with 7 buttons anyways, and am glad I made this choice.



And here's my little E. modeling the sweater for me. It fits her just perfectly, so I'm really hoping that my nephew gets two, maybe three seasons out of this sweater.



Now, back to my knitting. I'll try to post once a week, but don't hold me to that (Jenn). Maybe you'll get just photos, no text. I should take a picture of my latest FO, the Noro scarf, but that will have to wait for a few days until I get a chance to block it.

Is this what they mean when they talk about backwards knitting?

So, before Christmas, I made myself this nice cashmere hat. It's Devon's Toque from Handmaiden. The cashmere is like buttah, and knit up so fast, it was ridiculous. Even though I cast on for the hat three times, it was still super fast.

The first time I cast on with the right number of stitches, I didn't like the way the brown and black was pooling. Basically, half the hat was brown, the other was black. Not very good, in my opinion. I also thought it would be a little small, so I decided to cast on with 8 more stitches (2 more 2X2 ribs) but it didn't do much to reduce the pooling, and it still looked smallish. I cast on again with 8 more stitches. That was what seemed to work like a charm. I liked the spiral / striping effect, when I put the first few inches on a string and 'tried it on', it fit like a glove.

Well, when the whole thing was finished, the hat ballooned at the bottom. I knew that cashmere relaxes a little, but this relaxed A LOT!

Also, since I'd added so many stitches, I didn't have the length that I wanted. Even though in this picture, I have it folded nicely, when it's on my head, I can only get about 1cm of a fold, which looks weird. Jenn will be posting pictures of me in the hat when she gets around to posting about the Fibonacci socks.

Anyways, I didn't like the look of the hat. I loved the feel of the cashmere, and I'd invested $40 in the one skein of it, so I darn well wanted something that I'd love.

So, this happened....

It got ripped out and skeined on my new niddy noddy.

This is the yarn after it was skeined up. Amazing how quickly (about 2 months) the kink gets in the yarn.



Which meant soaking it,


And then drying with a little weight. I use a full spray bottle.


And then finally, the re-tied skein, looking just about as awesome as it did before I made the hat. I'll have to dig up the little endy bit that I had -just in case I need when I re-knit it.



So, what am I going to knit this up into? I'm thinking about this hat pattern - which should work with the stitch count I need, and I like how the top decreases are done.

Hab-by Christmas

Look what I made tonight for my Habs-loving husband. It's not quite to scale, and is a little different from what the big boys wear, but I think it's pretty darn cute.


I've made a couple of other mini sweaters for hostess gifts for the holidays using leftover sock yarn. They're quick and easy and so much fun to make. Start to finish was about 3 hours including sewing all the ends and crocheting the C. I've already given away 2 - one to our neighbours and one to my father (I made his using leftover yarn from the socks I made him)


I still have to finish sewing up the sides of the other sweaters and making the mini-hangers. Hoping to be done these and 2 more before Christmas!!

Wild wintery weather

We've had some snow here in Montreal. Lots of other Montreal bloggers have been writing about it, but I think the best example of how much snow we got recently can be seen on the weather page of my coworker Celini.

When you go to that page, click on the little square in the video to make it full screen. It's even more impressive.

What? Pictures? You've got to be kidding!

Ok, it's been a while since I've posted photos. It's been a little crazy around here lately. First of all, we had a french drain put around our house. This was done the week of Hallowe'en, so we didn't have any trick or treaters this year. It was weird not having any kids ringing our doorbell, but it was way too dangerous to let anyone near the house. We were tempted to fill the moat with water and put in fake alligators, but decided rather quickly against it.



Now for some knitting photos which I know have been woefully lacking these days. I'm catching up on a lot of things (sorry, blogging has not been priority #1 for me lately) and my photos are slowly being managed.

Photo of the finished second potamotamus sock - which was finished over a month ago! Recipient has already gotten her pair of socks and apparently loves them. Her favorite colors are purple and green, so I sure hope so!



Below is some gorgeous pink/white angora/merino that I got at a sale at the Montreal Knitting Guild in September. I had bought it to make something for my 4 1/2 year old daughter (imagine, her favorite color is pink!). Tried as I might, I couldn't find the right project for it. First I though a neckwarmer or hat, but that would felt too quickly with the snow play she does. Then I thought of a nice little sweater, but I don't have enough yarn. Then I thought maybe a mini sunrise circle jacket by Kate Gilbert. The sunrise circle was THE idea for a few weeks. I ran into Kate at a workshop with Fiona Ellis (I have those photos processed but you'll have to wait a few days) and she gave me a couple of pointers of how to reduce the pattern to make it 4 year old size. When I did the math, I realized that with the much thinner yarn than the pattern calls for, I would actually have to knit the same number of stitches as if I were making the adult size LARGE, to get a sweater that would fit my daughter for maybe one season. That idea got nixed rather quickly. Also - angora for a 4 year old. She needs superwash. I need the angora. :-)


I've now decided that I'm going to overdye it with blue to make a nice purple color and make a scarf/shawl for me. I haven't figured out yet which pattern, but I'm sure it will come to me one day.

On to my mother's shawl. I've honestly had problems with this shawl. It was going along swimmingly, but then it started to get so repetitive. I had hoped to get it done by her birthday in September. That didn't work. Then I hoped to get it done for Christmas, but that's not going to happen either. Maybe for the spring? i figure I have another 5 or 8 repeats to go before it's large enough. I'm not sure if I'm going to put a border on it or not, maybe a simple scallop or something.


Last but not least - for today anyways - here are the socks in progress. I started these about two weeks ago.

Erika had asked for socks with "all the colors". I promptly went to Blue Moon, picked some nice, muted colorways - but still with many different colors. Guess which one she chose? The one with all of the most vibrant, fluorescent colors possible. The picture here doesn't do the colors justice. Picture pink, yellow, orange, green and blue highlighters.

I do truly love these socks though. I made them a bit big, and think I'll give this first pair to her little friend whose feet are just a bit bigger, and I'll make a pair that's 4 stitches less around so that they fit her this year. I fear that if I keep these for us, that she'll fit them perfectly in the summer.

I do have more photos that have been processed. The next few nights will be for knitting, but I hope that before next week I'll have another post with photos.