Month: November 2017

Knitting

Last Minute Gifts to Knit

Iris Rose

I have kind of hit a blank on what to blog about this week.  I have been working on new patterns and did promise them for the end of November but, I can tell you right now, that ain’t gonna happen.

I have been designing a poncho in a really pretty gradient yarn and, having reached the point where both the front and back pieces were finished, I sewed one side together so that I could knit the neck piece.  A look in the mirror had me laughing my tush off!  It was the most ridiculous looking piece of work that I have ever created.  The cable is beautiful and the yarn shading is very, very pretty but the style, not so much.  Fortunately, I do have a sense of humour or I would have been either in tears or throwing the darn thing through the window.  I will have the pattern ready for January; Christmas season is interfering with my spare time. 

I have also been working on a crocheted shawl that I am excited about.  I am just not excited enough about it to finish it.  I really don’t like the yarn that I chose and want to restart in something that I enjoy working with.  I am going to put my work ethic (huh!) in gear and get that done first so, tada, there will now be two new patterns in January instead of November.  Good things are worth waiting for though, right?

While I procrastinate and you are waiting for me to reveal these patterns, how is your gift knitting or crocheting coming along?  I have a number of free patterns on Ravelry that are speedy knits with very little investment in yarn required.  Cheap and fast, what more can you ask for?  Seriously though, if you are short on time and need an inexpensive handmade gift, have a look at my store.

My favourites are first, the Simple Shawl which you can whip up in about four hours on big needles with 150m of a fancy textured or self striping bulky yarn.  Next is the Quick and Easy Garter Stitch Cowl which, again, you can whip up in a couple of hours and, using a thick, pretty yarn, makes a great gift.  Third choice would be the Latte Scarf.  It takes a little longer to make but, using one cake only of Caron Cakes, is a fancier gift that won’t break the bank.  Use a second cake and make this one wider for a pretty wrap.

If you can both knit and crochet, the Combo Hat pattern is very pretty and doable in an evening.

Make your simple gifts with fancy textured, striping or fuzzy yarn and let the yarn be the star.  I have a few other patterns that you might like; have a look and make this a handmade holiday!  You still have plenty of time.

Knitting

Baking for Breakfast

Iris Rose

I like to bake on Sundays.  I usually make bread for the coming couple of weeks and make biscuits or scones or muffins for our breakfast bread.  Last Sunday, because I hadn’t baked for a couple of weeks and my freezer was empty, I really went to town and made bread and muffins and biscuits.

                                                                                      

Multigrain buns, plain biscuits and Blueberry Orange Muffins, breakfast taken care of for the next little while!

Today, instead of yarn crafts, I am sharing my Orange (or Lemon) Blueberry Muffin recipe with you.  I make them in the large, six cups per pan, muffin pans but you can easily make them in the smaller, dozen cup pans.  The recipe makes twelve large or twenty-four regular muffins.  They freeze well and thaw quickly for a quick breakfast.

Start by setting your oven to 375 degrees and either lining your pans with paper cups or spritzing them with cooking spray.

Muffins:

4 cups of flour (all white or half white and half whole wheat

½ cup sugar

2 Tbsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

Zest of two small oranges or one large orange or one lemon

 

Mix these together in a large bowl.

4 eggs

½ cup oil (canola or your favourite one)

Juice of the orange(s) or lemon that you zested

3 ¾ cups buttermilk

 In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, beat in the oil with the eggs, add the juice and buttermilk and stir well to mix all together.

 2 cups fresh or frozen, unthawed blueberries

 Add the blueberries to the dry ingredients and stir gently.  Make a well and pour in the wet ingredients all at once.  Stir until just mixed, do not beat.

Fill the prepared muffin pans to just under the top edge.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until lightly golden and slightly cracked on top.  Like a cake, they will spring back when lightly tapped on the top.  Let them sit in the pan for about ten minutes before removing them to a rack to cool.

These are best fresh or frozen to keep longer than a day.  Enjoy!

Knitting

Hat Display aka Pothead

Iris Rose

This weekend I am going to be a vendor at one of our local Christmas Markets.  If you happen to live in Calgary and want to see what I and other crafters have been making, drop by the Blessed Cardinal Newman High School at 16201 McKenzie Lake Blvd SE and browse the Christmas Market between 10AM and 3PM.  All of us appreciate the support.

I normally use a few of those styrofoam wig heads for displaying hats.  However, and this is a big however, they are smaller than an adult head, very easily damaged, and love to tip over unless they are perfectly balanced and/or taped (this is my preference) onto the table top.  I needed a solution to all of these problems.  There is a video circulating on facebook that shows a styrofoam ball wrapped in yarn with lips, crocheted and glued on, that is meant for hat display.  The “head” sits on a dowel and is based on a chunk of wood.  It is very cute but I anticipated a problem with the yarn sticking to the hat when someone pulls it off to try it on.  Plonk, over goes the display and likely the next one to it.

          

A very talented crafter, Lynn, came up with a brilliant solution by placing the dowel inside an overturned clay pot through the drainage hole.  She commented that the dowel was still a little unstable.  My DH came up with the really great idea of cutting rounds of wood just smaller than the pot opening and sitting the dowel in that.  It is really perfect blend of both ideas that works great for me!

The ball is drilled and then glued onto a dowel which is pushed through the drainage hole of the pot into the wood base but not glued so that I can dismantle the display for storage.  I made three different heights so that they can be grouped closer together than the wig heads and still be visible.  The styrofoam is quite slick so putting hats on and taking them off should be a breeze.  The finished product was dubbed a “pothead” and has been the topic of jokes all week.  I don’t have time to decorate the pots this year but have plans to get creative and sponge paint or paint flowers on them or knits or whatever.  I will let you know how that works out.

This is our second sale this fall.  The first was kind of a dud due to location but, you know, I always enjoy being at these sales just to meet people, so it really wasn’t a waste of time.

Have a crafty week and I will let you know next Thursday if our “potheads” worked out.

Knitting

Foray into Machine Knitting

Iris Rose

This week, I thought that I would write about my third craft love, machine knitting.  I know that I have written about this in the past and I know that machine knitting is regarded by many as cheating or not requiring much skill, but nothing could be further from the truth.

I have caught up with my WIPs (actually ignoring the pile is more accurate) and decided to give the old standard gauge a whirl.  I have a couple of knitting machines, okay four, all of them Singers from the eighties, three are standard gauge and one is a bulky machine.  Three have matching ribbers.  My first machine was a gift and the others were just too tempting a price to refuse once I caught the bug.

Silk Noil Tank Top With Hand Crocheted Edging

I am self taught and learned before the era of Youtube and other helpful online resources.  I thought that using a machine would be breeze and, although I was already an accomplished crocheter and knitter at the time, I soon found out that this craft was a whole new ball game.  The instruction books that come with the machines are good but there is no substitute for hands on help with this type of knitting.  I joined a machine knitting group and that really helped to keep me going.  I have learned so much more these last few years through facebook groups and Youtube that I am light years ahead of where I was when I packed up my machines thirteen years ago.

A standard gauge knitting machine will handle yarn from very fine to about sport weight.  3ply and 4ply (sock) are the perfect weight in my opinion.  You can knit DK but it is a struggle and requires using only every other needle so is limiting in what you can make.  My favourite machine is my Singer 560 (I have two in case one dies on me) and has built in electronic patterning which was state of the art in 1984, the year it was made.

This last couple of weeks of been a fun test of all of the knowledge that I have acquired but not used recently.  I had rehabbed my machines a few months ago with new retainer bars and needles and, wow, what a difference!  I cast on without dropping everything on my toes and I was off.

    

Cashmere, Silk and Merino Wrap, the photo doesn’t do it justice!

The first thing that I made was a wrap for myself.  I collect yarn, did you know that?  I have a few, okay some, okay a lot, of luxury yarn on cones that I buy online from Colourmart in the UK.  I had a 150g cone of cashmere, silk, merino blend in a charcoal grey.  Perfect, I thought.  I played with some swatches (yes, you have to swatch for machine knitting too!) and settled on a simple tuck stitch pattern that gives the work some interest but allows the sheen of the yarn to come through.  Thirteen hundred rows later I had a gorgeous wrap that only required some crochet around the edge to stop the curl.  Three thousand single crochet stitches later and my wrap was done.  It is really lovely, soft and drapey, and is my new favourite wrap.

Bunny Hop Cardigan

Well, the simple work was done, and I ventured on to something more challenging.  I didn’t keep the patterns that I had written long ago but remembered enough to work out a simple girl’s cardigan.  Having a lot of sewing experience in garment construction really can make a difference in success or failure when designing for another craft.  A border of bunnies across the bottom above the ribbing made the sweater.  I still needed to block everything and sew it together but, when that was done, it is really cute and I am proud of the way it turned out.

Cable Sweater Back, Unblocked

Next up is a more complicated pullover with hand manipulated cables and raglan sleeves.  I had no trouble with the back but, of course, thinking that this would be a breeze, I needed to reknit the front a few times.  All in the learning curve I guess but whew, I was glad when it was done.  I have completed a sleeve and am working on the second.  I should be done this weekend, yay!

    

Wrap Knit from a Youtube Video, this took some patience but was fun!

If you think that machine knitting might be for you, I highly, highly recommend that you join a group in your area if you can find one.  I did that when I first started and it really does make a big difference in continuing or quitting in frustration.  Youtube is your friend and an active facebook group will keep you inspired and encourage you to keep going.

Knitting

Time’s Awastin’ and Nordic Mitts

Iris Rose

I am back to nag you about the number of weeks left until the holidays, less than eight!  I know that you know that the deadline for getting the handmade gifts done is close but, if you are still trying to decide what to make, time is a wastin’.

I have a number of free (and paid) patterns in my Ravelry store that are ideal for gifts.  Have a look at the hat, shawl, scarf, and sweater patterns that I have written for you.  If you decide to make one of them, thank you!

I have a few new patterns on the drawing board, in the testing phase now, that I hope to have ready this month.  I will keep you posted on the progress.  In the meantime, here are a couple of ideas.

I made a couple of pairs of Nordic style mitts this summer and fall and really enjoyed the experience.  I used a 30cm, 12” circular needle to make these lovelies.  I found it much, much faster to use a slightly longer circular than the 20cm, 9” that I have used for socks.  I think that the longer needle made management of the floats easier in that I could keep a longer stretch between the stitches.  I usually have a problem with fair isle or stranded knitting bunching up but was able to keep that from happening with these.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ussuri-tiger

       

These are really, really unique and have brought a lot of compliments.  The pattern designer, Natalia Moreva, has some other very beautiful patterns in her Ravelry store, Kulabra Designs.  The pattern that I used was well written but not a beginner pattern.  It assumes that you know the basics of knitting and that you have done colour work before.  Having said that, I had no difficulty in following the instructions which I, of course, changed a little at the cuff.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/deep-in-the-forest-mittens

These are another pair of mitts that I made.  The photo shows front and back that are similar but feature different trees.  This designer, Tuulia Salmela, also writes for a more experienced knitter but was also easy to follow.  I made the mistake of trying to knit these, my first pair, on DPN’s; huge faux pas as my poor mitt was all buckled and warped!  I really liked her instructions for the Nordic braid at the cuff and carried that over to the tiger mitts.

These are a couple of ideas for you if you feel like you need to step outside of the hat, scarf, shawl box, have some extra time, and enjoy the challenge.  There are many, many thousands of other patterns for making gifts; these are two that I enjoyed.

Happy crafting this week, and may all your yarny dreams come true!